"The Force Awakens" (with SPOILERS)

You know, of course, the entire ST is now set up for a glorious Kylo Ren redemption/sacrifice scene at the end of Ep. 9.

Probably saving Leia. The fall of Anakin in the PT and the rise of Darth Vader in the OT was initially fueled by his failure to save or protect the life of his mother.

Ultimately Kylo Ren will be vanquished and Ben Solo redeemed in the ST when he succeeds in saving his.

 

And if they don't do that and Rey ends up stopping him, you will complain that they stole from the old expanded universe. Some people just want to complain.

I do have some issues with the plot, such as not having Leia go along to find Luke at the end, but I'm still enjoying the new ride so far. Still not sure how I feel about Han Solo's death. It made sense in the plot. Somebody else pointed it out. They just hadn't done enough to establish who Ben Solo was before turning to make that work emotionally as well as it should have.

 

Totally agree on your last point. I suggested that even a montage of young Ben with his parents may have helped.

 

It didn't bother me when I watched the movie, but it did once I thought about it later.

I'm sure the anti-expanded universe folks don't like that his real name was Ben, which was the name of Luke's son in the novels.

It is an interesting question to wonder if Luke stuck to all of the old Jedi ideals and remained celibate or not. There is just so much story between Return of the Jedi and The Force Awakens. I get why they did it, but I really would have loved to see those stories. I still want to see a story of Luke trying to start a new Jedi order, but failing because of Kylo Ren's betrayal. It just wouldn't be as good given that we know how the story turns out.

 

Which is the single biggest thing that drains any possible dramatic tension out of the prequels.

 

Oh, I know it, and I had the same thought. But execution was also a big part of the problem with the prequels.

I'm guessing we will get more about Max Von Sydow's character at some point. That whole bit was kind of odd.

 

On a completely different topic about the movie, the best part of it was sharing the experience with my 12-year-old. I showed her the original trilogy when she was fairly little, but she didn't remember them very well. Then she became interested again because all of her friends were talking about it at school the last few weeks.

That led to us watching the original trilogy on DVD this week, then going to the new one this morning together. It warms my middle-aged geek heart to see her excited about Star Wars, to be able to share it with her. Most importantly, to find out what happens next together.

She was going on and on about BB-8 and Chewbacca, a character she has always loved. She was looking things up on the internet to learn more about the story. She even copied Rey's hairstyle.

Of course, she also ranted about the idiot teenager sitting behind us who wouldn't shut up the entire movie. Poor Mrs. OOP had to listen to both of us on that one.

 

The vast vast majority of the EU was trite stupid predictable bullshit. Once the very sensible decision was made to dump it, they should have stuck to it. Instead they decided to shuffle around a few of the names and flip-flop a few of the details, and basically pinch it whole cloth.

But again, after seeing how STID basically cribbed the storyline of TWOK, it's no big surprise. JJ ain't real big on coming up with new ideas of his own.

 

My 6-year-old hasn't seen any of the movies, but he reads kid books about them constantly and pretty much know the major plot points of ell seven movies. I got out all my old action figures and vehicles for him yesterday. My daughter, too, who picked out an Ewok and started roaring.

My boy is deciding whether he wants to go see "The Force Awakens" this week.

 

Another question I had, and maybe this was explained in "Aftermath," was what the hell happened on Jakku in the 30-year gap between movies.
There were an awful lot of Imperial star destroyers and other ships crashed into the desert there. Was it a junkyard where they were intentionally dumped? Was there a major battle and they crashed there? Looks like some serious stuff went down there.

 

I think it's in a video game.

 

I was covered in the Battlefront game series. Battle of Jakku was one of the last big battles IIRC.