ST Post your own personal REVIEW of The Force Awakens here!

I thought reviewing this film would be tricky for me as I was uncertain as to whether I really wanted to see what happens next after ROTJ. Thing is, it always seemed so final: The balance of the force is restored, everybody including the ghosts are happy, Lando grooves, and the ewoks get some storm trooper cadavers to nibble on. The End. But then I watched it....

The Force Awakens is a strange title because it never really went to sleep. After ROTJ, Luke presumably when on an expedition to get some younglings together and train them in the ways of the force. I'm guessing he took on Ben Solo because he was family but maybe felt something off-kilter about his nephew. Whatever, he didn't sense Snoke's snout in the trough and messed things up. Back comes the dark side. Maybe it should have been called The Dark Side Awakens instead.

The opening was terrific. Max Von Sydow is as awesome as ever. I could happily just stare at him rocking in a chair for two hours so I was gutted that he was struck down so quickly. There's an 'old Obi-Wan' quality to him that adds gravity straight off the bat. I'm guessing we'll see a lot more of his character in the inevitable pre-TFA animation spin-off.

TFA feels more visceral and aggressive than the older films, particularly at the beginning, which shook me a tad. Good work JJ. The frozen laser shot was wonderful, especially counter-balanced with Poe's humorous exchange with Ren shortly afterwards. That sort of material was handled very well throughout the film and the main characters were each given enough humor to keep it feeling very alive. JJ's Star Trek spirit has most certainly found another home in SW.

I enjoyed all the characters and, tbh, all the various locations and sequences. There's very little that bothered me, Scottish anti-Solo dude included. Talking of Solo, Harrison Ford really made it for me. He was the shining light in the center. Definitely more ROTJ Han than ANH, and why not? We all change as we age. Its like watching family vids of our relatives and realising that your grandad was a bit of a prat when he was in his 40s. Different guy to now. Harrison Ford had that great balance of grumpy but warm hearted; wise but frivolous; many sides that fleshed his character out to a much greater degree than ever before. His death came at the right time and, I think, in the right way. He showed bravery and courage, as he always does, but his failings as a parent cost him his life.

The three younger heroes, I love. Such good actors who re-kindled that old energy and brought a constant smile to my face. Hope to see the Fin and Poe show in the next film with Rey battling her demons with Luke. She really was terrific and I'm glad is the centre character, kicking butt and taking Han's place in the Falcon.

I'm glad 3PO wasn't in it for long. The brief moment we got with him really made me laugh and was worth more than his entire contribution in the prequels put together. I know people say 'C3PO and R2D2' but for me its always been '3PO and Solo'. Worked before and works here again. Likewise with R2; no need to use him until the time is right. Loved BB8 staring up at him though!

Kylo Ren was excellent. Vulnerable one minute, psychotic the next, pretty much how Anakin should have been portrayed. His inability to control his temper was very amusing. His grandad would have force-choked some sense into him if he'd been around to witness the petulant displays.

Carrie Fisher was solid as the neo-Mon Mothma, although I was previously hoping to see her use some force powers other than empathy.

Favourite moment: probably Chewie going ape. Short but sweet. One of my lesser criticisms would be that they didn't show him mourning afterwards. I expected a bit more of a souped-up Hoth shield doors howl. Then again, five planets with billions of people on have just been destroyed and there was more at stake so I'll just leave it to my imagination and think of him having counselling off-screen.

Quite a few people seem disappointed with the battle scenes. I'm not one of them. They kept me on the edge of my seat and I enjoyed all the pyrotechnics and accompanying sub-oscillator booms.

The plot? Yes, a mash-up of what we've seen before, not just ANH but all of the originals. Lucas always said that he likes parallels and the writers took that to heart. What they didn't take was his imagination and that is one area that I've got to criticize the film: there was little that was actually new. Despite so many wonderful ideas (the crashed Star Destroyer etc) there wasn't much that felt like a leap into the unknown. For all their faults, the prequels had much that added to the SW universe; TFA just re-hashed the stuff we've seen. It was a safe choice and thus it safely attaches itself to the OT but personally I'd have preferred bigger more imaginative gambles, even at the expense of annoying some fanfolk. SW should be endlessly diverse with things that we've never imagined. It doesn't have to be all next-gen ties or giant space stations blowing up planets. I was glad, at least, to see some new force powers. More please!

Oh yes...Luke. If it was me I'd have had Rey and Chewie zooming off a la Lando and Chewie in TESB and left a question mark as to what happened to Luke until the next episode. Seeing him stand on the cliff edge was a good metaphor but it took away a little of the mystery for me. This is a very slight criticism though as I still got minor goosebumps.

I don't like ranking the films in order or preference as that's a fluid situation that depends on my mood. The other day I watched them all with my daughter and, for the first time, enjoyed ROTS the most. Next time it might be back to ANH. I will say that I found it a really enjoyable addition to the series and can't wait to see it again on Monday.

 

Finally managed to put into words why I really, really liked this movie but didn't love it the way I did the others, even the PT: http://imaginary-cinema.blogspot.com/2015/12/star-wars-nostalgia-awakens.html

 

OK, just saw TFA for the first time over the weekend. Wanted to see it earlier, but wasn't able to. Great film! I liked it a lot better than I thought I would. I'm a mid-40's guy, but the years melted away as I watched this, and I literally felt like a kid again (I was 6 when I first saw ANH in '77).

My initial impressions:

I didn't mind that Jakku was a desert planet, as I initially thought I would. Sure, it reminded us a lot of Tattoine (especially the moisture vaporators & red sun), but at least they had four different planet environments in the film, all of which were in homage to the OT: Jakku, the jungle/forest planet (where the Resistance base was), the snow planet (where the First Order Empire was), and the planet with the islands where Luke was at the very end.

Just like Luke on Tattoine, the desert planet Jakku was supposed to emphasize the desolation that Rey had to deal with in her daily existence.

I especially liked the snow planet, since Hoth was probably my favorite planet environment in the previous 6 films. There is a real sense of isolation re: all the snow, which fit the vibe of the Imperial base.

Nice combination of old & new tech, i.e. the X-wing Fighters & Tie FIighters, but also all of the other cool new Imperial ships, robots, etc. Especially nice was the Imperial "drop ship" that took the Stormtroopers down to the planet(s).

The "Cantina" where Han took Rey & Finn was interesting, and obviously a homage to the ANH cantina. Howver, the cantina band's music in TFA was very watered down & somewhat tepid - which appeared to be intentional.

Kylo Ren doesn't seem as threatening as Vader appearance-wise, but may even be MORE powerful than him - i.e., it was impressive when he suspended that blaster bolt in thin air.

Going along with the above, I was not impressed by Kylo Ren's look, but I guess that was the point - he was supposed to bring DV to mind, but not be an exact copy of him.

Poe Dameron's flight jacket (that Finn was wearing throughout most of the film) seemed to be intentionally similar (though not exact) to Luke's yellow jaket that he wore during the ANH awards celebration at the end of that film.

The laser rifle that the new Stormtroopers were using on the snow planet (that Rey was later using after she took one from a Stormtrooper) were white-ish, and actually reminded me strongly of the toy Strormtrooper laser rifles that Hasbro came out with in the mid 1990's when the SW toy-line was resurrected. This white laser rifle was one of the first POTF2 toys to come out, and the reason given at the time was that it had to be white due to safety issues (there was a also a red Han Solo laser pistol produced at that same time). In any case, if the intention was to make this look like the POTF2 toy, nice homage there too.

I liked seeing Han & Chewie back to smuggling; again, nice to see them return to their "roots". Going along with this, not surprised that Han & Leia had split up due to Ben/Kylo Ren going to the dark side.

It was cool to see Chewie's bowcaster in action through much of the fight scenes; in the OT, you didn't see this much - or, if you did, it wasn't apparent that the "laser bolts" were that much more powerful than regular laser blasts. However, in TFA it was obvious that the bowcaster laser bolts were much more powerful than a regular blaster. Also liked the scene when Han was using the bowcaster; it was evident he hadn't used this before.

I'm glad I had known about KR killing Han Solo ahead of time, so I could go into the film emotionally prepared to see this. To me, this action makes Ren evil & beyond redemption - especially since he tricked Han Solo into thinking he was turning back to the good side right before he killed him - unconsionable.

The huge Imperial crowd scene where the Imperials were all talking to the group of Stormtroopers (with the vehicles in the background), etc. was epic & incredible, and nothing like this had been seen in the OT. Extremely impressive.

The lightsaber battle between Rey & Kylo Ren was EPIC - definitely one of the best lightsaber battles in all the films. Extremely intense. Obviously Rey has some kind of family background that is strong in the force; she wouldnt' have been able to fight so well otherwise - nor would she have been able to use the Force to get that trooper to free her.

I'm extremely glad we did actually see Luke at the end of the film, albeit briefly. For a second there, I thought they would end the movie without showing him - which I felt would have been a cop-out, especially since we were all waiting to see him throughout the movie.

As a big fan of the '90's SW EU novels/comics, I do know that the new films are ignoring this EU. However, I did notice some obvious elements that seemed to be "lifted" from the EU, i.e. Han & Leia being married (at least at some point, even if they no longer were in TFA), Luke at some point having become a Jedi teacher to train new Jedi, etc.

Questions I have about the film:

Is Kylo Ren indeed dead? The snow planet that the Starkiller was one was destroyed & Ren was on that planet. So, unless he escaped before it exploded, he's dead...maybe!

