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Originally Posted by #-3
I finally watch the movie this weekend, took me a while to find a night with a babysitter. And I had completely avoided spoilers even previews ahead of time, all I knew were the old characters were back, and it started on a desert planet that wasn't Tatooine.
I haven't done a movie review before but I feel like doing one for this movie.
I liked the story, and how they integrated the old and new casts, and the overall tone of the movie was allot better than I/II/III. But I found the character development to be quite a bit weaker than any of the other movies.
Finn and BB8 were perfect characters, no problem at all
The old characters did not need development and were well used, no problem at all.
If I wanted to nitpick my complaints would be
If Rey was going to pick up on the force that quickly they needed to foreshadow it more. (accidental telekinesis while scavenging, maybe give Maz the ability to use the mind trick or something, so she was emulating something she had seen when she left the cell). I just didn't like that she went from thinking Luke and the Jedi were myths and Jedi mind trick and Force Pull in a matter of days.
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I kind of agree with this, except that we saw her first awakening when she touched Luke's lightsabre. Her first real attempt at using the force with the mind trick was a dismal failure. When she put some real force so to speak into it the second time it worked, that was I think the aha moment for her.
I guess my problem is she's tied up she's been tortured, she tries the mind trick and it fails utterly, then she tries it again with a lot more force and from a position of what I would call fear. To me that could be something of a step towards the Dark Side more then the light. Just like in the fight with Ren, I had that feeling when she really amped it up and the way that she looked at Ren after she wounded him that the only thing that saved her from a quick fall was that the earth separated them.
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Originally Posted by #-3
Poe needed a way bigger role, I think if he had suddenly reappeared at the scavenger camp right as the tie fighters were about to attack it would have taken nothing away from the plot, and they could have given him 10 extra minutes for screen time, for a character we probably needed to get to know better.
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Poe's a pretty minor character in my mind, he is literally a combination of Wedge and Porkins from the first movie. I think that giving him more screen time would have been developing a character that isn't all that important.
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Originally Posted by #-3
The whole scene with Kylo and Han would have been better if that was the first time they showed his face. It would have made it allot more emotional IMO, which that scene needed, and maybe a bit less development of the Kylo chartacter would have given them more story to work with in the future.
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I agree sort of, but I did like it when he took off the mask while errr torturing Rey because it was a big part of the whole he seems a lot more vulnerable without the mask, whereas with the mask he was a killer and a rage monster. When he couldn't get what he wanted out of Rey and she pushed back, I liked that he removed the mask and you could see the whole frustration and what do I do know expression on his face.
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Originally Posted by #-3
The lightsaber scene was a little too much. The should have either cut it really short and had Rey/Finn make a lucky escape or had Chewies shot cripple Kylo allot worse, so it would be believable that they survived against a well trained Sith.
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Except that the key point is that Ren isn't all that well trained. I had the sense that he hadn't received any training at all from Snoke, and he was pretty much a clumsy Padawan level person. He's not even a Sith. He had just taken his final fall moments ago when he slaughtered his father, before that he was in a land of confusion. My feeling is that a decently trained Jedi Knight probably would have wiped the floor with him, then turned him into a ferrett and bounced him off of walls.
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Originally Posted by #-3
I don't think the First Order needed to be that powerful that early in the trilogy, having them as an upstart collecting the scattered remnants of the dark side and emperial army probably would have been an more entertaining plot device, than showing us there's a bigger badder power than the empire that already took over 30 years later. But maybe the next two movies will prove me wrong about that. It just seemed to me the Star powered planet gun did nothing to drive the plot, they should have just made the whole thing about race to capture the droid, then the rescue of the girl, there was enough movie there and it would have given them the opportunity develop the First Order as a growing threat.
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I disliked the reliance on the Super Weapon. But if you think about it it points to the First Order not being like the empire which had a powerful navy and army even without the Death Star, and the Death Stars were designed as the final nail in the coffin for the rest of the Galaxy.
The Star Killer I feel was built to hide the weakness of the First Order. It was a fire first weapon to one shot the Republic and kill it and then take the resistance out. My sense is that the First Order that rose from disgruntled Imperial Officers and Military Members doesn't have a huge fleet or millions of soldiers but is a small package of fanatics who spent a ton of money on a super weapon that would allow them to conquor the galaxy thought fear.
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Originally Posted by #-3
There were also times where is seemed like Abrams was poking a bit of fun at old movies, which I did not like for a movie that was trying to add to their story. Oddly he did the same thing with Star Trek and I really liked the way he used it for a reboot, not sure why I took it differently with a continuation.
Star Wars is a funny series, because all 7 of the moives had better stories to tell and better characters than the actual movies themselves. I'd probably give this one a 8 /10, and say it's a movie you can't not watch. The Legend is still bigger than the movies themselves, but it doesn't have the obvious flaws that Ep I and Ep III had.
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I think that was more Kasdan then anything else. His movie which was Empire Strikes back had more of that style of humor in it.