I saw the film this morning. I'm not giving any spoilers. I will say I found it very 'moving'. Everyone in the cinema was moved. As a lifelong fan, it was everything I hoped it would be ...and more... Even if you've not seen the other films in the series, go see this one. Then you'll want to see the others.

I'm vibrating with my eagerness to see it. I'll get to go on Friday.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAI LOVE STAR WARSAAAAAAAAAAA

*muppet hands*

Saw the movie last night. Will be seeing it again.

Laitang isn't joking when he (or she) says that it is a moving film, lots of nostalgia, lots of emotions.

Prepare to fall in love with Rey (Ridley), as her performance is by far the best of the new actors, not to say that the others didn't deliver as well, just her performance really stands out.

Saw it this morning.  Best one since the first two.  I had the nostalgia of remembering when I saw Star Wars at the movie theater in 1977--the lines, the hype, the crowded theater.  I was surprised at how much humor was fit into the film without distracting from the narrative.  Nostalgia is not even the right word for the nods to the original film--it is almost an homage in character creation, storytelling, and dialogue.  The talk of a trash compactor made me chuckle...

And yes, Rey's performance steals the show.

EDIT: Also, if you have the chance to see it in 3D, do so.  There are some scenes that really pop out, and in one scene a star destroyer looks like it's coming through the screen.  Many gasped in awe when that happened.
This message was last edited by the user at 23:43, Fri 18 Dec 2015.

This was not disappointing overall. I was expecting more from Finn though, both in terms of acting and writing. After the initial awe and thinking it over, he moved my score from 3.5/5 to an even 3.

I just got back from seeing it, and agree with everything that has been said about it. :)

I read a comment somewhere that said it had the feel of the Original Trilogy with the best feels of Indiana Jones as well and I can understand that look at it now. :)

Here comes Chupa Bob's spoiler-free review.

I came. I saw. I enjoyed.

John Williams brought his A game.

Regarding the overall plot, Disney played it very, very, very safe. The new movie is almost a plot point for plot point rehash of episodes four and five. That is probably the most prudent strategy if slightly underwhelming.

The movie looks great. I am thinking that J.J. took to heart all of the razing he received about lens flares in the Star Trek movies. I watched the movie in 2D, so I will take Heath's word for the quality of 3D.

The thermal exhaust port in this movie (and by that, I mean the weak spot) has got to be the dialogue. Every idea is expressed in the simplest and most boring words possible. There was not one memorable quote in the entire film, and in that one aspect, even the prequels were superior. Maybe someone at Disney is a huge Hemmingway fan, but I think that they just didn't try much.

In my scale of one million monkeys randomly banging away on typewriters, it would take 890,000 monkeys to create this piece.

Sorry to be the miserable guy in the corner here but I didn't like it.

I felt it was too much of a reworking of Episodes 4 & 5, lacked originality, was NOT moving at all in it's handling of certain characters and plot points and generally NOT in keeping with the Star Wars theme. These are of course just my opinions on what for some people will be a fantastic movie experience so I am certainly not trying to ruin things for you. If you enjoyed it then I am happy for you.

Rewatch the Lucas-ified versions of the original trilogy before going and you'll appreciate it much more.

I felt it was a solid movie, and a fun one.  It wasn't an Oscar winning masterpiece or anything, but it was fine.  I liked the new characters (both for their well acted parts and their interesting motivations).

My personal gripe is that everything involving flying a ship made no sense, but Star Wars has always been like that.

I felt like TFA was a big love letter to the original trilogy. On one hand, I could say that all of the callbacks made it feel kind of derivative, but on the other hand, Star Wars is all about Campbellian myth, and the callbacks could be interpreted as these iconic events that echo and reverberate through time in a cyclical way...

But mostly I think it was just a whole lot of fun, and you could tell everyone involved loved Star Wars.

I really like Rey and Finn, and I'm looking forward to what happens next.

I shouldn't have to eat at McDonalds before I go to the restaurant in order to think the food at the restaurant is good.  :p

It was a fun ride, but soooo predictable. Even the part everyone says is so emotional can be seen coming a mile away.  I liked the new characters, but they didn't give them enough time to develop and be really interesting.

At least there was no shaky cam or lens flare.  That alone raised the enjoyment factor of the movie.  I wouldn't bother seeing it in 3D, though.  It was big-screen worthy, but doesn't need 3D to excel like some movies.

Oh, and for anyone who hasn't seen it yet: do yourself a favor and not go with anyone who is an Expanded Universe freak.  You will not enjoy hearing them birch the rest of the night about the discrepancies.

Didn't they pretty much de-canonize the entirety of the EU just to have a clean slate to build on and avoid such shenanigans?

In reply to nauthiz (msg # 12):

From what I hear, yes, but you won't get the EU-fanboys to acknowledge it.

Most of them know it was done, and why. They just don't like it.

Most of my EU attachment is the Old Republic stuff, a bit of the Thrawn novels, and the Dark Forces games with Kyle Katern. That said, I was more worried Star Wars was going to get the iPod treatment. Overall, I liked Force Awakens. There are bits that seemed out-of-nowhere (in the sense that it was a set piece just plopped into the story with no other build-up or explanation). There were potential emotional moments that were not played to the fullest. I would call this movie better than say The Phantom Menace, but about on par or a little less than A New Hope. In essence, this felt very much like a Star Wars film and I'm glad I got to see it in theaters.

As for the EU disconnect, a close friend of mine put it best: There is just too much lore to keep up with and a LOT of it is contradictory. So as much as my friend was kinda hoping to see Admiral Thrawn and Mara Jade, my friend understands why they didn't. Though, I admit to being cautiously optimistic with the new Trilogy.

I'm in the "did not like" camp. I can appreciate why others would, but the things that I looked for weren't there.

For me, the main character for Star Wars was the music. It's always in the foreground because the space opera was scored as an opera, and it is always playing. It is playing as Chewie, Han, Leia, and Luke run down the Death Star corridors, and even as Leia is trying to communicate with Wicket. Love or hate the prequels, the same is true for them. You are always hearing music.

The Force Awakens just felt silent to me. The music always seemed like it was in the background, or less daring. Even the Scherzo for X-Wings lacked the bombastic themes of "The Battle in the Snow" or "The Last Battle." Don't get me wrong, there are points where it pokes through (especially Light Side of the Force's theme), but then disappears into the background.

I was also hoping for something new. To paraphrase Ed Asner's character in KOTOR, the movie leads us down an all too familiar path. Given that Abrams' last big movie did the same thing with Star Trek Into Darkness, it was a bit disappointing to me. Also, it's not a good idea to pick well-known UNESCO sites as places for your alien planet. It makes about as much sense as using the Sphinx as the staggering monument to alien cat-people warlord. It works (kinda?), but it breaks immersion. At least, it breaks immersion for me.

I did like Finn's character. He was both entertaining and sympathetic. Plus, I can't not like someone who had possibly the best reaction to seeing himself in a Star Wars trailer.

http://www.ign.com/articles/20...orce-awakens-trailer

I totally would have done the same thing.

You shouldn't have to, no, but I watched those films (4-6) with my daughter the day before we went to see the new one.  That greatly lowered the bar of my expectations and, I think, made for a better overall experience.  If you're riding too high on nostalgia and expect more than a Star Wars movie can possibly deliver going in, you're going to be disappointed.

Personally, I never followed that much of the EU, but the main problem with the EU is that most of the big stuff involves the original characters... who are all too old, now.  If you kept all (or even most) of the EU, you'd be coming in after a big swath of it was done to match their physical ages.

I loved that 3D scene!  The movie as a whole too - but I remember that scene you're talking about.

No movie is ever going to impact me now the way the star wars trilogy did when I was young.  so it's pretty unrealistic to expect a new star wars movie to somehow live up to those.  But by the same token, the prequels were so disappointing that any attempt to go back to the original theme and feel of star wars is very,very welcomed.  So to me, it was fun, it was exciting, and it has made me happy to be a star wars fan and look forward to the future movies they make (especially the Boba Fett origin movie, that just sounds all kinds of violent and dark to me, which should be great).  There were no gungans, so that's pretty much automatically a success to me.

Also the Force seems to have gone back to being a mystical energy field that connects everything (whether or not it has a serious strep infection).  :)

I saw it last Wednesday.  And I enjoyed it immensely.  :)

the power Kylo Ren exhibited in the first scene caught me pleasantly off guard.  "That's new"  was my only thought when the blaster went off...