Who are Rey's parents?! I got the impression she wanted to go back to Jakku to wait for them. The implication is that possibly Han/Leia are her parents?! Or, is Luke her father?

Going along with the above, did Luke get married/hook up with a woman & have children between ROTJ & TFA?! This is unclear. I know the new ST is ignoring the '90's-on EU novels/comics, so I know Mara Jade isn't in the picture here.

Who are Finn's parents? He said he was taken from his family as a youth to become a Stromtrooper, but no other details are given. Also, does Finn have Jedi powers? He did fight Kylo Ren using the 'saber, though it was brief.

Will probably see the film again at least one more time in the theater...

 

Watched it for a 4th time today but first time with the missus, she usually doesnt like starwars but really enjoyed TFA, we have been debating back and forth on whos child Rey may be, which has been fun.
Im really impressed with this movie, everyone who worked on it really has produced a stunning piece of work, this easily sits up there 4,5 and 6 for me.
We talked about the movie for nearly the whole 45min journey home which i think is a testament to how good this movie is, havent done that with any other movie ever, great writing imo rather than the so called plot holes...

 

My short take on TFA:

I've seen TFA twice, and I'm not planning on seeing it anymore, so I think I'll type up my review of the film now. The film generally was a letdown for me. I was actually pretty bored while watching it, and while I knew JJ was brought on board because he is generally thought of as the "Rich Little" of American film directors and he had turned Trek into an action franchise, I thought he'd be more interested in developing the Saga in new directions. Honestly, it's a little perplexing to me to think about what motivates JJ. I believe that it's true when JJ says Star Wars is what first inspired him to pursue filmmaking, so it seems weird that when JJ finally got his shot at making a Star Wars film, he did little more than retell ANH's story with a little TESB and ROTJ thrown in. In terms of originality, I think most fanfic easily exceeds JJ's level of creative ambition. Most fanfic writers want to tell new stories -- even if those stories usually turn out to be lame -- but when JJ finally gets the opportunity that his 11-year-old self always dreamed of having, that many of us have dreamt of having, what does he do? Nothing new really, mostly just retell the same story that his 11-year-old self enjoyed long ago. If this story was JJ's own making and not forced upon him by Disney, then I have to say what JJ most reminds me of is a once idealistic politician who has lost his way, one of those longtime members of congress who through the process of seeking office has made so many concessions that his sole goal ends up becoming seeking re-election rather than any of those higher goals he originally hope to fulfill. Of course, retelling ANH's storyline may have been Disney's choice, but whatever the source of this decision, it was a soulless one that put commercial interests far ahead of artistic and creative ones. After seeing this film, I can understand why Lucas, the artist, was frustrated by what they gave us. If he were the egotist that many make him out to be, then he'd be bragging right now: "Look! They've used my old story again and it still works great! I'm so awesome!" Indeed, if imitation is the highest form of flattery, then TFA is the ultimate form of hero worship. Instead, Lucas wanted Disney to take TFA in original directions, while Disney only wanted to re-package things straight from the original trilogy. Regardless of whether TFA was a success or a failure, I think the film sets an awful precedent in an industry already hellbent on relying on recycled material and using formula. Honestly, why should they give us anything new when something old will earn billions?

Just the choice to so closely retell ANH's storyline makes TFA seem odd as a part of the Star Wars historical timeline. Even in a mythological world like Star Wars, a succession of events would never repeat with so many similarities. Imagine if after the final Lord of the Rings book, Tolkien wrote a new saga in which a dwarf had to make a long trek to get rid of a magical necklace that would give an evil spirit ultimate power if he were to find it, or imagine if Jesus returned and he just started doing the same stuff he did in the New Testament in the exact same order, we'd be like: "Come on, God, you have supreme intelligence. Can't you come up with something new! That bread and wine trick wasn't that great the first time around!" That level of repetition is plain weird, and that's pretty much what we have going on in the Star Wars timeline now. Just for this reason alone, TFA seemed a little off to me. I went in expecting something new, and instead what I got was something that I already knew very well. Still, just the fact that TFA so strongly resembles ANH wasn't the only reason I didn't care for the film. Just because a film was inspired by creative cowardice doesn't mean that a film can't work. For all I know, James Cameron researched Dances With Wolves and Ferngully and, for that matter, Star Wars too and he then used a computer program to seamlessly fuse those films together into a single entity. Even if this were the case, I still think Avatar was a pretty good if somewhat predictable film. In the big picture, what happens behind the scenes doesn't really matter. Grinding up pigs' snouts, feet, and anuses might be part of the ugly process that produces a hot dog, but a hot dog can still taste good. Of course, if you get the recipe wrong, then you don't end up with a hot dog. Rather you end up with a disgusting pile of pigs' snouts, feet, and anuses that someone else expects you to eat and enjoy, and unfortunately, for me, TFA less reminded me of a good hot dog and more a poorly assembled pile of leftover parts. Of course, I am speaking hyperbolically here, but my main point is that sometimes a good film can arise from an assembly line approach to filmmaking. It's just that this did not turn out to be true for me in this case.


(Yum! Yum! Behind the scenes footage of the production of hot dogs and TFA: you'll never eat a hot dog or watch the pre-production of a film the same way again!)

For me, the only time the film's copying of ANH's storyline became cringe-worthy was once its third act had begun and it was time to take out the newest incarnation of the Death Star. During the rest of the film, the repetitive nature of the TFA's storyline felt less overt, in the sense that I was not rolling my eyes. At the same time, the rest still seemed overtly familiar to me. Nothing seemed to surprise me because in one way or another it had occurred in other films -- mostly other Star Wars films but other well-known films in general. For instance, it was so obvious that Rey was going to adopt BB-8 that I didn't see the point of seeing that person-who-adopts-the-cute-puppy storyline once again. Of course, she was going to save BB-8; of course she wasn't going to abandon him; and of course, she wasn't going to sell him. BB-8 had important plans in it, so it was obvious that BB-8 and Rey would be stuck at the hip from the second they met, and because that was so obvious, that little puppy adoption storyline didn't work. It just seemed like filler. Neither did it help develop Rey's character. Since it was so obvious that the plot dictated that she and BB-8 remain together, instead I was just reminded of the writer's hand forcing her actions to conform to necessities of the plot. I've also grown tired of most action-adventure storylines, as most of these films seem too much alike. I'd greatly prefer a unique plot twist (like Bruce Wayne being trapped in a prison that he can only escape from if he is able to make a leap of faith embracing life in The Dark Knight Rises) rather than another fistfight or chase scene. As a consequence, TFA's borrowing not only made the film seem overly familiar but it also prevented the storyline from going in interesting new directions.


(Something's a little too familiar!)

JJ seemed more restrained in his cinematography compared to his Trek films. His camera movements were more less fast and chaotic, his fetish for lens flares was contained, and things weren't always blue. To some degree, I thought his visual style served as a bridge from the style of the rest of the Saga to a more contemporary style, not that I think it's necessary to make this change, but I'm fine with the Saga developing its visual vocabulary. At the same time, I wish he had stayed a little more true to the Saga style. The most striking visual departure was one whose rationale I don't understand completely. The color palette seemed muted and grainy, and none of the colors seemed bright. Its look was somewhat reminiscent of that of Man of Steel, but while Man of Steel was meant to be a more serious take on Superman, The Force Awakens felt more like light entertainment, and so the only explanation I can think of is that they settled on a muted, grainy style to conceal CGI effects, as integrating CGI effects is more difficult on film than it is with digital, and grain and color correction can help improve CGI integration on film. JJ used many more close-ups than are typical for Star Wars films, and his use of a shallow depth of field also contrasts with the Saga, and while I typically prefer photography with a shallow depth of field, those changes made it feel a little less like a Star Wars film to me. This was not JJ trying to make Star Wars feel more contemporary. The cinematography of The Avengers and Avatar both come closer to the Star Wars style. JJ was simply staying closer to his own film aesthetic, and I wish JJ had looked to these examples as perfectly viable contemporary approaches for inspiration for his visual language, if he could not find enough inspiration in the Saga films themselves. These visual differences alone wouldn't have created too drastic of a contrast with the rest of the Saga, but combined with his editing style, the ultimate visual effect felt far less like a Star Wars film than any of its predecessors.

The most jarring departure from the Star Wars visual language was TFA's editing, which I believe serves a central role in the success of Abrams' narrative style. JJ's fast pacing combined with his rapid cutting is the key to holding an audience's attention even when the material makes no sense. If you're wondering what I'm talking about, pay attention to the light saber fight the next time through; JJ cuts after virtually every saber swing; this is totally unlike Lucas's approach to filming saber fights. His sensory overload approach to filmmaking creates an immersive experience that makes it difficult for the viewer to reflect upon what he is watching. Things jump around and move forward too fast.


(Is it thrilling? Is it nauseating? It's hard to say. It's just a roller-coaster!)

To a degree, this is the goal of most filmmakers, but JJ's adeptness at creating immersion is often undercut by his narrative deficiencies. If a viewer, as I did, starts to notice the many problems in the film's story logic, which I will later detail, then he is pushed outside of JJ's intended tunnel-vision immersion, left unable to get back inside. What might be an exciting roller-coaster to some becomes an unpleasant onslaught of loud sounds and quickly flashing images. Other filmmakers have employed this approach. The few detractors of The Dark Knight argued that its pace made the experience equivalent to two and half hours of constant climax (making it perhaps the ideal viewing experience for the musician Sting!). However, unlike TFA, The Dark Knight had a plot that held up to scrutiny. Though TFA's narrative problems are more extensive, it more resembles The Dark Knight Rises, which also utilizes the forever building immersion with a narrative that has problems with story logic. For me, this shortcoming on the part of The Dark Knight Rises was mostly offset by the investment in Bruce Wayne's storyline, the effectiveness of Bane as a villain, a sense that things were at stake, and a pretty original story. Unfortunately, TFA didn't compensate for its narrative shortcomings in any ways similar to these for me.

