Star Wars, Episode 7 The Force Awakens (2015) [SPOILERS]

[Centerfield]

Maybe we create another thread, with spoilers, for folks who have seen the movie and want to discuss?

[TransMonk]

This one could be the spoilers thread.

We have the one below in the Non-BB Forum with no spoilers already.

viewtopic.php?f=2&t=23807

[RealityChuck]

It was pretty good. The difference between this and the original film is that Lucas ripped off a long list of films, where n this just ripped off Star Wars sometimes slavishly so.

Entertaining, but not a great film.

[Edgy MD]

LA Times is far less generous than I was.

The issue, however, is whether "The Force Awakens" even deserves to be considered as a movie, because it's not. It's the anchoring element of a vast commercial program, painstakingly factory-made for maximal audience appeal, which means maximal inoffensiveness. The result tells us a lot about the state of entertainment today, and about the future of Hollywood.

Abrams seems to follow the precept that the surest way to keep from putting a foot wrong is to walk only within the footprints of one's predecessors. As has been noted by a few reviewers who braved the intimidating weight of "Star Wars: the Phenomenon" to write critical pans, the new movie obsequiously replicates the formula of the original -- its set pieces, rhythm, pacing, even dialogue -- almost without advancing the story at all. It's a mark of Disney's own caretaker mentality that not only is a Jar Jar Binks-level blunder absent from "The Force Awakens," but so is surprise or even much suspense. One has to be a pretty inattentive viewer to be surprised or shocked by either the big reveal in the story (no spoilers!) or its denouement.

[MFS62]

Michael Hiltzik (The person who wrote that, for those of you who didn't click on the link) writes like someone who can see the negative side of anything. He must have had a miserable childhood, never letting his imagination run free or allowing any fun into his life.

Maybe he's setting us up for an upcoming book about what's wrong with Hollywood.

Later

[Edgy MD]

I didn't particularly appreciate it either and I'm full of joy. Isn't it possible that what he wrote is just his honest assessment?

There is something very wrong with the state of the film industry today. Speilberg and Lucas have said as much themselves, even as they largely blame themselves for it.

[MFS62]

It was like being reunited with an old friend. Things pick up just about where they left off the last time we saw each other. We try to fill in what happened when we were apart and go on from there.

Highly enjoyable.

Later

[dgwphotography]

TransMonk wrote: I'm guessing it will be later revealed that Rey (PURE CONJECTURE)=#F5D0A9]is the daughter of Leia. Maybe shortly after her and Han split, she discovered she was preggers but didn't tell him and "hid" Rey on Jakku to keep her from Snoke/Kylo Ren. Or, heck, maybe she's descended from Luke directly. It seems like she has some familial relationship to the group.(/PURE CONJECTURE)

Either this, or
(Conjecture)
=#E4EEF3]Rey is the daughter of Luke and Mara Jade. Mara Jade is the most popular of the Extended Universe characters, and it would be great to have her back story added to Canon.
(/conjecture)

The movie was a lot of fun, but left me wanting more. Reportly, Disney had Abrams trim 20 minutes or so from his original cut. Hopefully there will be a director's cut version that will answer some of our questions

[Elster88]

Edgy MD wrote: With the Han analog from this film, Poe Dameron, all you know about him is that he's a hotshot pilot. And that we have to learn through a quick force-feeding, when he's called the resistance's "best pilot" in the crawl, and him boasting "I can fly anything" as he kicks into action. Bam, I’m supposed to care about this guy?

He's the fifth most important character in the story, so no, you're not supposed to overly care about him. The story was busy developing the other characters. And it developed them well. And calling him a Han analog is a silly, gross oversimplification.

[Elster88]

MFS62 wrote: Michael Hiltzik (The person who wrote that, for those of you who didn't click on the link) writes like someone who can see the negative side of anything. He must have had a miserable childhood, never letting his imagination run free or allowing any fun into his life.

I don't know anything about him, but that seems like the description of someone who wouldn't like this movie. Not that it was the greatest thing ever, but I don't get this review. The movie was a really good time, as the other 99% of reviews indicate.

[Vic Sage]

with all the time and money at their disposal, remaking the original was the best idea Disney and JJ could come up with? Say what you want about Lucas, but he had the vision to see the story unfold... this didn't unfold, it folded back on itself, regurgitating every single trope of the original. Sure, it was well executed, but that's a pretty low bar.

feh.

[Guest sharpie]

Pretty much what Vic said. It was nice to look at but it felt like I was watching the same movie the seventh time.

