No, if it were a cannon, it would probably shoot back.
Okay, I have to admit I’m guessing on that. Maybe there’s an EU novel about womp rats that would establish it one way or the other. 
Snoke does seem odd since the reason given before on why the Empire was pretty much just humans and droids (versus the Rebel menagerie) was because it was crazy xenophobic. Now the emperor gets thrown down a well (ROTJ spoilers) and some ugly alien dude picks up the pieces and seizes control. Be like Hershel Goldman taking over the supposed Nazi remnants in Argentina.
Good point!
Here’s the best piece I have read on the movie:
I was curious about how excited the audience was in all of your collective experiences: Mine was a bit strange. There were several moments of clapping and some random cheering, but for the most part my audience was restrained. It was almost like they were embarrassed to do it. It was only during the end credits that the audience gave a standing ovation, but even that seemed brief and stilted.
When I saw it, everyone was utterly silent, from start to finish. Not even a whisper.
It was like that for the showing I went to as well. I kept chuckling at the little funny lines here and there but I heard nothing from the rest of the audience. No cheering for Han and Chewie’s entrance, no gasps. I thought it was a bit odd.
My theater went silent when “A long time ago” appeared and then cheered when Star Wars appeared. They also cheered at the Millennium Falcon, big cheers when Han and Chewie appeared. Some cheers for Leia and Artoo. Nothing for Luke. Cheers during credits.
I agreed with you up to there. I don’t want to see more politics. I would like to know, in a brief verbal summary, what has been happening. We saw way too much politics in Phantom Menace.
My theater had some muted reaction for the Millennium Falcon reveal and Han dying but nothing crazy. Also, despite seeing it opening night, no one dressed as Ewoks or Hammerhead or anything. Couple Star Wars t-shirts and that was about it.
Granted, we saw it at one of those pricy, leather recliner style theaters but I’d think anyone who can drop $150 for a mint-in-package Walrusman action figure can afford to drop a couple extra bucks on the comfy theater seats. Maybe they all caught the 6am showing.
I was definitely bothered by Rey’s being-amazing-at-everything, but not enough not to thoroughly enjoy her character overall.
But more than the force using, I was most taken aback by her incredibly detailed mechanical knowledge of the Millenium Falcon. It’s one thing for her to be a generally knowledge mechanic who can look at things and deduce what’s where and has background information about how things work, but she seemed to have the same kind of detailed knowledge of every inch of every system that Han did back in the day, or that Kaylee had for Serenity. Does she know that much about every model of ship that exists? How does she have time to learn that if her life consists of sitting in her little room, eating instant bread (and how awesome a little detail was that?) and scavenging parts out of a crashed Star Destroyer?
There’s one mention of how someone put some compressor in or something and she thought that was a bad idea… are we meant to gather from that that there was an earlier period in which that guy had been actively trying to get the Falcon flying, and Rey was helping? A few more lines making that explicit would have made her absolutely comprehensive knowledge more reasonable.
(Oh, and while discussing Kylo Ren and how powerful/badass/knowledgeable he is, he also does a “freeze someone in place with the Force” trick that we’d never seen before, as well as a “wave a hand and knock them unconscious” trick.)
First showing I went to, the audience was super into it. This was the premiere, and half the crowd was in costume. They cheered at pretty much every story beat and legacy character. It’s also a theater that’s partially owned by Lucas, and is the venue of choice for LucasFilm employees to see movies they worked on, so there were a few odd cheers during the credits. “Third Unit Principle Photography” “Woooo!”
Saw it the next day at a special screening my job set up, and that was more subdued, but not unusually so for a mostly full theater. Big round of applause at the Star Wars logo, another at the end, and laughs and some applause at the appropriate moments.
Completely Important Point: I said that Rey had both a packet of the instant bread stuff AND the blue Jell-O shot stuff in the wax paper (which I assumed was some bug protein gunk a la Snowpiercer). My wife thought that the blue gunk WAS the instant bread. Who wins this argument and decides the fate of our marriage?
The blue stuff in the wax paper was the bread.
I was pretty sure they were different. As in she was eating the blue stuff separately at some point. Assuming the blue stuff was protein (because one cannot live on bread alone)
Doesn’t matter. The wife is always right.
How did Luke know he could do so in the Wampa cave on Hoth? I’m fairly sure Obiwan never levitated anything in ANH. (correct me if I’m forgetting something). At this point, Rey’s seen much more evidence of the Force being used for TK than Luke had until then.
Another thing I would have liked in the movie (and this is mildly nitpicky, but we all seem to be Star Wars nerdy here and that’s our forte) is to see more fighters on both sides. We really just got the X-Wings and TIE fighters. Where were the A-Wings or some other #-Wing developed in the last 20 years? The TIE Interceptor was supposed to be a beefier version of the TIE Fighter but then even though the new TIE looks to be a bit of an upgrade, the bad guys still seemed to stick to the original.
I’m not quite following your point, here, or how it relates to what I said.
Well, because Marvel, mostly. Disney has done a good job with the Marvel brand at mixing up the formula for the superhero movie, which is how they’ve kept the franchise fresh despite releases two or three films a year. Disney’s now planning one Star Wars film a year for the foreseeable future. Seems a good bet that they’ll use the same billion-dollar strategy for Star Wars that’s served them so well with Marvel.