Abrams attempts to make a convincing reality out of narratives riddled with coincidences, bad story logic, and character motivations that often make little sense, and he does so by giving the audience the impression that any questions will be answered later on and then using persistent sensory overload to distract the viewer until he forgets what he was wondering about in the first place. For me, this worked to the film's detriment, especially on my second viewing of the film. I believe this is how JJ was able to immerse the viewer in a film like Trek 09, even though the film contains a ridiculous number of coincidences, characters making decisions that make no sense, and a villain, Nero, who has absolutely no reason to want vengeance against old Spock. In fact, he should want to thank Spock. JJ's narrative problems are less severe in TFA, but they are clearly here. Just a quick run through of some of highlights/lowlights -- 4 coincidences in row happen to connect BB-8 to Rey to Finn to the Millennium Falcon to Han, Han's visit to Maz really serves no purpose, 2 escapes are accomplished with ridiculous ease, the weakness in the Starkiller base is discovered within a minute of the Resistance learning of its existence, and the heroes are searching for a map to locate "the incredibly important" Luke who apparently purposefully does not want to be found and has no ability to be decisive in military combat unless he's become a Force god. Now that I've pointed these story issues out, what does this mean? Does this mean that I'm a smarty pants and people who didn't catch these things are dumb dumbs? Of course not. Some viewers simply may not care that the plot doesn't make a great deal of sense even on a surface level. There's nothing wrong with this. Some people don't demand that popular culture stand up to scrutiny.


(George Costanza: "I like stuff you don't have to think about too much")

However, I think some people would find fault with JJ's story flaws in TFA when they notice them or when they are pointed out, but as I said, he pretty effectively disguises these flaws by utilizing a fast pace, an immersive visual experience, and the impression that questions about the plot will later be answered. These techniques can produce a thrill ride type experience, but they also prevent the viewer from noticing the serious problems with the film's story logic because things go by so fast. Certainly, many people reading this will immediately think -- "I liked this film! It can't possibly have so many plot problems!" -- and they will remain in denial about this until the day they die. Well, no, the problems are there. JJ simply has an effective way of slipping them by you.

Now, does this mean that TFA has a bad story? Well, for me, yes, because I care about story issues like this and I saw most of the problems from the get go and found them annoying and distracting and they undermined the film's reality for me, which was already hurt by the plot's derivative nature and its similarity to ANH. TFA's narrative has many qualities that have traditionally been considered hallmarks of weak storytelling: its narrative compromises basic story logic, its characters have motivations that don't make sense, it relies heavily on coincidences to move its plot forwards. Perhaps standards are changing. These basic story problems are present in Skyfall, Trek 09, and Gone Girl, and these were all critical darlings, and these all had a good to great reception by the public. In the end, I suppose it depends on your point of view. If you demand that the films that you love the most have plots that are reasonably believable, then maybe you should watch TFA with a more critical eye and catch what you've missed, and then be honest that the film amounts to, at best, a big dumb thrill ride. However, if what matters to you is the illusion that events in a film logically connect, then you probably won't mind TFA's story problems. JJ has effectively created the illusion that has convinced a lot people that his plot is believable, and with escapist entertainment, maybe that's all that matters.

Williams' score suffered because of JJ's fast visually immersive style. Most of the most notable musical motifs from Williams' scores come from moments when little is happening on screen, and Williams' music provides part of the meaning to the scene: Luke looking out at the binary sunset, Artoo rolling through the desert, the Emporer's theme as he walks with Vader or when he is sitting on his throne, Across the Stars swelling as Anakin and Padme kiss and are rolled into the Colosseum, Yoda lifting the X-wing out of the water, Leia interacting with a curious Wicket. Williams' music is best when a director gives him slow moments or situations that are melodramatic, whimsical, or idiosyncratic. Williams' musical style stems from Wagner, a German opera composer, so it should not come as a surprise that his music works best with a space opera/fantasy rather than sci-fi action adventure. TFA didn't give him these moments to work with. Except for the moments with Rey on Jakku, the film didn't allow Williams to bring meaning to its scenes, and it showed.


(Just how poignant a person walking and standing can be when accompanied by Williams' music. ♪♫Let it slow! Let it slow! JJ, slow down your pace much more. Let it slow! Let it slow! Stationary objects are not always a bore.♪♫)

The mise-en-scene (any object that you see on-screen) feels most like the rest of the Saga. If you stop most frames, you'll see sets, costumes, locales, spaceships that feel right at home in the Star Wars universe. Of course, part of the reason for this is that they relentlessly re-used the imagery from the OT, and I wish they had given me the opportunity to see more new things. After looking at the book The Artwork of The Force Awakens and seeing the many ships and locales that developed upon OT-tech and settings, I'm convinced that Disney, not JJ, forced this retro look upon the film as a corporate mandate. I can't imagine any director who possesses a human soul and an ounce of dignity tossing out these really cool new concepts just to give us more of the same. Part of what makes Star Wars compelling to me, like Avatar, is that it is typically so visually original. Probably TFA was most successful in this department with its introduction of new aliens. Say what you will about TPM, but for me, especially for its time, it had far more visually striking images than this film, and each PT film that followed it exceeded what TPM accomplished. The Gungan city, the underwater creatures, the pod-race and its pod-racers, the battle droids being deployed from their carrier ship, even the interior of the senate chambers were more visually wowing than all but the few highlights from TFA: the Star Destroyer grave yard, hogsquattle, the rathkars (the rolling, tentacled blobsters), that shot of the Starkiller being fired in front of the First Order troops. That's about all I can think of. Honestly, one of the most visually unique things in TFA was that self-rising muffin, and that a muffin can upstage most of the visual high points from TFA sort of shows just how safe creatively they were playing it.


(Nothin' says lovin' like a muffin that needs no oven!)

I thought the performances were generally good. I think Ford was best as Han. It was nice to see him onscreen once more, and Chewbacca had some good moments too. Isaac was greatly underused. He immediately comes across as a likable confident character, but after the first fifteen minutes, all he really gets to do is fly around. I do think that Rey is pretty much a Mary Sue, not that that hurt my appreciation of her character much. It only was glaring when she was telling Han how to fix the Falcon. There were a few times when her performance seemed forced (her fangirl enthusiasm when learning the Falcon's owner is Han, her yelling to Finn as she runs towards the ship on Jakku), but she, just like Finn, most of all needed more character development. They were more character types or sketches than fully fleshed out characters. Finn was likable, but JJ's choice to alternately use him as a source of comic relief and dramatic tension undermined his reality as a character somewhat. Especially when he was being humorous, it was very clear that Boyega had switched on the "I'm the comic character persona." Then a moment later, he'd switch it back off. Finn's character was also a lost opportunity. He was a child soldier trained from infancy, yet despite this background, he came across as the most genial character in the film. No real hints of darkness, no real sense of him losing the only life he ever knew, no real connection to his former comrades. (Heck, he had no problem blowing away his buddies as early as his escape.)

I enjoyed Adam Driver as Kylo Ren. I liked his hissy fits. I thought he was interesting as was his Force mind-reading battle with Rey, and I liked the sense of conflict in him before he killed Han. Unfortunately, while he worked well as a character, he was not an effective villain and antagonist, and neither was Snoke; in Snoke's case, I don't think I even need to go into why he came off as lame. For my personal viewing experience, great villains are very important to the overall success of this type of film. Great villains played pivotal roles in raising the stakes in some of my favorite films -- The Joker, Bane, Hans Gruber, Alex in A Clockwork Orange, Jack in The Shining, and, of course, Vader and Palpatine. For me, some films, like Skyfall and Into Darkness, were saved from being absolute turds by their memorable villains. So, TFA's lack of menacing villains really worked to the detriment of the film. Clearly, memorable villains are not as important to other viewers. The MCU continues to thrive despite falling short in that department again and again.


(Great villains are so much fun!)

From the initial crawl, I was curious why finding Luke was such an important goal. From spoilers, I knew that they would be looking for him, but as that was one of the central goals in the film, my mind kept coming back to why Luke was gone and why finding him was so important. It can't be that they want him to train the apparent Force prodigy Rey because they didn't know about her yet. It also can't be that he's needed for military victory unless he's become some kind of Force god. Well, it turns out they never give us a good reason, and so as the film goes along that entire quest felt more and more hollow. The film also leaves the impression that Luke simply didn't care about the Resistance and left for no good reason except that he was down. An earlier draft actually gave Luke a compelling reason for leaving. He didn't approve of the Resistance's choice to develop their own super-weapon, and that sub-plot would've added some interesting grey area to the film. The super-weapon also had the capacity to ram through the 1st Order's shields so that would've brought something new to the space battle. Again, I can only surmise that these interesting twists on an old theme were squashed by studio executives.

