Star Wars: The Force Awakens - Spoilertastic Thread

[Quantum Vagina]

7. The dialogue was SO BAD. It was really forcedand awkward so much of the time, I really felt like I was sitting through a bad high school play.

THANK you.  I'm glad I'm not the only one.  Started to think I was going crazy...

No, the dialogue was not great, but it was not bad either. What the hell are the both of you expecting? Maybe you should be thinking less about the writing and more about the characters. I mean we're basically watching the interactions of:
1)Finn- A guy who has been forcefully trained his whole life to shoot at stuff and feel a conditioned reaction to doing his job.
2)Rey-  A woman who has been abandoned and forced to fend for herself with potentially very little education.
3)Ren- A guy whose moral compass is simply and completely backwards, "By the grace of your training, I will not be seduced"(back to the light), THAT is interesting, and very un-Anakin. He doesn't come of as emo to me at all, instead, he feels like a twisted version of TV's Dexter Morgan. I'll tell you what else is un-Anakin, taking a laser-blast to the kidney and then trying to walk it off. I don't know if any of you have experienced Kidney pain, but I HAVE. It hurts like somebody constantly shoving a hot iron inside of a stab wound. You underestimate Ren. I really like his complexities, and the guy is bad-ass and instead of whining, his weaknesses come across in ways he doesn't show outwardly, he shows determination for his cause. In this way, he is most un-Anakin.

I have NO idea what you're talking about. The characters are products of the writing, so you have to think about one to think about the other. Not to mention that I've said that Rey was excellent and, in my opinion, better than Luke was in Episode 4. In the remake of Ep 4, though, a few things stick out to me. The villain is shitty and unmenacing. Christensen pulled a MUCH better job of being brooding and upset in Attack of the Clones, the defacto WORST SW movie, than driver managed to portray. The supporting lead of the opposite gender, in this case Finn, is a much less interesting character than Leia was in the Original trilogy. He filled the role, sure, but I don't really care about him.

And yes, the writing isn't necessarily the be all end all of the characters. But each of the actors that portray them in their own way and give them life. Driver and Boyega did terrible jobs, and Ridley did an amazing job. This is all opinion, as I think is fairly obvious. I also think that your excessive buying into the massive hype colors the hell out of your opinion. Nothing wrong with that. I still feel that you're taking my lesser enjoyment as a personal insult. I don't know what you want from me. It seems like you want me to say that this is the best and be all end all of Movies, and that's just not going to happen, because I think it was pretty damned mid tier.

[soguru]

You've seen me admit the flaws again and again, why would I be buying into the massive hype if that were the case?

[Imrahil]

Patton?

Patton was an irresponsible asshole with severe megalomania.

[MartyS (Gromit)]

OK, just watched it, and read this thread.



I enjoyed it, not as many flaws as I was expecting.   I was expecting callbacks, but not an entire movie full of them...



I kind of agree with the complaints about Finn being too good at everything, I hope we find out later that the force has also awakened in him to explain his abilities somewhat.

Rey was the best new character, I guess the question is was it her parents or her that were there to be trained by Luke at the Jedi training camp?  Even if it was her parents she would have been exposed to the lessons, that would explain her being able to use the force so quickly.

Han going on that catwalk seemed right, he was either going to get his son back or die trying.  The father and son on a catwalk bit stole some of the seriousness away from it, that was one place there shouldn't have been a callback.  Also, Han had to know the fate of his son if he didn't turn him back to the light, so wouldn't want to be the one to have to destroy his own son later on.

As for Vader's grandson, that's got to be the weak point with the new characters, he had parents and an uncle around, how was he turned?

The soundtrack was very forgettable except during the callbacks.  It was nice to hear Leia's theme again when she showed up, and there was a nice beat with the Falcon at one point, but did Rey even get her own theme?  If she did I didn't notice it.

All in all, most of the emotional beats worked well, good mix of laughs and almost tearing up.


So I guess Luke is going to have to learn to be Yoda for the next installment?  If Han was Obi-Wan in this one Luke has to be Yoda in the next one, right?   


Two complaints that took me out of the movie slightly:

Is the new dark lords' name an homage to George Lucas or J.K. Rolling?  Ugh...

So, what's the deal with the big weapon being powered by a star, and the stupid idea of draining all the power from it?  Did no one bother to look up how much fracking power is in a star?  And how do they fire it again if they drain the star with each shot?  Does that entire planet have to be moved to a different system to drain a new star?  Would have made a lot more sense if they simply drained off enough to fire, you could still see when it was done by the trail of plasma between the star and planet going away.  I know Star Wars is fantasy and not science fiction but the powering of the weapon was just stupid.

[Quantum Vagina]

Neil Smoke DeGrasse Tyson complained on that last one, actually

[MartyS (Gromit)]

Neil Smoke DeGrasse Tyson complained on that last one, actually

Cool, it's always nice to be in agreement with the Neil.