Star Wars, back before it was A New Hope, Episode IV, or any other name, was the first movie I saw in the theater by myself. I attended a boarding school in 5th grade, and they took us to see it. I was hooked on all things Sci-if just from that one introduction and the moment that initial Opening Scene.

Imaging my immense pleasure when TFA brought back similar feelings.

I do know that I will be trying to see it a couple more times once this initial surge of interest/lack of ticket availability dies down. :)

First and foremost, I did very much enjoy the movie and when it ended I was left wanting more. The two and a half hours went by way too fast. But I still think Timothy Zahn's Heir to the Empire series would have made a much better 7-9.

I don't disagree with you, but that would have been flat-out impossible to do after the early 1990s.  That series has a lot of Luke, Leia, and Han in it, and all three of them are now much, much too old to be the central characters in an action-adventure movie trilogy.

I think, given that constraint, they did the best job of framing a story as they could.

The things I wish they'd done differently mostly boil down to "learning physics", "have soldiers act like soldiers", and "make space battles that seem like actual space battles".  However, I've pretty much given up any hope of seeing that outside of specific anime.

Finally got a chance to see it, and managed to avoid any spoilers beforehand.  Aside from the initial trailer, I have stayed away from anything that discussed any plot points, avoided interviews with the actors that might have given up anything about their characters, etc...so I went into it with tempered expectations.  I knew it wouldn't be the prequels...but I'd also seen J.J. Abrams do some very ham-fisted things with both Star Trek movies, so I didn't have my hopes too high.

I loved the fact that it looked, and felt, like Star Wars.  The prequels felt like some kind of high-end soap opera, that had precious little to connect it with the original trilogy (the names of a few characters and a couple of settings, pretty much, at least until we started finally seeing some hints of the coming visual designs in some of the Republic military craft...)  This had the same sense of adventure, the same general visual design (updated, some good and some bad changes...I actually felt like these stormtroopers might be able to see me if I was standing right in front of them...)

The places where it fell short for me:
--I think it got a little carried away with the 'callbacks' to the original series.  When it got to the point where I was asking myself just how many references they were going to cram into this film, it stopped being fun for me and started drawing attention to itself.

--The impossible physics of powering the Doomsday Weapon du jour.  Even if you could manage to somehow suck away a sun's energy, when you have superheated plasma hitting oxygen-rich atmosphere, a lot of stuff is going to die a horrible death...this was such a big issue to me that every time they showed it on screen, it took me a couple of minutes to get back into the story.

--I honestly wonder if J.J. Abrams can write/direct decent villains.  I hated his Romulan miners-turned-super-bad-apple-space-warriors, I think he botched Khan and Admiral Whatshisname...and I definitely feel like Kylo Ren got hosed.  Your heroes are only as great as the villains they defeat, and I don't care how super-powerful with the Force you want to make Kylo Ren, the fact that he's got the emotional maturity of a very disturbed pre-adolescent child with severe anger management issues totally undermines him as a successful villain, in a storytelling sense.

All that said, I will actually rest a little easier in the knowledge that the prequels will end up not being the last hurrah for Star Wars on the big screen.  And I'm guardedly optimistic for EpVIII.  But if they don't do a significantly better job than they did on this, they're going to lose an awful lot of the good will they've accumulated from this one.

I actually kind of liked the anger management issues.  Sith are supposed to give themselves over to their anger and hatred, but we honestly don't see a lot of that in 4-6.  A half-trained Sith that can't keep his stuff together?  That seems pretty alright to me.  I also wouldn't characterize it as pre-adolescent.  It's actually very adolescent and in character for a young adult/teen with issues.

In the end, though, I still don't feel like he's meant to be the villain.  He's probably going to be the conflicted bad-guy-good-guy.  Kind of a Space!Snape, if you will.  He even kind of looks like Alan Rickman, if you squint hard enough.

You're right about the Deathstar 3.0, though.

I actually feel like Kylo Ren was the Anakin Skywalker we never got. This is because the dark side is meant to be, right? Anger. Hate. Suffering—and above all those, passion. That’s not passion in terms of romance (although it can be), but the strength, the amplification, of your emotions. In George Lucas’ original conception, the Jedi were meant to be the warrior monks, skilled and precise and in control of their feelings. They harness power from that control. The Sith are the ones who give into their passion and seek power from jumping into that swirling sea of emotion. They’re angry and sullen and screaming at the world, at the legacies handed to them, because that’s what empowers them.

It almost sounds like a certain Skywalker, doesn’t it?

Personally I liked him. He represents a sith before a sith is in control of his emotions. I feel like through his training in the next movie we will see a more in control and precise sith like Darth Vader.

In reply to Evil Empryss (msg # 11):

I have to agree with you that, as much as I liked the nostalgia of this and reworking of the original trilogy moments, I too did not find the movie emotionally compelling.  That supposedly emotional scene was not emotional and was probably my least favorite of the whole movie.

After the train wreck that was the Star Trek reboot I did not have high hopes.  But I was pleasantly surprised.  I have not followed the EU much, so that was not a factor for me.  I enjoyed it and thought it was a good addition to the franchise.


I love Luke, Leia and Han, but time marches on.  Frankly, this is the sort of treatment that should have been done for the Star Trek franchise.  Instead of recasting the main characters with some sort of time travel nonsense, set it in the future with the remaining main cast as admirals and other mentor types.



Ditto.

I finally saw it.

Having been in High School when the original came out, and remembering the impact in a way the young whippersnappers these days can't, I have to give it a point just for being Star Wars.

Another for not having Jar Jar.

Mix of good and bad, but fun throughout.

My worst:  Where the (de-spoilerized) dialogue went like this:

"But isn't this just like the time in that other movie when..."
"No, this is very different.  Really. Look at my handy audiovisual aide".

When you have to explain to the audience that this is NOT the same situation you used before... no.  Too late. You blew it.

My best:  Finn.  Because the movie needs a hero without a bizarre intertwining back story and/or "royal birth".  Just "A Guy" who grows a conscience and decides to be a hero.  Mister Everyman Anonymous.  The "Jack" of traditional European folklore.

(If he turns out to be Lando Carlrissian's long lost son, though, I take it back.)

Overall:  Worth the matinee price.
This message was last edited by the user at 03:28, Tue 12 Jan 2016.

Well, that's the thing about evil, it's usually immature.  If something bad happens, how often does the bad guy say, "Ok, that's no problem, we can work this out."  That's what the good guys says.  If the bad guy were to say that, the audience would start to really empathize with him and the whole tenor of the movie would be different.

Remember:What if he did alter the deal further?  What if Vader set things in motion?  Calrissian, afraid of what happened, sent his wife and son into hiding for safe keeping.  After the second Death Star blew up, everyone celebrated and Lando went home.  He walked in to find a destroyed house and has never heard of his wife or son since.

Although, if that was the case, it'd make Anakin out to be more of a jerk than he already is if his spirit is hanging around with all these live people and he never told them all the bad things he did that could still be fixed if someone got right on them.  Actually, come to think about it, a lot of what the new Empire does is going to have a plot point in it if Vader, who's now on the good guy's side, doesn't speak up and say something.  I guess that means no more Force ghosts from earlier trilogies.

In reply to Genghis the Hutt (msg # 31):

Oh, don't get me wrong.  I don't expect the villains to have a calm, rational response to setbacks.  But one of the things that made Vader such a phenomenal villain was the way in which his rage was so firmly controlled and focused (at least, in the original trilogy...the immature, "Imma slice up everything in my path 'cuz I'm MAD!!!' version of Anakin, while fitting in with the premise of the prequels, was yet another one of those things that made him such a pathetic figure, overall).

I mean, I get it.  Kylo Ren is SUPPOSED to have anger issues.  But he would have been far more scary, to me, if that anger wasn't spewed indiscriminately like someone dropped a firehose.  He's supposed to be the 'right hand' of Snoke, and you don't wind up in positions of trust and authority very often when you are prone to outbursts of total lack of self-control (and destruction of valuable equipment that your side owns.)

I just feel like he would have been a much stronger villain if he wasn't indiscriminately destructive.  And making HIM stronger would have made the heroes look even stronger, for having succeeded in spite of his focused rage.

To be fair to him, I think Snoke might be playing Kylo's pride with that "right hand" bit.  We saw in the movie that the military figure was given more precedence than Kylo was.  Additionally, Kylo may have usually had more calmness -- we really saw him destroy things when he started to fail, though.  I don't think he's very good at accepting failure with equanimity. ;)

In reply to facemaker329 (msg # 32):

I noticed that whenever he destroyed some electronic wall thingy, nothing happened at all.  Lights don't flicker.  No one on the bridge notices the sudden damage, no alarm sounds. No "We've had an explosion in sector 7B!".   And Stormtroopers just turn their backs and walk away.

