Came back last night from this. Hate to be so hyperbolic to say this movie felt very close to Indy 4 compared to Indy 1-3.
It has a promising and intriguing start and first act but once the movie gets going, it just falls apart. It feels too fast for its own good, compresses time too much and features a climax it just hasn't build towards enough nor has it earned the character drama of Kylo and Han.
There is so much wrong with how JJ compresses time, the complete vagueness of vast parts of the background and plot, world building logic flaws and also mistakes in character bits which you would think he could nail.
1. COMPRESSION OF TIME AND CONVENIENCE OF COINCIDENCES
After a promising start where Max Von Sydow is wasted we have Rey and Finn steal the Falcon and head out into space.
(Feels weird how the movie cycles around Jakku so much, the First Order goes down to Jakku, goes back up, then Finn goes back down, then they go back up. Then Rey wants to go back down.)
Having escaped what seemed like 5 minutes ago, suddenly everyone in the whole galaxy got a mail from the First Order to search for BB-8. Both arriving pirate parties know what is going on and we get a weird time wasting action scene with tentacle monsters in non-descript freighter corridors noone gives anything about.
(There probably was more to those Raid guys's pirate party scenes and JJ decided to cut it as the movie would have derailed even more at this point.)
Then we head to Takodana which feels like a really unmotivated stop for Han. Goggle lady Maz gives some exposition while at the same time Snoke is discussing BB-8 (!) with his underlings and how they now need to head to Takodana and kill everyone.
Would Palpatine have discussed ridiculous things like R2D2? Snoke at this point feels more like a cheap reacting Voldemort instead of a Machiavelli scheming Palpatine.
Snoke is basically
"Ok now we need to accelerate our plans and crush the Republic - fires shots at the Republic, crushes the Republic"
"Ok now we need to accelerate our plans and crush the Resistance - proceeds to fire on the Resistance base"
Holy shit has this guy a badly planned out master scheme. Why didn't he do it before? (and how bad is he at training his wannabe Vader?! Didn't he have like 10 years to train the guy?)
Anyway so after 30 minutes on Takodana we get another very small scale pewpew assault of a "division" of the First Order troops which feels more like a bunch of cosplayers with paintball guns. (who decided to paint the Stormtrooper rifles like white plastic?)
And then suddenly as if everything in the fucking galaxy is right next door even Leia and Resistance guys show up and manage to somehow force the "division" of First Order troops to retreat.
So how does this work exactly? It feels like Finn and Rey escaped the planet an hour ago, they have a quick tentacle monster encounter and head to Takodana and then suddenly the First Order and the Resistance both manage to be there super fast after spies in the Mos Eis..er pirate castle cantina inform them?
I mean Leia was there like 30 minutes later to save the day. How small is this universe?! In the OT the hyperspace travel times were kept vague at least or in the case of ANH they actually travelled a long time through the hyperspace tunnel before arriving at Alderaan.
With every scene where characters arrive from a distant corner of the galaxy 10 minutes after being called it makes the world building look so broken.
Why are there poor people on desert worlds making a living on scraps if all they would have to do is hop to the next lush green watery world full of culture and all it would take is 10 minutes of travel time on a cheap rusty freighter?
2. NOSTALGIA AWAKENS
No need to list them all here, but the unbelievable number of callbacks and references was just grating.
The Falcon run through the pipes and tunnels inside the Imperial vessel, the "Don't get cocky kid" moment of shooting down Ties in the Falcon (btw why do Finn and Poe Dameron not need TIe pilot breahting apparatus?!), the Falcon being tractor beamed into the bigger vessel, hiding underneath the Falcon floor panels, seeing the door before the "stormtroopers" break in, the hydrospanner moment, the Kesselrun quote, it was just way too much. From the moment they found the Falcon the movie was in full on self-reference mode. This was borderline Terminator Genisys territory at times.
What saved it once in a while is the witty character banter and BB-8's cuteness but the whole thing felt like kids playing with their parents old history and retreading their paths, down to the last fucking rhyming trash compactor joke to help sequel bait Phasma and that Death Star announcer voice running the remix tape on Starkiller base of "We think they have split up".
3. CHARACTER MOMENTS & CAST
The movie does have some functioning nice character bits with Finn and Rey and also Han feels like Han at times, but it also has some real head scratchers.
Finn goes from "I can't kill" to "Wohoo lemme blast my ex-comrades left and right" real fast.
He also seems like nothing could separate him from Rey until he needs to disappear for her vision, so he goes into "I need to go to the Outer Rim" mode for 5 minutes and then comes back more motivated than ever to not get seperated from her again.
Another weird one was Leia and Chewie. So Chewie's partner of 40 years JUST died, they come home. There is Han's wife, the princess and he just walks past her, without even throwing a look and ends up as a background character in a group scene.
Leia meanwhile comes up to the girl she met 5 minutes ago and gives her a deep hug. Huh? I know Leia called Chewie "a walking carpet" in ANH but quickly bonded with the fellow and now not even any type of scene after Han is dead? This felt super weak.
While the new primary cast had some really good moments, the bad guy casting seems like they didn't think ahead too much.
