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If you haven't seen Star Wars, go away, there will only be spoilers here. Here are 10 things I liked and didn't like about the movie:
1. The politics were really poorly explained
The Republic. The First Order. The Resistance. So, after the Empire was defeated, we know the Republic was re-created. The First Order appears to be trying to reclaim the galaxy from the Republic; I don't get what "the Resistance" is.... it seems like a ragtag group that is funded by the Republic to combat the First Order. The First Order has a major death star, they have huge battle cruisers, and seem to be a pretty big deal, so I'm confused about why the Republic just put a few people in charge of taking the bad guys down. Wouldn't the Republic put all its effort into stopping a potential resurgence of the Empire? This whole thing doesn't make sense and seems like it was only put in place to replicate the feel of the original trilogy.
2. Did the First Order win?
So they used their death star 3.0 to blow up like 5 planets, seemingly wiping out the Republic with the press of a button. This is a pretty huge event of galactic significance and it was handled so nonchalantly in the movie. The guy gives an impassioned speech, blows up the planets, and there's just a "wow look @ those explosions" reaction. It seemed so random because such a significant event should have a huge plot point, but it was barely even a side step on the story, hardly recognized by any of the characters involved. But basically, even though the First Order failed to find Luke, they literally took over the galaxy.
Unless I just mis-read the whole situation, but I feel like it was implied that they just destroyed the Republic's power center, thereby opening the door for them to dominate the galaxy again. Pretty big deal if you ask me!
3. Kylo Ren was really flawed, and I loved it
I really enjoyed how flawed he was as a character. From what I gather, he was being trained by Luke and things went sour and he turned evil, but he's still not even a full jedi (does not have the title of Darth yet); he's barely above a trainee's level. He's emotionally weak and unstable, and he was bested several times. This really opens the door for so much character development and it could go so many different directions.
I loved his tantrums, I like the fact that he wore a mask even though he didn't have to, really shows that his whole perception on things is skewed. It'd be neat to see him mature into a pure evil villain as the story progresses.
4. There was no tension at the end at all
So the dialogue was incredible, but one of the problems with it is that they were TOO campy with it when they shouldn't have been. There was 0 gravity/tension with respect to destroying Death Star 3.0 because they talked about it so nonchalantly the whole time. Poe literally said "alright so we just take down the shield, blow up the balance thingy, and destroy the planet... sounds ez." They also seemed to accomplish their mission insanely easily, none of the characters struggled even remotely. Finn and Han, just the 2 of them (Note in Episode 6 it took an entire battle force of Rebels + Ewok army to take down the deflector shields) were able to disable to the shield with practically no effort. They ran into Chrome Storm Trooper lady and bullied her into deactivating the shield, then Han and Chewie put a few bombs on the thing to open it up for Poe to single handedly fly in there and destroy Death Star 3.0. I think during the whole mission they lost about 3 X Wings? Out of 10-12?
Considering this thing was minutes away from wiping out their whole planet, nobody seemed to be too stressed or worried about it. I wish the whole sequence was designed to create a little more tension, because as it was it felt like a foregone conclusion that they were going to win and even the characters themselves didn't seem worried about failing.
5. Final lightsaber duel... mixed feelings
Finn had 0 training with a lightsaber, and he lost a 1v1 fight to a completely random storm trooper, and he actually held his own and managed to hit Kylo Ren. That seems insanely far fetched to me, even if Ren was weakened from a blaster shot.
I LIKED the fact that they didn't over choreograph it like Episodes 1-3; there weren't any stupid backflips and crazy shit, they were just jousting. It felt like real people. I don't particularly mind that Rey randomly learned how to use the force despite having 0 training and just finding out about her abilities a few hours prior; because the force is a pretty innate thing so that wasn't too outlandish. The Finn thing was bad though.
6. TOO much copying of the original trilogy
I feel like this was necessary to completely pivot away from the completely awful prequel trilogy, but there was probably too much copied from the original trilogy. It's almost the same plot regurgitated. Han is still a smuggler/scoundrel. Leia is still a rebel, fighting with a ragtag group against an evil, oppressive force. Luke is Yoda (Luke let Kylo turn to the dark side and disappeared.... Yoda let Anakin turn to the dark side and disappeared); Rey is basically Luke. She's either going to end up being Luke's daughter, or Kylo Ren's sister, both of which I'll be really disappointed to see.
The opening scene is reminiscent of all the original trilogy. The whole thing is basically the same. Again I get why they did it. I hope that Episode 8 and 9 though introduce something new and not predictable.
7. Dialogue... YES
Loved it. None of the stupid horribly written dialogue from the prequels. They successfully made it funny and campy (like the original), while still having a serious undertone (with the exception I mentioned above).
My friends and I were dying of laughter when Chewie was being talked to by the medical examiner; "wow.... you're so brave... you must have been real scared."
Finn: "ya... well... this is what we look like."
Jk it was only 7 things. Overall I loved the movie, thought it was really good. I'm SUPER excited to see where they take it!
Discuss~
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I died when Fin was begging the droid to tell rey where the rebel base was. That moment where both of them give each the thumbs up was ridiculous.
Also shout-out to the trailer before hand with the sloth, that was on point.
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On December 19 2015 10:50 MysteryMeat1 wrote:
I died when Fin was begging the droid to tell rey where the rebel base was. That moment where both of them give each the thumbs up was ridiculous.
Also shout-out to the trailer before hand with the sloth, that was on point.