This leads me to suspect that they are prepared for his outbursts- areas that Kylo is expected to be in are equipped with expendable "prop panels".

In reply to facemaker329 (msg # 32):

I completely agree with, well, all three of you about Kylo. My question is, what purpose in the story is it to have him that way? Snoke has to know about Kylo and his emotional issues. I have read a couple of interesting theories about him. I will leave it at that to avoid spoilers though.

Also yeah, don't go with someone who is a fan of the EU. I did, becus a ride is a ride. But it was over a week before he shut up about it.

Well, the obvious answer is that he's a major character and not just a villain.  As such, he's going to have a full character arc with development and everything else.  Giving him interesting motivations, showing his internal struggles, and making him relatable (maybe not to us crusty old people, but teens certainly know what that kind of anger is like) is all part of that.

There's also a certain market appeal to the tortured bad guy with a tormented past (Loki, Snape).  I like to refer to him as Space!Snape because there's a bit of a resemblance in so many ways.  A whole lot about him says "this guy is here for the early-teen girl to drool over".

If Kylo Ren is there just for tweener girls, then he's as shallow an inclusion to Star Wars as Jar Jar Binks was in the prequels for pandering to kids.

That being said, I don't think either of those characters were intended to be included for those purposes. My problem is that I just don't believe Kylo as a serious threat, let alone a sympathetic character. He wipes out an entire village, and then delivers a soliloquy to a mask where he complains about still feeling the Light side of the Force. He throws temper tantrums when things don't go his way, and the reactions by the rest of the First Order show that they're used to this. To me, he felt as intimidating as a toddler, and just as annoying.

There are a lot of people saying Kylo Ren is the Anakin Skywalker we should have had in the prequels. I don't agree with that. When Anakin Skywalker cuts down the Sand People in Attack of the Clones, I felt like there was an emotional charge to it. When he admits it to Padme, he doesn't say that he's sorry, but instead says that he's satisfied. Other people might look at that scene as crybaby whining, but it was one of the few things in the prequels that really worked for me (much more than "Now this is podracing!" or the 1950s diner scene in Coruscant).

However, movie tastes are subjective things. People like different stuff. A lot of people like Episode VII. I don't, and I'm not trying to convince people to agree with me. I'm just trying to explain my particular point of view.

In reply to JxJxA (msg # 37):

Cool, and I completely understand. I for one can't wait for the next movie and to find out just what is going on with those weird issues.

At least, I will be severely dissapointed with disney if they were not put in for a good reason.

To begin with, I really enjoyed the movie. It was a lot of fun, and the filmmakers really made an effort to take the series back to the feel of the original movies, which I appreciated. While I’m sure there was a lot of digital/CGI work (of course), this movie seemed grittier and more realistic than a lot of the prequel trilogy. So well played!

The good:

Han Solo – My goodness, Harrison Ford just slipped back into the character as if he’d never left. He gets pretty much all the best lines in the movie and his delivery (“That’s not how the force works!”) is really top-notch. Stole almost every scene he was in.

Humor – TFA had more laugh lines than any other Star Wars movie, as far as I can recall.

Space Battle Excitement/Choreography – The three set piece spaceship battles

---

Spoiler text: (Highlight or hover over the text to view)
(Falcon v. TIE, X-wings at Temple, Assault on Starkiller base

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), were all really well done.

Rey and Finn – I thought these characters were introduced really well and both actors are very charismatic. They were immediately likable and I was rooting for them the whole time.

Finn (Part 2) – I really liked Finn a lot. His continuing amazement at being able to do things well and his (justifiable, given his experiences!) fear of the First Order made him really relatable.

The bad:

Kylo Ren – A man I’ve taken to calling “Darth Emo.” He just didn’t seem very threatening, and having your main antagonist throwing several temper tantrums like a spoiled child doesn’t increase his threat level. He just seemed like a whiny kid.

Rey (Part 2) – While I enjoyed Ridley’s portrayal, I did not enjoy Rey’s Mary Sue qualities.

---

Spoiler text: (Highlight or hover over the text to view)
Here she is, a scavenger on a desert planet, and she is also: 1) an expert spaceship pilot (how?); 2) an expert spaceship mechanic (how?); 3) an expert staff-fighter (more explicable); 4) apparently a linguist; 5) able to use the Force to overcome Kylo Ren’s mental defenses in a matter of literally under a minute; 6) able to use the Force to dominate a stormtrooper in an hour or two; and 7) able to defeat Kylo Ren, a guy who looks to have at least 80 pounds and reach on her, in a lightsaber battle. Doable, but this meant she would have to be an expert swordswoman as well, since staff-fighting and sword-fighting are completely different things.

---

One or two or even three of these would have been okay, but all of them? It challenged my suspension of disbelief.

Poe – Woefully underdeveloped.

General Hux – Seemed a bit over the top.

That said, I really enjoyed the movie and am really looking forward to the next one.

I really don't get all the hate for Kylo Ren. First off, this is just the first movie. If the fact that he stopped a bolt blast MID AIR wasn't enough to key you in to his power, I don't know what else could. He's young, he's conflicted, he unsure of himself. Honestly, he has a dynamic I haven't seen before in the SW movies. He WANTS to be bad, but his heart still is good. So yeah, we're gonna see it as "emo." I don't think it's fair that so many people are juding the entire trilogy on just one movie. I mean, c'mon...there's still two more movies to go. I want Kylo to be the villain we can hate.

So do I.  That's why he bugs me, as is...*grin*

Mary Sue

Not really, but close, a couple of things she did, added to things she should/could do gave the illusion of Mary Sue-ness. Also scenes of her fails were removed from the film.

Points
1- Agreed though there may be a unity of flight systems from rafts to ships as Luke, Biggs were pilots too. She also repeatedly bounced off the sand too and quickly captured by the passing Nostromo. ;)
2- She was an expert at parts from years of experience.
3- She carried one
4- If seen as a stand alone talent, not an issue
5- Agreed
6- Agreed. Oh and that Storm Trooper was Daniel Craig.
7- Villain had a blaster bolt in his guts and a fight before hers. Wonder he lasted as long.

A scene of pistol combat with pirates was removed, she had no clue what a safety was. Such has happened in real life with Tom Horn being a victim of same back around 1905.

There's definitely more going on with Rey than shows up at face value.  As evidence, I offer Kylo Ren's tantrum when someone mentioned not that the droid had been found by someone, but that it had been found by a woman.  I suspect she's a lot more developed in the Force than they bothered to demonstrate (developed, as opposed to trained...it would explain why she's such a good scavenger and survivor, if she's learned to trust the Force...which could also explain her ability to understand droids and Wookiees and others--she doesn't necessarily understand what they're saying, but she senses what they're trying to communicate...)

If Ren knew, or could sense, that she was there, it would do a lot to explain why he was so volatile when it was reported that a woman had the droid...because she would actually be BB-8's best chance of getting his information off-world.  That much, if it actually proves to be the case, would be enough for me to forgive the first of his multiple destructive outbursts, because it would actually feel motivated by real frustration, as opposed to petulance.

Unfortunately, Abrams seems to have developed a tendency to include critical story elements that aren't explained in the story (how a Romulan mining ship that was rushing back to save their home got sucked into a time vortex, and somehow emerged from the other side with the offensive capabilities of a whole battle-fleet, for instance...)  I suspect he's been guilty of that here, as well, and I really hope the pieces get picked up as the trilogy goes along.  Star Wars (the original) wasn't necessarily brilliant story-telling, after all, but it gave you everything you needed to know (for the story to make sense) within the body of the story. I can appreciate leaving some mysteries to be theorized over by the fans...but there's a difference between leaving room for speculation and just completely skipping the introduction of crucial information.

So, for the time being, I'm reserving judgment on Rey.  I found her to be remarkably conveniently talented, but I can think of reasons to explain it (other than the prospect that the writers just got really sloppy).  I know more information will come to light as the trilogy progresses, just as the information we had about Darth Vader evolved over the course of the original trilogy.  And unlike the original, this one was written KNOWING it was the first of three movies, so the pressure to make it a solid stand-alone wasn't anywhere near as great (it just had to be enjoyable enough to bring in solid audiences and boost hype for Disney's marketing campaign of all things Star Wars, as well as the multiple movies following it).

I don't think it's the right way to tell the story...but it's not my story to tell.  And for all the things about it that did leave me going, "Eh....I don't know how I feel about that..." I have to say that I did, overall, enjoy it.  And when it gets to the discount theater where I work, six months from now (if I'm lucky), I will probably watch it at least a dozen more times.

