Worst movie I've seen in years (I don't watch a ton of movies), there's no way I'd have sat through it if I wasn't with friends. Terrible dialogue and acting, paper thin characters with inexplicable motivations, same plot and beats as A New Hope, terribly stupid use of lightsabers (they cut through everything except leather jackets and skin, a Sith Lord with a boo-boo was no match for two complete beginners).
Kylo Ren wasn't a Sith Lord. He didn't didn't even had a Darth prefix to his name. His Lightsaber was garbage and many times throughout the film they mentioned he had training to finish. He was a better version of Luke in Empire and Return, training but wasn't nearly finished. The parallels between his and Luke's story were great and obvious too. Where Kylo was able to finish murder his father and become more powerful with the Dark Side then ever, Luke didn't and stayed true to the Jedi way.
Loved the movie besides that, Rey was a fantastic character and Daisy Ridley was awesome. She was like a young Keira Knightly in the Pirates movies. Young and naive but more than capable of taking care of herself. Visually they look like sisters too.
Luke's reveal was fantastic, looked great. A weathered veteran of war and combat, not the pudgy sweaty Mark Hamill we've seen. Hope he stays in good old man health for the remaining too.
Thought Oscar Isaac's Poe was underutilized but there is plenty of movies left. Will he be in the X Wing spin off?
Totally didn't see Han's death coming at all, not even during that confrontation.
Lots more thoughts but those are the initial ones. Awesome flick.
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I thought it was entertaining, and I liked a couple of the performances. It was certainly impressive in IMAX, that's for sure.
But I did think the pacing was terrible and they tried to stuff too much into it. It was pretty obviously a re-hash of ANH. Unapologetically so. Hell, even the initial scene is a villain intro involving stormtroopers shooting a bunch of people followed by a dramatic entrance of a guy in a helmet. Which, yknow, okay, but I didn't think they did a good job of re-telling that story. There was too much shoe-horned in. One thing I thought was particularly jarring was the follow up of the serendipity of, "oh ####, the Millenium Falcon just happens to be on this random planet we're on" with "oh ####, it's Han and Chewie, they're here now too". And if Rey just happens to be someone's daughter, as seems inevitable? Deus ex force I guess but damn, guys, it's a big universe, it contains more than one extended family, and all these coincidences start feeling super implausible.
They should have saved the UberDeathStar for EpII. We had no reason to give any f***s at all about the Republic planets being destroyed. Even if that weapon had fired again, we wouldn't care much about the Rebellion worlds either (I'll leave aside it not making any real sense to fire the first shot at anyone other than them because that only bugs me ever so slightly). So the whole final act of the movie didn't have much in the way of stakes... If the climax of the movie surrounded rescuing Rey from Kylo Ren; say from a Star Destroyer, that would have been preferable. Then it's all about the Han and Ben thing and the importance is getting the map to Luke while saving the protagonist. There's plenty of stakes there; we care about them getting to Luke, we care about Han, we care about Rey, and we care about Kylo Ren. It also distinguishes the film from ANH and it leaves you with somewhere to go in VIII. Ren can take out some of his anger at getting cut up and defeated by a novice out by using the big gun once we've had some time to figure out that we should dread its use.
EDIT: I'm not saying it was a bad movie and I'll definitely see it again at some point. It's a fun movie and I don't regret seeing it in the theatre, it was a better big screen experience than most movies and on the whole, I'm a fan. But I almost find myself in the same place as I was after the prequels, thinking about the relatively minor and fairly obvious (to me, anyway) tweaks that could have been made to turn it from entertaining to amazing.
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Last edited by CorsiHockeyLeague; 12-28-2015 at 09:23 PM.
Yes, his voice was so unique I was thinking it had to be someone famous. I was guessing Bardem or Clive Owen.
It does sound like Bardem, but then on the other hand, maybe every voice actor who has played a kidnapper demanding ransom over the phone.
The actor who plays Moriarty on Sherlock sounded a lot like that in a few scenes. His voice goes all over the place, but there was an instance where he tell Sherlock, "I will burn you!" That sounds eerily similar.
After reading more about the movie there are a lot of hidden plot points throughout. The flashbacks and premonitions give away quite a bit and have references to both of the old trilogies. The First Order seems to be a front for the Knights of Ren, the group that hunted down the Jedi, drove Luke into hiding (much like Ben Kenobi). There really are a lot of similarities to the old movies which makes me wonder if they'll pull off a Dark Knight or a Spiderman 2. The series could go either way, setting up a villainous group so similar to the previous trilogies will make for interesting storytelling. The Knights of Ren hopefully is something more imaginative than the Sith.
Was the phrase "Knights of Ren" used once, at any time, in the film? If so, I missed it. If not, why do you think it's a thing that exists?
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When was that? I mean, just throwing that out there once - such that I missed it totally - and never explaining further seems like a flaw... But actually, they just didn't have time to do anything with it either.
Seriously, this could have been prequels 1-2.
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When was that? I mean, just throwing that out there once - such that I missed it totally - and never explaining further seems like a flaw... But actually, they just didn't have time to do anything with it either.
Seriously, this could have been prequels 1-2.
I think it was during their last interaction before the end of the movie, when he says his training is to be completed.
They have 2 movies to explain anything. I wouldn't call it a flaw any more than Kenobi mentioning the Clone Wars during A New Hope.
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What a breathtaking filming location Skellig Michael was for that final scene. Rey traversing the rocky steps, finally reaching Luke Skywalker and handing him his Lightsaber as the camera pans around the two was downright stunning to watch. Iconic image.
No green screen can come close to re-creating that beauty. The hoops they must have went through to film at a protected location... loved it.
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This is one of the BEST movies, not one of the worst. I am legit sorry you feel that way and couldn't enjoy it like the rest of us.