The interior of the drop ship did not feel like it belonged in a Star Wars film. It immediately reminded me of Aliens, and that brought me out of the film just as it was beginning. Once they landed on Jakku, it then felt much more like an Imperial military exercise. Poe's exchange with Max Von Sydow's character came across as very perfunctory, and their slaughter of the villagers felt just like regular run-of-the-mill bad guy behavior. Kylo's Force freeze of Poe and his Force mind reading of Poe felt much more threatening, and the latter was cool new spin on the Jedi mind trick. Poe's escape from custody was ridiculously easy. He's supposed to be the Resistance's best pilot and he knows information vital to the Resistance, yet Finn is basically able to walk off with him with no hassle. Just compare the ease of his escape with the escape from the Death Star in ANH. Han, Luke, and Leia have considerable difficulty escaping, but Lucas, recognizing how improbable an escape like this still would be, gives the further explanation that Vader allowed them to escape so that they can be tracked, making it that much more realistic that they could've escaped and giving the escape an unexpected twist. On the other hand, on two different occasions in TFA, Poe and Finn as well as Rey are each basically able to walk out of custody virtually unimpeded.

During their escape, it was a good moment when, after Finn says, "Stay calm. Stay calm," Poe tells Finn he is calm only to have Finn admit he's talking to himself. I did like the look of the tether as the TIE-fighter tried to pull free, and while I think recycling the TIE's is lame, there is something cool about the texture of their black solar panels. The aerial escape was not very exciting, I think because attempting to dodge lasers isn't as exciting as out-maneuvering other ships. Poe's choice to christen Boyego's character with the name Finn seemed out of place during their escape and made them seem incompetent, as they were shot down moments later.

I enjoyed seeing Rey's life on Jakku. The shots of her rappelling in the Star Destroyer looked cool. Her AT-AT home, making muffins alone, popping on a helmet all helped to make her seem lonely and bored, and I wish the film had spent more time developing this. I think the much longer time spent getting to know Luke in ANH paid off in the long run. Disney was able to make it work with Wall-E; I don't see why they would be afraid of a little more character development here. Her adoption of BB-8 seemed trite, as it was obvious to me that she would adopt him, and they did nothing new with the adopt-a-puppy storyline. Once Finn met Rey, they should've given them much more time to get to know each other, but unfortunately, it was already time to run away from bad guys, and for some reason, they decided to include some really dumb dialogue about hand-holding then. The escape on the Falcon was exciting and the high point of action in the film for me. I wish I had seen less of it in commercials, but I'm glad JJ mostly removed the Falcon roller-coaster shot that I so scathingly criticized which appeared in the first trailer. He must have been convinced by the side I was on when some of us argued against it on the forums! I think the aerial footage throughout the film did the best job of incorporating the old Saga style while expanding its visual vocabulary at the same time.

I enjoyed seeing Han and Chewie together again, but really they didn't do much with that conflict between him and the two gangs, who also just coincidentally showed up on Han's freighter at the same time. Rey just accidentally (i.e. conveniently) let loose those rolling tentacled blobsters that helpfully swallowed up or chased away all the gangsters. I liked the look of the creatures, but there was nothing exciting about the scene. On my second viewing of the film, the coincidences that led up this point, which I had already noticed before, really stood out as egregious. BB-8 just happens to find Rey, then Poe just happens to find Rey, they both just happen to find the Falcon, and Han just happens to come upon the Falcon in outer space, then two groups of gangsters coincidentally are able break into Han's freighter and board it at the same time, and we're not done yet -- we're about to have another coincidence when Rey stumbles upon Luke's saber in Maz's castle. (This covers about every major plot point in the 1st half of the film.) I can certainly think of minor tweaks that could've eliminated some these coincidences, but JJ just doesn't seem to care about fixing things like that, even when there are easy fixes.

It was nice to see Han telling Poe and Finn there is truth to the Force, and it's understandable why Finn who was part of the First Order and Rey who lived in First Order territory wouldn't know about this part of galactic history. The rationale for dropping by Maz's place makes little sense and adds little to the story. Han simply intends to drop them off there so that Maz can find them a ride to the Resistance, but Han had no reason to do this. Han could've just hopped into hyperspace, dropped them off on the Resistance planet, and flown off without ever seeing Leia. The visit to Maz's seemed more like an excuse to give us another cantina experience, but again, without the proper rationale. This issue is also too easily resolved. Maz changes Han's mind simply by telling him he should go see Leia. Big drama there. I did like Maz. She was quirky, but I wish they had done more with her. Rey's vision was well-done, and more dream-like than comparable visions in Man of Steel and AoU. Still, so much more could have been done with it. Yoda's visions in the Yoda arc of the Clone Wars TV series put any of these moments to shame. It was very weird that Rey chose to go for a long jog to de-stress after seeing the disturbing vision, but this was clearly included so that she could be captured. It also made little sense that Kylo chose to pull back his troops after capturing Rey. He would still want to prevent the Resistance from finding BB-8, and I doubt his issue was that he wanted to save 1st Order lives. It was cool to see Han and Chewie shooting things up, but I didn't care about the aerial combat as I didn't care about anyone involved in it and a great deal of it was shown from a ground point of view. (This was at least a new perspective from which to watch a dogfight, but I think the choice didn't work well.) Finn getting bested by the Imperial with that weapon didn't bother me, though I wonder why a stormtrooper would have such a weapon, but his failings here makes it weird that Finn is able to wound Kylo.

The scenes with Snoke and Kylo fell completely flat and felt completely derivative. Snoke's choice to go with Hux's military approach didn't make much sense. It's presented as an either/or scenario as Hux says "Our strategies must change," but there's no reason this has to be an either/or decision. There was no reason to postpone destroying the New Republic worlds as they waited for BB-8 to be found. BB-8 wasn't going to be taken to those worlds. They wanted to return him to Leia. Also, their failure to find BB-8 gave them no greater reason to fire the weapon at that time. Just because the Resistance was slightly more likely to find Luke didn't mean that New Republic worlds needed to be blown up. Blowing up those planets also came across as pretty flat. In ANH, there was a logical and dramatic reason for blowing up Alderaan -- to rule by fear and to gain information from Leia. We got to see Leia's shocked reaction to their choice to fire and Obi-Wan is traumatized by its destruction. Here, we get a nearly incomprehensible nonsense rant from Hux criticizing the Republic government for "acquiescing to disorder," whatever the heck that means (I guess he really doesn't like neat freaks). This is followed by shots of basically anonymous worlds being destroyed. Also, for me, Kylo asking the mask of Vader to give him the power to resist the light side is pretty absurd. He's positively the worst guy to ask given that he's the only guy who was able to resist the dark side (and yes, the novel establishes that Kylo is aware that Vader returned to the light side and was redeemed).

The reunion of Han and Leia was nice, but unfortunately, I was found myself distracted not at all by Fisher's age but rather (not trying to be mean, just honest) the effects of her plastic surgery/botox on her facial expressions. Let's just say that it limited her emotional range. The scene within the map room played out almost like a parody of what occurred in ANH, with their pointing out, "Look at how much bigger this one is!" I also thought it was so lame that, in a matter of minutes, they were able to identify yet another weak point that could destroy the entire super-weapon planet. (I hope earth doesn't have one those self-destruct points!) One high point for me during their ground assault/rescue mission was Han's line: "That's not how the Force works!" The Force mind-reading battle between Rey and Kylo worked well, and JJ made effective use of editing and cinematography to bring a great deal of drama to what was essentially 2 people engaged in stressful staring contest, and I think this may have been his high point as a director in the film. However, the revelation of Kylo's big ambition came across as pretty lame. He wants to become as tough as Vader. What is he -- an eight-year-old? Soon after that, we have another ridiculously easy escape from custody, this time by Rey. One interesting bit of information that I noted in their Force mind reading battle: Kylo mentions seeing an island in Rey's mind, even though she was never exposed to it up to that point in the film. Perhaps, Rey has actually been to the first Jedi temple where Luke is waiting, but she had her mind wiped.

I thought the meeting between Kylo and Han was dramatic. I really got the sense that Han cared about his son, and that Kylo was torn, though the dark side was still dominant. I like the little play on words there: "I'm being torn apart. I want to be free of this pain... Will you help me?" Han believes that Kylo wants to return to the light, but for Kylo, Han is the source of his pain because he tempts him back towards goodness. So, Han's presence there does help Kylo by allowing him to break another link to what was good in him. Kylo was too under-powered in his saber fight with Finn. Though he seemed to be toying with him to a degree, Finn was still able to wound him, though it wasn't entirely clear how because of the editing, and really how does Finn know how to use a saber at all? Also, that Kylo was wounded did not seem like a plausible explanation to me for his failings in combat the way it was portrayed. He didn't even walk with a limp. I did like how he smacked his wound to anger himself. If you want to be nit-picky, Kylo should've just force froze Finn and then sliced him in two, but Force-users often don't use all the powers available to them for some reason. The saber fight between Rey and Kylo was equally unimpressive. It basically went like this: Kylo was wiping the floor with her, then Rey had her Force "Hulkamania/Super-Saiyan" moment, then she was wiping the floor with him, then the crumbling planet's surface decided that it wanted to save Kylo's life. I'll assume that Rey had years of training and had her mind wiped by Luke after the Jedi massacre. (Say goodbye to a Darth Revan spinoff and its big plot twist.) If she hasn't had any training, then her success against Kylo is beyond stupid.