Justified in the script: after their son turned evil, he walked away from his position of responsibility and went back to, as he put it, “The only thing I was ever any good at.”
:dubious: I don’t recall the Millennium Falcon plowing through a village in Star Wars, or flying through a Star Destroyer, or having its guns get damaged and locked in one position, preventing them from fighting back. Also, while Finn has more formal training than Rey, Rey has more actual experience. The attack on the village at the beginning was Finn’s first combat deployment. I don’t think he’s ever fired a gun at another person until he and Poe blast their way out of that Star Destroyer’s hangar. Rey’s grown up on the mean streets (well, sandy pathways) and has had to fight for everything she’s ever gotten.
That’s just how people communicate over long distances in this franchise. You might as well complain that using spaceships to get from place to place is a retread.
So I’ve had a few days to think about and digest the movie, along with reading what everyone else here and elsewhere is saying about the movie. My initial excitement and love of this movie is still there, but yeah, there are some flaws I can see now. I would still give this movie a solid 8.5/10 though, and for simply being fun and cool and having that modern gritty aesthetic, I could bump it up to a 9/10. This movie was that good.
I don’t care that it was a rehash of A New Hope. I think that was brilliantly done and necessary. We all had a bad taste in our mouth from the prequels, and even if Revenge of the Sith wasn’t terrible, it still missed out on being a terrific film by virtue of poor writing, the previous 2 films being kinda shitty, and filled with whiny, unlikable characters with poor motivations. The Force Awakens needed to be a reboot in more ways than one. It needed to capture that old magic feeling, which I feel it did by having so many similarities to A New Hope, but most important of all, this film series seems intended to redeem and reboot the prequels. By having such a big focus be on Kylo Ren and his struggles, acted superbly by Adam Driver, and making the fall seem more realistic than Anakin and the whiny dialogue Hayden Christiansen was given, this film makes up for that fall by showing how a real fall into the dark side should have been. We appreciate this film more because in contrast to the prequels, it stands as a better film.
And speaking of Kylo Ren, I’m actually fine with this version of “whiny”. Anakin in the prequels was a little boy and a weepy teenager trying to get in control of his hormones. Not to mention he got some of the worst dialogue know to man (“I don’t like sand…”). I never saw him as much more than that little Jake Lloyd character from the Phantom Menace. Each time I think about Christiansen and Portman having a relationship, I remember that she met him when he was like 9 and it just feels kinda creepy. Teenage Anakin and his high school hair braid didn’t help either. On the other hand, we never meet Kylo as a child, we know him as a man, and first as a menacing, helmeted user of the force that could freeze a blaster bolt in mid-air. That establishes him as someone badass, someone I can fear, someone I can take seriously. Him removing his helmet is jarring as he doesn’t look like how you’d expect him to look from the previous hour of the movie, and then you find out he’s Solo’s son who turned to the Dark Side. Suddenly his temper tantrums make sense, he’s supposed to be this good kid of Han and Leia’s, carrying on the family tradition, but he got sucked into the dark side by this menacing, giant 20 ft tall alien (don’t think for one second that Snoke’s size isn’t on purpose, they designed him to be that intimidating). Internally though, he’s still got some Solo and Skywalker in him, and that tears him apart so much he’s talking to his dead grandfather. Rey’s turning of the force mind reading back to him was exactly what the audience suspected all along, he’s a young man trying to live up to a legacy that he’s afraid he can’t. Of course he looks normal, of course he’s got this scary helmet, everything he’s doing is emulating Vader.
I think the complaints about Rey being too quickly a force-using adept is too early at this point. We’re too used to instant gratification now. Short attention spans, the need to have everything right now, its ruining long term planning. This movie is the first in a trilogy designed to cap the end of a 9 movie, 40 year franchise. There will be things here that won’t make sense! There will be things set in motion now that will be explained in 2019 when Episode 9 comes out! So what if Rey never flew a ship but could fly the Falcon? So what if she beat a force user in her first light saber battle ever? She could be the daughter of Luke or Obi-Wan! She could have had training that Luke suppressed when Kylo Ren killed the rest of his apprentices! She could be Snoke in disguise, Palpatine’s clone, Darth Revan, or a collection of midichlorians in a human skin suit! Let’s just marvel at how badass she is and not try to question something when we don’t have all the information. She’s obviously someone important or set up to be someone important, so all of this will be explained later. Just enjoy it for now!
I’m not too thrilled that the movie was a rehash of A New Hope, but like I said above, it was necessary for redeeming and fixing the prequels. It was also, I think, a production necessity by Disney. Let’s face it, as much as Lucas messed up the prequels and toyed around with the original trilogy, he was Star Wars itself. He’s one guy making all the decisions and a billionaire, so we know he won’t chase a new series just for money or to ruin it (on purpose). We might disagree with his vision, but it seems better than having a giant corporation control this franchise, right? JJ Abrams knew that, and knew that there was a lot on the line to prove he was a worthy successor and that these films won’t be picked apart by any corporatism, whether real or imagined. The Force Awakens showed he could make a Star Wars movie true to the feel of the franchise. Now that he’s got this under his belt, he has the political capital to do things much differently with the next 2 movies. Imagine if we got something totally different in this first movie. It would be endlessly attacked as too Abrams and not enough Star Wars, or OMG lens flare! Or this is too similar to Star Trek or whatever. He needed to make a Star Wars movie first before he could experiment with making it different and new and unique