*SPOILER DISCUSSION* Star Wars The Force Awakens *POST HERE AFTER SEEING THE MOVIE*

[Cecil Terwilliger]

Originally Posted by codynw

Do you want the whole sentence?



And the comments about it being an over commercialized product would be fair, if that was a new thing. Star Wars has always been that way. Don't act like this movie ruined anything.

I would also point to JJ Abrams. He's a nerd and loves Star Wars. Ignore all the commercial crap like toys, tv commercials, fast food deals etc, and the movie wasn't just some horrible money grab. Take Captain Phasma for example. If you saw the movie blind you'd think she very much was similar to Boba Fett (looks cool, does nothing) but probably wouldn't see so many people lamenting the characters lack of a role in the film. Why? Because of the marketing. Phasma was heavily advertised and pushed as part of the toy sets.

[blankall]

I don't understand why the production of the a new movie somehow destroys the "soul" of the original trilogy. If you don't like it, don't watch it.

People are also forgetting that this is not the 7th movie in this franchise. We also have:

1) Star Wars: Holiday Special (alright maybe not technically a movie and never intended to be cannon, but this was released in 1978 following the first movie)
2) Caravan of Courage: an Ewok Adventure
3) Ewoks: the Battle for Endor

Star Wars has been commercialized to an extreme degree from the get go. If you find the new movie to commercial, just ignore it like I do 99% of the Star Wars branded material.

[Max Cow Disease]

Originally Posted by Matata

I don't put a lot of stock in Rotten Tomatoes, reviewers can be bought and influenced and the studios are wise to the fact that a lot of people hold RT in high regard. Blockbuster movies are almost always rated higher than what I think they should be on RT, they seem to get a 25% cushion on where I think they should be (except Mad Max, I'd give Mad Max a 97%, easy).

Remember when GTA4 came out to unanimously positive 100% reviews, but is now largely thought of as the GTA game that forgot to be fun? Reviews can't be trusted when marketing budgets exceed $200 million.

Yes obviously reviews and review sites can be tainted for whichever reason, but if the legitimacy of aggregate reviews fall on a spectrum like that, they do so relatively for other big budget movies as well. The prequels were big budget affairs with the Star Wars name attached just the same but were largely derided by critics AND fans in comparison to the reception for Force Awakens. So, in a world where sites like Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic can't be trusted, this movie has still shown itself to be of a better quality than a lot of others.

For every "funded" positive review from a critic on a site like that, there are five reviews that give the movie a 0 or 1 because internet.

[CaptainCrunch]

Its funny because if you look at the Star Wars fan base, there's this core that has the main job of tearing everything apart.

When you have a franchise like this, you also have fans that have their own specific vision of how it should be, and no matter how the movie is, they're going to focus in on the small details of the movie, and the unseen parts not in the movie and try to build lore and at the same time criticize the crap out of it.

In other words they lose sight of the movie for the grass under neath the movie.

They mourn their fandom instead of celebrating it.

I think this also happens when you have fans that watch a movie 5 or 10 or 20 times. After the first time it almost feels like to me that for some fans it becomes a job more then an enjoyable past time.

That's why you get obsessions on things like fan theories, and obsessions on contiunality issues and errors.

It takes us all back to the high school or college days where you were handed a book, whether it was Shakespeare or something else by a teacher and you had to break it down and interpret it for its deeper meaning, or symbology, or what the writer was trying to secretly protest at the time.

I remember having a monstrous argument about the fact that we had to do this with a book like the Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz, and it took the reading of this book from joy to a grim 10,000 mile death match, as she kept asking the same questions in every chapter. What was the writer angry about when he wrote this chapter, and what was the main character linked to in the real world of 19 whatever Montreal.

My response is that once in a while a book is escapism, its entertainment, not everything has or needs a deeper meaning, and not everything is a masterpiece of covert protest art.

Sometimes a movie is just a movie, and you can accept the flaws in the search for a complete piece of entertainment, enjoy it, and not have to look all that hard into what was missing, or what the director was trying to get at as a link between Modern Day North American Economic enslavement, and his movie vision.

For Star Wars, it just seems like theres a die hard hardened group that needs to stand on a soap box and state that, the movie is bad or terrible because it doesn't link to their perception of the GFFA.

Sometimes, a movie is a movie, and a banana is a banana.

For me, I'm going for a second time tomorrow, I finally managed to schedule my old man to go and see it with me, and he's probably not going to care about the detail flow from the prior movies to this one. He knows Star Wars, but he's not going to muse about who Snoke is, or why R2D2 was in a coma for years.

But he'll probably love the fight scenes, he'll probably remember some of the mythology of Star Wars that he got from the other movies, and he'll probably feel like he got his money's worth.

[calgarywinning]

And with that I think this thread can be closed. Great write up CC.

[Teh_Bandwagoner]

I think Jammies and I were more or less in the same mind space going into this movie. Except I didn't so much hate the original trilogy, but felt generally indifferent towards the movies. I may have watched those movies more than once, but can't say for sure. I do know that I've seen Space Balls way more times than the OT lol.

That being said, I got dragged into the watching all of the prequels on opening every time, and hated those. So definitely some disdain there.