[Quantum Vagina]

[soguru]

So, what's the deal with the big weapon being powered by a star, and the stupid idea of draining all the power from it?  Did no one bother to look up how much fracking power is in a star?  And how do they fire it again if they drain the star with each shot?  Does that entire planet have to be moved to a different system to drain a new star? 

Sigh... are we really going to start scrutinizing science in a Star Wars film? A Science Fantasy film? I wouldn't even do that with the prequels(mostly because science is the very least of their problems)!! I mean I have no Earthly goddamn idea how a light saber could ever work or exist, but I accept it because it's fucking awesome. Star Killer base is fucking awesome. Same thing with Transporters, warp drive, cloaking devices. It doesn't matter how they work, what matters is that I as a member of the audience can suspend my disbelief because as a fan of science fantasy, that's kind of my job.

I've already addressed the deal with the callbacks like half a dozen goddamn times. One critic said it best when he said people were overall complaining that the prequels weren't enough like the original trilogy, so when JJ makes a movie... he makes it like the original trilogy... and people still complain anyway.

[anais.butterfly]

Soguru, you need to dial it back. Your posts are too emotional and defensive. I am telling you this because I am your friend.

[Ben]

Soguru, you need to dial it back. Your posts are too emotional and defensive. I am telling you this because I am your friend.

SOGURU needs to dial it back? Have you even been READING any of Lawful Cupcake's posts?

[Quantum Vagina]

Soguru, you need to dial it back. Your posts are too emotional and defensive. I am telling you this because I am your friend.

SOGURU needs to dial it back? Have you even been READING any of Lawful Cupcake's posts?

I don't see myself being emotional and defensive. I've told him that it's great that he likes the movie, but that he can't make others like it as much as he does. I think it's a pretty alright movie. If you feel I'm being inappropriate, PLEASE, report me to the moderators. As it is, I don't see that I've done anything except state my opinion.

[MartyS (Gromit)]

So, what's the deal with the big weapon being powered by a star, and the stupid idea of draining all the power from it?  Did no one bother to look up how much fracking power is in a star?  And how do they fire it again if they drain the star with each shot?  Does that entire planet have to be moved to a different system to drain a new star? 

Sigh... are we really going to start scrutinizing science in a Star Wars film? A Science Fantasy film? I wouldn't even do that with the prequels(mostly because science is the very least of their problems)!! I mean I have no Earthly goddamn idea how a light saber could ever work or exist, but I accept it because it's fucking awesome. Star Killer base is fucking awesome. Same thing with Transporters, warp drive, cloaking devices. It doesn't matter how they work, what matters is that I as a member of the audience can suspend my disbelief because as a fan of science fantasy, that's kind of my job.

I've already addressed the deal with the callbacks like half a dozen goddamn times. One critic said it best when he said people were overall complaining that the prequels weren't enough like the original trilogy, so when JJ makes a movie... he makes it like the original trilogy... and people still complain anyway.

Calm down, my post wasn't to you, and why did you ignore the positive things I had to say?

Sorry I couldn't suspend my disbelief as much as you, all those things you list are pretty easy to do that with except for this one, it would have been so easy to fix the massive error with the giant weapon, just change a couple lines of dialog and one special effect slightly.  Just say it was powered by a star so it has more power than can possibly be imagined.  See, they could have even gotten in another callback!

I wasn't really complaining about the callbacks, except the one I mentioned, I just wasn't expecting so many, most of them invoked a nice feeling of nostalgia.

[Pak-Man]

*Stumbles into this thread with his mod hat on and a hand over his eyes*

Um, I accidentally clicked in here and it looks like there's something that needs light moderation, and I don't want to read anything to get details because I don't want THOSE details, so EVERYONE:

Repeat to yourself, "It's just a show, I should really just relax."

Don't make me have to risk being spoilered to get more details!

[MartyS (Gromit)]

It doesn't matter how they work, what matters is that I as a member of the audience can suspend my disbelief because as a fan of science fantasy, that's kind of my job.

Feel like I need to respond to this one separately.

That's somewhat of a unique perspective on being an audience member, we are the ones paying, so we should be considered the boss, not the employee. 

I'd say it's the film makers job to not have plot holes that crash your suspension of disbelief.  Doesn't matter what the type of movie is, there are levels of disbelief in all movies that have to be overcome.  In a drama you can't have a character do something too far away from what is expected based on what they have done before, in an action movie you shouldn't have infinite bullets.  That's what this was, the moment they said the weapon drains the star until it goes out I thought "how do they reload, they already fired it once?", that took me out of the movie for a moment and flagged that as something to think about later.  And after the movie is a bad time to analyze specific things like that.

Also, it is possible to not like a few moments in a movie and still like it overall.  I will be getting this movie on Blu-Ray when it comes out, I'm hoping this is the first JJ movie that I'll be able to watch multiple times.

[Parker_Hylton]

Oi Vey...