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[Esna Pitoojee]

Turbo-delayed response time!

Saw it way back in early January, saw it again with some friends.

My reaction remains... disappointment. Sheer, overwhelming disappointment.

First off, let me say that as a piece of filmmaking, it's perfectly fine. Very well shot, pretty well acted (Boyega and Ford especially), only criticism I can make is that they seem to have mixed in the music somewhat softer than on previous films so it wasn't always as noticeable.

With that said, however, plotwise it was an absolute disaster.

- Let's start with the Starkiller base. Excluding, for a moment, that it's somehow a less powerful weapon than the Death Star that they felt it somehow necessary to build into an entire planet (and plonk a huge bullseye on), the old 'big superweapon with a big weakness' thing is getting beyond ridiculous now. A small thermal exhaust port was understandable; it was literally overlooked. Putting a critical piece of your infrastructure on the surface where anyone can fly up to it is rather more inexplicable.

- On that note, the First Order's incompetency in general is staggering; in fact, at times the movie seems to solely run on nothing but their inability to do anything right. Basic measures are neglected ("Hey, let's not keep our shields up while in hostile space, have combat patrols outt here, put more than one guard on anything, or have more than one locked door between a prison cell and the hangar bay...") and very often broke my suspension of disbelief. The only remotely impressive thing they did in the film is make good speeches.

- If the First Order were incompetent, it seems they've only survived because the Republic is now fully brain dead. For starters, the entire Rebellion/Republic military allegedly disarmed after the Empire's end... despite the First Order still being out there, quite hostile, and seemingly controlling large swaths of space. 1.3 million planets, and not any of them said 'uh, no. We'd like our guns and starships, just in case.' The 'Resistance' is apparently formed of 2 squadrons of X-wings, a couple small transports, and a few thousand people. I know we all love underdogs and stuff, but that felt just ridiculous to me.

- Apparently the reason no Republic fleet could be summoned to stomp Starkiller Base flat after the shields went down is that they were all concentrated around the single capital system that was blown up. No anti-piracy patrols, no roaming border fleets, nobody else anywhere. At all.

Onto a completely unrelated topic, the movie occasionally seemed to show us things we didn't have to see but neglected to give us hints about what we really needed to know.

- For instance, seeing Rey's parents spaceship take off... I mean, we all understood what had happened.

- Conversely, during the final fight between Rey and Kylo Ren, apparently what was actually happening was Rey tapping into her rage and 'dancing with the dark side' to overpower him; this is why Kylo offers to train her: He can sense she is using the dark side. Then, she was supposed to reject the Dark at the end and refuse to give in and kill him - a call back to Luke's duel with Vader in episode VI. None of that came through, however; all we saw was Rey somehow get mad lightsaber skills then flee because, oh yeah, there was a giant trench between them.

At the end, I felt more bored than anything else and couldn't help but ask: We gave up Thrawn, Zsinj, Mara Jade, Wedge and the Rogues, Booster Terrik and more for this?

[Arnulf Ogunkoya]

Turbo-delayed response time!

Saw it way back in early January, saw it again with some friends.

My reaction remains... disappointment. Sheer, overwhelming disappointment.

First off, let me say that as a piece of filmmaking, it's perfectly fine. Very well shot, pretty well acted (Boyega and Ford especially), only criticism I can make is that they seem to have mixed in the music somewhat softer than on previous films so it wasn't always as noticeable.

With that said, however, plotwise it was an absolute disaster.

- Let's start with the Starkiller base. Excluding, for a moment, that it's somehow a less powerful weapon than the Death Star that they felt it somehow necessary to build into an entire planet (and plonk a huge bullseye on), the old 'big superweapon with a big weakness' thing is getting beyond ridiculous now. A small thermal exhaust port was understandable; it was literally overlooked. Putting a critical piece of your infrastructure on the surface where anyone can fly up to it is rather more inexplicable.

Less powerful than the Death Star? Eh? This thing shoots through hyperspace and blows up the best part of a solar system. Also, given it sucks the local start dry to do it I'm assuming it must have hyperspace engines to relocate to a new fuel source. Although I take your point about the recurring design problems. That said nobody seems to understand basic health & safety in the Star Wars 'verse.

- On that note, the First Order's incompetency in general is staggering; in fact, at times the movie seems to solely run on nothing but their inability to do anything right. Basic measures are neglected ("Hey, let's not keep our shields up while in hostile space, have combat patrols outt here, put more than one guard on anything, or have more than one locked door between a prison cell and the hangar bay...") and very often broke my suspension of disbelief. The only remotely impressive thing they did in the film is make good speeches.

It's true that, for once, it would be nice to see a villian that had read the Evil Overlord's list.

- If the First Order were incompetent, it seems they've only survived because the Republic is now fully brain dead. For starters, the entire Rebellion/Republic military allegedly disarmed after the Empire's end... despite the First Order still being out there, quite hostile, and seemingly controlling large swaths of space. 1.3 million planets, and not any of them said 'uh, no. We'd like our guns and starships, just in case.' The 'Resistance' is apparently formed of 2 squadrons of X-wings, a couple small transports, and a few thousand people. I know we all love underdogs and stuff, but that felt just ridiculous to me.