In reply to facemaker329 (msg # 43):

Actually, if I recall correctly, Lucas actually had the whole story written out before he started filming. Him having such a large story was part of the reason why he had such troubles finding a company to produce it, and why he had to create ILM to do the special effects.

In fact, the fact that Disney is not using the original story he wrote apparently is something Lucas is upset about.

Lucas had the original trilogy written out...and realized, early on, that there was no way he could make a coherent story out of it, so he focused on the section that became Episode 4.  It was a huge gamble, by everyone involved, to even try and make a sci-fi epic...at the time, sci-fi did not generally do well in the box office and if you look at stuff from the era, you can see where Star Wars was a drastic departure from the way sci-fi was done.

But because it was such a gamble, there was no knowing whether or not it would go over at all, much less be popular enough to warrant sequels.  So he had to make Star Wars function as a stand-alone...you didn't need to see or read anything else for it to make sense, because at the time, there wasn't anything else to look at to fill in the gaps.  When it proved to be the blockbuster that it was, he could go into Empire and lay out pieces that didn't need to be wrapped up in one movie...because he already knew there would be another one after that.

I think I've heard tell that he had some basic ideas for the prequel...because you can't have a story about a villain's redemption by his son without some ideas about how the villain fell from grace in the first place...but I don't believe he had Eps 1-3 laid out in the same clarity (which shows, I feel, in the lackluster pace of the storytelling).

And, yes, Lucas has said that he had ideas for this trilogy, as well...but that's all I've ever heard him say in interviews...ideas, not scripts, not full stories, just ideas.  One of the longest-running fan myths surrounding Star Wars is that Lucas had the whole thing written out in three trilogies before he ever started, but given the disparity in style between the prequels and the original trilogy, I have a hard time buying that.  And the fact that Lucas made the prequels and then stopped doing Star Wars again leads me to believe that he didn't have a sequel trilogy ready to go, either...  His big excuse for waiting so long on the prequels was that 'technology needed to catch up to his vision', so he could tell the story effectively, which was also the justification for the Special Edition of the originals...he could include scenes or rework scenes that he wanted to change because technology made it a viable option (but a lot of people look at the Special Editions as a solid example of "Just because you CAN do a thing, doesn't mean you SHOULD do a thing.")

For sure Lucas didn't have the whole thing written out before he started. Darth Vader wasn't even Luke's until quite late in the development process. As facemaker said, ideas maybe, but that's it.

And he wanted the first movie to feel like a single episode in a continuing story. That was part of his aim. He wanted to create something akin to the Buck Rogers serials he watched and loved as a child. And, in fact, he tried to buy the rights to Buck Rogers and only turned to Star Wars when he couldn't get them.

In reply to truemane (msg # 46):

You almost make Star Wars sound like a piece of Buck Rogers fan fiction?

In reply to Merevel (msg # 47):

It almost is. Along with a healthy dollop of jidaigeki filmsm, which are Japanese period dramas, usually samurai movies (say that word 'jidaigeki' out loud and see if it sounds familiar, especially the first two syllables).

And. among samurai films in particular, there's a lot of Akira Kurosawa's Hidden Fortress, which Lucas considered re-making as his next film.

I have to say, the issues with Rey didn't bother me too much.  She is a Mary Sue character, but on the other hand, there could still be a good reason for it all.  I think there is- it's too much of an open door.  It's a setup- it leaves the next movie to say "she can do all these incredible things because, you see, she's really...."

Having already noted that my favorite character was Finn, I can say there was one who I did have a problem with.  Poe.

Not the "How did he get off the planet?" problem.  He's hot shot super-pilot.  He found a way.  Other things.

The attitude bugs me.  They really overplayed the brash hot shot.  I think, prior to flying for the Resistance, Poe flew in 1940's war movies.  Hey, I'm awesome... but you bro, you're awesome!  Overdid it.

I can accept the fact that he flies his X-wing on a top secret mission to meet an undercover agent.   Parks it in the open right next to the village he's visiting, not even a hint of camouflage.  Sure, he just blew the cover of the Resistance's contacts there, but hey, he was described as the resistance's "Most Daring" and also "Best" pilot.  Never their brightest.

I can accept

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his remarkable escape going completely undescribed.

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  Okay.  We'll close up that plot hole in another movie.

What I cannot accept is this:  At what point did Poe

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TAKE OFF THE FURSHLUGGINER JACKET??? He was wearing it while flying, and then somehow left it behind...

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think about it.

In reply to Eur512 (msg # 49):

Of all the complaints in that thread, that is mine too.. Other than that, thoroughly enjoyed the movie.

Personally, I got a strong Finn/Poe vibe out of their interactions later on.  Less "over the top" and more "hitting on him".

As for Rey... she's less of a Mary Sue than Luke and Anakin, in some ways.  The Force apparently digs that.

How is she less of a Mary Sue than Luke or Anakin?  Especially Luke?

Here's what Luke could do in the first movie:

1)  Fly

2)  Whine

He had some undeveloped affinity for the force, but he couldn't really do anything with it.  It took the tutelage (and spirit) of a powerful Jedi Master just to get him to the point where he could effectively use it once, at the very end of the movie, to guide his torpedoes.

That's it.  Otherwise Luke is CONSTANTLY getting into scrapes and having to be rescued.

1)  Rescued from Sand People by Ben;

2)  Rescued from Mos Eisley Cantina Confrontation, again by Ben;

3)  Rescued from Tatooine by Han;

4)  Rescued from Trash Compactor by R2-D2;

5)  Rescued from Death Star by Ben (both by deactivating tractor beam and distracting Vader);

6)  Rescued from Vader by Han during final trench run.

So I don't get how Luke is a Mary Sue.  He has one, maybe one-and-a-half useful skills, and continually has to rely on other people to save him.

He turns some relatively limited land-vehicle piloting experience into the ability to pilot a starfighter effectively against everyone but the best pilot in the galaxy?  I mean, Star Wars space battles are generally terrible for realism in general, but why they would let Luke pilot a starfighter when he has no experience (and makes idiotic statements that show he doesn't understand the scale and speed of space travel) is a mystery.

Honestly, I think we're in a bit of a Matrix situation with Rey.  They've given us a glimpse of a character and hints that she has a big, important backstory.  If that backstory is put together well enough, most of the Mary Sue stuff becomes baseless.  However, just like with the Matrix, they could royally screw up the second movie.

Yes, but my point stands.  You said she was "less of a Mary Sue" than Luke.  Luke had one important talent.  Rey has many.

And Rey is better than Luke at flying.  Luke didn't really outfly anyone during the Death Star attack.  He's no Poe Dameron!  He was part of the group and took the last torpedo run, but it was not like he was portrayed as an ace out there.  And Luke has air-vehicle flying experience--he wasn't bullseyeing womprats back in Beggar's Canyon in a landspeeder!

Rey, on the otherhand, outflew TIE fighters with a FREIGHTER whilst having NO demonstrable flying experience, and no reason to believe from her backstory that she would have had any (I'm just a scavenger scraping by, but every so often the stingy gang-boss of my local settlement allows me to pilot stuff!  Or something.)
This message was last edited by the user at 20:47, Thu 14 Jan 2016.

The Force did it.

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More seriously, Rey's backstory is very important here, and we know none of it.  If it turns out she was trained as a child and had only some specific memories blocked, it's all within the realms of reasonable.  It's also possible they'll completely mess it up and she's the Mary Sue-est Mary Sue since Mary Sue herself.

If nothing else, I'll point you to the fact that Rey drives around that floating popsicle thing of hers while scaving, which is at least as much experience as Luke has.

And... a freighter?  Really?  Even if it looks like a hunk of junk (which is intentional, I believe, as it was used for smuggling a whole lot), it's one of the better ships of the era according to all of the lore.  There are some holes in the story there, as well, that the next movie should fill in.

Which is another thing.  That vehicle didn't set down when turned off.  It was "always" floating.  If they have "always floating" technology, then they have, well, they should be much more technologically advanced than they are.

That's nothing new.  Repulsorlift technology seems to be very low energy.  Even the crappy speeder Luke has in Episode 4 never seems to set down when it's off.  The tech only lifts, though, it doesn't propel.  You have to have a second motive system to propel a craft and it's entirely unsuitable for spacecraft due to its limited ceiling.

Star Wars universe is very much a hodgepodge of tech.  They are very advanced in some ways and very backwards in others.  There are in-universe reasons for it, but in reality, a lot of it's because it was designed back in the 70s and 80s so the "future" was all guess work.  Take a look at any sci-fi RPG published in that period and you'll see similar themes.