The aerial attack on the Starkiller base reminds me of my perspective on song remakes: either make it better or make it very different, and if you can't do either one, what's the point? That about sums up that attack. ROTJ can be criticized for re-using the Death Star a second time, but I would argue that battle at least exceeded what occurred in ANH both in terms of scale and drama. The stakes were high in ANH, as pilots were being shot down around Luke left and right, and we care about him much more than we care about Poe, but the story there has a very simple linear trajectory, whereas ROTJ's Death Star attack has twists, reversals, and the drama works like interconnected moving parts. Unlike in ANH, Palpatine in ROTJ wants the Rebels to attack the Death Star, though they don't know that, and if it weren't for Lando's quick thinking about Imperial jamming, the entire Rebel fleet would've splatted on the Death Star's shields like bugs on a windshield. At that point, the space attack is totally dependent on the success of the ground assault. Then, there's another twist: the Death Star is operational. So, the Rebels improvise by attacking the Imperial fleet. At the same time, Palpatine uses this perilous situation to anger Luke as he keeps giving gleeful play-by-play commentary on the Rebellion's imminent destruction and his friends' imminent deaths on Endor. This, in turn, brings extra drama to the space battle and the Endor battle. We identify with the frustrated Luke and see the battle through his eyes, and as the Rebel fleet continues to be routed and Palpatine keeps rubbing it in, we want Luke to shut him up, but that is exactly what Palpatine wants too, which only increases the tension further as both we and Luke conflicted. We all know how it turns out, but my point here is that ROTJ provided us with was near perfection. Most people cite ROTJ's space battle as the Saga's best, but really, it has very little to do with the special effects. Teddy bears or not, what matters is the battle's dramatic structure that connects the space battle, to the land battle, to Luke, as I just described above. That's what makes it work so well. And TFA's aerial combat is just a pale imitation of what occurs in ANH, let alone the much more intricate and dramatic ending to ROTJ.

In TFA, they fly through a trench, but it's not entirely clear why they need to fly there when their goal is blowing up that hexagonal area. That just seems like something to be done for our visual checklist. Plus, the X-wings are being led by a guy we hardly know. Han forces Phasma to turn off the shields, but wouldn't somebody notice that, and just turn them back on? Or are the shields only controlled at one spot protected by virtually no guards? Then Han, Chewie, Finn, and Rey place explosives all over the place while hardly running into any 1st Order resistance. I know it's cold out there, but shouldn't they have this structure overrun with guards? Or is this a case where the Resistance can figure out how an entire planet can be destroyed during a one-minute conference but the 1st Order has no knowledge of this planet-destroying weak point? Ultimately, all the aerial combat to destroy the Starkiller was very underwhelming as was the destruction of the planet itself, mostly because it contained none of what made ROTJ's space battle so special, and I think JJ even recognized just how weak this part of the film was. That's why we got to see very little aerial combat. Unfortunately, the Starkiller Base's destruction was also supposed to be the climax of the film, so showing us less of the film's weak climax only prevented it from being more boring. It in no way added in making it any more dramatically effective.

Once they returned to the Resistance home planet, it was bizarre that JJ left in Chewie walking right by Leia. Maybe he's still angry at her for the walking carpet remark and the award ceremony snub. Then we're off to complete our original storyline, and the ending came off as very anti-climatic, probably again because I was finally expecting, once R2 came on, some explanation for why finding Luke was so important, but no, again, nothing. So, at that point, I already knew what the end would be -- merely our first chance to see Luke. Even this brief glimpse of him wasn't dramatic or impressive, even with the Force theme swelling in the background. To me, Luke just looked kind of crazy, and JJ lingered on that shot for way too long, especially when it went to the helicopter angle. I was hoping for a nostalgia rush at that moment, but it didn't do much for me at all.

To conclude my review, I'll mention a description of the difference between Lucas's approach to Star Wars and JJ's filmmaking approach that I read elsewhere on these forums: Lucas takes complex ideas -- mythological, spiritual, philosophical, political -- and makes them accessible to children in a fantasy world context (as Lucas's goal was to make a modern mythology for children from the beginning); whereas JJ takes comic book ideas and makes them accessible to adults. Even though TFA is arguably the most adult film of the Saga, it seems to me to also have the least depth and makes the least effort to tell a story that makes sense. Maybe it would have been cool if Lucas had made his Saga films on a more adult level. Though fine as they are, I think they would've worked with a fully adult tone as well. However, given what we have now, I can say without hesitation that I greatly prefer Lucas's complex world for children over JJ's comic book world for adults. I'll say this. One the best aspects of this film is that it leaves things wide open for Rian Johnson to take things in creative new directions, and I'm certainly glad that he has finished his script and he is deep into production, because both of those things make it a little less likely that Disney can intervene and force Johnson into safe formulaic filmmaking, which is what I felt we got in spades with TFA. Of course, there's another scenario that might prove to be true. Maybe that kid from Boyhood at age thirteen was right on the money when he ad libbed one of his scenes for that film years ago:


("Yeah, no, Return of the Jedi, it's over. There's nothing. What are you gonna' do -- turn Han Solo into a Sith lord?)

 

I can deal with it, as long as it's explained why, that's not too much to ask for, is it?

 

Just a few key response points: ( I loved TFA for what its worth) Not bashing your points.
-I find it hilarious that people are "shocked" that others don't think the new movie is as good as or better than TPM or other Prequel movie. People act as if its scientifically proven that the prequels are bad. Its opinion. You can say that the "critics" this or that... I'll just say, when the prequels came out, they were box office hits. TPM made over a billion dollars at the box office (adjusted for inflation). Hardly a movie that everyone hated. The hate came afterwards. I still remember seeing TPM in 3D when it was released and it was packed.
-To claim that the prequel characters didn't have chemistry etc... what ever... I cared about Obi Wan and Anakin. My son was heart broken when Anakin turned to Vader. While I loved the Force Awakens, it suffers from moving too fast. How can I care about the characters when I hardly know them? (not saying TFA isn't good, just pointing out it has weaknesses. Tired of people slamming the prequels and acting as if this movie is some perfect thing that is untouchable)
-Finally, I think Abrams (whom I'm a fan of, LOST is my favorite TV show ever) should be slammed for borderline plagiarism. The EU was wiped out and basically stole a bunch of ideas.

 

Man it truly is astonishing how, from day 1, this ST pitch/project has both made my inner fanboy leap with Joy and yet at the same time Rage hotter than the Volcanoes of Mustufar.....Very few pieces of entertainment have so fiercely divided me.

I wish I could have been able to look at TFA in a vacuum and not have or care about any of my epectations from being a fan since the early 90s when I was a little kid and blew all my Birthday money on a set of the original OT VHSs and a Luke Skywalker Toy lightsaber....But alas I carried 20+ years of fandom into the theater with me.

****Let's start off with the good****

Can you say Yay for the use of Practical Effects!!! The explosions on the deck and during the Ties chasing Finn and Rey on the ground of Jakku all looked fantastic....and brought an amazing sense of brutality to those segments.
They did something special with BB-8. Major props to his creators....little guy just oozed Star Wars fun and looked great doing it.

Creature and Costume design was also fairly good....if you were ok with the main focus still being a variation of the Rebel vs Empire. From Finn/Poes jacket,unkar plutt,Reys desert clothes to the updated look of the FO...all fit in well the GFFA IMO. Phasmas already has a growing Fett like following because of her characters armor.Though the Thing they were going for with Kylos costume had already been done better by Revan...It still rated well against any bad guy outfit. Leia Han and Luke were given good looks as well.

The planet designs weren't too inspired but a few of them made for some great back drops to the action. Racing through the wreckage in Falcon was a heck of a ride, those x-wings skimming across the lake makes me want to play rogue squadron just thinking about it, and the snowy Forrest at night made for a great location to have a ending movie duel.

I have some problems with how the duel ultimately played out with the characters....but I thought choreography was generally pretty good and used the surrounding environment to great effect. Kylos force chuck of Rey once again maintained a good sense of brutality and fierceness at the start. The lightsaber clashes and sound effects all felt good. The trees falling as Kylo stalked Rey gave me the Same sense of thrill as a JP movie when a T-Rex was hulking after its smaller prey.

All the new actors were great...Rey sold the lonely scavenger kid like a boss...Poe captured that hopeless dreamer "who ain't afraid of no empire/FO" that we saw of the rebellion in the OT...a true believer of the cause...despite little screen time...And John was charming as hell...as someone seeing the GFFA in an all new way...determined to not be controlled by anybody.....And JJ got a commendable send off performance out of Ford as everybody's favorite scoundrel.

The actors doing their thing was definitely the highlight of the movie....but as good as a job as I thought they did, they couldn't stop the raging going on in my head about where this narrative has went 30+ years after ROTJ.

****And here comes the massive problems I have with the plot and setup of this ST****

Im so freaking ticked right now, that they have chosen to go this direction with Luke and His Jedi....or lack there of. We had to watch Sidious and Vader rip apart and terrorize the GFFA for 6 long movies. Obi-Wan and Yoda lost nearly everything at the end of Episode III. But they did mange to get Luke to safety and ensure that he'd be the new Hope to bring the Jedi back. Obi-Wan, Yoda and Luke went through all that suffering and pain at the hands of Vader and Sideous, decades worth, finally to triumph over them in ROTJ.......only for all that work to get steamrolled offscreen???? By someone we have never even heard of before????

Are you freaking kidding me!!!!

As with the Anakin killing of Mace, signaling the transformation of himself into Vader and the Republic into the Empire.......Luke Redeeming his father and conquering the Sith should of signaled the rebirth of the Jedi.

To top it off, the Trojan horse turns out to yet again be another deranged family member of the Skywalker Clan. For the life of me I can't see why anyone finds this aspect of this whole Order 66 Part Deux acceptable. I never bothered with any of the BS of the Post ROTJ EU because I heard about stuff like this, and certainly find it awful now that it has become film canon. repeatidly making Skywalker blood keep falling to the Darkside is so un imaginative and lazy IMO. We just spent 3 movies watching the Skywalkers break away from the grips of the darkside. We now need another 3+ to deal with that same weakness in them.....

