The Librarian
Banned
We need a canon checklist of how, exactly, the force does and does not work.
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[SPOILERS] Star Wars: The Force Awakens (Thread #3) - That's Not How the Force Works
- Thread starter Bobby Roberts
- Start date
Ragnorok64
Member
Who had black blood?
FlashbladeGAF
Member
I think you'd take it hard if your son became Darth Vader reincarnate killing younglings.
Plus we don't know who Rey is yet. Her past could shed some major light onto what happened between everyone.
Subpar Spatula
Banned
Which makes sense on a movie / thematic level, still doesn't explain why Kylo Ren is pretty weak.
Back not black lol.
yes
Han Solo spent his life on his own or with one buddy doing super illegal shit. It's not a stretch to think he would be a shit father and Leia had military responsibilities chances are they dumped him on Luke and he felt abandoned. Knowing your parents don't have time for you is a real fucked up thing to a kid.
Giant Panda
Member
I thought I'd delve a little deeper into the parts of this movie I disliked since I've had more time to think about it. My problems include the lack of explanation of some important details, repetitive plot elements, the feeling that many plot points felt rushed, and the unnecessarily extreme incompetence of the bad guys. A lot of the points are related however.
There was no explanation in the movie itself about the relationship between the Republic and the Resistance. I couldn't stop wondering throughout the movie what the hell the difference between them was supposed to be. This made me very confused as to why the good guys were such a rag-tag group, when surely the Republic had a powerful fleet. I've since seen people say that other Star Wars media explains how the Republic is officially neutral with the First Order, so the Resistance was created to fight the FO, with some backroom support from the Republic. Why the hell they didn't think this should be explained in the movie escapes me. It would have cleared up many things. In fact they should have explored this concept further, as it would have been a more refreshing idea than the "out last hope resistance/rebels up against impossible odds" cliche that the movie ended up with.
The interactions between the Republic and Resistance could have also been used to provide more information and context to the conflict in general. This would have made it easier to care about the conflict. As the movie actually was, I cared about Rey, Finn, Poe, and BB8 as characters, but I had no attachment to the outcome of the conflict as a whole. Empathy is greatly aided by understanding. Another important part that seemed lacking in emotional impact was when Kylo Ren kills Han. Ren seemed very interesting as a villain fighting his conscious, but I still didn't know enough about him to care much about the resolution of his inner conflict. I needed to understand why he was conflicted to truly have an appreciation as to why he was killing Han. Due to this, Han's death fell flat. I realize that the movie was purposely trying to make Ren and his motivations mysterious, but I think this ultimately back-fired by reducing the emotional resonance of the film.
Speaking of emotional resonance, the movie did best in this area early on with Finn deciding to try to leave the FO and Rey just scraping by. Again, I feel like these parts could have been expanded, as they were some of the best parts of the film and more context for Finn and Rey's motivations would have been helpful. Rey's motivations especially could use expanding. I can't recall any scene where Rey displayed any concern for the outcome of the FO-Resistance conflict. Because of this, some of her actions seem a little hard to understand. With just a little more exposition or character development on Rey they would have made her actions much more believable.
Another point I think needed more time to develop was the Rey-Finn relationship. How quickly they start to care for each other is just hard to believe. It would have been more satisfying with better pacing.
A main annoyance is the un-ending stupidity of the bad guys. It is a total immersion breaker early on how Finn and Poe escape. There is almost no effort involved; the only obstacle they encounter is the tie fighter's physical link to the ship. I guess many other viewers were able to suspend their disbelief about the inconsistency of the technology displayed in Star Wars, but I couldn't. FO's security is worse than run-of-the-mill current day security. This disconnect occurred for me again when Rey manages to escape from Kylo Ren. Ren had just discovered that Rey was gifted in the force and then he leaves her with a single guard and very basic physical restraints. Come on. Throw some droid-based security or electronic security measures for goodness sake! Maybe someone as important as that even deserves a second guard! Thank god they put in the part where the guard resisted her first attempt at Force Persuasion or I would have been even more peeved.
Not long after that, the crew manages to take down the bases' very important shields by managing to capture the Storm trooper captain by luck. And she just follows their commands. It wouldn't have been that hard to change the sequencing so that Rey would have joined up with the crew at that point so she could Force Persuade the Storm trooper captain to lower the shields. Still, they have no one else on the Starkiller or whatever that could notice the shields are down and just press a button again to put them back up? And why was it so easy for the Millennium Falcon to get beneath the shields in the first place? Seems like they didn't even need to lower the shields as it stands to me!
