"The Force Awakens" (with SPOILERS)

Yes, sorry, gush is more appropriate.

 

I think I pretty fairly pointed out what worked and what didn't. I don't feel the need to make a binary decision. Not my style. Keep in mind that I'm not even voting in the presidential election.

 

I think this is a pretty good review:

Star Wars: The Force Awakens feels committee-approved to delight fans

 

http://www.popsci.com/what-are-economic-effects-subprime-death-star-mortgage-crisis

 

That's where Luke erasing their memories might come into play.

But I figure she is Luke's daughter by Captain Phasma.

 

That's really convoluted, though. And it's a cheat - it's like Obi-Wan telling Luke that his father was murdered. They won't go there. They aren't going to mislead the audience, and then introduce some plot contrivance to cover it. It's bad writing.

That would be very George Lucas-ian. Every damn character must be connected. We don't need to know her mother.

 

I'm just glad Mayor Wasicsko got a chance to do something else after a tough few years in Yonkers.

 

"I'm being called to the Light," I think was pretty close to the quote he used while talking to Vader's mask. But, yeah, Driver killed the role. He's just odd enough without the mask, and just menacing enough with it. Funny, though, he's even more of a whiny teenager than Anakin was, tearing up rooms with his lightsaber every time he gets mad. His scene interrogating Rey was a highlight of the acting for both, I thought. Through not much more than facial expressions and some subtle sound effects, you feel the Force "awaken."

I don't disagree, but as you note, there's only so much they can do here. I wasn't surprised Han died, because Ford has previously said Solo should have died a hero's death in Return of the Jedi, but there was still something difficult to watch about him dying. I grant that maybe this film didn't earn it, but the original three probably did.

Agreed. Funny that he never became a star because his acting clearly improved throughout the first three films and he's a better actor by miles these days than he was then.

The plot was derivative in many ways, as evidenced by Han's quip along the lines of, "So what, it's bigger, we've done this before." They still had to disable the shield generator so smaller snub nose fighters could penetrate the outer defenses and trigger a chain reaction that would blow up the whole damn thing. The Empire/First Order should have certainly learned their lesson by now, and the writers should have come up with some other way for them to control the galaxy besides an ultimate weapon that fires one shot before getting destroyed.

Kylo Ren is a very cool character, and I'm glad they didn't kill him off the way they did Darth Maul. But we immediately see how weak he is and, by comparison, we are led to believe Snoke is extremely strong in the ways of the Dark Side. However, they only tell us that, they don't show us. So, assuming Snoke is the major bad guy for the trilogy, I don't feel they did a good job showing us how incredibly evil and powerful he is. Also, much like Doomsday in "Batman vs. Superman," he looks way too much like a "Lord of the Rings" retread. Given that JJ Abrams has talked at length about how much they preferred to rely on practical effects instead of CGI when possible, I thought it was an odd choice to make the major villain a CGI character, particularly one who is not rendered especially realistically.
[quote[

• We know almost nothing about Rey and why she is strong with the Force. I hope it's interesting. I don't want "Star Wars" to devolve into a series of Guess the Family Connection plotlines.

[/quote]
I suspect we will find out more about her family bloodline. It played too much a part of her character not to. She was supposed to meet Fin and leave Jakku to ultimately learn the fate of the family that left her behind.

I thought they did a nice job of taking his character on a new journey that logically connected with the original trilogy. I hadn't thought of it before seeing the film, but it really is where Luke Skywalker was meant to go. When the crawl filled us in, I thought to myself, "that's perfect." He needs to revive the Jedi Order that was slaughtered by his father to achieve the full redemption for the Skywalker name he sought in ROTJ.

 

I (tentatively) disagree. Jedi are sworn to abstinence, right? That's why Anakin's love for Padme led him down the path to the Dark Side. I don't think Luke, who had no romantic connections in the original trilogy (outside his sister in Empire ), would end up with a bastard daughter on Jakku.

My hunch is that Rey is Ren's (twin?) sister. Twins run in families, right? Rey/Ren — get it? Luke trained them both there on the island of the water-covered planet (which Rey referenced before we saw it in the final scene). Luke lost Ren to the Dark Side, and dumped Rey on Jakku, afraid the same would happen to her, and went into exile (much as Yoda did).

Now, Rey must learn the ways of the Force through Luke, destroy Snoke, save Ren and establish a new Jedi Order, thus fulfilling the prophecy of Luke bringing balance to the Galaxy.

 

Ren's real name is Ben Solo (Han yells it to him when he was on the bridge)....Han's kid...why would Han and Leia have no idea who this girl was?

Snoke was just a CGI because he was talking to Ren through one of those telecommunication devices. It was just a projection, my guess is he is not that big if he is shown in "real life"

 

After catching up on the thread, a few other thoughts:
- I was surprised there was no appearance by Lando Calrissian. I mean, they had Admiral Akbar, Nien Nunb (Lando's copilot in ROTJ) and basically everyone short of Mon Mothma. Surely they could afford Billy Dee. The racist in me wonders if Fin is Lando's offspring, since they're the only two black characters in the Galaxy. Maybe he'll show up in Episode VIII, similar to how he showed up in the second episode of the original trilogy.

- I love Daisy Ridley as Rey. She's really fucking good.

- I've been a John Boyega fan since "Attack the Block," and I thought it was funny that, in a film that features many characters with British accents, he sounds American.

- Oscar Isaac, who I recently liked in "Ex Machina" and before that in "Driver," was really fun as Poe Dameron. I'd like to see them give him a better storyline than he has thus far, but he's been good. Right now, he's Wedge Antilles with more lines. He needs to be Han Damn Solo.

- They did a really nice job with the lightsaber battles of not making the fighters look too advanced. For all of the flaws of the six previous movies, the lightsaber battles have been incredibly consistent in terms of skill levels. Episodes IV-VI give us a progression of very basic saber skills, to intermediate. The prequels give us the most amazing lightsaber battles because the Jedi and Sith were at their peak. This film gives us solid swordplay - Ren has training, while the other two have simple physical prowess or Force awareness to make their battle compelling.

 

He may not be that big, but Snoke is going to be fully CGI throughout. That's why Andy Serkis is performing the part.

As for Rey, the explanation for why Han and Leia don't recognize her doesn't have to be complicated. We gather from the film that she was left on Jakku by her family around, what, age 4, 5 or 6? A decade later, they wouldn't necessarily recognize her. The interesting part is why she was left behind (by whomever her family was) in the first place.

Doesn't it seem like a rather large coincidence that she was left on the same planet, near the same town, as the Millennium Falcon? If she's not Han Solo's daughter, I'd be very surprised.