- Apparently the reason no Republic fleet could be summoned to stomp Starkiller Base flat after the shields went down is that they were all concentrated around the single capital system that was blown up. No anti-piracy patrols, no roaming border fleets, nobody else anywhere. At all.

I'm assuming that's from the novelisation or the comics because I don't recall seeing that in the film.

Onto a completely unrelated topic, the movie occasionally seemed to show us things we didn't have to see but neglected to give us hints about what we really needed to know.

- For instance, seeing Rey's parents spaceship take off... I mean, we all understood what had happened.

- Conversely, during the final fight between Rey and Kylo Ren, apparently what was actually happening was Rey tapping into her rage and 'dancing with the dark side' to overpower him; this is why Kylo offers to train her: He can sense she is using the dark side. Then, she was supposed to reject the Dark at the end and refuse to give in and kill him - a call back to Luke's duel with Vader in episode VI. None of that came through, however; all we saw was Rey somehow get mad lightsaber skills then flee because, oh yeah, there was a giant trench between them.

At the end, I felt more bored than anything else and couldn't help but ask: We gave up Thrawn, Zsinj, Mara Jade, Wedge and the Rogues, Booster Terrik and more for this?

I'm re-reading Zahn's Thrawn books at the moment & can see your point. However I gather the Extended Universe did become a bit of a mess.

[Pieter Tuulinen]

It seems to me that the Rebellion failed incredibly hard between the Battle of Endor and the events in Force Awakened, doesn't it? Both the First Order and the Rebellion are now pale flickering embers of the organisations that both are descended from - the Republic has been set up completely independent of the Alliance, it seems, but is also so tiny that fragging five worlds is seen as a major economic hit rather than a terrorist pin-prick attack.

I'm not sure what happened to the Rebellion, but nothing seems to have gone the way that Leia, Luke and the others wanted it to. They certainly haven't become the leadership of the New Republic or anything. I suspect that destroying those two Death Stars caused a Galaxy wide recession and that the Rebellion were fingered as a terrorist organisation because of their part in it.

Loss of Mon-Calamari support would have led to the withdrawal of anything in the Rebel Fleet that could remotely be classed as a true 'Capital Ship' and they probably got slaughtered by some sort of Imperial Remnant fleet. Of course, taking out the Rebels would have been the only thing holding the Grand Moffs and Moffs into lockstep and I bet the old Empire collapsed into internicine infighting shortly thereafter...

Maybe...

[Ollie]

Putting the critical filter of an adult perspective aside, the litmus test for me is that it's converted my seven year old kid from someone who knew nothing of and had no interest in Star Wars to someone who's dragged me to the cinema to see it twice more after the first time, has burned through my old copies of the original trilogy, thought the prequels "weren't too bad" and barely stops talking about Star Wars from the moment he gets up until the moment he falls asleep at night.

It's the exact reaction I remember from about the same age after seeing the original movie on the big screen for the first time.

[Esna Pitoojee]

I'm assuming that's from the novelisation or the comics because I don't recall seeing that in the film.

Disney comics and books, yeah. I had to go look it up because that gap left me scratching my head as I left the theater.

I'm re-reading Zahn's Thrawn books at the moment & can see your point. However I gather the Extended Universe did become a bit of a mess.

Yeah. I'm not denying the EU was a mess in places and definitely needed some paring back, but this as a complete and total replacement didn't really satisfy me at all.

[Silas Vitalia]

The EU products had been mostly shit for going on twenty years

I was there for the first Zahn books and then I was there for the lucas publishing 'conveyor belt' of terrible, fan-fiction quality releases coming out every few months for years.  Filled up a whole bookshelf with that nonsense.  The timeline and course of events became a ridiculous maze of trilogy 'novels', each worse than the one before. 

Search your feelings, you know it to be true.

By the time you got to every side-character in the damn Mos Eisley cantina having their own short story and background, the well was damned dry.  They drove that IP into the ground.

Nuke it from orbit, only way to be sure.


That being said the 'old republic' content from some of the games, etc wasn't too bad though

Anyway considering how much of a colossal mess the movie -could- have been I'll take my silly adventure time with it's flaws and call it a minor victory.  It was fun despite it's plot silliness, but let's not forget how silly EP IV, V, and VI are.

[Esna Pitoojee]

On the contrary - that kind of background detail stuff was what I absolutely loved. Fleshing out the background and the entire universe was something that never got old to me: The journal of the proud but war-weary nameless 501st trooper, the machinations of Tyber Zann and his consortium, discovering the fates of the Seperatist armies after the Clone Wars ended - that stuff was my bread and butter. Picking through scenes to figure out the power output of turbolasers and seeing roles and purposes fleshed out for all the ships that appeared was like crack for me. Things like that made the universe feel alive, in depth, and interconnected.

[Samira Kernher]

You can't really bemoan 'terrible, fan-fiction quality releases' and then turn around and praise Ep 7, tbh.

