ST Plot holes and lost exposition - real issues or not?

It seems like Disney was so afraid to talk about any kind of politics in this movie, they were willing to let some plot holes/inconsistencies slide.

Most moviegoers are good people, they won't blow up over a little bit of dialogue. Give us more credit than that, Disney. Ok, people didn't like the prequels' political atmosphere, it's been 10 years, its time to get over it.

Seriously, we needed just a bit of political exposition about the state of the galaxy. Relationship between the Republic and Resistance. Who the new chancellor of the republic, for those that didn't read Aftermath.

The broader state of the force. Starkiller base, that had to have taken a tremendous collection of resources comparable to amassing an army. How could the republic not have spies that reported on mass building of something like this? Are they totally incompetent.

Kylo Ren should've just been able to force push Rey and the fight would be over. Based off how his powers were displayed in the first half of the movie. The gap between them is that large, regardless if she was trained as a child. Kylo has had years of experience and training. So, how then could Rey just awaken and learn a jedi mind trick out of the blue. She was taught that at 5 years old? Kylo should've ended that duel in 20 seconds.

Is this what it's come to? Scared so much of exposition and over exaining, that we say "wait until the next movie". If those, I'm not sure I'm with this reductionist storytelling.

I'm sure I missed more, but it's like when you put a little bit of thought into it, plot holes begin to appear. Its really starting to decrease my opinion of the movie. Regardless, it was enjoyable but definitely not 97% good.

 

The OT did fine without much talk about politics. I think the political environment will be hashed out more in other forms of media. Not to generalize, but I don't think many people are looking for too much politics in Star Wars.

 

How many flight hours did Luke have before outmaneuvering "the best pilot evar" Darth Vader and destroying the Death Star.

The Force "awakens" inside of Rey. The Force does all kinds of wacky crap ... that didn't really bother me.

It's also fairly easy to explain ... Rey does have Force training, it's just repressed in her as it's fairly clear from the movie that memories are repressed inside her (maybe for her own safety?).

Some how I doubt the average movie goer was thinking "you know this is ok, but you know what would be really great right about now ... a 10 minute sequence with politicians and beaurecrats and a vote of no confidence".

 

I get that, I really do. I'm not asking for star trek scientific explainations. Just more detail, more perspective on key elements. Some of this we're just asked to take it at face value. That's a lot of supending belief.

How are we suppose to feel at the loss of the republic captitol? I mean it was just some place blown up. We have no emotional connection there. It just undermines the work that our heroes fought decades for. Let us know WHY we should mourn for it. Show us. Let us know how hard many people fought for a return to democracy. How many people died trying to bring it back.

 

You saw the rage of General Hux and the complete lack of empathy that Snoke had for those about to be destroyed by Starkiller and we see the actual people before they are killed, I believe that was enough to have the audience mourn the loss and to see the level of danger that the rest of the galaxy now faces.

 

We what about the actual characters? They literally don't give two ****s about it.

 

Actually Darth Vader had Luke dead to rights and Han Solo snuck in from behind and saved him.

(Pointing at myself) nerd alert!

 

This can't go in the complaints thread?

 

The politics seemed pretty clear to me: the Republic would not openly oppose the First Order, but were supporting the Resistance in secret. What more do you really need? Who cares who the Chancellor is? They're dead now anyway, and Leia leads the Resistance.
It's been explained so many times in so many threads how and why Rey was able to beat Ren in that fight that, at this point, I can only assume the people still mad about it have a problem with women.

 

"It is a period of civil war. Striking from a hidden base, the Rebel Alliance has won its first victory against the evil Galactic Empire." This establishes that the galaxy is ruled by an evil Empire and the Rebellion is fighting to overthrow the Empire.

"Holding her is dangerous. If word of it gets out, it could generate sympathy for the Rebellion in the Senate."
"Inform the Senate that the ship ran into asteroids and all aboard were killed." These two lines tell us that the Empire has a Senate that it's hiding it's brutality from.

"I'm a member of the Imperial Senate on a diplomatic mission to Alderaan."

"The Imperial Senate will no longer be of any concern to us. I have just received word that the Emperor has dissolved the council permanently." "How will he maintain control without the beuracracy?" "The regional governors now have direct control of their territories. Fear will keep the local systems in line. Fear of this battle station." This tells us that thanks to the Death Star, the Emperor was able to dissolve the Senate and switch to ruling by fear.

Also, we're told that Alderaan is the planet that Leia is Princess of. This tells us why Alderaaan's destruction is important.

 

Could it be also luke was watching her from afar giving a helping hand ala ben over luke in anh...

 

Much*

 

I loathe long scenes of exposition just for the sake of it, give me hints and clues so i can figure it out for myself, it just makes it so much more interesting. I don't feel like there was, at any point, a need for more exposition. Exposition is of course needed, and despite all the **** the prequels get for politics, those movies were in dire need of exposition at times, i didn't feel like this movie ever did.

