"The Force Awakens" (with SPOILERS)

The argument against the portrayal, and I buy it, is that Luke could have had all those doubts and fears...and not been a big asshole about it.

 

Because broken people are known for being nice and hopeful and they never act like assholes.

 

I'll trust your experience on the topic.

 

Yes. If it is not considered art, then art does not exist. [/fineifyouthinkthatisahottakeflameaway]

I listened to the end credits for strictly that reason. Watched in a theater to myself a couple of days before Christmas ... we had just put out two editions and had escaped the newsroom at a relatively early time.

Given Williams' age, will Lucas, Spielberg or anyone else come out with some films to give Williams another few chances to piece together some more work? Before that gets labeled a stupid question, consider that the man is 87 years old.

 

I really enjoyed Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald's take on this in their Watch podcast on the Ringer. The more I think about it, the entire third trilogy was a hot mess, and if you weren't in it for the nostalgia, you'd have no idea what the hell was happening throughout the duration of the third three movies. Just because I enjoyed sitting through the three movies doesn't mean they were good. I love rewatching the original three. I don't have any desire to rewatch the other six, and I doubt I'll see this one again.

 

I agree. I liked TFA when it first came out and it was visually pleasing and it was a Star Wars movie and I thought it was what we all wanted after the prequels. But in the end, it's pretty far down my Star Wars list. Then TLJ, I enjoyed very much unlike many as discussed here a few days ago. It's honestly in the upper half for me, but when put with TFA, who knows how it all goes together. Then we have the current edition, which to me just plays like a greatest hits piece, doesn't even do that well and doesn't particularly fit with the other two much at all. Just an all over the place three movies. To me, the disconnect of the whole trilogy makes all of them worse on their own merit. It's funny because in the end I think this set makes the prequels look much better, and we all know how those were received.

And then to really throw something out there, in my mind Rogue One, which wasn't a part of the sequels at all or part of overall "Skywalker" saga in general, was better than all three of them and much, much better than VII and IX. What's that say to how all these were put together? Maybe it means nothing since it was a separate movie, but kind of sad it outdid a whole trilogy that so many were excited for.

 

I'm not broken. I'm just an asshole.

 

Rogue One is probably the best of the movies, because it has a pretty consistent tone, and while it's not a completely original flick, it was mostly free to tell the story it wanted. Kind of like how Black Panther was better received than the usual Marvel solo movie effort. Rogue One is their attempt at a war movie, and likewise, MANDO! is getting a more positive response because (from what I've heard) it's mostly a space western.

 

I saw a special about the overall series up through The Force Awakens yesterday. They had Kevin Smith talking about how to many fans who were annoyed by the prequels, TFA "tasted like Star Wars." I think he was right and maybe the only reason for that was the return of the original cast. I think Abrams got that. Perhaps that was why they gave C-3PO such a large role in Episode IX, because they couldn't do what they wanted with Leia and they didn't want to push the force ghost thing any further.

 

But they knew when they brought it all back home, when they had spent 2:05 paying relatively little attention to canon and existing characters, in those last five minutes, they had to step into the box and hit it over the light towers.

 

The Force Awakens is not a hot mess. It’s a perfectly fine movie that many fans loved.

 

It's fine. It loses some of its impact when you now know the next two films are varying degrees of successful. Like it setups the First Order as the Empire After The Empire, but even that loses impact after Ep9.