If I were Luke, I’d insist on doing them in person.
I finally saw it. Don’t have the energy to read through an 11 page thread, so I’ll just say it.
It sucked balls
Remember the prequels? The ones fan boys love to hate…usually while watching them for the 371st time. Its as bad as fanboys claimed the prequels were. Except no ones going to watch this over and over again.
I mean its the same movie as the first. Some abandoned kid escapes a desert planet. On the Millenium Falcon. A planet destroying superweapon. Destroyed by a daring sortie. With a masked villan, Who fell to the darkside.
There was not one twist I did not see coming 35 minutes before. Not one. Ren was Solo jr? Yup. Instead of Stormtroopers; it would be Han and Chewie? Isaac’s character was still alive? We saw him leading an X Wing attack in the trailer.
The prequels at least tried to make an original story. This did not even make a cursory effort. Just a handjob to overaged fanboys. I mean a girl who has never started a lightsabre in her life beats a Sith on her first try? Anakin lost to Count Dooku, despite being vastly more powerful and having actual training.
I almost wished they had made Carrie Fisher wear that slavegirl bikini again; would have at least been unexpected.
I am not sure what to say to posts like yours AK84. To me the thing that makes or breaks Star Wars is whether it sells the Hero’s Journey.
This movie is a solid retelling of the start of a Hero’s Journey, updated and diverse. The fact that it is a re-telling of Ep IV was expected / wasn’t surprising because of the function Star Wars serves in our culture. Fanboy JJ got that, with Kasdan piling on.
My question is what is the Big Beat Down that is going to be featured in Episode 8? With ESB, we had frozen Han, Rebels depleted, Luke lost in his jedi/spiritual quest, etc.
I suspect Kylo Baby (man did he look 70’s John Travolta-licious with his feathered hair or what? I though he was a great “son of Han” with their matching smushed noses, etc.) will emerge Triumphantly Evil!™ at the end of Ep 8, with Rey and Finn (and I supposed Poe) separated and squashed, and BB-8 in pieces.
Look if you want to relive the 1970’s Star Wars, remake it. Or better yet, simply rerelease it in theatre.
This did not have any good acting (Ford was interesting, Boyega(sp) was trying to play it well, and Isaacs was as misused as Samuel Jackson in the prequels, but otherwise, it was mediocre.
Every movie beforehand has introduced something new and fresh. There was nothing here which was not used before. Jedi Master’s apprentice turns on him? Check. Goes hiding on deserted world? Check (plus, won’t Jedi robes be a bit underdressed for Space Scotland)? Family link, with the Skywalkers? Check. Droids? Check. Evil empire? Check. Massive planet size destroying weapon? Check. Whiny teenager/twenty something? Check. A commando mission and fighter attack. check?
We get no,information about any of the protagonists and why we should care about them at all. Riley is just a street urchin and we never see why she is left on the planet Sahara. Kylo turned to the dark side because…ummm…has too much Vader in him? You know who has more Vafer in him/her? Luke and Leia that’s who. I mean if they had made it so that Vader’s ghost was possessing him, it would have been more interesting.
The First Order are cartoonishly evil. Just in case you missed the memo, here’s a shot of Nazi’s in space Nuremberg. In the other movies, the Imperials were brave, professionals, like Needa and
Piett.
And we lack the gravitas of Cushing and Guiness and the scenery chewing brilliance of Ian MacDiarmid.
At the screening I went to, I ended up sitting right in front of Kate Capshaw and Ke Huy Quan.
When Han Solo walked out onto that narrow bridge to face Kylo Ren, Kate Capshaw audibly gasped, “Is he nuts!?” to which Ke Huy Quan replied, “He no nuts, he crazy!”
This is because opening night isn’t opening night anymore.
I started a thread quite some time ago that didn’t seem to interest anyone (it got zero responses). I had felt like the Thursday night release had been cheapened over the years.
I don’t know if The Phantom Menace was the first movie to get a midnight release, but it certainly was not a common occurrence at the time. The midnight release for The Phantom Menace was something really special. For midnight, of course, we mean 12:00am Friday technically but actually being the close of the business day for Thursday. So, the official Friday release date was honored technically but it was a late night Thursday experience for the audience.
In the early years after The Phantom Menace, this “Thursday Midnight” release was still reserved only for the biggest most anticipated releases. After about a decade, however, it seemed like everything was getting a midnight Thursday showing (I started that original Thread after going to a 2012 midnight Thursday release of Cabin in the Woods and noticed that they also had midnight screenings for the to-be-released-Friday The Three Stooges!!!)
Then after another couple years, these Thursday screenings for films that still listed an official release date for Friday weren’t even waiting until midnight anymore. They had 10:00pm screenings and then 7:00pm screenings! I remember being excited about getting midnight Thursday tickets for something, probably one of the Marvel films, and then realizing that there were actually 10:00pm and 7:00pm screenings and I wondered, why bother keeping the theater staff there until after 2:00am when the first waves of the major fanbase were gone by midnight- my midnight screening was only about a third full and not particularly high energy.
So, Jophiel and SlackerInc, if you went on Friday for “opening night” screenings then you weren’t really there for opening night. All the super excitable fans had seen it the night before (I saw it at 10:35pm Thursday). Probably a significant number of the people in your audiences were already on their second viewing.
Nitpick: it was Space Ireland.
The Space North Atlantic Current brings warm water from the Space Bahamas.
I’ve see it twice now. The first time I saw it in Imax 3D and since I don’t like 3D I went back to see it in standard.
