Han Solo knows who she is though -- at the cantina, Maz asks him "Who's the girl?" and he gets kind of a funny look on his face. The camera cuts away before he can respond, then the next scene is her going to get her Force vision and Maz talking all mystically. She's a Skywalker.
I have a feeling it's not a coincidence that the Falcon was on that planet and also that Han ended up being pretty nearby.
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I've just got home from watching this at the Science Museum IMAX in London. In time, I'll add to the discussion. Right now however, all I can say is 'wow'! This made me feel the same way I did as an 8 year old watching 'A New Hope'.
This movie was beyond any expectation I had for it - I'm buzzing.
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Well, it was a lot of fun, but it was also just a really good reboot for the most part.
One thing I couldn't understand is that it clearly sounded like it was raining during the lightsaber fight. It was very odd, we couldn't figure out why.
Also, 3PO's line something like "at this point it's going to take a miracle" was just a terrible line. Thanks tips.
Holy ####ing #### ... Rian Johnson is directing the next two Star Wars?! Looper was good, but he's directed 4 movies in almost 20 years. How does he get handed the keys to Star Wars
as previously mentioned Johnson is only doing ep 8, episode 9 with Colin Trevorrow as the director, who has only directed 5 movies that have been released, of which the only notable one is Jurrasic world, and I didn't hear good things about that one...
as previously mentioned Johnson is only doing ep 8, episode 9 with Colin Trevorrow as the director, who has only directed 5 movies that have been released, of which the only notable one is Jurrasic world, and I didn't hear good things about that one...
The direction in that movie is actually really good, as is the direction in Safety Not Guaranteed.
The part to remember is that he wrote Jurassic World, which was where the problems of that film all originate from. He is not writing Ep.9.
Well, it was a lot of fun, but it was also just a really good reboot for the most part.
One thing I couldn't understand is that it clearly sounded like it was raining during the lightsaber fight. It was very odd, we couldn't figure out why.
Also, 3PO's line something like "at this point it's going to take a miracle" was just a terrible line. Thanks tips.
Man that's 3PO's schtick, and has been for 6 movies already. It was almost charming in how annoying that line was haha
Han Solo knows who she is though -- at the cantina, Maz asks him "Who's the girl?" and he gets kind of a funny look on his face. The camera cuts away before he can respond, then the next scene is her going to get her Force vision and Maz talking all mystically. She's a Skywalker.
Not quite. Han makes the face to Rey as she looks at Han in disbelief after Finn leaves the table (and then chases after him). Then Maz asks "who's the girl" and all we see is the back of Han's head.
Not quite. Han makes the face to Rey as she looks at Han in disbelief after Finn leaves the table (and then chases after him). Then Maz asks "who's the girl" and all we see is the back of Han's head.
I didn't really remember that, just thought whatever face Han may have made was Han feeling Maz was implying she was a girlfriend or something.
To start with, I'll get the emotional part out of the way. This was the movie that we all wanted when Star Wars returned with the prequels, this was a fantastic Star Wars movie that could really appeal to people that haven't vested in Star Wars.
When ANH came out in the late 70's it had a tag line talking about how a group of unlikely hero's came together and saved the Galaxy. That tag line really represents this movie. That's not to say that it was without flaws, there were several that I want to point out later on, I might be right I might be wrong.
I think to break this down logically I'm going to break this into different sections
The Cinematics
I think that one thing that came out here, is that JJ Abrams has a bit of a better hand in terms of editing the Lucas does, he seems to have a strong understanding of story flow and transitions. That's not to say that Lucas doesn't, but with the exception of Revenge of the Sith, the story had better flow then the prequels, and we didn't have awkward transitions that really bugged me about the prequels. We didn't have the clumsiness where the camera in the prequels seemed to hold onto the characters for too long after the dialogue ended and we were stuck holding onto the characters facial expressions like the end of a bad 70's sitcom where the characters froze while the credits rolled.