My girlfriend (who was probably in a similar boat as me, except she found Hayden dreamier than I did) and I loved the new movie. Better than your standard summer popcorn flick. I really liked the characters, the set pieces, and the action, while maintaining an interesting story (insta-Star Killer Base destruction aside) that felt refreshing while staying true to the lore built up in the original movie.

Kylo Ren really felt like a super villain in the making, especially once he killed Han and took a nearly fatal blow to the kidneys (seriously, I'm not at all versed in Star Wars lore and knew that taking a hit from Chewie's bow would be fatal to anyone else! How do some people not get this??).

So no, having a deep understanding of the Star Wars universe wasn't a requirement for me to enjoy the movie and call it one of the best movies of the summer (though I'd still put the Martian and Mad Max above it).

[CaptainCrunch]

Mad Max though was a exceptional movie and a rarity as an action/scifi flick, in that the lore of the Mad Max universe isn't important, and the only string from one movie to the next is that the character's first name is Max.

[Teh_Bandwagoner]

Originally Posted by CaptainCrunch

Mad Max though was a exceptional movie and a rarity as an action/scifi flick, in that the lore of the Mad Max universe isn't important, and the only string from one movie to the next is that the character's first name is Max.

They need to make a cross-over movie between TR-8R from Star Wars and the fire guitar dude from Mad Max. Maybe like BvS where they start out as enemies and end up as a buddy cop movie.

[CaptainCrunch]

[Hack&Lube]

A Stormtrooper playing a fretless Telecaster is probably the sonic equivalent of his ability to hit a target.

[Locke]

You know, I hate to get into eugenics or population selection or anything like that, but seeing as the Empire and the First Order are basically derived from Nazis, the Republic could potentially take some tips from them.

The Skywalker family seems to have been directly responsible for a disproportionate amount of Galactic strife per capita, it might not be the worst thing for them to be...removed?

[CroFlames]

Originally Posted by Locke

You know, I hate to get into eugenics or population selection or anything like that, but seeing as the Empire and the First Order are basically derived from Nazis, the Republic could potentially take some tips from them.

The Skywalker family seems to have been directly responsible for a disproportionate amount of Galactic strife per capita, it might not be the worst thing for them to be...removed?

Many of tried. None have succeeded.

Old man Luke is still roaming the galaxy taking names.

Edit: I guess they succeeded in killing Anakin.

[Locke]

Originally Posted by CroFlames

Many of tried. None have succeeded.

Old man Luke is still roaming the galaxy taking names.

Edit: I guess they succeeded in killing Anakin.

"Hey Luke! Come over here man, I have the coolest reactor shaft that I just have to show you! What? No, I have no idea why theres a reactor shaft in my office I'll take that up with maintenance, just STFU and get over here!"

Accidents happen every day...I'm not sayin' I'm just sayin'.

[undercoverbrother]

Originally Posted by Locke

"Hey Luke! Come over here man, I have the coolest reactor shaft that I just have to show you! What? No, I have no idea why theres a reactor shaft in my office I'll take that up with maintenance, just STFU and get over here!"

Accidents happen every day...I'm not sayin' I'm just sayin'.

"reactor shaft"

[peter12]

Originally Posted by undercoverbrother

"reactor shaft"

Did you just recently assume Dion's identity?

[Erick Estrada]

Not ever going to happen but I wonder what could come out of an R-rated movie in the Star Wars universe.

[undercoverbrother]

Originally Posted by peter12

Did you just recently assume Dion's identity?

click my profile

[Coach]

Originally Posted by Erick Estrada

Not ever going to happen but I wonder what could come out of an R-rated movie in the Star Wars universe.

Would love an R-rated Han Solo movie.

Unlikely to happen though. Really the main thing that drives R ratings is language and nudity. Violence tends to get more leeway. Solo's movie could have some hot alien ladies ala Star Trek, but the swearing wouldn't happen, because their words arent the same.

"Now give me back my wallet."

"Which is it?"

"It's the one that says bad nerfherder on it!"

[CaptainCrunch]

So going back to the argument that if this movie wasn't a Star Wars movie that it would be a bad movie.

I took my parents today.

My Dad hasn't sat down and watched a Star Wars movie since ROTJ, he watched the prequels but didn't get much out of them.

My mom hasn't ever really watched Star Wars movies, they weren't her thing.

But both of them loved it, they loved the action and effects, and they both enjoyed the story, and my dad got the signficance of a lot of the key moments. Kylo killing his dad, the son's conflict. He even muttered when Kylo got shot by Chewie that he had to be pretty tough since everyone gets flung back 50 feet by Chewies blaster.

He really liked a lot of the interaction between Rey and Fin, laughed at the BB-8 lighter scene, and asked me why Fin was fighting with a lightsabre when he fought Steve the Riot Trooper since he was clearly horrible at it.

My mom loved it, she really liked Rey, she loved Chewie and figured out what he was saying in a hurry. She was upset at the way Han died because his son is clearly an idiot.

They both viewed this as a stand alone and enjoyed it completely. They didn't get hooked up on the Death Star versus Star Killer base, or who Snoke was, they thought that Hux was a complete weiner though.

My mom also liked the preview with the Snow man and the little girl and thought it was really sweet.

[Locke]

Its getting there....