Star Wars Episode 7: The Force Awakens Thread **SPOILERS THROUGHOUT**

Yeah I never thought of Snoke <>Thrawn.

Mainly because the copies I have Thrawn is on the cover and bright blue with glowing red eyes - pretty much how described in the books.
 
Nope, I think you may be the only one! I don't see any resemblance at all, to be honest. Especially given that Snoke is obviously a Force user and Thrawn never was. If it was the fact that he had a bluish tinge that made you think this, just remember that all holograms in the Star Wars universe are blue. At least I can't remember any that weren't.

But in any case, my understanding is that Disney brought Star Wars whole, and if they wanted to use Thrawn they could have, without worrying about any kind of change to adhere to licensing agreements. They've been pretty open about saying that they've discarded pretty much the entirety of the EU, but will cherry pick things when it suits them. I don't think this is one of those times, though.

I'm with you. I loved Thrawn as a character, but it didn't even cross my mind that that's who that was. My understanding is they DO own the whole SW "universe" outright and can do with it as they please. One of the first moves was apparently to decree that ALL the EU books are NOT canon and are considered "legends" (I believe the one exception is the very recent Heir to the Jedi which apparently provides some of the backstory for Kylo Ren and probably contains a lot of spoilers for anyone that has yet to see the movie). So I suppose they could use Thrawn, but have made a conscious decision to basically jettison all of those plotlines so as not to be weighted down by them and have more freedom in their own films. That said, they also surely could incorporate some of those stories the way Marvel and DC pick plots and villains from their own multiverses seemingly at random for film purposes.
 
Saw The Force Awakens for the second time yesterday. I was ambivalent but basically favorable the first time. It was actually even better the second time. The first, I was too busy worrying that it would suck and noticing all the callbacks to the previous movies and wondering how much screentime the original cast would get and so on, so there was a kind of skepticism that kept me from fully engaging. This time, I just kind of got swept up in the story and the visuals for one, and the new characters seemed more familiar for another, so that I really liked it. For instance, I thought Poe Dameron was almost a bit part and thought the Poe/Finn and Finn/Rey relationships were pretty thin (allowing that Han and Luke and Leia bonded plenty fast themselves) but Poe's role seemed much more substantial on a second viewing and I could buy the bonding thing somewhat better.

And no offense, but the second viewing brought to mind that some folks are barking up the wrong tree with this. Sure, the plot is ridiculously convenient on one level and the "map" is not all that convincing a macguffin but this is a technomyth (or fairy tale, even) and it's off-point to criticize a foundling for just happening to find swords or be a prince or whatever. There was nothing really all that illogical - just serendipitous. The map's not a map so much as a symbolic thing. And, in this kind of story, that's not wrong. Similarly, yeah, the sun-draining thing and defiance of light-speed so that everyone can see "planet novas" from system to system is silly but if you have a problem with the science of Star Wars, you're in the wrong place and how can the original trilogy be any good? I mean, you've got spaceships whizzing around performing faster-than-light aerodynamic maneuvers and the Force from the start. The destruction of the planets looked awesome and was a major tone-shifter and pace-setter for that part of the movie. (I actually missed the scene in my first viewing - whatever happened to intermissions in movies? - and the second-hand description I got in-theater didn't do the scene justice, either on the negative or positive sides.) I'm not saying I want to check my brain at the door and have even looser plots with even worse science but I also don't want to check my heart at the door and I thought, in the context of a technofantasy, this did a really good job and didn't demand much more of me than the originals.

Perhaps the weirdest thing was that Han being killed had a hell of a lot more impact the second time around. First time, I was feeling like I should have been in suspense and simply wasn't because I could see it coming. The irony here, for this second time, was - because I had seen it happen before instead of just being 99.9% sure I would see it the first time - it had much more of the fantasy "doom" feel to it in which destiny strikes a hero down and it seemed to happen much more slowly. Chewie's howl of pain and rage was amazing.