[TransMonk]

That movie the seventh time is still exponentially better than Episodes I, II and III. People can applaud Lucas for his vision, but his vision for the prequels made two and a half horrible movies.

Episode 7 is the movie I wanted them to make back in 1986. Fans were calling for a return to form, which is exactly what this is. I'm not sure why anyone was expecting otherwise.

[Vic Sage]

A "return to form" is one thing; the regurgitation of the same story mechanics and plot points is another. I think it was a reasonable expectation for the movie to continue the adventure, not repeat it.

And i won't defend the prequels, but (1) the third one wasn't bad, and the 2nd one is not terrible, (2) the problems were more in the scripting and acting than the plots per se*, and (3) they were judged by the standards set by the original trilogy, which were impossibly high, and this one is being judged by the standards of the prequel trilogy, which are ridiculously low.

* (with the exception of "midi-chlorians", which were a terrible idea.)

[Guest LeiterWagnerFasterStrongr]

Best, most enjoyable acting in any Star Wars film.

I'm very curious to see what Rian Johnson does with all this. Between "Brick" and "Looper," I'm an admirer.

[TransMonk]

Saw this again today...even better the second time.

I read an online article earlier this week theorizing that Rey may not be a Skywalker descendant, but rather a Kenobi descendant. Watching a second time with this theory in mind does make some sense. She shares Obiwan's proficiency in the Jedi mind trick, her sneaking around on the Starkiller resembles Ben's sneaking on the original Death Star, the British accent, the tunic that resembles Obiwan's Episode I under-cloak garb...even at the end of Rey's dream sequence after touching Luke's lightsaber, Ewan McGregor makes a cameo voice appearance whispering "These are your first steps…". The article went on to propose that the Rey vs. Kylo Ren battle(s) in this new trilogy may not be between siblings or cousins but rather a re-duel between grandchildren of Episodes III and IV...and that perhaps when all nine films are completed, they will tell as much about the Kenobi family history as the Skywalker family history.

[metsmarathon]

ok, I finally saw it, and I fuckin' loved it.

it has flaws, sure, and borrows a bit much from the original, but I'm thus far okay with it. I simply cannot wait until I can watch it again.

unfortunately, it was altogether too much for minimm. part of the problem may have been that we were seated in the friggin' second row, under a massive screen, but he was curled up into a ball almost from the get-go. he left with mrs.mm before the assault on starkiller base. he agrees that perhaps the cinematic experience saturated him, and is not averse to trying to see it again, on a smaller screen at home, in the future. poor kid.

I liked what was done with the original cast - it all felt authentic.

as far as rehashing star wars plot points, rotj already had another death star, and the phantom menace had Anakin fly into a large space station and destroy it (accidentally) by blowing up it's weakest design flaw. I thought they offered up a fairly new take on it all, and in remixing in a lot of what felt familiar from the original trilogy, they established that with the force, in this universe, it's all cyclical. and I think that such a pattern has already been established as canon.

besides, there's really only two ways to take out massively powerful superweapns - critical flaw, or attrition, and attrition is a lot less exciting to watch in a movie.

[Vic Sage]

...it has flaws, sure, and borrows a bit much from the original...

borrows a bit much? Ya think? Quick, tell me which movie this is:

1. There’s a droid carrying valuable information who finds himself on a desolate desert planet.
2. There’s a Force-sensitive, masked, and darkly clothed antagonist who arrives on the scene shortly after the information is handed off, looking for the droid.
3. There’s a desert settlement that is wiped out by storm troopers.
4. There’s a hero who’s tortured by the bad guys to retrieve the information.
5. There’s a lonely, orphaned, Force-strong desert dweller who dreams of more and ends up adopting the droid and getting sucked up into an epic adventure.
6. There’s a worldly old warrior who has to explain the Force to the next generation.
7. There’s a cruel military officer (Nazi-like, with a British accent) who holds a comparable level of authority to his Force-sensitive, masked, and darkly clothed colleague.
8. There’s a mostly unseen supreme evil (depicted via hologram) that’s pulling the strings from the shadows.
9. There’s a criminal element that’s owed a debt by Han Solo and attempts to kill him after he screws up their arrangement (Hopefully, a long time from now, we won't have to wonder who shot first)
10. There’s a cantina filled with various alien creatures.
11. There’s a moment when one of the heroes abandons the fight as a self-preservation measure, but he eventually returns to help save the day.
12. There’s a massive spherical weapon that’s used to destroy a planet,
13. There’s a base belonging to the rebel forces on a forest-covered world.
14. There’s a surrogate father figure who is cut down by someone previously close to him, who has turned to the dark side.
15. The hero watches helplessly from afar as the surrogate father figure is slayed.
16. There’s a coordinated aerial attack on the massive spherical planet-killing weapon that’s monitored from a control room by Leia.
17. There’s a trench that X-wings flew through in order to fire on a vulnerability in the weapon and destroy it.
18. There’s a massive explosion that gives the rebels a major victory but likely allows the Force-sensitive, masked, and darkly clothed antagonist to survive to fight another day.
19. All presented with a bombastic John Williams score...