I was also disappointed by the defeat of Kylo Ren. Getting hit by Chewie's bowcaster when any scrub jedi could have deflected a single blaster bolt felt cheap. Then almost losing to Finn really stripped any fear of the villain that was left. All I saw was a weak villain. Ren didn't need to be a master or anything, as the movie makes clear Ren needs more training, but they still needed a better sequence for how Ren would be defeated for Ren to remain a decent villain. Again, some small changes could have gone a long way. The premise of Rey starting to become more powerful, powerful enough to defeat an injured Kylo Ren was fine, but Kylo Ren was injured in the lamest way possible.
My issue with these scenes is that there doesn't appear to be any challenge for the heroes to overcome. Not any true challenge anyway. The movie presents paper-thin challenges to the heroes and then hopes the audience doesn't notice that the effort expended to get past the challenges barely deserves a participation trophy. My thought is that this issue exists because the movie was rushed. I think most of the problems of the movie come back to the plot being rushed. The audience's connection to the characters is weakened by the rushed background and development of them, and then heroes overcome obstacles very quickly because the movie is rushed to move on to the next plot point/action sequence. It turns out that overcoming real challenges in a satisfying and believable way takes time, and this movie didn't want to spare it.
The other over-arching issue was the Starkiller was repetitive and had no build up to appear threatening. The Star Wars universe has had a storied history of super weapons being major plot points, but the similarity and poor execution of the Starkiller was incredibly disappointing. It destroys a couple of planets that none of the characters had any connection to and that no one cares about. The audience knows that the Republic was supposed to be on those planets or something, but due to lack of any explanation or presence of the Republic in the movie, it's hard to give any fucks if the Republic loses some random planets. My biggest issue with the Starkiller is that it is defeated in the exact same way as the Death Star. I would have preffered the Starkiller not exist at all, but at the very least they needed a more inventive way of defeating the damn thing.
My last critique is that the movie should have ended with Rey setting out to find Luke, not actually finding him.
To conclude, I would like to say that I don't think this was a bad movie, just that there were a good number of flaws and that I didn't find it great. A number of the characters had potential to be great, but the overall execution of movie ensured that they didn't live up to their potential.
There was no explanation in the movie itself about the relationship between the Republic and the Resistance. I couldn't stop wondering throughout the movie what the hell the difference between them was supposed to be. This made me very confused as to why the good guys were such a rag-tag group, when surely the Republic had a powerful fleet. I've since seen people say that other Star Wars media explains how the Republic is officially neutral with the First Order, so the Resistance was created to fight the FO, with some backroom support from the Republic. Why the hell they didn't think this should be explained in the movie escapes me. It would have cleared up many things. In fact they should have explored this concept further, as it would have been a more refreshing idea than the "out last hope resistance/rebels up against impossible odds" cliche that the movie ended up with.
The interactions between the Republic and Resistance could have also been used to provide more information and context to the conflict in general. This would have made it easier to care about the conflict. As the movie actually was, I cared about Rey, Finn, Poe, and BB8 as characters, but I had no attachment to the outcome of the conflict as a whole. Empathy is greatly aided by understanding. Another important part that seemed lacking in emotional impact was when Kylo Ren kills Han. Ren seemed very interesting as a villain fighting his conscious, but I still didn't know enough about him to care much about the resolution of his inner conflict. I needed to understand why he was conflicted to truly have an appreciation as to why he was killing Han. Due to this, Han's death fell flat. I realize that the movie was purposely trying to make Ren and his motivations mysterious, but I think this ultimately back-fired by reducing the emotional resonance of the film.
Speaking of emotional resonance, the movie did best in this area early on with Finn deciding to try to leave the FO and Rey just scraping by. Again, I feel like these parts could have been expanded, as they were some of the best parts of the film and more context for Finn and Rey's motivations would have been helpful. Rey's motivations especially could use expanding. I can't recall any scene where Rey displayed any concern for the outcome of the FO-Resistance conflict. Because of this, some of her actions seem a little hard to understand. With just a little more exposition or character development on Rey they would have made her actions much more believable.
Another point I think needed more time to develop was the Rey-Finn relationship. How quickly they start to care for each other is just hard to believe. It would have been more satisfying with better pacing.
A main annoyance is the un-ending stupidity of the bad guys. It is a total immersion breaker early on how Finn and Poe escape. There is almost no effort involved; the only obstacle they encounter is the tie fighter's physical link to the ship. I guess many other viewers were able to suspend their disbelief about the inconsistency of the technology displayed in Star Wars, but I couldn't. FO's security is worse than run-of-the-mill current day security. This disconnect occurred for me again when Rey manages to escape from Kylo Ren. Ren had just discovered that Rey was gifted in the force and then he leaves her with a single guard and very basic physical restraints. Come on. Throw some droid-based security or electronic security measures for goodness sake! Maybe someone as important as that even deserves a second guard! Thank god they put in the part where the guard resisted her first attempt at Force Persuasion or I would have been even more peeved.
