Jelly Rajah
Banned
Let's face it.
TFA is a big turd that's spray painted gold.
TFA is a big turd that's spray painted gold.
Star Wars VII doesn't respect the original trilogy (spoilers)
- Thread starter PerezDeCorcho
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Nope!
PerezDeCorcho
Member
Except the original Star Wars trilogy bothers to develop it's characters beforehand.
What you're saying is that it would be OK to skip the entire Mos Eisley sequence from Episode IV and cut straight to the action in the Falcon during their escape.
In the same post, you covered the things that you know about Rey. Whether Finn knows them now or not is not as important as whether the audience knows them. We know they're both desperate for different reasons. Finn is looking for something to hold on to, Rey is fighting against her need for the same.
As far as character-defining choices, we see:
- Finn being traumatized and choosing to defect / "do the right thing"
- Finn almost stepping in to help Rey in Jakku (and then needing her help)
- Rey choosing to run from her destiny
- Finn's only priority being the retrieval of Rey on Starkiller
- Finn stepping up to fight even when insanely outmatched against Kylo
- Rey letting the force and her instincts in
Amongst others. The movie could have slowed down a bit and would have been fine (but you're in risky territory with a 2.5 hour long family movie), but there was plenty to process and absorb as a viewer. They just don't stop to spell it all out that much.
Despite what many would say, this movie isn't Episode IV. It's structured differently and there's plenty of time to get to know Rey and Finn at the start before they're clashed together.
There is no time to get to know Finn. He's literally only there to help Poe escape. Someone said this guy is the next bond too lol.
PerezDeCorcho
Member
You're reaching, there.
And I'm not suggesting that everything should be done like Episode IV. But if you ARE going to emulate Episode IV, as this movie so clearly tries to, at least emulate the GOOD things regarding that film. In the narrative sense, I mean.
You're trying to defend lazy screenwriting.
FunkyDealer
Banned
I didn't really concider these things too much while watching the film. With the exception being the weird "precious" lightsaber.
My main gripe was that the film was too short and didn't have enough build-up to make you care about just about anything.
My main gripe was that the film was too short and didn't have enough build-up to make you care about just about anything.
PerezDeCorcho
Member
Lol
Sorry, but I don't 'buy' Finn yelling out Rey's name during her abduction or Rey softly kissing an unconscious Finn while muttering "Thank you, my friend."
That breaks immersion to someone like me. That takes me out of the film because it is not earned.
Grimm Fandango
Member
Saw it yesterday. Enjoyed most of it.
Didn't care for the killing of Han. Seemed like an easy way to get Ford off the payroll.
And did the movie explain Kylo's reasoning for joining the dark side aside from "reasons"? I didn't really buy why he was bad.
Didn't care for the killing of Han. Seemed like an easy way to get Ford off the payroll.
And did the movie explain Kylo's reasoning for joining the dark side aside from "reasons"? I didn't really buy why he was bad.
BocoDragon
or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Realize This Assgrab is Delicious
Both.
TFA has a hint of Into Darkness/Wrath of Kahn syndrome. It is to a much smaller degree, and TFA is the much better film, but there are real similarities.
It deliberately imitates the structure and story elements of a classic film. This is enough to raise the ire of certain fans on its own. But it may be forgiveable if it were an accurate revival of what made the original great. The far greater sin is that the retread pulls off many of the moments with far less impact than the original.
That Starkiller attack run is a retread of the Death Star attack run. We all know that. But the Death Star attack run was this tightly edited work of poetry, cross-cutting between our heroes and the enemy attacks, timed perfectly with Williams score, building up to a moment of climax when Luke makes the final shot destroying the Death Star before it can destroy Yavin.
By contrast, the Starkiller attack run was a typically 2010s miasma of meaningless CGI shots that don't ground us anywhere in the action. It doesn't care what the heroes inside the X-wings are doing or thinking. It doesn't care how the enemy is reacting to the attack. It doesn't care about the status of the Williams score and how it is building to a heroic moment. The Starkiller base exploding just kind of happens eventually.
I guess I have to conclude there are things JJ doesn't really understand about Star Wars, and I mean cinematically. I can't believe that someone would consciously recreate story moments from the original movie and at the same time fail to recreate what made them special on a level of direction and editing. Much has been said about how JJ is a wonderful mimic of classic directors like Spielberg and Lucas... I think that's very wrong. I think there are some basic stylistic facts about these classic directorial styles that many of us see plain as day... And JJ doesn't. He is a competent workman who isn't ashamed to step into the shoes of giants, but he is no master reverse-engineer of these classic films.
BouncyFrag
Member
What made the new movie flat for me was having had so many different SW experiences through the moives,books, games, etc, all we got was a reheash of ANH. I wanted something NEW.