...and i'm not even warmed up yet.

[note: this isn't my list... i cribbed it off the internet. There are lots of even more specific lists of mirrored plot points, if anyone cares enough to look.]

It's not like the similarities are accidental, occasional or superficial. they are massive, significant and obviously intentional. Why? I guess because they think that's what we wanted. And the fact that the movie is already the biggest film ever supports that notion. But why? Why did we want to see the same movie again? You can recapture the magic and wonder of the original trilogy without regurgitating every-fucking-plot-point, like we're brain-damaged. They could have picked it up 35 years later, and gone from there, while still giving us some moments that echoed the original without just rebooting them. I want to see the adventure CONTINUE, not just REPEAT.

i'm confused about why this is ok with so many folks.

[seawolf17]

Vic Sage wrote: i'm confused about why this is ok with so many folks.

[TransMonk]

Vic Sage wrote: Why? I guess because they think that's what we wanted.

It's what I wanted.

[Vic Sage]

Clearly. I just don't understand why. You've got the originals available to you in every format conceivable. Doesn't the notion of a new story in that universe, that carries the adventure forward, excite you more than seeing it all again? If not, why not? Seriously, i don't understand. I'm not trying to pick a fight or be obnoxious, i'm just looking for insight.

[Edgy MD]

Elster88 wrote: Edgy MD wrote: With the Han analog from this film, Poe Dameron, all you know about him is that he's a hotshot pilot. And that we have to learn through a quick force-feeding, when he's called the resistance's "best pilot" in the crawl, and him boasting "I can fly anything" as he kicks into action. Bam, I’m supposed to care about this guy? He's the fifth most important character in the story, so no, you're not supposed to overly care about him. The story was busy developing the other characters. And it developed them well. And calling him a Han analog is a silly, gross oversimplification.

He (spoiler)=#FFBFFF]fired the shot that destroyed the enemy's super-weapon, saving the free peoples of the universe(/spoiler). He presumably was supposed to matter.

This script was distressingly unimaginative. We were up to 22 plot elements cribbed from earlier films before we just got bored with counting.

The rough part is that this isn't a failure. This is a success, from Disney's point of view. This is the way they make films.

[TransMonk]

For me, personally, it's about nostalgia more than anything. Sure, the story is familiar, but it's like visiting a childhood friend after 30 years. The story had enough new elements to keep me interested (especially since there are two movies yet to come in order to complete the whole picture).

Additionally, I would rate the acting, direction, cinematography, effects, pacing, stunts and costumes as excellent in this movie...better than in the prequels and, in some cases, better than the original trilogy.

In an age where Hollywood is "rebooting" seemingly every action/comic franchise (sometimes more than once) and we're going to see our fifth actor playing Batman on the big screen this summer, it's hard for me to fault Star Wars for playing it safe with the story while executing nearly everything else about the movie well.

[metsmarathon]

some of the copying of plot points is due to the nature of the galaxy they're in. the empire likes to make big round powerful weapons, with trenches. it's what they do. it's their thing. they also like impossibly large space ships shaped like triangles. do they need to start branching out stylistically? do they maybe need to find a different defense contractor? yes, clearly.

this time, instead of building a moon, they built their weapon into a planet, through it's core, however improbable that it. I guess they could've lopped off a couple sides of it to make it a giant tetrahedron. or cube it. maybe have the gun hang off the side like a big angry Q...? I'm okay with it. the trench? I guess. sure. need to pop some hard right angles into these things instead of all the straight runs. but it took more of a ROTJ-style attack to defeat it than a single lucky shot from luke.

and if there wasn't a weak spot, it would become a very sad movie where the bad guys win easily, or the good guys have to win by slowly punching away at the diamond wall. attrition is really hard to do cinematically.

so. desert planet. ok fine. they should mix up a little more effectively where they source their protagonists from. beyond that, "hey look, our hero is a happy, well-to do kid with a robust, full family and lots of friends." doesn't seem to have the same draw as some down on their luck dreamer whose been dealt a raw hand. though I suppose the down on their luck thing doesn't come off as effectively if the kid is on a verdant lush forest world.