And the thing that infuriates me above all else about this, is that these Story Creators apparently feel they have to kill off or sideline every other Jedi in the GFFA so that they can tell these stories. So what.. there will forever going to be a rule of 2 now for the Jedi??....because they want to keep rehashing "Nutcase Masked Skywalker Screws GFFA"???

And even if I wanted to see the narrative take this repetitive path again...The setup to it should have happened much different and IMO better. If we were going to go down this route.....Episode 6 should have never been titled Return of the Jedi.....and it's ending left far far more ambiguous. Luke should have never made it back from that 2nd Death Star.....leaving his future in limbo...Did he turn to the Darkside???...did he die or is he still out there somewhere????.....Leaving the GFFA left to ponder how to move forward without the presence of both the Sith and the Jedi....

The setup we got in TFA looks entirely out of place and disrespectful to all that was fought for in the previous 6 movies.

Not only did they axe decades worth of Lukes Jedi work of rebuilding....but they created a new mega Death Star To wipe out the heart of the New Republic....leaving no doubt to all the haters of the PT, that There would be no politics getting in the way of their beloved OT story structure this time....

I could go on about the balance issues I had with characters the of Finn and Rey....but I just don't have the heart after TFAs onslaught.

Lukes been forced into exile
The Jedi are still virtually extinct 30+ years after ROTJ
Han was forced back into his old life of smuggling.
Han and Leias love, that people saw grow and invested 3 movies in, has been made to churn out that little monster Kylo Ren.
The New Republic has largely been obliterated.

There's not having a happy ending and then there is what we actually got in TFA....Though ugh it's already been proven a happy ending can last in the GFFA....Yoda and his order were doing it for close to 1000 years.but whatever that's not really what matters.

It was about getting to see our heroes take that strength that they rightfully earned over the course of the previous 6 movies...and getting to use it against a villian who could challenge them in new and more interesting ways. So that they get to be the inspirers and repairers of the broken wayward souls of the next generation.

I don't see how they will ever convince me the setup to this ST had to be this one sided in The undoing of the ending of ROTJ....for there to be a story with drama. That's a lame excuse for these writers for not doing their job and writing a plot grand enough to include the OT3 and their achievements.

****In Closing****

i guess my feelings boil down to this.....the whole thing feels like one big sucker punch to the hopes and desires I had for this ST to move into new terrority. Something that should have been far grander than what we got. What we got was reasons and excuses for why large parts of the story in the ST is going to be twist and turned to fit into that OT Story structure.....Characters and passed accomplishments be damned.

I can respect that people love some of those elements so much, that they don't mind seeing them repeated again. I loved a lot of it to, when it fit in with the narrative IMO. I can see the buisness side of it all. I'm not stupid....It was a smart move for them.

But I refuse to believe these are the only types of Star Wars stories worth telling....and would have rather not seen ROTJs beautiful ending undone....because they wanted to stay in their nice comfort zone of OT dynamics/setting.

****Scores****

As a stand alone fantasy movie free from the narative of the others....7.9

Me looking at it as the type of Star Wars fan that I Am....4

 

What's wrong with using that term? Probably something obvious but it's been a long day

 

Sorry, "snatch" is a bit of vulgar slang for a certain part of female anatomy.

 

I see. Was unaware

 

Here's my two part review. It's mainly concerned about how I wasn't engaged with the story. This is coming from a huge fan of the franchise. I loved the prequels. This film was just a mute experience, I mainly talk about negatives but there are some obvious positives that I don't need to mention such as the lightsaber fight which was great.

As a movie

It's professionally made but ultimately worthless, shallow and severely lacking in context.People forget Star Wars is often about context. I love a fun and entertaining movie but it all becomes worthless without it.

Here's an example of poor context.
''Poe is an amazing pilot so he destroyed Starkiller Base'' That's pretty much all there is to be said.

Here's an example of good context.
''Luke, a boy with ambitions is introduced to the force. He finally learns to let go of external mechanisms and trusts the force and with the help of a selfish pirate who finally realises the meaning of fellowship, returns to Luke's aid and they destroy the death star''

The film just has strange ideas of context overall. You have Finn who becomes morally conscious at the death of his fellow Stormtrooper, seemingly decides he wants no part in any kind of violence, good or bad. He kills dozens of Stormtroopers without hesitation and wears the jacket of the man who killed his fellow Stormtrooper. Not exactly well thought out. I couldn’t buy into his character, he seemed like a guy who just walked into the film, though he was entertaining. Of the thousands of Stormtroopers, suddenly one of them happens to become morally conscious without introduction and becomes part of the story. The film is lazy to provide proper introductions or context. It just moves onto the next thing, ticking each box that provides instant gratification and not ticking the boxes that provide proper character development or pay-off. Everything just takes place in a vacuum.

A lot of people have complained that Rey is too powerful to invest in or drive the story forward and they’re right. She is essentially a super-hero. The film leaves behind the old concepts of fellowship since the lead can handle everything on her own so it struggles to build the relationships for each character. She doesn’t depend on any other character for help and she doesn't accept guidance. All the characters actions just take place in a vacuum. Whereas Luke learns to become a hero, her story boils down to “great power comes great responsibility.” Not sure I buy into a super-hero in the Star Wars Universe.

Kylo Ren was a good villain with a brilliant performance by Adam Driver. He’s extremely underdeveloped and is only left to a few short sentences of back story. I wish it was clearer how and why he became so evil. He had no turning point, he had no pain or fear in his backstory yet he was somehow seduced to the dark side. He too easily fits the archetype of a troubled and pathetic brat, which is fine but it could've been a lot more interesting.

Han Solo is an archetype. He’s a cowboy and archetypal characters deserve a fitting end. Why does his father-son relationship become the biggest plot point leading up to the events of the film? Yet there is barely any development or build up. It’s another context issue that could’ve made for an engaging story arc.

I found it hard to invest in any of the characters or stories. I thought the mid scene cut at the end was more of a slap to the face than a cliffhanger. The search for Luke story arc would’ve been the only thing worth investing in but there was no closure. I’ve never seen a film make no effort to leave you with any sense of anything. It was just completely mute.

It’s a weak film lacking in many engaging elements. It trades off core factors such as theme, context, and character for simplistic appeal.



As a Star Wars movie

In a world where there are nuances and parodies of Star Wars everywhere from Spaceballs to Family Guy, I would never have thought the franchise itself would fall victim to this regurgitative trend. The similarities with A New Hope are endless but that’s not what I’m going to write about. Star Wars always has an honest story to tell. This was more fan fiction than film yet even fan fiction can still be great. Some people don’t understand that there’s more to Star Wars than lightsabers and spaceships. The originals was a story about a revolution in a pirate themed sci-fi world with heavy Taoist philosophy and samurai. The prequels were sort of a cold war/medieval war blend with eastern politics, freedom vs fascism, and the originals being good vs evil. This film’s themes were just so bland.

This is now a franchise trapped in its own fossilized iconography. Its sense of nostalgia wears off very quick, since, you know… it’s meant to be a movie. It rehashes A New Hope, depends on the Original Trilogy for nostalgia and depends on sequels for a more complete story. That’s three disastrous strikes I’ve never seen a film take. The film fails to have an identity of its own, it just fails to have its own contribution to the medium of story-telling and has nothing new to offer. When I watch a Star Wars movie I always say to myself “wow what an engaging story” and if you summarize the plot into one sentence it would give me chills reading it. Sadly the newest instalment offers nothing interesting, nothing that captures the imagination. There’s no context hence there’s no story. There’s no investment hence there is no pay-off and there’s no stakes hence there is nothing to give a **** about.

From a sci-fi aspect, Star Wars is a fresh and vivid universe and it feels bigger in each instalment with new planets, cities, and also new ideas. Again there’s none of that. Nothing that captures the imagination.

Star Wars is a massive Universe with limitless possibilities yet one cohesive story. Star Wars has a philosophy, it has a mythology. Star Wars has strong inspirations, Taoism, Japanese Samurai, Akira Kurosawa, Joseph Campbell, Stoicism, Spirituality, History and Technology. Star Wars is a rich tapestry of ideas, themes and inspirations. With so much material to work with and so much to potentially be made, this film suffers to live up to its legacy.

 

I thought the movie was visually amazing. So many great shots. The characters were interesting and brought some real humor. The dynamics between the new and older generations worked well. I can see how much it takes from ANH but I think that's partly because this is the intro movie in a series so what better example to follow than ANH? I have my own wishlist of things I would have like to have seen or expanded upon but overall TFA is a fun movie that is both enjoyable to watch while having you care about the characters.

 

I posted my review to my blog on January 3 after having seen the film three times and digested my impressions over the course of two weeks: http://wrathfuldove.org/2016/01/03/my-thoughts-on-the-force-awakens/.

Since then I've seen it two more times. My essential thoughts haven't changed other than that I recognized that I evaluate the film differently when viewed as an isolated film rather than the seventh episode in a saga and that most of the film's weaknesses derive from its relationship to the earlier films especially ANH.