You don't seem to buy the opinion of anybody that disagrees with you, which makes discussion an exercise in tedium. There was plenty done to flesh out the characters, much of which you cited (but somehow doesn't count because it was shown to the audience instead of said character-to-character). You don't have to like it, but it's there.
I'm defending the stuff I think the film excels at and that is definitely the characters. Finn and Rey have more in common then one would think, which is why she doesn't really give a shit that he lies, but does give a shit that he leaves. Stuff like that.
PerezDeCorcho
Member
Are you surprised, given that I don't dislike a film that has a 90+ rating on rotten tomatoes?
Naturally, it'll take a damn good argument to sway me, and telling me to wait until the next film isn't going to do it for me.
If the desctruction of Starkiller was the climax of TFA, then I might agree with you that JJ doesn't give it the oomph it needs to match the destruction of the Death Star in ANH, which is the climax of ANH. But that's not the climax of TFA, and he gives the actual climax of TFA as much Star Wars as I would think is possible.
BlastProcessing
Member
A pretty big difference in structure is that the Death Star exploding was the climax of a New Hope. The climax of TFA is the saber fight. Specifically when Rey grabs the Light Saber.
The Starkiller X-Wing attack is connective tissue that attaches the two most important beats of the film. Solo's death and Rey's acceptance of the Light Saber. It's difficult to compare it to the ANH sequence that serves an entirely different purpose.
BocoDragon
or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Realize This Assgrab is Delicious
Including a Death Star III and not having it be of central importance to the climax is precisely missing the point of why that element was in the original in the first place. It originally exists as a grand punctuation to the conflict. I would accept if TFA brought back another Death Star in order to re-create that thematic punctuation... But it was not brought back to deliver the same emotional highs, it was brought back to check a box off a list of Star Wars story elements.
TFA is not a retread of ANH for the sake of trying to recreate what worked in that story structure. It is indeed just an ANH nostalgia cash-in. It's the same purpose as why Into Darkness raided the corpse of Kahn. They're not trying to endear us by making a movie like the classic, they're trying to endear us by winking and nodding at the classic.
Sure... Make the climax the lightsaber conflict between Rey and Kylo. Great.. I love it. But to have an anemic Death Star battle in the background? Why even bother. A real Star Wars movie would have expertly cut between the space battle and lightsaber conflict, both of them having weight, and both of them having satisfying conclusions that more or less time up together. ROTJ says hello.
The interesting thing is what a "real" Star Wars movie is might not matter much anymore. By the time we get to Episode 13 and have gone through a bunch of different writers, directors and spin-offs Star Wars will be in a completely different place than everyone is currently used to.
BocoDragon
or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Realize This Assgrab is Delicious
Oh absolutely. I know I can say goodbye to that distinction forevermore from now on.
One month ago, there is no way in hell that the ending to TFA was a proper Star Wars ending. It's a direct cliffhanger setting up the next film, starring a living macguffin, shot from a damn helicopter. The first movie in a Star Wars trilogy should end at a ceremony with the heroes standing around grinning. Obviously?
But it's a Star Wars ending now, and no one will be able to tell that it ever wasn't soon enough...
dapperbandit
Banned
To make a film that fans of the OT will be familar with they reset and rehashed a majority of the themes, settings and plot points without offering a convincing explanation. Why bother with worldbuilding when you can just rename all the factions?
The First Order are the Empire, but the Empire was defeated, but the First Order are very powerful, despite not ruling the galaxy.
Which is why nobody, on screen or in the audience gives a shit for more than sixty seconds that the New Republic is destroyed. Because the Republic is a meaningless entity that seems to exist only to be destroyed in order to put the First Order back in the place the Empire was.
The Resistance are just the rebels. That they're even called the Resistance when they're on the side of the government is nonsensical. Again, there's no effort made to explain why the Republic itself isn't doing the fighting, and if the Republic was doing the fighting, that would interfere with the portrayal of the Resistance as scrappy underdogs in an overgrown base just like Yavin...
Han Solo is a scoundrel smugger again. They offer a slightly more compelling reason for this reset but again I found it unconvincing, especially since there's little explanation given to what Leia and Han had been doing for the last few decades. To me its too convenient that among everything that's reset the character of Han Solo is too.
Altogether its unimaginative.
The First Order are the Empire, but the Empire was defeated, but the First Order are very powerful, despite not ruling the galaxy.
Which is why nobody, on screen or in the audience gives a shit for more than sixty seconds that the New Republic is destroyed. Because the Republic is a meaningless entity that seems to exist only to be destroyed in order to put the First Order back in the place the Empire was.
The Resistance are just the rebels. That they're even called the Resistance when they're on the side of the government is nonsensical. Again, there's no effort made to explain why the Republic itself isn't doing the fighting, and if the Republic was doing the fighting, that would interfere with the portrayal of the Resistance as scrappy underdogs in an overgrown base just like Yavin...