I think I recall something about Abrams claiming that there was some kind of eternal recurrence and wheel-going-round and so on that he wanted to have and I didn't put much stock in that whenever I first heard it as it sounded like a defensive excuse or ex post facto rationalization (which is part of why I can't remember the specifics) but it makes sense. This happened "a long time ago" and Maz could see "the same eyes in different faces" (or words to that effect) and it worked better for me as a done deal rather than relying on suspense (or suffering from lack thereof). In a way, this makes it diametrically opposed to SF which is partly about the mystery of the future unfolding and makes it more purely fantasy, but that's okay in this context.

Anyway - yeah. All that said, I'm hoping they don't recapitulate Empire too much in the second one (and it's so there, with Luke playing Yoda and Rey playing Luke) but, for this movie, as a kind of "requel" or whatever a semi-sequel, semi-reboot is, this works. Star Wars is back. I'm gonna buy the DVD. Can't wait for the next movie. All that stuff. :D
 
Is it safe now to say I didn't really enjoy this movie all that much? When I saw it a month ago, it seemed that no one could criticize it without coming under intense attack. I remember reading one negative review with a heap of comments all suggesting that the only reason the guy wrote a negative review was get attention by being different. And I remember thinking: Maybe the guy just didn't like the movie.

But I'll brave it. Here goes.

There were a number of issues with The Force Awakens that marred my enjoyment of the film. By the numbers:

Characters and creatures that looked/sounded out of place
  • The dealer on Jakku reminded me too much of one of those accountant aliens from that awful Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy movie that came out a few years ago.
  • The gangs on Han Solo's ship looked like they wandered in from the set of Firefly. I found them really jarring, almost as jarring as the silly CGI blob-like aliens that appeared seconds later.
  • The not-Yoda alien. I actually liked the character but she looked like someone from Hellboy II. Maybe she could be Abe Sapien's mother. Now, I like the Hellboy movies. I think they're great. But I just like to keep Hellboy and Star Wars separate.

Homage vs rehash


I know this has been discussed a lot on the net already but what surprises me is the fact that most people are okay with it. Personally, I wasn't. I haven't even tried counting the copy and paste jobs in this movie but there sure are a lot of them:

  • Someone hides plans in a droid and is captured, interrogated and then rescued by someone in a stormtrooper outfit.
  • Someone emerges from a simple existence on a desert world and goes on to do great things.
  • There's a bad force wielding guy in a mask who answers to another bad force wielding guy who appears through a giant hologram projector.
  • There's another Death Star (that's three Death Stars in just four movies - There's a point for The Empire Strikes Back for not having a Death Star).
  • One of the protagonists is related to one of the antagonists and tries to turn them to the good side.
  • A mentor type is killed by a protagonist as his friends look on.
Actually, with the last one, I honestly thought I'd hear Handiana Ford Kenobi's voice going "Run, Chewie! Run!"

And this isn't the whole list. Maybe someone with enough time and patience can type out the whole list but I'm not the man for that job. Now, if there were just two or three of these, it might be cute but I think the movie sank under the weight of the sheer volume of these things.


Stupidity


  • The Falcon goes to lightspeed in a hangar. And then, before I can forget that happened, it decelerates from lightspeed in an atmosphere. What happened to precise calculations and all that? And there is no way that anything could decelerate from the speed of light quickly enough in the second instance to avoid smashing into the ground.
  • When the Starkiller base blows up the planets of the Republic (which is surprisingly small), it's visible from the planet the protagonists are on. Is this planet supposed to be in the same system or is the Star Wars galaxy smaller than our own inner solar system?
  • Snoke. Stupid name. Stupid voice. Stupid character design. Looked like a poor man's Voldemort and didn't belong in the movie.
  • People couldn't find Luke until the piece of map was put inside a hole in a larger map? Is that right? That seems a bit like being unable to recognize Canada until someone puts the bulk of the United States below it and Alaska on its side.
  • I get that Poe died originally and was revived in rewrites but I would have liked some effort to explain his miraculous survival.

Pay-off without set-up

There were some big moments in the movie that fell flat for me because they weren't earned.