@ Swordchucks: I think you're giving Rey too much credit on flying, and Luke not enough. If your argument is that Luke is more of a Mary Sue because Rey's flying ability will be explained in future backstory and Luke's wasn't, then I'd offer this counterargument:

In "A New Hope" alone, Lucas & Co. establish Luke as a good pilot. Obi-Wan Kenobi says that Luke is the son of the greatest starpilot in the galaxy, so there's evidence for the nature side in the nature v. nurture debate. Luke says, and Biggs vouches in deleted scenes that are added back in the Special Edition, that he's a decent pilot in his own right, racing in Beggar's Canyon on Tatooine and managing to hit small moving targets. He had a T-16 Skyhopper---that model he plays with for a moment---in his "garage" that you can see while he's messing with the droids. Flying in normal space is different from making hyperspace jumps, and the Death Star battle is fought only in normal space. Finally, even Vader admits that The Force is strong in him.

There's other canon stuff. The radio play includes a bit with Luke getting put in a training simulator at the Rebel base and acing a scenario that pit him against the Imperial fleet. However, I don't think it's fair to include it if I'm just looking at the movie. I mean, there's a ~14 page pdf that explains away a lot of the plot holes in The Force Awakens, but I think its existence is more justification that the writers did a bad job at exposition.

That being said, just because you don't see Luke fly until the Death Star battle doesn't mean that it came out of nowhere. The writers did their best to establish it before final battle.

It did in the Ep 4 version that I saw.

At what point did it set down?  I'm not asking to be argumentative...but thinking about Ep4, the only times I remember seeing it not in motion were when the Sandpeople were rummaging through it, and when Luke jumped into it to race back to the farm when he realized the Empire had wiped out the Jawas that sold droids to his uncle.  We never saw it on the ground in either scene...and in the second scene, we actually see it dip just a little bit with Luke's added weight as he jumps in, which would imply that it's floating.

So, I'm forgetting a scene, somewhere, apparently.

It's all a bit hard to establish credit for anything without falling into an apples vs. oranges debate.  Star Wars space battle physics is terrible.  Star Wars atmospheric combat physics is also terrible.  It's like holding a debate on which wizard is better at their craft using only the bits and pieces we, from a world without such magic, can figure out.  Stuff that looks impressive on-screen might be super-easy in-world and stuff that looks easy might be super-hard.

Case-in-point, Rey outflies a couple of TIE fighters.  Is that amazing?  Is that easy?  I don't know.  It depends on how easy/hard it is to fly the Falcon, and it depends on how good TIE fighters are in atmosphere.  Figuring either out requires you to assume a whole lot about motive systems and in-world physics that we just don't know.  The fact that the Force could have guided her through it all just mucks it up more.

My opinion is firmly this:

Rey's backstory will determine whether or not Rey is a Mary Sue.

We've been given glimpses and hints that her parentage and youth are important.  There are theories that she was part of Luke's original Jedi training group (which means nothing she did with the Force or a lightsaber is a stretch).  There are theories that she's related to a main character from the last trilogy (and, more importantly, Han/Leia know it), which would explain a bunch of the other Mary Sue-like characteristics.

However... Disney could still mess it up entirely with no good explanations.

In reply to swordchucks (msg # 61):

My point was just that calling Luke more of a Mary Sue than Rey seemed unfair IMHO, especially since the first movie that introduced him did its best explain why he would be able to fly an X-Wing. It's not like that skill came out of nowhere, and that strength was contrasted by his flaws. Outside of general social awkwardness, Rey didn't seem to have any flaws to contrast her strengths. Delving into physics or what is and isn't easy isn't the point. I'm talking about the character construction.

There are still two movies to go, and I appreciate the difficulty that moviemakers have in this day and age to keep twists from being leaked and spoiled. That might be why Episode VII held back a lot of that story exposition. However, I'm not expecting much from the future given that they never explain in the movie who Max von Sydow's character was (apparently a member of something called the church of the Force), what's going on with the Republic, what the Knights of Ren are, and specifically say in the movie that it doesn't matter how they retrieved Anakin Skywalker's lightsaber. :-/

I didn't.  I simply said that, in some ways, she's less of a Mary Sue.  Luke, taken as a whole, progresses very quickly with relatively little training (compared to all of the dead Jedi who had a whole lot more training).  Anakin is some sort of Force-Jesus figure that's also the only human that can compete in pod racing.  Provided Rey's backstory is well put together, she's more of a Mary Sue in some ways and less in others.

As for comments about piloting an X-wing, the establishing shots are either not in the movie or painfully subtle.  They're also colored by my more hard-sci-fi understanding of how piloting a space fighter would be likely to actually work.  The fact that Star Wars is more sci-fantasy lets them break rules like that, but it's unfair to then apply reality in other places to other characters.  I mean, if we allow off-camera stuff as justification, who's to say that Rey doesn't spend all of her free time in an old TIE Fighter simulator they found on the Destroyer they're looting?  I mean, there were probably quite a few of them, and I can see that being fun.

If you want to poke at the biggest Mary Sue characteristic in the whole thing, it's when Rey gets immediately trusted with major missions by the Resistance.  Like going to find Luke.  This only makes any kind of sense if there's a backstory reason (like she's really Luke's kid and Leia knows it).  Having a character appear and be immediately liked/trusted by the main characters for no reason is the very epitome of Mary Sue.

If we want to be even more painfully honest about it, Hollywood is still struggling with how to portray a strong female lead.  If they beat her up too much, they get criticised.  If they don't beat her up enough, they get criticised.  I do know that sitting there, watching the movie, she never bothered me.  She screwed up at least twice (releasing the monsters by accident and getting captured), but that seems to get ignored when painting her as a Mary Sue.


Any of that stuff could be explained as part of the next movie, but I agree that at least some of it (specifically the Republic/Resistance stuff) should have been explained a lot better in this film.  Supposedly, the novelization of the movie does a better job explaining a few bits (like the map), but the fact that you have to consult a book to figure out things annoys me. There are EU explanations for some of it, too, and if any of those hold true, we'll see them in the next film since they're all closely tied to Luke.

OOOohhhh! Check out the trailer for Season 2.5 of Rebels...

Looks like some Force Awakens ties! What a glorious time to be a Star Wars fan!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJyxPDEvo9U

If that was it, I wouldn't have posted. I replied because of your second post:



Subtlety is a YMMV situation. I thought it was pretty obvious that Luke can fly because he keeps referring to it throughout the movie. As for why they had him in a fighter, well, his exchange with Han is pretty telling:



They needed everyone who could fly. It was like the final battle in Independence Day: they have the ships, but they don't have the pilots.

Sometimes editing also screws up with the story. Just found this while trying to look up info on the Rathtars:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/fil...footage-concept-art/

Fair dues on writing strong female leads. I just wanted to see more contrast, as she doesn't even get the brunt of the Rathtar incident (that falls on Finn the Buttmonkey). They got the right person for it with J.J. Abrams, as he was behind Alias, Lost, and Fringe. I thought he did a great job with Uhura in Star Trek. However, he also was responsible for Gone Fishin', which is possibly the worst movie Joe Pesci and Danny Glover ever did, so there's a wide range that his stuff can fall into...

What is this Rebels?  Obviously Darth Vader is alive and kicking.  For some reason, all of the stormtroopers seem to be too short to be stormtroopers.  Is this a show about kids who are escaped stormtrooper cadets or something?

Star Wars Rebels. It's a Disney show, primarily aimed at kids from what I can tell (or at least lower teens), set just after the events of Episode III. If there's a Force Awakens link that'd be kinda weird.

I thought at first I was watching Kyle Kylo turn to the dark side, but then I noticed that Darth Vader was alive.  Maybe it's just the standard, "Anyone with dark hair, especially if it ever partially obscures their face,  is evil.  Or at least they're flirting with evil."

I think the Rebels' nod to TFA is the cross-guard lightsaber.

Personally, I really enjoy Rebels, more than Episode VII. The characters feel a little more fleshed out, and the voice acting cast led by Freddie Prinze, Jr. and Vannessa Marshall is really superb. Plus, it's awesome seeing CGI versions of 1970s hairstyles. It might seem cheesy, but I was kind of hoping that the new Star Wars movies would go back to them...

Ah, okay.

I have no problems with Rebels. My son loves them. He's a bit more into Star Wars than I am though.

This bugged me, too. I just watched it for the 3rd time and only just caught it...

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He takes the jacket off immediately after getting into the TIE fighter.

