"The Force Awakens" (with SPOILERS)

Critical community has really changed in 15 years. Attack of the Clones is a far worse movie and, if some of these critics were prominent back then, the AOTC score would be far lower.

I've seen IX. I'm not the market for it. Last hour's pretty good. First 90 minutes feels busy and tedious but I think most Star Wars movies are too long.

 

The audience score is almost 90 percent.

 

It's a percentage of people who give it a thumbs up. I don't know - most of the response I've seen on the web is "good not great." It's fine. Adam Driver is an excellent actor.

 

Absolutely no spoilers ...

People saying this movie is not good had their minds made up before they saw it. That, or they were going in expecting The Shawshank Redemption or Citizen Kane (which sucks, by the way). It's not intended to be those. None of these movies are intended to be those. I never understood it until watching my son watch them.

I enjoyed the first two prequels so little that I never watched Episode 3. Nor did I go see The Force Awakens. We caught the back end of that a year later on a movie channel and enjoyed it enough to watch the full version. My son was 2 1/2 at the time and was riveted. He made us play it over and over, the way kids will watch Frozen or Toy Story over and over. He liked it so much that we showed him Eps 4-6, which he loved even more. Couldn't get enough of the stuff the adults hated -- the Ewoks, for instance. Then I reluctantly showed him the first three, and he loved every minute, even though had had no clue what was going on. He loved Jar Jar Binks, because 3-year-olds, and probably 10-year-olds, were who Jar Jar was created with in mind. He loved Rogue One, loved The Last Jedi, loved Solo, and this morning loved The Rise of Skywalker.

He's a robust 5 1/2 now and I think that's what most of the critics -- and the die-hard fans -- forget: These are kids films. They're made for children or at least with children in mind as a major portion of the target audience. They aren't high art. They are eye candy with good guys v. bad buys stories. They're fairy tales. If you can keep that in mind and not try to look at them as some kind of cinematic reinventions of the wheel, they are enjoyable. This one wasn't my favorite of the 11, but it was far from my least favorite. No need for details now, because so few have seen it. But I agree with Regan; if you don't like this, you don't like Star Wars, or perhaps forget why you ever did.

I saw my son's eyes, and that of his 6-year-old cousin, bulging for 150 minutes this morning. I remember my eyes similarly popping out of my head in 1977 at their first sight of a light saber, the Millennium Falcon, Darth Vader, etc. We grow older, but there's no reason we can't see with the same eyes we did all those years ago, back when we just watched, rather than micro-analyzed.

 

Yes and no. While the charm of Star Wars lies in its ability to appeal to kids and our inner-child, what makes episodes 4-9 better than a lot of my childhood favorites is that they are still good movies today. I think that was lost in 1-3, which I liked initially but quickly grew out of.

So yes, I think episode 9 was good, but I think there’s still room to treat these films like art, and discuss them on that level.

 

Maybe, but at their best I will never view them as art. To me they are strictly entertainment. No. 9 was certainly entertaining. I got my $9.75 worth.

 

We’ll never fully agree, but my point is that there’s an art to being entertaining. The score by itself, for example, is undeniably art, right?

I get that you’re saying people shouldn’t take these movies so seriously that we can’t shrug off some flaws and just enjoy the ride. I agree with you there. But it’s possible to do both: take it seriously without letting it spoil the fun.

 

Yep. John Williams is a national treasure. I don't say this lightly, but dude should get a Presidential Medal of Freedom for his contributions to American culture.

 

Williams also had a cameo on-screen. Now THAT is art.

 

I enjoyed it but very much in a 'turn your brain off and let the spectacle wash over you' kind of way. There were lots of great individual moments, scenes, cameos, and character beats. What didn't work for me was the overall story. It was very clear that very little of the three-movie arc was planned in advance, given that Rian Johnson's TLJ was very focused on undoing Abrams' TFA, and in turn Abrams seemed keen to return the favor by having TROS undo TLJ and return to roughly where he seemed to be going with TFA.

For example...none of the business with Palpatine was set up in either of the preceding two movies. He was dead, and there were no clues otherwise. In this movie...without straying too far into spoiler territory, eh, not so much. It felt a lot like they took dialogue meant for Snoke (killed off in a surprising moment in TLJ) and repurposed it for Palpatine. As if they knew Kylo Ren wouldn't do as the main villain for so many reasons, not least of which was his possibility of redemption, so the writers pulled Palpatine out of their collective asses to have a greater evil than him. Even without any foreshadowing, it might be forgivable, but less so if you invested anything at all in Lucas' claim that Eps. I-VI were all about Anakin's fall and own redemption arc as the "Chosen One" of the saga by ending the Sith order and killing Palpatine. This movie renders Anakin's arc pretty meaningless (and to some degree also the accomplishments of the other main heroes of the past trilogies).

I didn't hate it, despite all the above. It was fun, great eye candy and felt more or less like Star Wars...something Abrams has figured out how to get across as a filmmaker. It's just a shame about the overall plot and storytelling. I couldn't invest anything meaningful into it. So, my enjoyment was entirely superficial as a result.

 

I saw it last night and it gets a big meh from me. Despite the critical reviews I was sort of hopeful with overall fan response, especially from general fans who seemed to think it was pleasing. I love Star Wars but am not a hard core where I know all the ins and outs and canon and comics and odd ball lines here and there. So I was hopeful I'd be pretty entertained and maybe from some of those basic responses my expectations got reset too high. It was entertaining, but it was a let down. It didn't tie everything in a pretty bow like even many think it did. It wasn't near the wrap up on any level, let a lone emotional, that something also as grand as say End Game was. I know that many complained that The Force Awakens was too much rehash and I think this one took it to a whole other level. I didn't like that at all.

I agree with many here who say it suffered from a non-linear writing stance. These last three were all over the place. I would be willing to watch it again or let it sink in a little more to see if I change my mind, but I kind of go on the the critical side that this is closer to the bottom of the overall series than anything else. I've honestly not been disappointed in a Star Wars movie before and was with this one, and that's a weird feeling too.

 

I just saw it. I enjoyed it in spite of some asshole trying to spoil it for me. Luckily, I trust him as far as I can throw a school bus, so I assumed he was lying.

Edit: Since this is the spoiler thread, I don't mind posting it here. Dickie posted major spoilers on some a random thread in his safe space just to get at me. The funny part is, I laughed it off. I thought he was kidding. It didn't hit me that he posted real spoilers until I was on my way home.

Thank you to whichever moderator kicked him to the curb. You did this place a great service that day.

My apologies for the rant. I know we aren't really supposed to talk about that place, but I think it is relevant here. I hate when people do that, whatever the reason. It may not have spoiled it for me, but I bet it did for others. Thank you to the folks here who know better.