Not long after that, the crew manages to take down the bases' very important shields by managing to capture the Storm trooper captain by luck. And she just follows their commands. It wouldn't have been that hard to change the sequencing so that Rey would have joined up with the crew at that point so she could Force Persuade the Storm trooper captain to lower the shields. Still, they have no one else on the Starkiller or whatever that could notice the shields are down and just press a button again to put them back up? And why was it so easy for the Millennium Falcon to get beneath the shields in the first place? Seems like they didn't even need to lower the shields as it stands to me!
I was also disappointed by the defeat of Kylo Ren. Getting hit by Chewie's bowcaster when any scrub jedi could have deflected a single blaster bolt felt cheap. Then almost losing to Finn really stripped any fear of the villain that was left. All I saw was a weak villain. Ren didn't need to be a master or anything, as the movie makes clear Ren needs more training, but they still needed a better sequence for how Ren would be defeated for Ren to remain a decent villain. Again, some small changes could have gone a long way. The premise of Rey starting to become more powerful, powerful enough to defeat an injured Kylo Ren was fine, but Kylo Ren was injured in the lamest way possible.
My issue with these scenes is that there doesn't appear to be any challenge for the heroes to overcome. Not any true challenge anyway. The movie presents paper-thin challenges to the heroes and then hopes the audience doesn't notice that the effort expended to get past the challenges barely deserves a participation trophy. My thought is that this issue exists because the movie was rushed. I think most of the problems of the movie come back to the plot being rushed. The audience's connection to the characters is weakened by the rushed background and development of them, and then heroes overcome obstacles very quickly because the movie is rushed to move on to the next plot point/action sequence. It turns out that overcoming real challenges in a satisfying and believable way takes time, and this movie didn't want to spare it.
The other over-arching issue was the Starkiller was repetitive and had no build up to appear threatening. The Star Wars universe has had a storied history of super weapons being major plot points, but the similarity and poor execution of the Starkiller was incredibly disappointing. It destroys a couple of planets that none of the characters had any connection to and that no one cares about. The audience knows that the Republic was supposed to be on those planets or something, but due to lack of any explanation or presence of the Republic in the movie, it's hard to give any fucks if the Republic loses some random planets. My biggest issue with the Starkiller is that it is defeated in the exact same way as the Death Star. I would have preffered the Starkiller not exist at all, but at the very least they needed a more inventive way of defeating the damn thing.
My last critique is that the movie should have ended with Rey setting out to find Luke, not actually finding him.
To conclude, I would like to say that I don't think this was a bad movie, just that there were a good number of flaws and that I didn't find it great. A number of the characters had potential to be great, but the overall execution of movie ensured that they didn't live up to their potential.
Badly wounded and out-Forced.
BluePigGanon
Member
Well, if you assume Kylo is a f-ing mess - which he is - it works. He has no clarity of purpose like Rey. He's feeling competing pulls, confusion, etc.
Starsailor
Banned
seems like Kylo destroy Han/Leia couple
Subpar Spatula
Banned
He gets slashed by Finn who gets dummied by another Stormtrooper. Seems like Kylo, based on being shot, at full health is as skilled with the saber as a storm trooper. This is why I find TFA to be a waste because it doesn't show power sith or jedi but characters that don't seem too strong. WTB some The Old Republic level of power.
UnemployedVillain
Member
Just seems like he sucks at saber combat and sucks at the force when it matters 
ohblahitsme
Member
Is this basically the star wars OT or is there a different one?
Ragnorok64
Member
Whoops!
Ren seems to rely on his force abilities and is kinda mediocre with his sword. He should try a blaster or a net caster.
BluePigGanon
Member
My impression is Kylo is only a teaspoon more competent than anyone else. Big fish in a little pond. Snoke basically saying "oops, guess I should actually teach this kid something" backs that up.
That last duel, I think we're watching someone who has no idea what she's doing fighting someone who kinda knows what he's doing.
That last duel, I think we're watching someone who has no idea what she's doing fighting someone who kinda knows what he's doing.
ohblahitsme
Member
They do have two novels and a comic series in between VI and VII, but I haven't read them yet. Source: http://io9.gizmodo.com/every-single-part-of-the-new-star-wars-canon-in-chrono-1727205928
Starsailor
Banned
Just seems like he sucks at saber combat and sucks at the force when it matters
you know there is a whole gap between "suck" and "great" right? A middle ground...no?
Kitschkraft
Member
She lights up when Finn tells her he's resistance. She's clearly on their side.
Also, she wants to help BB-8.
Also, Stormtroopers start shooting at her and Finn. He tells her they're "marked".
And the FO is evil.
Same way Luke hates the empire and we all just had to accept it, you just have to accept that she's against the FO.
Best part of the film honestly. (And hopefully set-up for the sequels)
He's shown during the film more like a power mind Force user than anything else. Most of the time he uses the lightsaber only to destroy the surroundings.