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If you're not paying attention, it's an afterthought that's easy to miss.

Then again, why did they let him keep it?

There are some hard rules of Sci Fi, laid down in the days of Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon, that are still observed to this day.

Not just Sci-Fi, any story where the hero gets captured.  After he's searched for his weapons/whatever, he's usually always allowed to continue wearing whatever he was wearing before.  Unless you're reading Conan or something salacious like that, in which case nudity is pretty common.

In movies, it's a combination of budget and visual communication reasons...if you change the way a character looks, you can throw some viewers for a loop because he 'doesn't look right' anymore...in Poe's case, they only had a few minutes to introduce him to people.  If he looked drastically different the next time we saw him, some people would get lost...maybe not for long, but anytime you make someone break from the experience of the film to think about what they saw earlier, you run the risk of losing their focus, and it takes time to get it back...the more time they spend not focused on the film, the more likely they are to report it as an unenjoyable movie.

And, while there's not likely much of a budget justification for it, in some movies they just plain old can't afford that many more costumes for people.

But look at earlier Star Wars movies...how often do we see characters change outfits in the course of the story?  Leia was an Imperial prisoner for who-knows-how-long...same white dress, with no wear-and-tear in it whatsoever when she's rescued.  Luke runs around swampy Dagobah in a tan tanktop and pants...and then wears the same pants to Cloud City.  Han's outfit doesn't change much for the whole trilogy...

In the list of motion-picture sins, keeping a central character in the same outfit through capture and interrogation (or any other arduous experience that should have damaged, if not destroyed the outfit) ranks pretty low on the list...*grin*

Rey does get an outfit 'upgrade', but she does keep the same color scheme and style.

Chewbacca has been wearing the same outfit for every movie he's been in.  :)

Edit: And they span about fifty years... and at least one garbage compacter.
This message was last edited by the user at 13:55, Fri 22 Jan 2016.

Will somebody get this walking carpet out of my way?

Wake me when it's over.

This was the first movie I have seen, in decades, that I did not like.

Loved the actors for what they could with the material. The writing struck me as poor fan fiction.

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I mean, every scene struck me as a mash up of something from Episodes 4-6.

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Still better than episodes 1-3, and I know that the magic of the original episodes 4-6 can't be repeated, but my hopes were a little higher. Overall, I'm glad that I waited until it was in the second run theater and only cost me $4.

I'll take 1 over 7.

????

I will admit the movie has problems. I was watching it with my wife who hasn't seen 4-6 and the backstory crawl does very little to establish who you should be rooting for if you're not familiar with the movie.

In addition the first half of the movie trying to get everyone together and a plot going is...problematic. It basically is an elaborate rip off of Episode 4.

Poe Dameron (aka Princess Leia) holds critical information that he delivers to his droid BB-8 (aka R2-D2) to escape shortly before the big bad sith lord Kylo Ren (aka Darth Vader) captures her. Then the droid is recovered on Jakku (aka Tatooine) by a local rube/expert pilot Rey (aka Luke Skywalker). Rey then gets tangled up with con man Finn (aka Han Solo) and they escape impending First Order (aka Empire) entanglements on the Millennium Falcon (aka...yeah...).

So the entire 1st act is almost plot for plot rip off of Episode 4.

Now the second part is where the movie diverges. In Episode 4 you have the whole encounter on the death star but in this one Poe Dameron escapes on his own. Also you have the "cantina scene" after Rey and Finn (aka Luke and Han) are already together but yeah...the second act is a quasi-rehash of the REST of episode 4 that wasn't already cannibalized.

And then for the 3rd act, the assault on Starkiller Base (aka Death Star aka Starkiller was going to be Skywalker's original last name before being scavenged for the now non-canon Force Unleashed series...). This time the positions are a bit muddled as this is more ripped from Episode 6 battle of Endor. You have Poe Dameron (now either Luke Skywalker from Episode 4 or Lando/Wedge from Episode 6) assualting the exterior of the base in a fighter while a crack team of ground insurgents need to bring down the shields.

Again specific details diverge as the father/son dynamic is flipped for TFA where it is good Father trying to redeem Bad Son. and despite the "Death Star Desgin Motif" inside Starkiller Base overall this was one of the more original parts of the entire movie.


ALL IN ALL is The Force Awakens a great movie? Not even close. Will you like it if you've never seen a Star Wars movie? Meh...maybe but you'll probably find it VERY confusing. HOWEVER if you're  a fan of the original trilogy and feel violently ill at the prequel trilogy then TFA will feel like a breath of fresh air.

My hope is that this was baby steps in the right direction. It definitely stumbles but overall it is still a lot more coherent and fun then the prequel trilogy and because 75% of the movie is a remake of Episode 4, it captures the same feelings as Episode 4 which again was not a great movie but did ignite the passions and imaginations of several generations to follow.

TFA was not the hit like Marvel Movies were but I can understand being buried by anticipation and although I like J.J. Abrams he isn't the greatest at telling complicated stories (see Lost). However he does do an excellent job of harnessing joy and excitement in his movies so I'm optimistic that the next one will do a much better job, similar to how Episode 5 was vastly superior to Episode 4...

In reply to praguepride (msg # 83):

Not as elaborately put as you, but this was much of what I had explained to my wife on the way home after watching it.

Most of my issues came from, what I call, the J.J. Ambrams approach. Everything was sparks, flashes, and special effects BUT no real story. The original trilogy was way better without all the glam and glits BECAUSE it tried to tell a story rather than simply awe you with twisty flying X-wing scenes.

See, I think the original star wars also told a muddled story wrapped up in glitz and glam, but the difference being that the director didn't expect you to watch 3 movies prior to it.

Both do start like you're jumping into the middle of a television series mid-season (hence Episode 4 albeit that was a later addition to the mix...). As my wife pointed out for the beginning 1/3 of the movie she didn't know who was a good guy and who was supposed to be the bad guys until I clarified things.

In reply to Flarelord (msg # 78):

Droids wont tear your arms off. Wookies have been known to do that.

Seriously, I enjoyed this movie. I really did. I would have even been cool with the character of Rey being a super female badass lead character. Problem is, in their efforts to trip over themselves to gratuitously pander to a certain portion of the population (and not necessarily the one you think I'm talking about) they just took her too far. It's not that she had a lot of skills that bothers me. It's that she is evidently better than EVERYONE at EVERYTHING

I'm sorry.... she's an "ace pilot" good enough to outfly TWO experienced fighter pilots at the same time (the TIE fighters), and through the tight confines of a Star Destroyer reckage no less, where the TIE's smaller size gives them a decided advantage. She's an ace mechanic good enough to figure out how to fix Han Solo's ship faster than he does, that he's been flying and fixing for..... I dunno, a couple decades anyway, and she's only been on for about five minutes.

Then Han Solo gives her a gun, and she can't even figure out how it works. Three seconds later, she's a dead accurate shot. Sorry. Combat skills don't work that way. You can either operate the weapon, or you can't. Having been an operator of firearms for several years, I can tell you that the person who can't even figure out a safety catch isn't likely going to wow you with their shooting aptitude. Beginner's luck does happen, but not in the middle of a firefight.

Then she's fighting Kylo Ren, a guy who by all accounts is only partially trained as a Jedi. Sure, he's injured. That's a fair point. But you know what else he is? A lot better trained as a swordsman then Rey could ever be at this point. You could make the argument that Rey might have had some lightsaber training since she might be a former member of Jedi Camp. But let me clue you in on a little something: Combat is mostly muscle memory. That decays over time. You literally lose your fighting skills if you don't practice them regularly. Given the fact that Rey doesn't seem to remember any Jedi training she might have recieved prior to the start of the movie, it's likely that she hasn't been training in it for many many years. Perhaps more then a decade. A person who hasn't handled a sword in a decade isn't going to do very well against a person who has handled one almost every day for the same time period. That's just reality.

I was okay with her using the force for most of the things she did with it. I think they're setting her up to be Skywalker's daughter, so it makes sense for her to be extremely strong in the force. There are a few points, like when she mindtricks the stormtrooper, that just made me cringe though.

I loved the movie, and I would have enjoyed Rey if she wasn't just some Mary Sue. I think the writers really did the concept of a strong female lead a disservice when they wrote that character.

So this might be spoiler-ish, it might be just fan theory but here goes:


My prediction is that she is the love child between Luke Skywalker and the main character in upcoming Rogue One movie: Jyn Erso.

The idea is that yes, she is better at just about everything then everybody, just as Luke/Anakin was.

