A/V THE FORCE AWAKENS - The Official Movie Discussion Thread

The fact that Kasdan's life philosophy is apparently "you never change as you get older, you're just fated to repeat your same mistakes over and over while accumulating regrets" explains a lot about TFA. And actually so do the details on what the writing was like.

I remember in the early 2000s, my circle of friends loved Equilibrium. It was a movie we would put on in the background for lazy Sundays far more than The Matrix. I actually think we moved on from it when Batman Begins came out and finally gave us a more-definitive Christian Bale action movie.

 

Well Han making the same mistakes is sort of writ large across the Star Wars saga and the trilogies where characters are generally in the same mistakes and conflicts across the decades. While there is a lot of deliberate character and universe growth in the series, history being doomed to repeat itself is another legit Star Wars thematic thing.

 

Yeah, the writing was really on the wall at the end of RotJ when Mon Mothma declared herself the first Galactic Empress.

(I know some people still insist this was out of character, but they need to take the presence of Exar Kun into account)

 

I think you mean Leia at the end of 9. Despite all the accusations of the ST mirroring the OT, it's really mirroring the PT. The supposed PT dislike by Disney is actually a ploy to deflect from the truth. Kylo is Dooku and Leia is Palpatine, and they are putting on a show until Leia declares herself Empress.

War! The Resistance is crumbling
under attacks by the ruthless
Supreme Leader, Kylo Ren.
There are heroes on both sides.
Evil is everywhere.

In a stunning move, the
Knights of Ren kidnapped
General Organa, leader of
the Resistance.

As the First Order
attempts to return to the Unknown
Regions with their valuable
hostage, Jedi Knight Rey leads a
desperate mission to rescue the
captive General....

Leia: Get help. You're no match for him, he's a Supreme Leader.
Rey: [turns and smiles] General Organa, Supreme Leaders are my speciality.
Kylo: Your sword, please. We don't want to make a mess of things in front of my mother. I've been looking forward to this.
Rey: My powers have doubled since the last time we met, Kylo.

(an animated series between 8 and 9 will reveal that Rey and Kylo fought every week)

Kylo: Good. Twice the pride, double the fall.

(Rey defeats Kylo and chops off his hands)

Leia: [joyful] Good, Rey, good. [suddenly turns sinister] Kill him. Kill him now. [Kylo looks shocked]
Rey: [hesitates] ...I shouldn't.
Leia: [Angrily] Do it.
[Rey decapitates Kylo]
Leia: You did well, Rey. He was too dangerous to be kept alive.
Rey: Yes, but he was an unarmed prisoner. I shouldn't have done that, it's against the rules of those Jedi books.

 

Hey. If it means we get an entire movie of Rey looking like this than I am all for it.

 

Needs a metal-arm.

Really, why did the ST go against SW's proud tradition of chopping of the main characters arm in the second movie? I just don't get it.

 

Because moving away from tradition for tradition's sake is probably one of the best things the franchise could do? It was kinda hokey when Lucas did it in AOTC anyway. It only became a tradition with that film anyway, and really a single repeat doesn't particularly make it a tradition at all.

 

It wasn't even done as a tradition. AOTC explained why Vader has a mechanical right arm in ROTJ. None of us knew he had all mechanical arms and legs because ROTS hadn't been released yet (although I think Lucas did mention it offhand in a Time Magazine interview before ROTS). All we knew at the time of AOTC was from the ROTJ novelization: that Kenobi had dumped Vader into a volcano, and even the accuracy of this was placed into doubt once AOTC revealed Owen was not Kenobi's brother like the ROTJ novelization said.

 

If it makes you feel better, Snoke lost a hand (and then some).

 

Sure, but that could have been left to ROTS if all it was intended to do was explain the injury. Putting it in the climactic duel with the Dark Lord in the second film was done for the purposes of rhyming. Rey had even less reason to lose an arm in her second film.

 

I would be okay if Episode IX starts off and the entire left side of Rey's body is part cyborg. What the hell happened there?!

 

Training yourself to be a Jedi from books alone, including self-training in lightsaber combat, can be dangerous.

 

Nah, it starts with Kylo in that scenario.

When pressed he reveals that the second-in-command of the Knights of Ren attempted a coup and he had to destroy them all. They are never mentioned again.

 

So Kylo Ren is basically what Revan would've been if Malak's coup hadn't succeeded?

 

If that really is Kasdan's real life philosophy, then I cannot disagree with it more. Sounds like someone who had tons of regrets and disappointments in their life, and didn't deal with them in a very productive way. Mr. Kasdan did an amazing job when he worked on TESB and ROTJ with George, but I don't think he was the right choice for TFA. Perhaps if it would still be George's story, as originally intended, and Kasdan would just be there to fix the dialogue like he did for the OT, it would have worked.

 

Something I begun to wonder about: do we get any explanation in any of the EU material to why Rey get the idea to try to 'mental suggestion' her guard?

 

I've always thought it was explained just fine in the film itself; Kylo uses the Force to probe her mind and compel her to give him answers, but in doing so lets her into his mind. She then realizes the awakened power inside her can be used to influence minds, and tries it out on Daniel Craig. In TLJ, one of the two things she thinks the Force is good for is to "control people".

The TLJ novelization presents the idea that "Kylo's training became hers" when she looked into his head, which people use as an argument for her "Force Downloading" all of his powers, but your mileage may vary on that one. To me, it's an explanation that complicates what's already pretty clear in the film.

 

I will have to disagree since I did not get it.

Ok, I fell like they could have talked about that in the movies. Made it a bit more clear

It's a bit interesting that she seems to get his skills and the knowledge that he want to be the next Vader but nothing else (everything Kyle and Luke tells her about their past is a surprise) and she don't mention this to Luke.

 

This is kinda going over the same stuff as in the TLJ thread, but she doesn't "get" his skills; she works out how he accesses them, and tries it out herself. And the only knowledge she gets is his central motivation, which would be pretty clear in his mind, I reckon.

If Jedi training might consist of, say, a Jedi Master demonstrating how to perform an ability, and then having the student practice that ability for themselves, I don't really see how Kylo demonstrating mind control on Rey, then Rey practicing it, is a stretch at all. No, she doesn't quip "I learned that from Kylo!" at Daniel Craig before running away, but it's definitely there; same with her trying out telekinesis while Kylo's demonstrating it in the forest.

What I like about it is that it makes Rey smart. She figures it out. She deduces it. It's not Luke going "what's the Force?" because the audience needs to catch up. Rey's got the benefit of arriving seven movies in, so she doesn't need to be dumbed down for exposition's sake. She can just learn by doing, by acting on instinct, same as Luke must have.

 

Rey's mind trick annoyed me in the immediate moment because she did the iconic verbal echo thing despite having never seen it performed. It seemed to come out of nowhere.

What I had overlooked was that Rey is an IU Star Wars fan and that's literally what she's parroting. The stories.

 

I just wish we’d seen her hearing or retelling those stories. That would be a really cool moment.

 

Should have been an Ewok on Jakku relating Threepio's version.

 

I think that would have helped the audiences to accept Rey's sudden Force abilities a bit more. If it would have been more clearly stated in the movie that she grew up listening to stories about Luke Skywalker and the Jedi Knights. There are hints of it though.

 

It’s not canon, but ASWC covered Rey’s IU fandom in a beautiful tribute to Leia/Carrie Fisher:

https://www.astarwarscomic.com/comics/star-wars-comic-12-hope/