I've reproduced the post below.
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When it was first announced in October of 2012 that Disney had purchased Lucasfilm for $4 billion and that Star Wars Episode VII was on its way for 2015, I wrote the following:

Despite this initially reserved greeting to the announcement of the Star Wars sequel trilogy, I warmed up to the idea when early reports indicated that George Lucas had sold Disney story treatments for Episodes VII, VIII, and IX that would serve as a basis for the new films. If anyone had good ideas about how to continue the story in an authentic manner, it was him. My cautious optimism for the films gave over to mounting anticipation until by the time that the The Force Awaken‘s first teaser trailer arrived on Black Friday of 2014, my excitement soared, and I began counting down the days until the new film’s arrival.

However, as the end of 2015 drew near, I ran across reports that Disney had decided not to use the treatments from Lucas and that they had instead chosen to start from scratch (although the latest information seems to suggest that the basic idea for the character of Rey does come from Lucas’s story). This news disappointed and worried me, but nevertheless, I remained hopeful as everything that I had glimpsed of the new film from the trailers to the marketing materials struck me as exciting, fresh, and genuinely Star Wars in feeling.

I have now seen The Force Awakens three times: first at the end of a more than 17 hour theatrical marathon viewing of all seven films, a second time on opening night with several friends to celebrate my 39th birthday, and a third time for further reflection. Now that I have seen the finished product, I’m sad to say that I stand by much of my original concerns from 2012. While still an enjoyable piece of entertainment, The Force Awakens feels too often like big budget fan fiction rather than genuine Star Wars. The Star Wars films that George Lucas created were always fresh, original, mythic story telling. In contrast, The Force Awakens is a film whose writers failed to crack a new story within the deadlines that the big mouse assigned them and instead lazily recycled the script’s skeleton from 1977’s Star Wars while padding things with heavy doses of nostalgic references and inauthentic usage of old characters. Still, in its pieces of new material, the film does provide a promising basis for Episode VIII’s talented writer and director Rian Johnson to actually achieve something great and worthy of the Star Wars mantle.

The Force Awakens shines best when it focuses on its new characters. I especially thought that Rey and Kylo Ren have a lot of potential, and I am very excited to see what Rian Johnson will do with them. Dailey Ridley and Adam Driver do terrific jobs bringing these characters to life, and I only wish we had had more time to spend with them in the film. Domnhall Gleeson’s calm and icy General Hux provides a nice counterpoint to Driver’s unhinged Kylo Ren. I enjoyed the chemistry between John Boyega and Oscar Isaac: I thought that they really sold the blossoming camaraderie between Finn and Poe Dameron in their scenes together. I absolutely adored BB-8 and think he nicely filled R2-D2’s shoes and then some.

The first part of the film starts off quite well by focusing on these new elements and even though we’re already seeing evidence of rehashed plot points (protagonist on a desert planet reluctantly accepting the call to adventure after crossing paths with a droid possessing a vital piece of information for a resistance group), it still feels fun and authentically Star Wars other than a few minor pieces of dialogue whose modern quippy feel will no doubt date the film in years to come. Even when the first bit of fan service enters with the reveal of the Millennium Falcon, it is a smooth and satisfying moment that feels earned and that neatly rolls into an exciting action sequence that really shows off the excellent developing dynamic between Rey and Finn.

For me, the precise point when the film starts to lose itself is when Han Solo and Chewbacca enter the picture. Not only does their entrance mark the beginning of a parade of lazy nostalgic references, not only is it punctuated with a scene involving rival space pirates and bad CGI monsters that feels like it came from some bad generic sci-fi rather than a Star Wars film, but it also rapidly introduces several plot contrivances that absolutely broke me out of the film. It is one thing for our heroes to stumble across the Millennium Falcon while traveling with a droid that contains the key piece of information needed to locate the apparently long lost Luke Skywalker – that scene at least was timed and executed so well that it simply put a big grin on my face. It is quite another to almost immediately then ask me to accept that Han Solo and Chewbacca happen to be cruising in the neighborhood and happen to detect the Millennium Falcon just in time to capture it after apparently years of fruitless search. The film’s weak implication several scenes later that they found it via a tracking device on the Falcon is too little, too late. Then, the film immediately asks us to accept that the Han Solo that we saw develop over three films from a self-centered mercenary into a self-sacrificing leader in the fight for a new Republic has apparently abandoned his wife/partner and his cause after his son has betrayed the family to become a murderous monster. Furthermore, after experiencing this horrific disintegration of his family, Han doesn’t seem worse for the wear, but instead seems rather happy go lucky in his sloppy-writer assigned nostalgic role.

If this preposterous character progression for Han Solo wasn’t enough, the film next asks us to accept that the Luke Skywalker who we saw mature into a heroic and wise Jedi over the course of three films and who in his crowning moments in Return of the Jedi grows into the true Jedi ideal would run away and abandon his family, friends, and the new Republic to Snoke and the New Order after his nephew turns to the Dark Side and murders the new Jedi padawans that Luke had been training. As we do not actually see Luke Skywalker in this film until briefly at the end and as one can come up with rationalizations why Luke might disappear that do not involve him simply hiding in failure (the film itself suggests through exposition delivered by Han that Luke might be seeking out the first Jedi temple – although that alone doesn’t provide enough justification for such a radical character arc), this particular story point isn’t quite as bad a piece of writing, but it is still problematic and jarring because at face value it demands too much narrative justification to simply be dropped in as the new state of affairs or as something to wonder about and wait for later films to explain. Mysteries for further development are fine. Unexplained character progressions that completely defy existing backstory and personality traits are not. It would have been far better to make Luke’s disappearance a complete mystery. Additionally, the idea that Luke left some set of clues to create a map to his location is such a tired cliche and feels unbelievable and completely out of place in a Star Wars film.

Having already provided us with a Han and Luke acting in baffling ways counter to their established characters, the film seals the deal and introduces us to a General Leia Organa who seems completely unaffected by the betrayal and loss of her son, the cowardly regression of her ex-husband/partner, the breakdown of her marriage/relationship, and the abandonment by her brother. Instead, she and Han have a comfortable nostalgic vibe (that is the aim at least – but I thought it felt inauthentic other than the single hug scene) going in their few scenes together where any logical writing would have placed a tension and a pervading sense of sadness, anger, and loss. Not only did I find Leia’s character progression and her relationship with Han Solo unbelievable, but I thought that Carrie Fischer’s performance was flat. I don’t know if it is indicative of Fischer not wanting to be there and simply dialing in her performance or if it was simply the best that she could do with the illogical script that Abrams and Kasdan handed her, but she never really felt like Leia to me whereas at least Harrison Ford was definitely channeling Han Solo in all of his scenes.

Finally, we come to what I found to be the weakest part of the film. Abrams and Kasdan decided to redo the Death Star (only *bigger* and more *powerful*) as if Return of the Jedi redoing the Death Star wasn’t enough. With Jedi at least, there was an artistic reason rather than a poverty of creativity behind *that* particular revisit as Lucas uses several parallels in the film with earlier episodes to achieve a symbolic commentary on the story. Not so with this film. Abrams serves up pure imitation with a rescue/escape of our heroine from the planet destroying space station, a fatal “long awaited” confrontation between the mentor hero and the villain during the rescue where the villain senses the hero’s presence through the Force – complete with horrified reaction from the other heroes and blasting at storm troopers in the aftermath, and a final desperate spacecraft assault on the space station that destroys the giant weapon and saves the heroes at the last minute while the key villains escape. Adding insult to injury, Abrams and Kasdan feel the need to include a scene where they explicitly point out that they are redoing the Death Star with Starkiller Base and then make a bad joke about the disrespectful absurdity bordering on parody that is being created when Han says “Oh, there’s always a way to blow up these things”.

This self-aware, shameless rehashing of the second half of the original Star Wars is sad, safe and lazy film making; worse, Abrams fails to competently execute the blueprint he is following. The original Death Star would have been enormously costly, but it was believable as the product of a powerful, galactic Empire. That a mere shadow of the defeated Empire could build the vastly more powerful Starkiller Base (let alone keep it a secret) while being threatened by the powerful Republic and its proxy guerrilla Resistance movement staggers all credibility. When the Death Star threatens and then destroys Alderaan, Lucas wisely connects us to the doomed planet via Princess Leia to heighten the emotional impact. In The Force Awakens, Abrams doesn’t even make it clear which planets we are seeing destroyed and how they relate to the political situation or characters. If you are not paying close attention, you might even miss the line from General Hux that seems to suggest that in one ludicrously easy move, the First Order has managed to effectively destroy the Republic by eliminating its core planets. Incredibly, after this horrific act of destruction, the Resistance fighters seem almost bored when planning their attack against the monstrous battle station. This lack of tension continues into the actual assault on the base itself. In Star Wars, Lucas carefully juxtaposes images of the X-Wings running the trench, the TIE fighters in pursuit, the nervous pilots – including our hero and emotional center Luke – in their cockpits, the worried Rebel commanders watching from their command center, and the Death Star moving slowly into range all to create a palpable tension that works every time. Combine it with John Williams’s brilliant score, and it is pure cinema magic. In contrast, Abrams doesn’t provide any real focus to his shots of the X-Wings attacking the Starkiller base, none of the pilots stand out other than Poe whose absence from most of the film robs him of emotional resonance, none of the pilots or commanders seem particularly worried, and inexplicably, there is no music during the attack runs to feed the drama. It all makes for a fairly tepid excuse for a climactic space battle.