Rey, who I liked quite a lot by the way, more or less skips all this business of finding out about the supposedly big galaxy and learning how to use the force, trying, failing, learning and all of that messy story stuff and just beats the villain straight out of the box.

Han's death, likewise, didn't work for me. It seemed that I supposed to buy into that scene on the bridge because Ben was his son but there were no prior interactions between them and the movie didn't flesh out the history between them well enough for the scene to have the proper affect (at least for me).

Han derails the story and it abandons its own premise

When Rey and Finn were flying the Falcon out of Jakku, I was beginning to enjoy myself. I thought the film was going somewhere. Then, out of the blue, Han and Chewbacca show up and Rey and Finn are immediately sidelined. There's a bit of Han Solo worship and then the Han Solo show begins in earnest. This is no sleight on Mr. Ford. I thought he did a great job and considering the fact that he never liked the character anyway and that he probably didn't need the money, it was pretty decent of him to reprise the role for the fans. But Rey and Finn were set-up as the primary protagonists.

Also, mid-way through the film, apropos of nothing, some teenage stand-in for a proper commander unveils the Death Star v3.0, blows up three or four planets and then the storyline about looking for Luke is dropped, only to be resumed right at the very end.


It renders the entire original trilogy pointless and squanders the opportunities it had

It'd be interesting to see how the Star Wars universe looked in the wake of what happened after Return of the Jedi. Timothy Zahn's books from twenty years ago, while occasionally silly and somewhat flawed, showed some interesting possibilities. I liked having the Rebellion become the New Republic and how that meant they had to change their approach to fighting the Empire. It was then the Empire that was using guerrilla warfare and the good guys had to defend themselves against them.

I also liked how the main antagonist was not a force user but a military strategist. After the cartoonish Emperor, this was a welcome change.

The Force Awakens however has brought back an Emperor type that makes the Return of the Jedi's main villain look like a character from Shakespeare by comparison and has reset the status quo.

So thirty years after Return of the Jedi, we have another rebel organization fighting another Empire type organization with stand-ins for most of the original characters and kooky force users as the main villains. Color me unimpressed.


That's not an ending. And it's not a cliffhanger.

Say something, Luke! Don't just stand there.

I dislike this trend of movies existing solely as trailers for future installments. Movies used to tell self-contained stories that could leave you with the feeling you got your money's worth.

Now, some people think this is a cliffhanger and say it's like the ending of The Empire Strikes Back but I beg to differ. The Empire Strikes Back was all about setting up that duel with Darth Vader. And because we had the duel and saw the aftermath of it, the story feels complete. We know we'll have to tune in again to find out if the good guys rescue Han but this story's done.

However, if the movie took the same approach The Force Awakens did, this is what you would get: Luke would walk into Vader's trap. He'd look up and see Vader and then, with an abrupt cut, the credits would roll.


....


Closing thoughts:

Now I didn't hate it entirely. In fact, there were many things I enjoyed about the movie. I liked Kylo Ren as a villain. I thought Rey was fantastic and I'd like to see more of Finn and Poe. BB-8 was great too.

If the makers of Episode VIII ditch Snoke, General Hux, any plans to remake The Empire Strikes Back and C-3P0 (please ditch C-3P0)... and if they properly retire the legacy characters so they can focus on the new ones, then I think they might be onto something.

And finally, I have no problem with other people enjoying The Force Awakens. If you loved it, then all power to you. I mean it. It's nice to have a big fun popcorn movie that most people can enjoy and there's something... innocent... about Star Wars that's a rarity in the age of gritty reboots and cynicism. I just wish I could feel the same way.
 
Good post, Hamish. After some reflection I am in complete agreement with you. This was actually the weakest Star Wars film to date, and in private I don't consider it 'canon' to be honest. It's just too stupid. The books, such as you discuss, tell a much better version of events and I'm sticking with them.
 
Hamish, I think those are all legitimate problems, and I agree wholeheartedly with a number of them (I forget who, but the chap who said JJ Abrams doesn't understand how big space is was spot on, when it came to the Not-The-Death-Star's red ray of evil being visible everywhere).