Han Solo is a scoundrel smugger again. They offer a slightly more compelling reason for this reset but again I found it unconvincing, especially since there's little explanation given to what Leia and Han had been doing for the last few decades. To me its too convenient that among everything that's reset the character of Han Solo is too.
Altogether its unimaginative.
I think there's something to say for watching a movie when you're young (and over and over again) that moments feel more significant. TFA spends just as much time with the X-Wing pilots as ANH does.
Hi ROTJ, I'm a sloppy action sequence involving teddy bears and two of the main characters that drags the rest of the third act down.
The finale of TFA was very similar to Empire, only cutting between two different conflicts and giving each room to breathe. It worked.
Despite the differing opinions of fans, I'm sure many can agree it's both an exciting and scary prospect.
Personally I'm at least looking forward to many different creatives working on it.
creatives, shareholders, board members, disney executives, all stirring away at one artistically bankrupt mulch.
star wars by whiteboard.
There's this weird perception Disney outside of Lucasfilm was involved in the creative decisions of The Force Awakens. Everything we've seen suggests Lucasfilm was calling all the shots.
I guess it's because people like the simple narrative of Disney purchasing Star Wars and then "ruining" it with their influence somehow. They assembled the heads for the project, but everything good or bad from the movie really is thanks to those heads and the rest of Lucasfilm.
Totally agree. Anything outside of the main characters didn't have weight and was just background noise.
UnemployedVillain
Member
Did the Starkiller even really need to be in the movie? I mean, I understand it gave The Resistance something to fight against and a sense of urgency, but I feel like the same could have been gained if they had say, just found our where The First Order's home base was and decided to mount an attack on it.
The whole Starkiller being the death star 3 and the retreat of the trench run scene seemed so...inconsequential. Obviously not to the actual characters of the movie, but in terms of the film itself. Like people said, the Death Star's destruction was the climax of ANH. This movie would be like if they tried doing that AND Luke's encounter with Vader all in one movie
The whole Starkiller being the death star 3 and the retreat of the trench run scene seemed so...inconsequential. Obviously not to the actual characters of the movie, but in terms of the film itself. Like people said, the Death Star's destruction was the climax of ANH. This movie would be like if they tried doing that AND Luke's encounter with Vader all in one movie
Interfectum
Member
People said the same shit about Blizzard too. It's pretty annoying but expected.
In A New Hope, the entire plot is centered around the Death Star plans and the Death Star itself.
In The Force Awakens, Starkiller Base doesn't matter for the first half of the movie and in the second half its importance is irrelevant to the actual core of the movie. Kylo Ren, Rey, and Finn don't care about Starkiller Base, and they're the main characters, so why should the audience?
So yeah, completely agree with this.
ryutaro's mama
Member
I'm almost positive you have that backwards.
BocoDragon
or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Realize This Assgrab is Delicious
That's just not the case. Childhood nostalgia? It's right there on screen and you can look at it right now.
I'd ask you to go back and watch two scenes in ANH, the battle against TIEs as they escape from the Death Star, and the trench run against the Death Star. Note the timing of the edits and the way they are set to score. There is a quality there ... It's almost music video-like and ahead of its time in the way that it has well-timed cuts set to high energy music that builds to a climax. And despite this high energy, the shots constantly refer back to the heroes. It never turns into a soup of random spectacle shots, as so many post-2000s films do.
If you see what I'm seeing, you'll watch TFA and realize that nothing of that quality is present. It is pretty much that soup of spectacle. It thinks it's doing the same thing because it has shots of X-wings, pilots shouting, TIEs chasing them... But it isn't. It has all the right ingredients, but the way they are arranged doesn't even try to match the original recipie, and it isn't tasty.
I'm sure some people will say "X-wings flying? Base exploding? Same thing!" but I will say they are blind to a filmic quality that was there in the original. Maybe some don't care... But when everyone was talking about making Star Wars great again, that's what I thought we were talking about.
ROTJ is not ideal. It's also a pale retread of the first Death Star, and that attack also fails to capture the tense beauty of the original sequence.
But it at least times its 3 conflicts well together. You feel a high energy as you cut between the battle on Endor and the Luke/Vader conflict... but in TFA I feel the Starkiller attack and the Rey/Kylo battle feel unrelated. They do not play off one another to build the audience's enthusiasm
Subpar Spatula
Banned
First Order would have been better if it was guerrilla fighters.
ryutaro's mama
Member
Yeah when I hear the movie was first announced, I thought the roles were gonna be reversed this time. The idea of the First Order now being the fledging group fighting against the now firmly in control Republic would have been an interesting take on things. That would have at least explained Finn getting initially brainwashed into believing he was on the side of right.
If the offspring of the remains of the Empire were similar to the American South after the civil war, that could have been neat.