Everyone survived. Hux, Phasma, Kylo and Snoke and none of them even remotely feels as menacing and "real" as Tarkin, Vader or Palpatine. How they will turn this bunch of wannabes into proper EPVIII villains has to be seen.
3.A) STARKILLER BASE
Isn't a planet sized, atmosphere-possessing forested snow world as the new Death star being a bit nonsensical when it comes to travel? Does the whole planet including the trees jump into Hyperspace?! How does it get to other star systems?
This thing singlehandledly manages to make the Star Wars universe become smaller again, as it seems to be able to destroy a bunch of distant worlds in real-time with people on planets in other systems being able to watch the event.
You can feel the writers trying to be clever with this thing. "Hmm how about it literally swallows the light, sucks it up and then it turns dark?! Let's do it!" Everything surrounding that thing not only bent and fundamentally broke the laws of physics (which is totally fine if it would keep in line with the world building) but it also felt like something you would expect in a LordofTheRings movie and not in StarWars. It felt too mythical, too fantastical to make sense. And it all is commandeered by a 30something year old wannabe General trading blows with another 30something wannabe Vader. How did this thing come into existence? Where did the funding come from? When ANH gave clues that the Death Star is this bueraucratic instrument of terror, with the senate possibly giving financial support, the First Order is a cult of freaks with 15x the resources of the Empire? The movie showed the audience nothing for them to "earn" that superweapon.
3.B) MOVIEKILLER BASE
Where is it in space? You don't get a feeling for why this thing is a danger. Where is it in relation to the warmed up Yavin IV Reb..er Resistance base, where is it in relation to the unanonymous "New" Republic's core worlds? In ANH Lucas did the whole slow approach around the gas giant Yavin and the audience could see on a clean infrographic how long until the Death Star would be in a direct fire line. This builds suspense and a sense of urgency.
In TFA starkiller base is SOMEWHERE and we have to take the director's word for it being a now or never situation. And it also seemingly has some weird magic beams that can arc around stuff instead of having the need for a direct fireline (and the beam seemlingly is like 1000x times faster than the speed of light)
Then onto the battle plan: In ANH Lucas included Death Star plans as its weakness, something we normal audience can relate to. Of course! If the rebels get the blueprints, they will find a weakness to exploit.
In ROTJ we had the exposed Death Star II under construction, dependent on a shield coming from the moon below. Simple stuff that even Reagan could grasp and give the audience a plausible justification of why a bunch of rag tag rebels were capable of destroying a Death Star 2 times.
Now in TFA they have Death Star III aka Starkiller base. This thing is like 15x times bigger, has no weaknesses, nothing set up in the plot in act1 or act2 to give any indication of how to defeat it.
So we get a cookiecutter rebel pilot briefing scene around the same Yavin IV looking big battle plan room. Truelly democratic the resistance has a brainstorming meeting with everyone participating.
There is Ackbar, the weird looking other guy from ROTJ, another general, a fat pilot, Leia, Han, C3P0 and Finn enthusiastically chiming in with ideas and after some hard 2 minutes of thinking they know how to defeat it!
"Doesn't this thing have a compressor, or resistor, or shield generator or other Stark Trek techno bubble thing?!"
Sure it does! Easy we assemble 8 X-Wings and destroy the compressor, or resistor or generator or whatever it is.
So much wrong with this whole thing.
First: The First Order didn't think of ships bypassing their shield by coming out of Hyperspace directly above the planet? Super weak excuse. Coming out of hyperspace seems to be fucking common in the Star Wars universe.
Second: The Resistance has what feels like 8 X-Wings to finish off the ultimate doomsday weapon? Even the absolutely desperate rebels in ANH had more ships and knew that Y-Wings and B-Wings are used for bombing runs.
4. STAYING VAGUE
TFA gave off this feel that the writers were not knowing where this thing is headed, the Disney shareholder promises deadline loomed and they needed to come up with something that works to keep people interested in the brand for years to come.
So we get this super vague plot where the Republic is non existent, the First Order motivations stay non existent, where Rey's past feels like not even the writers know what is in store for her
(and even admitted as much in an Interview where they stated that it is now in Rian Johnson's ballpark).
This flashback feels like it was the maximum they dared in order not to write themselves into a corner. So we get a movie that guarantees people will go see the 2nd one to see how the mystery of vague stuff gets resolved and then even if EpVIII will be lackluster they will also jump into EPIX.
It feels a bit like Pirates of the Caribbean I-IV but without a coherent self contained first movie.
CONCUSION
I could continue with smaller things like the music being really weak, the Falcon bouncing like a physics defieing toy against scenery in every other scene or how the set design was just a rehash of Tatooine, Bespin walkways and Death Star corridors but this is already a wall of text. Just needed to write my thoughts down in order this movie somehow keeps up the hype and I get sucked into believing it was somehow on
par with the OT later on. It wasn't. Like at all. It had a nice primary cast, the chemistry was there, the OT banter was there, but holy shit at the gaping holes in the plot and world building, the obvious JJ disregard for basic physics and logic, the mystery box of vagueness and reference overload.
Really hope Rian Johnson can make something out of "Missing in Action" Wizard Luke and that whole "who murdered the younglings at the academy?" flashback mystery box setup.