Zootopia? That movie looks fantastic
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it was basically a Episode 6 remake, like you pointed out in your last section. I didn't expect much from this movie and i didnt get much ^^
The humor was good and the action scenes were nice. CGI was good too, but it didnt really cover up the lack of original storywriting imho. So in total, i wouldn't recommend this movie unless you are in easy watching mood.
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On December 19 2015 12:00 Cricketer12 wrote:Show nested quote +On December 19 2015 10:50 MysteryMeat1 wrote:
I died when Fin was begging the droid to tell rey where the rebel base was. That moment where both of them give each the thumbs up was ridiculous.
Also shout-out to the trailer before hand with the sloth, that was on point. Zootopia? That movie looks fantastic
yeah man, i'm on some zootopia hype
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Japan11285 Posts
On December 19 2015 10:50 MysteryMeat1 wrote:
I died when Fin was begging the droid to tell rey where the rebel base was. That moment where both of them give each the thumbs up was ridiculous.
Also shout-out to the trailer before hand with the sloth, that was on point.
BB8(?) put out a lit lighter which confused me and I thought it was like a droid 'fuck you' haha
My main gripe about the Ep 7 was the storytelling. Sometimes, things were too convenient, some times I felt like the plot was driven by lazy writing (like the lightsaber calling to Rey), sometimes it felt rushed (no build up then boom action.) and there was some deus ex machina like Po Cameron suddenly reappearing in an x-wing. I'm kind of disappointed because I know they could have done better with this material.
Also I hope Rey turns out to be an amnesiac jedi that got 'awakened' by Ren's Force probing otherwise I'll go nuts at her being so OP.
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I'm hoping Rey was part of luke's jedi training thing that kylo destroyed, as that would fit with the flashbacks when she first grabs the lightsaber and also allows them to avoid her being Luke's daughter which would be boring and predictable. In the trailer when Luke talks about how the force is strong in his family I think (and hope) that's referring to Ren who is his nephew rather than Rey because that would be fairly lazy writing. A very enjoyable film overall though, and I'm very interested as to where Snoke's character goes
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I'm very satisfied with the movie.
I binged lots of EU lore last week, though I don't feel as offended at the fact that they wiped it out. I was hoping they'd pull from it a little bit, so the whole ren reveal was an "oh shit its cadeus" moment to my eyes.
I also read the ring theory essay, and while I don't wholeheartedly agree that Lucas set up the films that way, the analysis behind it was very solid. during the movie I ended up looking for a lot of parallelism. It didn't feel like copying or repetitive to me then, it felt like "here's a set up, this is how it happened in ep 1/4, how will it play out here?"
So during the movie, the music, cinematography, and feel were on point. Everything felt grand and epic. Even though, yes, the story paralleled a new hope (like sith and Menace mirror a new hope in different ways...), the antes felt raised. Planet killing planets, stellar engineering, suuuuper powered force abilities (stopping blaster fire?!?), missing heroes/heroes that have no training made the situation more dire.
I agree strongly that the politics were missing. They really mattered, and I don't feel the world building in this one. It feels more like non stop action. Still, like you said, it was pretty predictable that the Death Star (I appreciate the name Starkiller a lot...) would explode. I hoped it wouldn't so that we'd get a starkly different situation than before, but from the same set up. I want to know how big the resistance is. The fleet they sent was only X wings. Was there another space battle, did they not send larger ships, etc? What matters about how it exploded then, if it's mirroring the other Death Star kills? Also why did r2 wake up?
Regarding the the final fight, it made sense. Kylo was super wounded from chewie's gun. They had a whole scene about how strong the gun is, so I can believe that he is significantly injured. He sold it well by hitting his leg so much. I don't know how I feel about Finn holding his own, but maybe the storm trooper earlier was more enraged ("traitor"), Finn was more desperate to protect Rey, Kylo was distraught after killing Han, etc. but it made sense that Rey held her own, she has combat skill, super powerful force abilities, and ren is injured, not completely trained, and emotionally unstable (he destroyed 2 different things during the movie). Ren's blade was very unrefined, most light sabers have cleaner blades. Maybe he is just a weak duelist with strong force abilities that are limited by his injuries. Rey's meditation during the fight was kind of off though
But cinematography, So beautiful and symbolic. The first scene inverted other openings (blackened star destroyer that blots out the illuminated planet). Downward camera turn reminiscent of ep3 and anakon's downfall. Then the Starkiller planet exploding to reveal the star behind it.
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What do you guys think about the theories behind who Rey and Snoke are? Luke's daughter would make the most sense because of the traits she has. I hope Snoke is Plagueis, but if Luke's been looking for old Jedi temples, he could be more ancient.
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On December 20 2015 05:51 kollin wrote:
I'm hoping Rey was part of luke's jedi training thing that kylo destroyed, as that would fit with the flashbacks when she first grabs the lightsaber and also allows them to avoid her being Luke's daughter which would be boring and predictable. In the trailer when Luke talks about how the force is strong in his family I think (and hope) that's referring to Ren who is his nephew rather than Rey because that would be fairly lazy writing. A very enjoyable film overall though, and I'm very interested as to where Snoke's character goes
The timeline for Rey is super confusing unless the Force vision she had on pirate land was somehow not reality. It looked like she was abandoned on Jakku when she was like...five? Eight maybe? She's 10 years younger than Ren, which would put him destroying the order at around age 18, which I guess fits, but and it would make it even weirder for her to think the Jedi aren't real, considering she was trained by one until she was 5-8.
A lot of weirdness all around with her character. I think there's a chance Kylo Ren kidnapped her from Luke when killing the Jedi and stranded her on Jakku...but why the heck would she think someone was coming back for her then? And is Luke just the ultimate deadbeat dad?
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