In terms of sheer lushness and backgrounds, I think one of the faults of Lucas is he had too many details in his mind and had to throw them into every scene. For the most part, TFA had clean simple backgrounds and because of that a lot of the visuals really held your attention, you weren't trying to capture a lot of movement in the background before the scene ends. That's not to say there weren't some clumsy moments in this movie where you were suddenly pulled out of the movement, I think the scene in Maz's bar was guilty of that at times. But I think JJ wanted to desperately recapture the Mos Eisley Bar in his movie.
Beyond some absolutely sets. one thing that seperates this movie from the prequels is the reliance on practical effects versus CGI effects. This movie marked the return of actual Storm Troopers, and Ship models and built sets, because of this the movie suddenly had a heft that was missing a bit in the Prequels, you actually felt that you were looking at actual physical people and things and not watching a cartoon. Because of this there was a certain realism that you felt in the battle scenes. The scene where Fin's Storm Trooper buddy dies and marks him with blood couldn't have been pulled off with CGI with the same feeling.
The Battles
Extremely well done, for the first time a long time, I felt like we had competent Storm Troopers, they moved like Soldiers and actually hit targets. The scene where they lit up Poe's X-Wing just felt really good. We also saw First Order Tie fighters taking apart X-Wings, and you felt that due to the troops on the ground and in space that we had a two evenly matched sides.
The Battle between riot control Trooper Steve and Fin was very well done, and you learned then that Fin wasn't a Jedi as Steve pretty well picked him apart and was about to kill him.
The other thing that I liked was the sheer power of Chewie's Bowcaster, which was throwing people backwards 10 yards at a time. I didn't however like the fact that Han was carrying it around and able to shoot it, that to me was cheesy, and I grumbled at that, Han's signature weapon is his blaster, it makes him into a gunslinger instead of a soldier.
The light sabre usage was extremely well done, as we went away from the highly trained and stylized light sabre battles of the prequels and went towards more of the weighty battles of the prequels.
I think one of the key factors in this was the level of training. Finn and Rey weren't trained light sabre users. Kylo Ren's light sabre suddenly made sense as he used it like a heavy broad sword instead of a rapier or saber. It was a unique interpretation, I also don't think that Ren is all that well trained but we'll touch on that later.
We really saw Rey and Ren cut loose and I loved the sound effects that were used, and I loved the visualization of tree's getting cut and slashed, but when Rey cut loose there was a real sense of weight behind her slashes and moves, and when Kylo used his light sabre there was a sense of raw power and aggression there, it was the epitome of someone captured by the Dark Side, and controlled by fear and desperation.
The Sound
The sound effects were great, and once again John Williams manages to take any scene and make them far more emotional. When the opening crawl kicked in with the familiar Star Wars opening, I felt my heart lift, when we had the villains a modified version of the Imperial March made me feel their menace.
More to come in a bit.
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Somehow JJ Abrams managed to find the right people to play the right roles. Of course its easy with the existing cast, Harrison Ford came back strong as Han Solo, but it was a different Han Solo then we had come to know and love in the Original Trilogy. Gone was the cocky opinionated brash Han Solo, This Han Solo was old and worn down by age and by situation. While he was still decisive and willing to look for a fight, he was also weary and looked tired and beaten up. Clearly the fall of his son Ben had destroyed his self possession, and he played a man that had spent years wandering between the Stars trying to basically get lost. Harrison Ford is an amazing character actor, and he slid into the Han Solo character easily and made him believable.
Carrie Fisher returns as former Princess Leia now General Leia leader of the Resistance. While we know the years haven't been kind to her, she carried a kind of stoic dignity in this role and was utterly believable as a general in what was a very short role. Like Han Solo, this was a woman who had a long fall and she was like her mother Padme, a very sad woman. Interestingly enough Carrie played the role in a very subtle understated way and she oozed heart break.