The mechanic issue can actually be hand waved within the context of the movie saying that she had very good knowledge of mechanics due to her jury rigging her own home and being a scavenger of an Imp star destroyer as her primary living. She knows what works and what doesn't.

The outflying the TIEs in the wreckage again can be explained that she flew through the same star destroyer that she has spent months/years navigating through for salvage purposes so she knew the layout inside and out. Even if the TIEs are smaller, knowing when the turns are happening and what's upcoming is far more important then size and agility.

As for the gun shooting and Kylo Ren fight, that is hand waved through the force where if she was really channeling the Skywalker line then anything is possible.

Not to be a total fan boy though, I hate how Jedi have been portrayed as being better at everything then anybody. In Episode 4 it was already established that Luke was a naturally hot shot pilot (like his father before him) but with the force it gave him that extra nudge.

For the most part that was how it worked, he was already a good action hero but the force lets him push the limits. Then came the prequels where you have Obi-Wan who profoundly is anti-blaster, anti-starship being an ace pilot and crackshot with a blaster that he never uses just because the force flows through him.

I would have rather they dial it back and make it more subtle which is (one of many reasons) why the original trilogy was so much better.

I would have rather they make her useless with a blaster because that would not only be a flaw in an otherwise Mary Sue-ish character but would also be a hilarious call back they could use for the rest of the trilogy where everyone makes fun of the fact that the Jedi warrior and legacy of Luke can't hit the broadside of a barn.

I think you hit the nail on the head though that they overcompensated a little for the general perception of lack of female agency in Star Wars movies but on the grand scheme of things I'd rather they swing this way then perpetuate bad stereotypes.

Life is a pendulum and it can be hard to find that perfect balance without swinging to the extreme both ways a few times.

I have already made a long post about force awakens (on my occasional blog). There were many many things I liked about it, and I see enormous potential here, it is all about what happens next, the characters will either break through to their potential and the movies will be great, or they won't, and it will be forgettable. Please note I do not mean dbz style power levels as potential

TFA is a movie you watch for entertainment. If you try to analyse it even a little, the plot holes appear.

For example:

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There is a great complex plan to blow up the super death star. The rescue team avoids the planetary shield by emerging from light speed inside the atmosphere... OK

So why can't they radio when the rescue has happened. Then a single x wing with a droid pilot can do the same trick and ... Overshoot a little bit. We saw the damage in Russia last year when a meteor exploded above one of their cities, and that was sub light speed. An x wing masses much less than the falcon, so the field anomalies will be that much easier for it to exploit.

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Using hyperspace as a weapon is a big no no in the star wars universe. There is evidence to support that it causes incredible damage but most writers skirt around it as a big no-no. Star Trek is the same way, you could propel bombs at Klingons at warp speed but there are usually two theories

1) It won't work the way you want. The extreme gravity of the planet disrupts warp space and saps you of your extreme momentum before you hit, and then you just hit the ground.

2) It's considered a war crime and is banned by all that is good and right. One of the few things even the sith won't cross because...reasons...

I never said they were good reasons :P

The moratorium on doing it is a good reason, however you are attacking a huge military target that has a minimum (imho zero) chance of civilian casualties, that has just given all that's good and true a huge kick in the teeth.

Rather than dwell on this further, here is another possibility, based on three bits of possible evidence. Military technology on the alliance side devolved or remained static. Possibly the Order has as well, but I prefer to think the order's capability advanced.

The first piece of evidence is Kylo Ren's Showpiece of freezing the blaster bolt in midair.  This was supposed to set him up as powerful, but my impression of that didn't last the rest of the film. So. This means there was more than just the light/energy for him to effect, possibly a physical component suggesting the technology of the alliance has stood still.

Why couldn't the X wing pull off the force field trick?  The millenium falcon was heavily modified and based on old tech.  The new X wings weren't capable of it. suggesting a focus on other matters than military spending.

Where was the alliance fleet? Possibly when luke announced his new jedi academy people started beating their swords into plough shares believing the jedi would be what they were before the empire.  The weapons contractors then went off to the Order.

I was going to say the RoJ endor forcefield was stronger than the one used for the super deathstar, but probably that was because it had to cover less volume so there were no wibbly wobbly discrepancies.

Are you trying to say that droids aren't sentient?  You monster!

My thoughts run along similar lines, praguepride ...

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Spoiler text: (Highlight or hover over the text to view)

My pet theory is that Rey is Han/Leia's daughter and Ren's twin sister.  :>

• we already know twins run in the Skywalker line, and is a nice parallel with the separation of Luke/Leia as kids
• though it only fits, given what we saw in TFA if Han and Leia think that their daughter Rey was killed a while back - could be the cause of their estrangement and Ren's turning to the Dark side ?  Also explains why the family she was waiting for never came to find her
• explains Rey's affinity with the Force, through Leia, rather than Luke, back to Anakin

Either way (whether Luke is father or uncle) the familial link would explain much.

Mechanical genius/ace pilot/crack shot ... definitely: while Rey'd been scavanging for years, as you say young Anakin was portrayed similarly, building his own C-3PO and an ace pod-racer, and Luke 'used to bullseye womp rats' and used his X wing's cannon + Force to destroy the original death star, which implies the Force could guide your aim with a blaster as well as with a light sabre

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Wrapped in spoiler tags, cos I only saw the movie for the first time yesterday (DVD came out), so there may be others with similar mileage (in which case - what are you doing in this thread ??!!)  <grrrins>

Personally, I liked it, but to me it seemed the first two thirds of the movie was a nod to the original trilogy ... which worked for me (I was there at the original showing back in '77), but not for my wife who always preferred Trek.  JJ definitely kept the flavour and pacing of the originals, IMHO, but I think the many different threads that had to come together was probably the reason why it didn't hang together as well as his ensemble Star Trek reboot.

Came into its own in the last 40 mins, though, and set things up nicely to go forward under its own steam in Episode VIII, if they can pull it off.  Best acting definitely Rey, followed by Finn.

I think one of the reasons the story seems scattered and hard to follow is because they already knew this would be a trilogy.  Yes, the original trilogy was written as a trilogy...but Lucas had no guarantee whatsoever that he'd get anything more than 'STAR WARS' (hence, no 'Episode IV' in the crawl of the original release).  He had to write ANH as a stand-alone.  Same thing with JJ Abrams' 'Trek' reboot...sure, there were high hopes for it, but Star Trek had been waning from favor with the general public and there was a chance it could have been a very expensive flop.  So they didn't leave much in it open-ended, to be explained in some later film.

And, in many ways, it's oddly appropriate that a Star Wars movie would have that issue.  Prior to ESB, sequels weren't common, at all, and they were generally something along the lines of a Sherlock Holmes movie, where each one stood on its own...yes, the technically could build on each other, but they didn't follow one after another, to pick up dangling threads from the film before and leave threads for the film after.  A lot of people felt cheated, in a way, when ESB ended with Han gone, Lando and Chewie headed who-knows-where to find him, and Luke in surgical recovery...all with the lingering "Was Vader telling the truth?!!" hanging over the whole thing.

I'm hoping they do a better job of dealing with them in ep 8...but I expect we'll end up with a few questions answered and a LOT of new questions.  I do hope someone sat down and plotted out the over-arching story...I can't imagine they didn't, but I haven't heard much reference to any sort of master plotline.  There have been a few comments made, here and there, that indicate there is, in fact, a master-story (like Abrams' commenting recently that Rey's parents haven't been introduced to us yet, which shoots down many of the fan theories on her origins)...so, it's just a hope.

I'm among those who weren't overwhelmed with joy for it, but felt like it was a huge step back in the right direction.  It's got a LOT of problems...but it at least gets back to the swashbuckling fantasy adventure that made Star Wars beloved.  I found the prequels almost ponderously slow, by comparison, and soap-opera-ish in their dramatic layers.  I think Abrams took a lot of things to some ridiculous extremes...and I would have liked more story and less 'LOOK AT THE COOL STUFF!' effects sequences.

But at least we don't have Ep3 as the final say in cinematic Star Wars, anymore...and I hope they get better from here.

Yes, a dear friend of ours commented after seeing Fellowship of the Ring that the movie "seemed to leave things unresolved", though we quickly explained there were two more to go.  :>

JJ also said that Cumberbatch wasn't Khan ... but from a quick Google he wasn't happy about that afterwards, so maybe this time it's not just trying to save a few mysteries.

Would have been an elegant solution, but I'm sure that there's more than just the Skywalker line that are strong in the force ...

Oooh !  I've had another idea !  Perhaps Rey's a clone !  We know that tech is  well and truly around.  <grrrrins>

Wot ?