Why Kylo Ren beat Rey is established at various times throughout the movie, there was no need for someone to go "also, this is how Rey beat up Kylo Ren, sit down for a few minutes".

 

I can't exactly remember, but doesn't the opening crawl mention the first order, the republic, and the resistance? That is giving some setup to the political environment.

 

Why do we need to know the chancellor of the new republic? The chancellor isn't even mentioned. We only need to know there's republic and what relationship they have with the resistance and the first order, and thus our main characters.

Who is the chancellor? Really?

 

Yes, it does. And that's enough. The OP wants people standing around squawking for minutes on end like the prequels.

 

What? Why? We know the Republic is funding the Resistance. The crawl and Hux tell us that. Why do we need to namecheck the Chancellor?

 

Are you serious? Deflecting to that? I enjoyed Rey in the movie, but I do have some issues with her progression. I doubt many people have that problrm, it was poor progression on screen. Bottom line, they needed a win for our heroes, and kylo had to be devalued just a bit for that to happen.

 

My answer to the poll is "no" but what I really mean is "yes - but i'll wait for episode 8". In other words, i'll give it the benefit of the doubt for now. The finding of Luke's lightsaber from Bespin, how Kylo escaped the planet in such short time, and the relationship between Luke and Kylo are quite distracting at the moment. But it also provides great fuel for the writing of the following two episodes.

 

Personally for me it was an issue..because I enjoy exploring the lore and geeking out about it...

Did it need it to work as a movie?..no,it totally worked ..but should have gone towards being a self contained story and it would have worked much better..
I see this being a dividing factor in fandom in the coming Disney hegemony..fans that was into exploration of story and lore tend to have enjoyed the prequels or may even have grown up on them..


Those who gravitate towards towards the spectacle of star wars special effects with a,the sake of
simpler story complete with a mcguffin sort of tacked on tend to hold the oposite view.

I feel I fall somewhere between the two extremes,but I do admit I feel star wars content after disney has started drifiting into a very generic feel for me..

 

You're joking right? And again, your OP suggestion of all of these side characters that have NOTHING to do with the main story was one of the problems with the prequels. You spend so much time on this ancillary characters like a Chancellor of a republic no one cares about or isn't important, you then spend less time on the important ones: Rey,Finn,Rey and Han.

KING_KENOBI, fandom might be split over the issue but, I can assure you, it won't be an even split. Most fans don't give a whit about endless dialogue scenes of characters standing around in councils endlessly. Most want good movies.

BTW, if that's you in your avatar, thank you for your service.

 

"War is the continuation of politics by other means." Clausewitz

While you are likely right that most people are not expecting too much from a blockbuster, Star WARS has always inherently been about politics. Even the OT has the Senate being disbanded, a non-aligned city state and an Alliance fighting to restore a Republic. We were given enough exposition to at least get an inkling of the political situation so that actions by individuals could be seen as being motivated by their relationship to a wider context. But, based only on what's shown in TFA, what's the relationship of the Republic to the Resistance? How did a First Order come about that is strong enough to bankroll the transformation of an entire planet into a star-consuming weapon? Without at least basic answers to these two questions, the action is ungrounded and meaningless. If all I wanted to see was spaceships and explosions, I could wait for the next nuTrek movie.

 

This. Thank you, it's what I'm getting at. People can't be serious, arguing that the opening crawl is any sort of filling inportant background details and persoective. Nobody is asking for tons of exposition, just more filling of details. By deflecting to "nobody cares about "x" or "y", you've killed any sort of informative discussion.

Why wouldn't you want to know about how the galaxy turned out after Endor? Are you suggesting most of movigoers are going to read EU content?

 

Without much talk but there was some talk to setup what was going on. In SW alone we got the disbanding of the Senate, them having total control through the local regional lords, whatever it was, a rebellion existing within the senate and Leia using the power of diplomatic immunity to work with the rebels. Not that it worked.

There were a few lines of dialogue that setup some stuff.

We know he drives speeders, we know he knows about speeders when he sold his and mentions not getting good money because of the new models. We know he flew his T-16 and was able to take out Womp rats, embarrassing that dude, we know the T-65 controls werent that different than the T-16 controls. He even annoys Han asking question based on what he sees in the Falcon's readout. He was CLEARLY setup as a character that knows about machines. He even knew that R4 droid had a bad motivator.

BTW, he didnt out maneuver anyone, he got hit in the engine once, he kept telling R2 to fix this one part that kept breaking down, his T-65 was shot and R-2 got hurt before the Falcon came in.

He didnt out maneuver anyone.
He is even told to pull but after his run cause he was cutting it too close.

The only thing he did above the rest was use force at the end to actually get the photon torpedo in.

Have we seen the force randomly impart abilities from the start?
And your explanation is your explanation.
The movie should've dropped some clear hints.

This is movie 7. You dont need 10 minutes but people should be aware that some info about the state of affairs should be comings.

 

Yes. Anakin in TPM at age 9. Repeatedly.