Peter Mahew put on the dog suit and became Chewbacca, its a rare strength that someone who growls and uses facial expressions can convey a character like he can. He and Harrison Ford work extremely well together as a Mutt and Jeff couple, and Chewbacca fed off of the humorous lines with ease. The scene when Finn is trying to treat his injuries was extremely funny. I also loved how he handled Han Solo's death, it was with a Wookie's anger and grief and reaction and it was well done. I felt that he was a bit ripped off in the end when we didn't have what could have been a very emotional scene between Leia and Chewie when they returned to the Resistance base.
Daisy Ridley hasn't done much prior to this, but she was phenomenal, She managed to capture every emotional moment, and was also a good enough physical action to not look out of place when she needed to be the action hero. Lets not cut corners here, Rey is the primary protagonist in this story and she carried that role extremely well. Her scene when she had the vision of the Jedi Academy slaughter was very well played, as was the scene when she confronts Finn who just wants to flee. She gave the performance that we had hopped Natalie Portman would have given in the prequels.
John Boyega was very good as Finn, I have to admit that it took me a while to warm up to him in this movie because his turn as a Stormtrooper wasn't well done, but he really hit his stride half way through the movie and its clear that he's taking up the Han Solo mantle. I guess what I didn't like was that his character as a whole didn't make sense. This was someone that was raised from birth to be a soldier, and a extremely loyal StormTrooper, but he spent most of his time being the accidental hero. I think that the writing of his character was a bit on the questionable side, I also didn't like that when it came to fighting he was extremely indecisive, you would think that a born and bred soldier would have none of that indecision.
Oscaar Isaac as Poe, did a decent job for a generic role. He is suppossed to be the square jawed hero, and he played it well, but there was nothing that really gravitated me towards caring about his character. He is literally the Wedge Antilles of this movie. I thought his best work was in the torture scene but I thought he could have shown more fear and emotion, I guess.
Adam Driver as Kylo Ren, Probably what I would classify as the best performance in the movie. He did a phenomenal job of playing two roles, the first in the mask as the embodiment of the Dark Side of the Force and a fallen Jedi intent of gaining enough power to be as strong as his Grandfather, when the mask came off he played an entirely different role, a confused and lost person who is unsure of his place in the universe, a man who had one foot in the dark and one in the light. However his best work was saved for when he murdered his father, I'm going to talk more about this later, but you literally saw the indecision, then the heartbreak as he talked to his father, and then the resolve as JJ brilliantly took the light away from the scene. His performance during the duel when he beat his wounded side in order to heighten his pain and anger and resolve thus giving him more power was brilliant. You got a sense though that there was a little of the lost teenager left when he offered to teach Ray the ways of the force.
The minor roles
Domhall Gleesan as General Hux. I think he was bought on board more for his aryan looks and accent then as a major character. What this movie lacked was a Grand Moff Tarkin type of villain who was brilliant and ruthless and smart and subtle. Hux was none of these things, he was basically a evil foil to fire a weapon and didn't have much impact on this movie. In my mind this is one of my big character complaints as it basically reduced the First Order to the useful tool role whereas in ANH Tarkin was a representative of a strong villainous group. In this case, the First Order takes a backseat to the battle on the metaphysical level.
Lupita Nyong'o as Maz, I had this expectation of more as the wise thousand year old character, but she really didn't amount to much more then, this is our Yoda replacement, but the character was relatively two dimensional, and I didn't really feel any attachment to what she was saying.
Gwendoline Christie as Phasma was the Boba Fett from ROTJ in this movie. She looked menacing, sounded bad a$$, but was tossed in a garbage chute. She represents the wasted opportunity of the First Order that could have been so much better. I know she's been cast in the next movie, but at the very least they could have given us one good action scene where she does something amazingly cool so that we'd care whether or not she was a threat.
Andy Serkis as Snoke, I'll be touching on this character later, but I don't think we got enough for us to develop this character. He was meant to look awesome and sound threatening and powerful, and the first part I don't think was achieved, the second part was, and I'm unsure of the third part.