I also agree on Thrawn, and Snoke being stupid in appearance (too blatantly CGI) and name. I bet his girlfriend calls him 'snookums'.

That said, I did enjoy the film. The two new leads work well, both individually and together, and I like the unexpectedly large role Hux [think that was his name, the chief military chap] had. It was reminiscent of the first film*, where Vader wasn't second-in-command of the Empire but just a senior chap who might get mocked by the military for being a Jedi.

*Ok, the entire film was reminiscent of the first film.
 
Great post by Hamish. I did enjoy the movie. It was a great improvement on the last three, which if I am to be honest, should have never seen the light of day they were so bad. Rey made for an engaging lead, Solo threatened to steal the movie, Poe was so cliched it was difficult to watch the scenes he was in, the villain should have kept his mask on. He lost all credibility as soon as he took it off and who would have guessed that Luke was hiding in Ireland.

Does it stand up to close scrutiny? Hardly, but do any of the Star Wars movies, especially the abomination that was The Clone Wars?
 
I enjoyed the original trilogy and watched the prequels but I'm nowhere near a devoted fan so forgive my ignorance. This may be totally inconsequential and forgive me if it's glaringly obvious to someone else but it seemed weird to me that Hans and Leia called their only son Ben. IIRC Ben was Luke's mentor and didn't have anything to do with Leia and I don't think Hans had anything to do with him so why would they name their only(?) child after his uncle's mentor? At Ben's birth everything was hunky-dory. Luke was training the new recruits, there was no reason he couldn't have sired his own child, so why would Leia take the most obvious male name that Luke would use?! Now if he was Luke's son then definitely . . . Maybe Ben and Rey were switched at birth and no-one noticed haha!

Seriously though, that really niggled me. Unless it's some sort of title and not really a name?! (Like I said, I'm not an in-depth fan).
 
I enjoyed the original trilogy and watched the prequels but I'm nowhere near a devoted fan so forgive my ignorance. This may be totally inconsequential and forgive me if it's glaringly obvious to someone else but it seemed weird to me that Hans and Leia called their only son Ben. IIRC Ben was Luke's mentor and didn't have anything to do with Leia and I don't think Hans had anything to do with him so why would they name their only(?) child after his uncle's mentor? At Ben's birth everything was hunky-dory. Luke was training the new recruits, there was no reason he couldn't have sired his own child, so why would Leia take the most obvious male name that Luke would use?! Now if he was Luke's son then definitely . . . Maybe Ben and Rey were switched at birth and no-one noticed haha!

Seriously though, that really niggled me. Unless it's some sort of title and not really a name?! (Like I said, I'm not an in-depth fan).

That jarred with me, as well, particularly as in the expanded universe Luke does name his son Ben. I don't know why they just didn't go with something totally different to avoid that link.

I've seen it explained away in numerous places on the web. Generally the reasoning is that without Ben, Han and Leia are never brought together, so he is a big part of their lives. Still, Leia only knew him as Obi Wan, and from stories her adoptive father told her, and Han knew him for all of a couple of days (if that, depending on how long that trip from Tatooine, the planet farthest from the galaxy's bright centre, to Alderaan actually took) and didn't seem to take to him all that well...
 
Thanks, guys. I'm glad I wasn't the only one who wasn't blown away by the movie. For a little while, with the unanimous praise on review sites like Rotten Tomatoes, I thought it might have been against the law to be anything less than head-over-heels in love with the film.

Actually, I find it interesting that comparisons to those godawful prequels come up a lot in relation to the movie - and a few of you have mentioned them as well. The reason is that I suspect the film's been given a bit of a free pass simply for not being as bad as the prequels, even though that's not a difficult feat. I feel it's similar in that regard to something like Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. I find that movie a bit mediocre when compared to Raiders of the Lost Ark but a lot of people love it.