[Pieter Tuulinen]

That might be going a little too far, Samipants. I thoroughly enjoyed my time with Ep7 and I totally understand why Disney pruned the entire EU covering the period where they wanted to start making films - it would have been completely impossible to have written a movie and not contradicted at least thirty points of lore in the EU canon.

[Aria Jenneth]

That might be going a little too far, Samipants. I thoroughly enjoyed my time with Ep7 and I totally understand why Disney pruned the entire EU covering the period where they wanted to start making films - it would have been completely impossible to have written a movie and not contradicted at least thirty points of lore in the EU canon.

Seconded.

[Silas Vitalia]

You can't really bemoan 'terrible, fan-fiction quality releases' and then turn around and praise Ep 7, tbh.

I sure can :p.  While the larger plot has holes, what Kasdan as a writer gets right, what he always gets right since Empire, is the relationships, the banter, the feel of the thing.   

It was -fun-  a light adventure with all the pulp thrills, etc.  Not a home run, but not a naboo trade embargo or parliamentary bullshit to be seen. 

[Samira Kernher]

That might be going a little too far, Samipants. I thoroughly enjoyed my time with Ep7 and I totally understand why Disney pruned the entire EU covering the period where they wanted to start making films - it would have been completely impossible to have written a movie and not contradicted at least thirty points of lore in the EU canon.

I enjoyed it too. But I also enjoyed Darksaber, New Jedi Order, and a lot of other EU books that are not typically considered the best. Why is it okay to scrap those, but not this new movie? It's no Original Trilogy, and it's no Thrawn or X-wing. It's as much fan-fiction-quality as the poorer parts of the EU are, but at least those parts of the EU didn't necessitate the deletion of all of the good parts to accommodate them.

You can't really bemoan 'terrible, fan-fiction quality releases' and then turn around and praise Ep 7, tbh.

I sure can :p.  While the larger plot has holes, what Kasdan as a writer gets right, what he always gets right since Empire, is the relationships, the banter, the feel of the thing.

What he didn't get right, though, was the Star Wars universe. And I don't mean the canon, I mean the 'feel of the thing'.

The prequels lacked the quality relationships and banter, but were thoroughly Star Wars. Ep 7 has the quality relationships and banter, but lost the Star Wars soul to do it.

[Silas Vitalia]

This is why fandom is so interesting, right? We all take our own stuff into these things and it shapes what we get out.

Like for me the prequels, and most of the EU decidedly did NOT 'feel' like Star Wars to me, in a way that this new movie did.

It was simple and dumb and contained in a way that the original movies were? I dunno.  I'm not saying TFA was the best thing ever I put it behind the OT but ahead of the prequels by a country mile.

Good conversation


I feel like this new trilogy is going to split up Star Wars folks into the warring Star Trek camps, Picard and Kirk

[Kala]

The prequels lacked the quality relationships and banter, but were thoroughly Star Wars. Ep 7 has the quality relationships and banter, but lost the Star Wars soul to do it.

...Depends where you place the emphasis though, surely?

For me the quality relationships and bantz were a large part of what made Star Wars.  The characters relationships and arcs foregrounded in Space Opera.
Decent actors with great chemistry helped that enormously, and made the whole thing feel more natural and warm - they were likeable characters who you could invest it (YMMV, ofc).

By comparison, while the prequels DID have plenty of decent actors (Ewan McGregor, Liam Neeson, Samuel L. Jackson etc)  the lack of chemistry between Anakin and Amidala (and Anakin and Obi-Wan, and Anakin and anyone) HURT the films.  The delivery of (teenage) Anakin in particular was stilted and wooden. As well as the character being essentially unlikeable.  I get why, ofc - its his arc to becoming Vader so he's obvs gonna be a bit of a shit.  But part of the investment in that journey is getting you onboard in the first place, and then being able to see how certain things unfolded and things went the way they did that caused the character to go bad.  I didn't give two shits about him vov  (I get they were shooting for dark, but it just came off as bland for me).

Sure, 7 was pretty much a reprise of the OT.  I can understand criticism that it was fan-fiction; though I think it might be fairer to call it fan-service.  It's very flawed. (There's an article about it here Star Wars, Storyelling, And Fixing It In Post which is pretty good). And I often found it was over-reliant on the OT, to the point where it passed knowing nods and homages and was cribbing wholesale.  But, honestly?  Since the deflating prequels I think (some) people wanted that - a recognisable return to the feel and beats of the first three films.  I enjoyed it.  The universe certainly felt Star Warsish to me (given the reprises of Han, Chewie, Leia) and the jokes* managed to capture the humour of the originals in a way that seemed natural and effortless.

What is the Star Wars soul - or feel of the thing - for you? (guessing specific to Lucas's writing?)

[spoiler] *Particularly loved the BB-8 thumbs up and the Stormtroopers turning on their heels from Kylo Ren's tantrum. I genuinely lol'd)[/spoiler]

It was simple and dumb and contained in a way that the original movies were? I dunno.  I'm not saying TFA was the best thing ever I put it behind the OT but ahead of the prequels by a country mile.

Same 

...Though I suppose the word I'm reaching for when combobulating about humour, chemistry and likeability is charm. Whatever its other flaws, TFA has the charm of the OT, which the prequels sorely lacked.