Still, even badly wounded he overpowers Finn when he decides it's enough playing and he overpowers Rey until he pauses to talk to her.
The Librarian
Banned
That's because Kylo was screwing around with him in a similar manner Vader was to Luke. As soon as Finn lands a hit, Kylo gets serious and takes him down easily.
He seems really mediocre though. Even with his wounds if he was properly trained he shouldn't be making almost wild swings like he was at points.
DiipuSurotu
Banned
Kylo was playing with his food. Same reason Vader got slashed by Luke in The Empire Strikes Back.
Wasn't he a hologram and that's why it looked like "cheap CGI"?
Kitschkraft
Member
Just seems like he sucks at saber combat and sucks at the force when it matters
http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Bowcaster
He had a bolt in his stomach.
And that's just one of the explanations.
But if you don't buy into any of the magical/emotional reasons, the bolt in his stomach should suffice really.
Ragnorok64
Member
So after doing some google image searching I am reminded that I had totally removed Lord Nyax from my memory.
According to the movies, Han Solo is a terrible smuggler.
Someone needs to make a Bowcaster/Vince as Han Solo gif, cause Han's reaction to chewbacca's gun (which he should have seen before!) is hilarious
BluePigGanon
Member
UnemployedVillain
Member
I'm well aware, but I think of it this way. Rey has much higher force potential than he does, and her untrained fighting skills were enough to best his injured and, presumably somewhat trained, fighting. So assuming he gets in more control of his emotions, and she actually learns about the force and fighting that will only put her further ahead of him.
The awkward tryst of Lord Voldemort and an Ork from the Hobbit.
I actually like the way this movie depicts force users. They are powerful but not invincible. Let's not forget it was the prequels that introduced God like agility and speed to the point that most action had zero tension.
I don't consider Kylo taking a few hits bad writing. Vader got tagged and so did Luke.
I don't consider Kylo taking a few hits bad writing. Vader got tagged and so did Luke.
She is shown at the beginning of the movie taking out three attackers using her staff.
friskykillface
Banned
Lol third OT
The ride never stops
Still love that line in the thread title solo the god
The ride never stops
Still love that line in the thread title
solo the godYou barely paid attention to the movie, man.
She fought off three randos trying to grab her robot not actually fight and she had a weapon, that's not impressive.
FlashbladeGAF
Member
Kyles motivation was to be Darth Vader and the power that the dark side brings...
...you see Kylo's power after he kills the old man in the beginning. This man knew Kylo when he was Ben. And having killed him brought him that much closer to becoming a Sith (which we presumed he already was at this point)
Him killing his father at the end didnt have the same effect. it had the opposite effect. And this time he stops the blast with his stomach.
Rey only cared about helping her first friend ever. BB-8.
Once she did that, she was going to return to Jakku.
But she got captured.
They care because they are the first REAL people they really become friends with. Other than the boyfriend line, its feelings for her were genuine. But much like Poe, their relationship developed thru the action. When someone saves your life, you are instantly bonded with them, because you can trust them with your life, and in that world im sure they havent run into many people they can say that about, much less call a friend.
Finn (who is also a very skilled fighter) sure did seemed impressed by it.
You think they showed that scene for shits and giggles? It was clearly there so the audience knew she was a skilled fighter and could handle her own in a fight.
I would argue for iffy writing on that front. The bowcaster has inconsistent effects throughout the movie.
FlashbladeGAF
Member
He was torturing Fin. When Fin injured him, he literally ended the fight in Fin in a millisecond.
Fin was the traitor who helped free the Resistance pilot who held the key to finding his old master, allowed the droid to end up in the hands of Han Solo as well as involving some mysterious girl who had a Force Awakening, and also gave information on how to destroy their base.
Because of the events that Fin started, Kylo now has to add living with the death of his Father who didn't give him the expected power bust he was expecting from going over to the Dark side.
He wanted to make that traitor suffer and he probably would have done it longer if he didn't underestimate a lowly stormtrooper.
ViewtifulJC
Banned
I know people are pretty lukewarm on Williams score, but again Finn's Confession is seriously good.
BluePigGanon
Member
The main inconsistency is Chewie's aim. But, he saw his BFF get killed so, I'll allow it.
Presumably Kylo's tunic is some sort of hi-tech
plot
FlashbladeGAF
Member
It may not be impressive to you, but remember she's been on Jakuu ON HER OWN since she was 4 or 5.
The fact that she is still alive is impressive enough. The fact that she can fight should be obvious, considering how wild west everything is in this universe.
I would be fine with the scene if if read more like they were trying to attack her and not just get her out of the way. I get the intention of the scene I just think it could be better.
Same with the X-Wing blaster cannons really: They hit Stormtroopers precisely in the chest in the scene where Finn witnesses Poe being approx. 10times better than any pilot ever and then later Poe causes massive explosions with every shot on Starkiller base.
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