the thing that I took away from the movie was that, yes, these points were taken from the original, but how they got there was different, and unique, and served, to me, to show how cyclical the star wars universe is. I also feel as if the remixing of these elements was viewed as necessary (and I agree that it was) to establish that, 'hey, this really is an actual star wars movie' and not just some other piece of fan fic using some of the same characters.

it was safe, sure, but for me, it worked, and worked fantastically well. will it hold up as well on a second viewing? I think so.

also, I look at it like I look at the terminator and T2. a lot of the same things happen, and there are frequent callbacks throughout. and in the terminator series, it makes sense as to the inevitability of the future, whereas in star wars it's about the cyclity of it all.

[Centerfield]

I loved it. Saw it twice and loved it even more the second time.

I grew up loving Star Wars. And after the prequels, I guess my bar is really low. I was praying it did not suck. And it didn't. Much to my delight.

Other than that, I liked:

1. It respected the first three movies. Didn't ruin any of them.

2. Better acting than any other Star Wars movie.

3. Daisy Riddle is a star. Tough, vulnerable, funny, compelling. You can't take her eyes off of her whenever she is on the screen. And it's not just because she's easy on the eyes. Even the way she eats her green meal on Jakku is compelling. If you asked me before the movie, who is worthy of taking over the Falcon, I would have said no one. Never. Impossible. But when she did it, it was seamless. When she called that lightsaber, it made you want to stand up and cheer.

4. Great dynamic between the three new stars (Rey, Po, Finn).

5. The moments between Leia and Han are really touching. All this time, I wondered how they would handle that. Having them be estranged was a huge risk, but it worked out well. When they are standing there soaking in what the other looks like after all these years, the audience is feeling it too.

Sure, there were parts I didn't like. The similarities to the first movie, obviously. (I like how they were like "It's no just like blowing up the Death Star. It's at least THREE TIMES BIGGER!") StarKiller base wasn't as significant in the story line as the Death Star was in the first, so it blowing up didn't feel as monumental. (so, yes, even when they copied, they didn't do it as well) And I am still not sold about Han Solo dying. It kinda seemed like the easy way to give the movie and the new villain some depth. But we'll see how they play this out.

[smg58]

Centerfield wrote: 3. Daisy Riddle is a star. Tough, vulnerable, funny, compelling. You can't take her eyes off of her whenever she is on the screen. And it's not just because she's easy on the eyes. Even the way she eats her green meal on Jakku is compelling. If you asked me before the movie, who is worthy of taking over the Falcon, I would have said no one. Never. Impossible. But when she did it, it was seamless. When she called that lightsaber, it made you want to stand up and cheer.

This, this, this, and this again.

Yeah, I would have come up with something more interesting than "the Death Star, only bigger." Hell, you could argue that swallowing up a star by itself would have been a better weapon. But I thought everything else about the movie was superb.

[dgwphotography]

Centerfield wrote: 3. Daisy Riddle is a star. Tough, vulnerable, funny, compelling. You can't take her eyes off of her whenever she is on the screen. And it's not just because she's easy on the eyes. Even the way she eats her green meal on Jakku is compelling. If you asked me before the movie, who is worthy of taking over the Falcon, I would have said no one. Never. Impossible. But when she did it, it was seamless. When she called that lightsaber, it made you want to stand up and cheer.

This made me think of a possibly apocryphal story regarding Harrison Ford: A director once said to him, "The minute you saw Tony Curtis on screen, playing a grocery delivery boy, you knew he was going to be a star," to which Ford replied, "I thought he was supposed to be a grocery delivery boy."

[Guest El Segundo Escupidor]

I don't get why the Resistance were in the position of vulnerability 10 years after winning the Galactic Civil War. It don't make any sense. Every other coincidence I could swallow, but not that.

The more I think about this film, the more I dislike it, itbt.

[Edgy MD]

Yeah, the remnants of the Empire went and rebuilt (seemingly) their entire infrastructure, without even having the treasury of a duped Republic to exploit. Goofy.

[metsmarathon]

the remnants of a soundly defeated german empire took a mere two decades to rebound into one hell of a formidable military machine following the great war.

the first order is on the outskirts of the known galaxy, with access to a vast frontier far distant from the new republic - and all of its attendant resources - and is made up from the most ardent among the empire's survivors. it could've been explained away a bit better. but did we really want them to get into more history lessons, treaty negotiations, and discussions of the intricacies of galactic economics?