Intercut with the space battle is a thread where Han, Finn, and Chewie enter Starkiller station to rescue Rey in a sequence clearly modeled on Luke, Han, Chewie, and Obi-Wan rescuing Leia in the original Star Wars where Han fills the Obi-Wan mentor role and confronts the villain. During the rescue on the Death Star, Lucas puts enough variety in both the sets and action to truly give us a sense that we are on a massive battle station and gives us R2-D2’s access to the station’s maps as a plausible reason why our heroes manage to navigate themselves around what we have been told amounts to a base the size of a small moon. Abrams instead allows his heroes to find their way around the planet-sized Starkiller base where ever the plot requires them to go with virtually zero justification. The Starkiller base sets lacked enough variety and scale-establishing shots and so wind up feeling small. We have no close encounters with storm troopers, no difficult situations to escape, and in general, no real sense that they are ever in any danger until after the encounter between Han and Kylo Ren. Instead of R2 locating the shields and Obi-Wan having to sneak around storm troopers and use mind tricks to get close enough to then disable the shields, we have our heroes somehow find Captain Phasma, quietly capture her, and then force her to lower the shields at blasterpoint when it seems more likely that she would simply refuse to cooperate. After all, the same film shows us multiple occasions of our heroes refusing cooperation with the First Order while undergoing torture, and we have every reason to believe that Captain Phasma would be fanatically loyal to her side.

While I have spent much of my time here focusing on what I saw as the main shortcomings of The Force Awakens, I do want to stress that I found watching the film an enjoyable experience despite being ripped out of my suspension of disbelief at a few points around the time that Han entered the picture. Once things moved past that part and I settled back in, I was able to enjoy the rest of the film despite being conscious of the various problems that I have been describing. I am happy to say that the climax of the film did deliver one of my favorite scenes: an excellent and fresh lightsaber battle in the best of the Star Wars tradition. I was very pleased with both the drama, the cinematography, and the choreography in this scene. Abrams honors the Star Wars practice of making each lightsaber battle a unique piece of visual commentary on the story rather than simply an action sequence. I thought the setting of the snow covered forest with the snow falling around the combatants lent a really nice, eerie atmosphere to the scene. I loved the close up shots of Kylo Ren’s sweat covered face, the choice to have Kylo Ren pounding his own injury to stay focused or channel anger, and the visually striking shots of lightsaber blades hitting snow.

The Force Awakens remains a mixed package for me. While it entertained me and allowed me some of the thrills of visiting a galaxy far far away, its reliance upon nostalgia and sloppy rehashing of a superior film left me disappointed and missing the fresh wonders, the creativity, and the substance that George Lucas always brought to each new Star Wars film. Still, I remain thankful for the parts that worked as well as for the promise of an Episode VIII from Rian Johnson that just might deliver a fully authentic Star Wars experience again. May the Force be with him!

 

Yeah, cannot agree with you there. I saw very little "creativity or substance" in TPM or AOTC. And only mixed results in ROTS.

 

I saw the movie for a 2nd time today with my parents, first time for them.

Both are in their 60's and have seen all 6 movies several times because of having a huge star wars fan for a son. They like the movies well enough, but are far from fans of them.

I think they both enjoyed this one as well, but it seemed it was probably one of their least favorite ones.

A few things I remember from them:
- Thought lor san tekka was a character from one of the other movies since he's so old and seems so important
- Didn't see kylo ren as han & leia's son coming, or han's death
- My dad definitely could tell the movie was very similar to ANH
- Wondered how Rey got her force powers so quickly
- Surprised Luke had no lines in it
- Wondered where snoke came from
- Wondered why Kylo/Ben turned to the dark side

As for my 2nd viewing as compared to my first.
- Definitely noticed the music more this time since I've listened to the soundtrack many times. Still think it's the weakest of the 7 scores, but the gap has closed a bit.
- Liked maz Kanata's character a lot more
- Possibly disliked Finn's character more, he's definitely better on first viewing since he is the main source of humor. Once you've heard the jokes already, it makes him not as appealing I find.
- During the 2nd scene with snoke, it almost seems like kylo wasn't expecting hux to come in, and was trying to hide his face from him as he's never seen him without the mask. Could be wrong though.
- Tarkodona and Luke's planet really scream LOTR to me. Partly because of the scenery, and partly because of the old ruins everywhere.
- The stormtroopers possibly seem even worse than in the OT, they go down super easy for the most part and still have horrible aim for the most part
- I can't take the large x-wing pilot seriously, because all I can see is the guy from Heroes.
- Han's freighter really has a Aliens vibe to it with the industrial look and yellow lights. Adding monsters sure completes the effect.
- Still not a big fan of the duels at the end, and not really for the duels themselves, but the cinematography. Between how dark it is, all the trees in the way, and how close it's shot, it's really hard to tell what's going on

Still not sure where I'd place it in my rankings. After first viewing I was thinking at best 4th and at worst 7th. It's tough since it has some very good points, but also many bad points. I think it's gonna takes a few more viewings still, likely on home video before I know for sure.

 

The interesting thing I have noticed is that people I know who are in their late 60s and 70s really seem to love the film. It has that old-fashioned charm that they appreciate.

This one really does cut across a surprisingly broad age group.

 

At first I wasn't crazy about the Rathtars scene but now I'm really starting to enjoy it. Love the gang standoff too!

Tell that to Kanjiklub!

 

I did a review on IMDb as the Milli Falcon and here it is, for your easy reading pleasure!

Being an 80s person, I'm obviously a fan of the original trilogy, AKA Episodes 4 to 6 (hence my IMDb nickname, lol). The prequel trilogy was not exactly my cup of tea with the exception of Episode 3, which shows how Luke and Leia came to the world as well as the transformation of Anakin into our favorite Lord Darth Vader!
Which is why while I was excited to be watching Episode 7: The Force Awakens, I also did so with some trepidation - for every 10 positive reviews, there will be three negative ones, criticizing the show as being a clone (pardon the pun) of the original trilogy, the actors were wooden, bland storyline, etc. And eventually entered the cinema hall with my mind closed to all these earlier reviews, only wanting to enjoy the movie in it's big screen glory. After coming out of the cinema, I felt that Episode 7 lived up to its original predecessors and was a welcome breath of fresh air to the franchise, more than 30 years since the screening of "Return of The Jedi" and exactly a decade since "Revenge of the Sith" (how time flies).
For an old-school Star Wars fan, it was indeed nice to see the original characters appear in Episode 7, including Han Solo, Princess Leia (now General Organa), Chewbacca, R2-D2- and C- 3PO, bringing back the memories of watching Episodes 4-6 so many years ago. But the new ones are the main show-stealers this time round, especially Rey, Finn, Poe Dameron, and the villains led by the intimidating Supreme Leader Snoke (I think we'll know more about him in Episode 8) and his main henchmen Kylo Ren (what he did to Han Solo was beyond unthinkable!) as well as General Hux. Let's not forget the presence of yet another planet-destroying battle station in the form of the Starkiller Base - a far more massive weapon of mass destruction than the earlier Death Stars - and the familiar bunch of iconic spacecraft like the Millennium Falcon, X-Wing Fighter (Poe flies on a cool new black one, by the way), and TIE Fighters!
Anyway, I shall not reveal too much here, for fear of being labeled the "Millennium Spoiler Falcon" and for those of you yet to watch Episode 7, just catch the movie at the soonest time possible and enjoy it!

 

Who's that fellow with the heavy Simon Pegg-like British accent, during that confrontation with the two gangs on board the "Eravana"? He should appear back in Episode 8 as a minor villain - quite underutilized in "The Force Awakens"!

 

Thanks to TFN for publishing my review and analysis of TFA:

http://theforce.net/v3-story/frontL...sis_Of_Star_Wars_The_Force_Awakens_167478.asp

 

Jabba the Human Being, that is probably the best review I have read concerning The Force Awakens. Mate, an absolute brilliant job. You have articulated what I feel in a way I couldn't have done.

I've read many, if not all of the reviews in this thread concerning the apparent lack of originality and whilst I'm a strong advocate of democracy and freedom of speech, I do disagree whole-heartedly with these people. There are a few points that I have agreed with concerning these views, but they are few and far between.

Jabba, I think you have captured the very thoughts and ideas that JJ wanted to get across to us all and I agree with you that the delivery of this makes The Force Awakens the best Star Wars film of all time; a millimetre in front of The Empire Strikes Back.

Also having read additional material now concerning TFA, I also agree with you that TFA needed to explain the dynamics surrounding the New Republic, the Resistance and The First Order a little better though.

Well done Jabba; a brilliant, brilliant review my friend.

 

You're too kind, GF! But thanks a lot.

 

I just made a post where I teased apart 'universe' from 'film'. Now I come in here by chance and see you had already done the same. It's a bit lifting because it's committing this problem to language. Few are going to competently criticize the film-ness of the product. It is a slick, composed, glitzy product. This film-ness of the product is the main shield, main defense of the everyfan. It does not scratch the underlying itch of a missing, malformed, deformed, unrecognizable universe. A Star Wars universe that is recognizable has breath, conflict, pause, reflection, exposition, context. Short shrift for these in this offering, and devil catch the hindmost who isn't fast enough in the ear, or forgiving enough of impudent coincidence.

 

You're welcome Jabba.

But thoroughly deserved. Your review was intelligent, coherent, insightful and well composed. You looked at everything below "the surface level"; a mistake that I feel is all too common in some reviews.

But what I liked most about your review (in addition to what you said) is that you did not attack anyone else's opinion to get yours across, nor did you criticize George Lucas in any shape or form. In addition to this, you also avoided an on-going conflict that is very apparent in many threads; where you did not use any of the prequel/OT banter and arguments to enhance your own views.

It was very refreshing to read a review of such quality.