BB-8, love this droid, and I put him as an actor because he does play a character, as the obvious replacement for R2D2 in the upcoming movies, for some reason BB-8 does a better job of emoting emotions and you can almost understand what he's saying. I loved loved loved the thumbs up scene as cheesy as it probably was, and the electric shock torture on Finn reminded me of Chopper in Rebels.
Still a lot more to come later, I'm going to talk about the plot, the links to the original series, and some of the theories that I have concerning Rey and Kylo and Snoke.
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Shockingly, while it was a solid story that had a galaxy spanning feel to it, it was really a fairly rote retelling of a new hope, but with more octane to it.
It doesn't take us long to meet one of the protagonists in Finn who goes out on his first mission and views the brutal nature of the First Order and decides to rescue Poe and flee. As I mentioned before, I had some trouble making the leap of logic that a person who was bread as a Stormtrooper, and raised as a storm trooper would turn his back on the First Order so quickly, part of it is that Finn is written as a reluctant player in this game, a trait that would have popped up during his training. My preference would have been that he was a combat veteran that had seen too much and decided that he couldn't live that life anymore. Its a minor point, but I had trouble believing Finns reasons. At the same time we meet Kylon Ren in a great debut where he basically is shown as an extremely powerful Dark Warrior who mercilessly searches for a map that will help him find Luke Skywalker. We are lead to believe that he is absolutely dark when he mercilessly kills an unarmed man and orders the murder of everyone in the village, then he uses the Force to try to rip the location of Poe's droid out of his head.
We then catch up with the droid, and meet Ray a scavenger who is waiting for the return of what we assume is her family who left her stranded there, we see her living a hard scrabble life while she ekes out a paltry existance (BTW I want that bread baking liquid)
Rey and BB-8 meet, and then shortly afterwards Finn and we begin a adventure across the galaxy with thrills and spills throughout. Rey grabs the Millennium Falcon which is in a jump yard and shows that she's a natural pilot as she and Finn and BB escape a First Order attack only to get captured by Han Solo and Chewbacca. We get a throw away scene of Han fighting business rivals and then head over to Maz's tavern. Most of this is a throwaway except for seeing Finns true nature as he just wants to flee the First Order. At the same time Rey finds Luke's light saber and when she touches it has a vision from the past where we see Luke with R2D2, the Knights of Ren enacting a slaughter at the Jedi Academy and Ren saving Rey's life we think, and then a young Rey being abandoned on Jarku. Rey also seems to be repulsed by Luke's lightsaber and she flees into the woods where she is captured by an attacking First Order. The attack is broken up by the X-Wings of the Resistance.
I forgot to mention that we saw the Death Star 3 errr Star Killer base in action. This is a weapon with a gun the size of a death star that drains stars for energy and shoots a concentrated hyperspace laser that destroyed the capital of the New Republic and the Republic Fleet. Instead of three factions, we're left with two, the Resistance and the First Order. I have to admit I wasn't the fan of another Super Weapon. The one thing I did like was that it couldn't be knocked out with one shot, and the movie recreated the trench run from ANH with the taking down the shields moment from ROTJ.
Now I want to talk for a second about the First Order and Supreme Commander Snoke. I read an interesting interview where Abrahms talked about a discussion around what would have happened if the Nazi's had fled to Argentina and re-emerged years later more powerful and focused then ever? This was the New Order, they didn't directly rise from the Empire, It seems like they were the most hardcore of the Empire (which had signed a treaty with the New Republic) who fled to the outer rim and then re-emerged years later. I think that the writers tried to hard to make it obvious that the New Order was completely evil, they committed atrocities in the first scene and then ruthlessly destroyed a Star System for no other reason then, we hate everyone. What I liked about the Empire in the original series is that it made sense as a totalitarian regime that wanted to rule the galaxy. I didn't sense this from the First Order, it felt like they were driven by the need to be bad a##, and Snoke didn't seem to be all that enamored with taking over the galaxy as he was in finding and killing the last of the Jedi. Because of this the First Order to me was basically that fierce dog on a chain being used by its owner to create havoc. It didn't make much sense. The Resistance is basically that, they're not officially part of the New Republic which sounds like the UN of the galaxy, so Leia is probably viewed as a zealot.