Nope, instead we got a First Order that kidnaps babies and has enough funding to build a death planet.
I would have enjoyed a different style. Unfortunately, I think a lot of focus was placed on continuing the iconic imagery at the expense of doing something new with the First Order, especially after the prequels' CIS covered that ground already.
Gundam has the same thing where the villains kinda blend together into a Zeon-colored mess even when they're decidedly not Zeon. Like in Zeta Gundam despite the Titans being Earth Federation, the opposite faction of Zeon, they're using Zakus because the kids are used to the bad guys using Zakus.
Godzilla's Left Toe
Member
People are naturally going to see a pop culture film like Star Wars but if you think this film was not design with those fans in mind you are kidding yourself
A Link to the Past
Banned
The only development we got for Solo in the first film was:
1. He shoots first
2. He's kind of wishy-washy
3. He's a skeptic
4. And at the end, he's a jerk with a heart of gold.
His interaction with Leia and Luke is basically the same - butting heads, but for different reasons.
I really liked the movie because it brought back the adventurous fun feeling the OT had but it's certainly not without issues. I do like how we got some seemingly different characters though this time around, even if all of the plotting and action were very familiar. A storm trooper actually defecting and a villain who directly out of the gate is having some internal conflict as to whether or not he is on the right side. I really liked the menacing nature of Kylo, he seemed very dangerous and impressively strong... that is until the very end where they appear to have dumbed him down so he doesn't instantly slaughter the 2 heroes.
I liked the lightsaber fight choreography itself as it seemed more like a fight and not a musical dance video, but ultimately there are a bunch of issues I had with how it actually went down. So he forced pushes the girl into the tree knocking her out then... he decides to fight with the guy instead of doing the same to him. It would have made more sense for Finn to get knocked out and Rey be able to resist the force push or whatever seeing as how she now has a grasp on her powers. Finn somehow being able to defend himself at all against a guy who we earlier saw freeze people with a thought and is seemingly a Jedi master with expert lightsaber skills just seemed unconvincing. At least Rey has the easy copout of saying it was the Force that gave her a chance at fighting, but Finn's just some regular dude.
I liked the lightsaber fight choreography itself as it seemed more like a fight and not a musical dance video, but ultimately there are a bunch of issues I had with how it actually went down. So he forced pushes the girl into the tree knocking her out then... he decides to fight with the guy instead of doing the same to him. It would have made more sense for Finn to get knocked out and Rey be able to resist the force push or whatever seeing as how she now has a grasp on her powers. Finn somehow being able to defend himself at all against a guy who we earlier saw freeze people with a thought and is seemingly a Jedi master with expert lightsaber skills just seemed unconvincing. At least Rey has the easy copout of saying it was the Force that gave her a chance at fighting, but Finn's just some regular dude.
He wasn't trying to kill Rey and he was toying with Finn.
I'm assuming you mean where he wants to turn her to the dark side, but what exactly does he gain from toying with a traitor? Some random no-name trooper that got scared and ran away? Why toy with him? What purpose does he serve him? It just makes no sense.
It seemed like he just enjoyed tormenting people. He did the same with Poe and Max von Sydow's character near the beginning of the film. He seemed far more eager to play with his food than Vader ever did.
He was torturing Poe to get information and did he not just murder that dude after talking with him for a moment? I can't remember that part as well.
excelsiorlef
Member
When you are hella more powerful then someone who has seriously pissed you off, you might be more inclined to take him apart slowly, and had Ren not been hurt and emotionally fucked up he'd have done so easily. As it was it was still rather easy, Finn got in a shot because Ren was being cocky, but right after Ren just wrecked him
He had him on his knees and taunted him a few quips if I remember.
He seemed to enjoy freezing Poe and that blaster shot in mid air as an intimidation tactic too even though he really could have knocked him out and taken him for interrogation at any point it seemed.
I dunno they seemed to be portraying Ren as a far more unstable, sadistic individual.
Principate
Saint Titanfall
By having someone completely untrained a defeat Dark Jedi with years of, as bad as some the fight were in the PT they were never that bad in terms of believability. It's a far worse climax than the destruction of star Killer.
Principate
Saint Titanfall
Then by that logic, Disney could not have been pushing an agenda to further women etc.
Which a majority of detractors seem to be pushing.
A Link to the Past
Banned
It needs repeating:
1. Luke has no cause to have survived the greatest star-pilot in the galaxy (Vader)
2. Luke has no cause to have survived the Wompa if asspulls aren't acceptable
3. Luke has no cause going toe-to-toe with Vader in Jedi because he barely got any training relative to what Vader had
Star Wars is a series of asspulls. Treating Rey like she is something different from Luke in terms of that is allowing nostalgia to blind you.
Also, we have no idea whatsoever that Rey received no training, and what she used to defeat him was melee combat which she demonstrated that she was proficient in.
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