I used to think that might have been because, as with the Han Solo Show in The Force Awakens, people enjoyed the Sean Connery Show in The Last Crusade. But then I realized that, for a lot of people, they weren't comparing The Last Crusade to Raiders of the Lost Ark; they were comparing it to the unfathomably awful Temple of Doom, a film so horrible I actively repressed my memories of it. And if they were comparing it to that film, then The Last Crusade would feel like Lawrence of Arabia.

Perhaps a similar phenomenon was at play with The Force Awakens. No Jar Jar Binks? No midichlorians? Actors interacting with other actors instead of with tennis balls in front of green screens?

Wow. It must be a masterpiece then.

However, putting that idea aside, I did get some enjoyment of the movie. There were a few lines that made me smile. A lot of the ship designs and locations felt right. It was a beautiful film to look at in many ways, and since film is a visual form of art, that counts for a lot.

And I liked the new characters. I did. I even liked Kylo Ren, which surprised me a little. From the previews, I thought he'd be a poor man's Vader... and he was. But I was surprised to discover that being a poor man's Vader is actually one of his key character traits, one he's fully aware of. That's an interesting concept, a villain who lacks confidence in himself. It'll be curious then to see whether he wears a mask in the next film or not. If he becomes more confident and in control - if he can keep his focus so he can pull off the kinds of tricks he did at the start of The Force Awakens - then he definitely should not wear a mask. And I'm sure Adam Driver's female admirers would be on board with that. But I guess we'll see.

And Daisy Ridley's performance was wonderful. She takes a character who must have been very thin on paper and imbues her with such life and warmth that it's impossible not to like her.

But I digress. The film had a lot of aspects that worked too but it made its problems worse in a way. When a film is terrible across the board, I can just forget about it. But when a film does so many things right, it makes it all the more frustrating when it keeps stopping to deliberately shoot itself in the foot.

Interesting point about the name Ben, by the way. I didn't think of that when I saw the movie. But you guys are right. It doesn't make a lot of sense from the character's perspective.

Oh, and I just remembered something else that bothered me - the quips. I know the old Star Wars films had their funny lines here and there but the jokes were so frequent here, it felt like the movie was trying to be a comedy. And Poe's line to Kylo at the start pulled me out of the movie a bit. "Who goes first? Should I talk or you talk?" ... or however it went. It felt like something out of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. And again, like Hellboy, I really like Buffy the Vampire Slayer (at least before it went off the rails in the later seasons) but I don't want it mixed up in Star Wars.
 
Last edited:
Now I didn't hate it entirely. In fact, there were many things I enjoyed about the movie. I liked Kylo Ren as a villain. I thought Rey was fantastic and I'd like to see more of Finn and Poe. BB-8 was great too.

And finally, I have no problem with other people enjoying The Force Awakens. If you loved it, then all power to you. I mean it. It's nice to have a big fun popcorn movie that most people can enjoy and there's something... innocent... about Star Wars that's a rarity in the age of gritty reboots and cynicism. I just wish I could feel the same way.

I think this is why I loved the movie so much. I thought all the new characters were great and very engaging, which was a refreshing change from the prequels where none of the characters really connected. It seemed like all the new characters were either zen Jedi (Qui Gon), CGI spectacles (Jar Jar, Yoda, Grievous), or famous people playing themselves (Samuel L Jackson and Christopher Lee). This movie had characters I wanted to root for again, ones full of some piss and vinegar instead of ones that spend entire movies crushed by the weight of the mythology. It was fun again, and hearing kids in the theater squeal "bb-8!" or duck out for Kylo Ren's scary interrogation of Poe but sit in rapt attention every other minute reminded me why I loved these movies in the first place. They're at their best as glorified chase movies, and this movie finally got back to that sense of desperately fighting against impossible odds instead of what felt like Downtown Abbey on Coruscant as senators and Jedi meditate Matrix-like on philosophical babble.

I also like that they got the fan service mostly out of the way, opening the door for the new characters to breathe a bit. I think there are a lot of interesting paths the story can take (on the topic of Ben's name... I have a notion that Ben was chosen by the "princess" for political reasons necessary to the republic... the kind of concession that possibly doomed Han and Leia's marriage and led to the fracturing of the family) and I look forward to their next adventures, which is more than I ever said at the end of any of the prequels.