Overall I liked the movie and I’d give it 8/10 a solid B. What kills it for me is the ending, the Skywalker island feels tacked on so that can say they brought the original cast back for this movie.
I found it interesting the second time through that several seens that felt interminable on my first viewing seemed much sborterthe second time. The frozen blaster bolt seemed to hang in the air forever to the point my wife didn’t notice that it eventually unfroze. Han on the cat walk seemed longer and built more tension. I swore that they spent 10 minutes circling Luke and Rey to end the movie so I counted this time and it was only 30 seconds. In general the movie seemed sborter and faster paced the second time.
The copying of plot points got a little old but since they seemed to steal from every movie I got the feeling that they were done and could start moving forward. The one criticism that I think is unfair is how the first order was stupid in how they built starkiller. The emperor allowing the raiding party to be on the same planet as their shield was dumb, not covering the exhaust hatch was dumb (but at least understandable) but building a base so that there had to be a team inside to blow it up while there were ships outside is pretty damn good defenses. Without Han and chewie deciding to do extra the base would have been completely safe. Basically the flaw was the fractional refresh rate in their planet shield so that a ship going lightspeed could make it through to me at least that feels very different.
The ending was what I hated for two reasons first it made the movie feel like a part one and not a complete movie in its own right. This is going to hurt rewatchability since unless you have time to watch part II you won’t reach a satisfying conclusion (and let’s be honest you’ll probably need to watch episode 9 too). Second it makes the story devalued. If this movie was the story of finding Luke as the ending implies then it should have skipped the whole starkiller base sidetrack and made it a race down the trail on the map. If this movie was about getting the map piece to the resistance who were then prevented from acting on it by the base then the story could have ended with the celebration back at the base which is emotionally how the movie was structured.
I’m excited for episode 8 now and Force Awakens will end up in my movie collection unlike the prequels.
The films are a bit unclear on that. Qui Gon says that Tattooine is not the republic. However, later at dinner Padme (who would have known) is genuinely surprised that Republics slavery laws don’t apply. In episode II, Watto, when he meets Anakin, is hopeful that Anakin can use his law enforcement powers to catch some people who owe him money.
In EpIV, the Empire is obviously the power in Tattooine.
This movie was about finding Luke the same way Pulp Fiction was about finding Marsellus Wallace’s briefcase.
“Find Luke!” was just the call to put the action of the story into play. The story is about Rey finding herself, coming-of-Jedi.
I saw it Thursday night. But it was a 10:30pm showing so I can believe that the True Fans didn’t wait until nearly midnight to break out the Yoda ears.
We had tickets because one of my wife’s friends bought opening day tickets independently of her husband (guess they’re fans, heh) and so gave us the extra later showing pair and went to the earlier show.
I actually give them credit for holding back on Luke to make it feel like a need for a continuation into Episode VIII. Must have been hard for JJ Abrams to only direct one Star Wars movie and decide not to use Luke even though they had money and access to Mark Hamill.
You’ve also more or less described most of Harry Potter. The “unexpected hero who came up from nothing to save the world/universe” story has been told over and over, because it works.
I didn’t see that coming.
the problem with the prequels is that they had no story to tell. we already knew who Anakin Skywalker was, and who he was to be eventually. That’s partly why the prequels were so boring. they were more or less just killing time in between scenes where Anakin takes another step towards becoming Vader. How much time did The Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones waste on people talking about trade disputes and Senate bickering. And that’s why I liked The Force Awakens. it is an entertaining film. the prequels were not, save for the last third of Revenge of the Sith.
I get involved in so few long threads. Is there not still a sort of ‘netiquette’ where people who want their views to get a hearing do not show contempt for other people’s views by refusing to read the posts that came before them?
AK84 most of what you are complaining about has been mentioned and responded to already.
For what it’s worth, I saw in an official SW book that Kylo Ren is not a sith.
I don’t think Watto says anything about “law enforcement powers”; he might just be thinking hey, now that you can parry blaster shots with your laser sword and choke people with your mind, maybe you could rough up some people for me, huh?
I haven’t gone through the thread as yet, so possibly these two minor issues have already been remarked upon:
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So Ren was wounded right after he killed Han Solo and yet still manged to get ahead of Fin and Rey so he could pop up in the forest and surprise them. Well, that’s pretty standard horror-movie stuff, so let that one go.
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The lightsaber Rey finds in the basement supposedly had belonged to Luke and his father, but as I recall, that saber was lost (along with Luke’s right hand) when Luke and Vader dueled at Bespin. By the next movie, Luke had made his own saber, a fact commented on when he meets Vader again: “You built your own lightsaber.” / “Yes, I no longer use yours.”
I hate it so much…I’m going to keep talking about it!
MoveOn.org man.
So what are we to make of the fact that Luke’s lines from the trailer never made it into the movie: “The force is strong in my family. My father has it, I have it, my sister has it. You have that power too.”
Is that something Luke says to Rey that got cut? Perhaps and ending shot of the movie that they decided would work better as the opening shot of part 8?
Saw it, loved it, might go again. The young leads were better actors than the young leads in the original trilogy, IMO.
I thought it was obvious that while Kylo was reading Rey, she also read him, and that’s where she picked up the ability to do the JMT so quickly.
What makes you say that? By which I mean - on what do you base your assessment of the relative power of Anakin vs Rey?
To me, the final scene worked fine without dialogue. Had Hamill said anything, I think it would have ruined it, and it was the first emotional moment I felt in the movie after 2.5 hours of being fairly blasé about it.