I could mention my other pet theory that Supreme Leader Snoke is actually Jar Jar Binks gone over to the Dark Side.  I'm sure membership comes with a dialect coach. :>

And I loved the way ESB ended with all the cliffhangers - really built the anticipation for RotJ.

But the cliffhangers in ESB didn't detract from the movie, I felt. Stuff actually happened to move the plot forward in both the movie in and of itself and the overall story.

Harry Potter's last movie being cut in half was justified because the last book was really two different stories, the FINAL reveal of how immortality actually worked (and how to counter it) and the big epic battle that had been building for nearly a decade. Now I think you could have totally chopped it down and made a single epic 3 hour movie and left the rest of it for the deleted scenes LotR style where you have a 'director's cut' that is 6 hours long BUT I think that final book split was justified.

Hunger Games splitting the last book (and Hobbit being split into a trilogy) really peached me off though because those were blatant money grabs. You could have pretty much cut the entire Mockingjay Part 1. as a movie and just go straight from Movie #2 to Movie #4 with maybe adding 5-10 minutes of "oh by the way..." type scenes. And the Hobbit...ugh, just ugh. LotR was a labor of love by Peter Jackson, the Hobbit was a Michael Bay-esque "show me the money" cash grab and it showed. I feel bad for the actors because I know Cumberbatch really acted the cranberries out of Smaug but who cares, crabapple 'made for the money' movie :(
This message was last edited by a moderator, as it was against the forum rules, at 16:19, Mon 18 Apr 2016.

And, apparently, Abrams has now recanted his statement that we hadn't met Rey's parents yet...so, maybe, the Papa-Luke theory has some room to be considered anew.

Agreed on The Hobbit.  I actually STILL haven't seen Desolation of Smaug...after An Unexpected Journey, I just couldn't bring myself to sit through more of Jackson's revisionist version of The Hobbit.  The ONLY reason I saw Battle of Five Armies is because a large group of friends went to a free showing of it, and invited me along.  And I've have felt really disappointed if I'd paid for a ticket for it.  I could go along with all the parallel storytelling, events included from sources other than the novel itself...but the 'inventing non-existent characters', monsters, battlefields, etc...too much.  I'll admit it, I'm a snob when it comes to Tolkien...I can tolerate abridging his works (like they did with the Rankin-Bass animated version of The Hobbit), because it's still his story, just minus a few details.  I could talk myself into accepting most of the changes Jackson made to LOTR, because he was updating the story for a modern audience with different sensibilities than were prevalent when Tolkien was writing.

But what he did to The Hobbit?  That was outright adulteration of the source-material.

But, back to the subject at hand...ESB was a good movie...cinematically, it's still the best one of the whole lot, easily.  But it was, at the time it came out, a shock to audiences...it was a big gamble, on Lucas' part, to leave the story hanging at that point and hope he'd won enough goodwill from the audience to keep them coming back to the next one, and it paid off.  But we've gotten to the point where, even when we see a movie that isn't written with a sequel already announced before the first one comes out, every little story thread that's left dangling instantly becomes fodder for a potential sequel, in the minds of the audience.  For most people at the time, ESB was the first time the word 'sequel' entered their vocabulary.  It just wasn't done, back then...and it DEFINITELY wasn't done in a way that split the story with so many points lacking closure.

Contrast that with TFA...where it was known from before the writers even began formatting the script that it was to be the first installment of a definite trilogy.  The impetus to keep the storytelling tight and crisp drops off dramatically at that point, and stuff that would have been wrapped up in the first film, otherwise, is now stretched out over two or even all three.  Things that would otherwise have been kept quiet until the second or third movie are now dangled teasingly in the first, but without anything to give us a clear notion of where it's going from there.  Unlike LOTR or The Hobbit (or Twilight or The Hunger Games or Divergent or any of these other 'franchise films' based on books), the audience doesn't already know where the story is going to go.  Like it or not, this current Star Wars trilogy is, in many ways, a foray into a new realm of cinematic storytelling...its closest analog is probably the MCU, but even then, the audience knows that, in the end, the heroes will win and the villains will lose, because that's what comic books generally do (we follow the story to see HOW the heroes win).  With Eps 7-9, we're not even altogether certain yet just who the villain is, really, much less how often the heroes will confront him and how many (more) heroes will fall in the process.  In that regard, I can forgive them for paralleling Ep4 so much in this story...they're taking the audience into new territory in their storytelling technique, so they want to minimize the risk by getting us back to a familiar place before they go off the edge of the map on us.

I think they could have done it better, yes.  Absolutely, I think they could have done it better.  But I'm kind of excited to see how they proceed.

I'm super duper excited for Rogue One, finally a star wars movie that isn't all about the jedi. I honestly think the Jedi are one of the worst things to focus on in the star wars universe. You have galactic civil wars, you have smugglers and pirates and aliens and unknown parts of the galaxy. The jedi are great in the background but after 7 movies and multiple television shows focused ENTIRELY on light side vs. dark side it'd be nice to see something else for a change...

AMEN.  The Star Wars group that I played in for...ages, really...had very few Force users involved, and only a couple of them even had aspirations to become Jedi.  We had a LOT of fun figuring out how to solve problems WITHOUT resorting to the Force (I've rarely seen a game where players so rarely spent Force points...)

Very definitely looking forward to Rogue One.  What little bits of it were shown in the trailer reminded me quite a bit of my old gaming group, in terms of who was involved (personality-wise) and the scale of the assignments we got.  It'll be fun to see how much of the actual plot-line ends up having a similar sort of familiarity to it.  (I remember when Mystery Men came out--one of my roommates had gone to see it and told me I HAD to see it.  I was a little reluctant at first...but it ended up feeling very much like our Marvel Super Heroes group..."Yep, we'd do that."  "Yep, we'd probably botch that in very similar fashion."  "Yeah, someone would end up doing something THAT ridiculous and saving the day..."  That movie still holds a fascination for me way beyond the scope of its story...)

In a spirit of fairness, I decided to watch TFA again ...

... OK, it hangs together better on a repeat viewing.  Only bit of remaining confusion for me was the scene with Max Von Sydow right at the very start (worst possible place for confusion, of course) - well acted as always, but from what he seems to know/imply, Max's character seemed to be someone very important that I should know (to earn that "an old ally" in the rolling text).  Only other complaints are that the base commander seems a tad young for the job (Grand Moff Tarkin wasn't a spring chicken), though I liked the actor and Snoke isn't as menacing as he should be (though that should get sorted when we actually meet him in person in the next movie).

But definitely much more coherent and enjoyable the second time through, for my money.  I'm thinking it's all to do with those expectations we discussed - I went into the first viewing wanting it to be incredible ... and praying it wasn't a disappointment, and I think watching in that light, even unconsciously, means I was looking for good bits and bad bits and not actually watching it as a whole movie in its own right.

Rey and Finn still the best characters/actors IMHO, though the CGI people did a great job with BB-8, getting a lot out of him (reminicent of Wall-E's stellar performance).  :>

A grizzled old veteran compared to the kids Starfleet has commanding ships, these days.

Maybe the Empire has been having human resources retention problems.  Crazed ideological groups do seem to have more appeal to the young.

You do know that he's an actual, physical droid that they designed and built, right?  That's actually a thing that was running around the set and with which everyone was interacting.  I think the one of the few times they resorted to CGI for BB-8 was his little cut scenes during the TIE Fighter chase aboard the Millenium Falcon.

Reference: http://www.howbb8works.com/
This message was last edited by the user at 19:42, Fri 29 Apr 2016.

In reply to Skald (msg # 99):

I tried watched the movie, like I do every other movie, without previews and watch it for the movie but TFW just could never fully get off the ground (it felt like to me).  Yeah it was moving but it was like scraping along the ground, just barely making clearance.  This was just the overall feeling.

W0LF0S ... I did not know that !  Wiki says they used the puppet version for a lot of the "walking" scenes and tidied it up in post-production, but even so, colour me impressed.  Only thing that would make it better is if they could have got an actor inside it ... c'mon, I'm sure Disney are looking at minaturisation technology ?  Didn't they use that in Ant-Man ? ;>

Sittingbull - "scraping along the ground" = nice metaphor for most of the scenes with the Millenium Falcon ! :>   TFA certainly owed a lot to the original movies, and I don't think would stand up on its own, unlike the Trek reboot (IMHO, and I always preferred Star Wars to Star Trek) - but I know what you mean ... I think of TFA more as worthy than great.  It just lacked a spark - I wasn't feeling that the characters were ever in danger, not like back in the original, so it wasn't involving the audience (ie me) as much as it needed to.