Even the things that bugged me the first time through seemed like no big deal the second time around. For instance, Han's cargo initially seemed totally out of place but it wasn't THAT different from the rancor or garbage monster and it gave Rey a chance to show off her reflexes... like Anakin's first pod race. The super weapon... Lucas himself recycled the Death Star idea and he let EWOKS be instrumental in destroying it, so suspending my disbelief on the laser thing isn't THAT hard.
 
Yeah, I'll give it credit for that. Star Wars works far better when it doesn't try to take itself too seriously because when it does try to act as though it's weighty and meaningful, it makes a lot of ongoing silliness more noticeable. When it's just trying to be a bit of fun, then things like monsters in a trash compactor and dumb marketing spiels for the dark side of the force are fine.
 
My thoughts, having only seen it once:

Rey is either a Solo or a Skywalker: She is most likely a Skywalker. But could be a Solo. I'm kind of hoping that she's neither; but also hoping that she's a Skywalker.

Han's death was strange: I felt like it went by too quickly.

The lightsaber fights were more realistic: Both Rey and Finn have presumably never seen one, nor used one.

Maz Kanata felt unfinished: like the scenes that were cut of her appearance were important.

The story as a whole felt a lot like too much of a rehash of Luke's story.

I'm very curious to learn what George Lucas's take on the story would have been way back before he started messing with the originals and went kinda cuckoo.
 
Sorry if this has been mentioned allready but Having watched a recent interview with three of the actors on Graham Norton I wonder if the accent is giving somethigg away here. Two english actors and Fin is speaking with an american accient Rey English. I keep thinking there's something Kenobi about Rey, some distant relative maybe, a nice reflection of the first trilogy( 4,5,6.)?

Another thing is the speed at which Rey became strong with the force. I remember Yoda saying that it's quicker with the dark side or something along those lines. Sorry if it's already been said but it's bugging me a bit the speed at which she learnt to use a lightsabre compared to luke.

Edit:

I mean luke had a whole day or two with yoda before fighting vadar
 
Sorry if this has been mentioned allready but Having watched a recent interview with three of the actors on Graham Norton I wonder if the accent is giving somethigg away here. Two english actors and Fin is speaking with an american accient Rey English. I keep thinking there's something Kenobi about Rey, some distant relative maybe, a nice reflection of the first trilogy( 4,5,6.)?

Another thing is the speed at which Rey became strong with the force. I remember Yoda saying that it's quicker with the dark side or something along those lines. Sorry if it's already been said but it's bugging me a bit the speed at which she learnt to use a lightsabre compared to luke.

Edit:

I mean luke had a whole day or two with yoda before fighting vadar

Kids today. Tcha! No patience. The six year olds in the target audience would have been BORED if someone had actually had to LEARN something. You see, back when Luke picked up a light sabre for the first time, there was no internet. Now there is. Rey just looked at a few Youtube videos or watched a couple of instructionals and she's an instant expert!

Never underestimate the power of the diminished attention span.
 
Either way she's a genetically superior white person. Isn't anyone else even slightly disturbed by the explicit fascism of all this?

It's never been suggested in Star Wars that human Jedi's are "genetically superior". Do you think that any person in any fiction with abilities different to the norm might be accused of being "fascist"? What definition of the term are you using?
 
Either way she's a genetically superior white person. Isn't anyone else even slightly disturbed by the explicit fascism of all this?
Well, she is a woman, at least. I couldn't help feeling that in the original series, once we had discovered Leia was the sister of Luke, she never got the same equal opportunities of advancement as he did. While she may have been "another" she had that whole princess glass ceiling to contend with. On the other hand, maybe she just really wasn't that strong in the Force. Vader could feel Luke's presence when he was on the Death Star but he could stand next to Leia and dismiss her like a little girl.
 

Similar threads


Back
Top