It's a good Star Wars movie but while it was very entertaining it also had some cringeworthy bad moments. If it's a movie by another name it's probably a good summer blockbuster popcorn flick but not even remotely close to a great or memorable movie. That said it's miles better than the last three movies and at least a step back in the right direction for the franchise. I expect the next one to be a lot better.
Last edited by Erick Estrada; 12-28-2015 at 11:02 PM.
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After reading more about the movie there are a lot of hidden plot points throughout. The flashbacks and premonitions give away quite a bit and have references to both of the old trilogies. The First Order seems to be a front for the Knights of Ren, the group that hunted down the Jedi, drove Luke into hiding (much like Ben Kenobi). There really are a lot of similarities to the old movies which makes me wonder if they'll pull off a Dark Knight or a Spiderman 2. The series could go either way, setting up a villainous group so similar to the previous trilogies will make for interesting storytelling. The Knights of Ren hopefully is something more imaginative than the Sith.
The first order is really there to serve the Dark Side, they don't seem to have much of a political goal in terms of taking back the galaxy. They seem to be in place to create chaos and gain revenge for the fallen empire. If anything they emerged from the fallen Empire as the worst elements of it. I think that we'll find out between now and the next movie that there is major infighting between the Empire and its more radical elements. Again the interview where Abrams says the idea for the first order came from the idea of the hardcore nazi's fleeing into hiding in Argentina and emerging years later stronger and more ideologically pure.
To me, the first order is a weapon to further Snoke's goals of destroying the Jedi once and for all and leaving the Galaxy at the whim of the Dark Side.
Whereas you would expect the Empire at the end of ROTJ to consolidate its holdings and try to retake territory from the Republic, it sounds like the Empire collapsed and signed a peace treaty with the Republic which limited them in terms of arms and territory, the First Order would have seen that as their treaty of Versaille and would emerge with a goal of revenge for being stabbed in the back.
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I think it was during their last interaction before the end of the movie, when he says his training is to be completed.
They have 2 movies to explain anything. I wouldn't call it a flaw any more than Kenobi mentioning the Clone Wars during A New Hope.
I would expect that we'll get much more of a back story for Ren in the next movies and in the novels in between. They will explain Ren's fall, and how Snoke engineered it and the rise of the First Order.
This movie was merely meant to introduce the fact that the First Order, Snoke and Ren are significant threats to the Jedi and the Resistance.
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Yeah, it's a bit odd. The whole "Sith Lord with a boo boo" is ridiculous. Did he miss the multiple instances of exposition when it came to how powerful Chewie's rifle was? Several moments in the film distinctively mention that Chewbacca's rifle is hardcore, and Kylo Ren took a shot from it, it blew clean through him. It wasn't a boo boo it was a potentially fatal shot. Ren was fighting mortally injured.
As an aside, Rey's staff was pretty intricate, looked very similar to a double bladed light saber. Looking back at the movie poster it's interesting how it runs parallel to Ren's red saber. Wonder if she goes with the double version when her training is finished.
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When was that? I mean, just throwing that out there once - such that I missed it totally - and never explaining further seems like a flaw... But actually, they just didn't have time to do anything with it either.
Seriously, this could have been prequels 1-2.
One of the things that Lucas was praised for with the OT, and especially the first film, was that it dropped us into the middle of the story into a "used universe" and didn't waste its time explaining every little thing.
One of the things that Lucas was criticized for with the prequels is that he spent too much time explaining all the minutiae of the universe and taking away the mystery that he established in the OT.
Remember that we knew that Darth Vader was a "Dark Lord of the Sith" for 20 years before anyone in any movie ever said the word "Sith". The Emperor doesn't appear on camera in ANH; only has one scene as a hologram in ESB; and finally actually appears in person in RotJ.
Also, if you look at JJ Abrams' history, especially with the tv shows he's been involved with, none of them really benefitted from trying to answer their questions. They were better when the mysteries were kept mysterious.
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Also, in that last fight if you watch carefully, he's handily beating her for most of it. She mostly just does defensive blocks and runs away until she channels the powers of the force fully, then pretty much just surprised him to beat him. She hardly wrecked him the whole time.
If the Hobbit was an example of stretching a story too far into three movies Star Wars the Force Awakens is an example of trying to cram 2 movies into one. The new Death Star is 10x the size of the old one, can suck the energy from a sun, and all it takes to shut down the shields of this state of the art structure is for a drill sergeant to log into a computer in a side room? I can't get over that. My boys really enjoyed it and maybe that's what these movies are for as an adult you kind of have to ignore the flaws and enjoy the action sequences.
Daisy Ridley was fantastic and she stole the movie IMO.
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If the Hobbit was an example of stretching a story too far into three movies Star Wars the Force Awakens is an example of trying to cram 2 movies into one. The new Death Star is 10x the size of the old one, can suck the energy from a sun, and all it takes to shut down the shields of this state of the art structure is for a drill sergeant to log into a computer in a side room? I can't get over that. My boys really enjoyed it and maybe that's what these movies are for as an adult you kind of have to ignore the flaws and enjoy the action sequences.
Daisy Ridley was fantastic and she stole the movie IMO.
The Death Star Mark III was one of the main problems I had with the movie. At what point does the Empire or it's ####### child (The First Order) think that it might be a good idea to look at a different approach to weapons building. It is like France building The Maginot Line 2.0 in the '50's.
I know there has been some discussion about Fin being a thin/weak character, but I enjoyed him. If memory serves, the landing at the start of the movie is his first engagement. He sees what it is all about and doesn't want in. Prior to this it appears he was in sanitation at Death Star Mark III. I can see the story line as: "yo this place sucks, I am gonna put in for some front line unit and get some action".
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