Anyways, back to the Story the Resistance has to take out the Super Duper galaxy gun, and they send Finn, Chewie and Solo to do it, but Fin also wants to save Rey.
We see an interrogation scene between Rey and Kylo where Kylo reveals his face and he tries to strip the map out of her head, instead he finds out that she is strong in the force but untrained and she rips secrets out of his head. At this point I believe that Kylo is frightened and this heightens his decisions to fully go dark so he can gain more strength.
Anyways Rey escapes in a scene made more hilarious by the cameo of Daniel Craig, and we head towards the major confrontation that we know is coming.
Now a couple of things. I think that the movie did a poor job in terms of reducing the shock value by continually letting us know that Kylo Ren was actually Ben Solo, so when we had that confrontation, it was missing a bit of weight, it was still an emotionally powerful scene made powerful by the two actors. But what was supposed to have been the I am your father scene of this movie, we got a sense that we know this all. Anyways Han confronts his son and basically begs him to come back to the light, and we see that indecision from Kylo without the mask, but in the end the dark and the desire to be powerful like his grandfather wins out and Kylo cuts down his father.
Now at this point I want to talk about this. I love the concepts of the Jedi and the Sith, and I will say that Kylo is not a Sith, he's a trained Jedi who has fallen to the Dark Side, but he desperately wants to follow in his Grandfathers footsteps. With the Jedi, I've always thought that their path to power was through enlightenment and knowledge. With the Sith I've always found that their path to power is through suffering and the willingness to sacrifice everything dear to them for that power. We saw with Anakin that he made that sacrifice very quickly when he slaughtered the Jedi and tried to kill his former friend. With Kylo killing his father was his sacrifice and his suffering which allows him to seperate himself from what he used to be. When his father fell off of the bridge and died, Kylo Ren finally accepted the Dark Side fully.
Han Solo's death was necessary, they really positioned him as the Ben Kenobi of this movie, the kindly guiding figure that set Fin and Rey on the right path. But it was tragic that Solo died like he did and we saw that his link to Leia and her love for him was incredibly strong as she felt is sectors away.
Anyways, Chewie goes nuts and hoots Ren with a shot from his Bowcaster seriously wounding Ren. We then get a partial explosion that is exploded by the Resistance who destroy the weapon in the nick of time.
Meanwhile in the forest Ren tracks down and confronts Finn and Rey, he knocks out Rey and attacks Finn and even though he was wounded badly Ren doesn't have any problems disposing of Finn. But try as he might he can't pull Luke's lightsabre out of the snow, which to me was strange, because the force isn't an Authorian thing, but Rey manages to get the lightsaber and duels Ren and shows that she's a Force natural as she slashes Ren across the hip, and arm and rips a long cut into his face. at that point the heros flee and return to the resistance and the Star Killer collapses. Snoke mentions that Ren can finally complete his training which goes back to his sacrifice and his willingness to commit to the dark side. Meanwhile Rey says goodbye to everyone and finds Luke at the first Jedi Temple where the movie ends with them starring at each other while she holds out his lightsabre.
Now I know I've missed a lot of plot points. But at the end of the day, from a new concepts plot, this movie is basically a mirror of the first movie with a more ham handed foe, but in a lot of ways it was executed better then ANH. The pace was frenetic at times, but there was still time to take a breath and laugh at bit. I really think that this movie was an extended way to build mystery towards answering the questions of who is Rey, What turned Kylo, and who is Snoke, and what Lukes place is in all of this.
I thought the plot and the dialogue was amazingly well done, and I can ignore the Superweapon 365 in the Star Wars universe because it was a necessary plot device to develop that the First Order is a viable enemy and ruthless enough in its goals to use it.
To be continued tomorrow, I want to talk about the theories and questions that have come up in this thread and throughout the Star Wars verse.
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