Topic: Star Wars: Movies and Shows on Disney+ and More

AGAIN, THIS THREAD CONTAINS SPOILERS!!!! YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!

No thread about this yet? I can't be the only Star Wars fan on the board, can I?

I saw it in IMAX 3-D, but made the mistake of only showing up 40 minutes before showtime, so I ended up in the second row. That is way, WAY too close. I had to turn my head from side to side just to read the opening crawl.

I thought it was fantastic. Exactly what a Star Wars film should be. It saddens me to think how good the prequels might have been if approached this way.

There were gaping plot holes, of course, but somehow those things are easier to overlook when the film is so entertaining. I'll be seeing it again. And from farther from the screen.

I can't help but think that Rey's parentage is going to come into play. Maybe Luke has an unknown daughter? Something called her to his/Anakin's lightsaber.

Oh, and THEY KILLED HAN! Once he walked out onto that catwalk, I suspected it might happen, but it still packed a punch.

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Rey will probably be Luke's daughter or something.  Honestly, though, there's limited evidence that force sensitivity is an inherited trait.

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He's getting torched for it, but I pretty much agree with Max Landis' perspective that Rey is a bit of a boring character because she's already good at everything.  I'm not going to use the phrase "Mary Sue" because I think there's an uneven description on what exactly that means. 

At the end of the day, she was cool, but she's only cool in a Superman way.  She's shown to be *great* at scavenging, fighting, piloting, using the force, and using a lightsaber.  All without any mention, on-screen, of any lineage or training she might've had before the movie.  And while, yeah, she's probably Luke's daughter and might've even had prior Jedi training that was mind-wiped, that doesn't really help her characterization in *this movie*

Han's death also bothered me.  The first act implies that he abandoned his family after Ben went to the dark side.  Fair enough and fitting with Han's character - he was always the rogue, and it's hard for those guys to be daddy.  But there doesn't seem to be any indication that he's really worried about it since then.  Then he sees Leia, sees Ben, and that's what opens him up to be killed?  I'm not saying that he didn't love his son or that he was a bad father - I just didn't think the movie set him up for that to be his weakness.  But it was still very tense - my heart was beating out of my chest when it was happening.

I don't know.  It's way better than the prequels, but it felt more like a prologue to another movie than an actual chapter in the series.

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I really have not and will not read much into the story and such.  I just don't care.  I found the film wildly entertaining, suspenseful, and with good humor and character.  Those expecting an epic were foolish, the story's already been told.  But for someone who liked but didn't love Super 8, and hated his Trek movies, I though JJ did a tremendous job on the film. 

Han being killed I could see coming from 30 miles away.  Somebody had to be killed to further the badness of Kylo Ren.  I don't think ANY of the new characters are particularly deep, but who cares?  Is StarLord a deep character in GOTG?  Not really, but Pratt played it well, and so did these actors.  Tough to lose Han, because Harrison was terrific, but there was no way he was doing film after film of this.

5 (edited by Slider_Quinn21 2015-12-22 02:25:07)

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Well that's the thing.  The problems I have with the movie are based on reviewing it for more than just a fun popcorn flick.  The majority of people seem to be pretty okay with that, but it's just strange to see that level of forgiveness following the merciless tearing apart of the prequels.

The movie has some major flaws, and it does way more sequel teasing than *any* of the Marvel movies.  I mean there are things in this movie that don't make sense inside the context of the film.  People forgive them based on their own theories (Rey is really good at everything because she's either Luke's daughter or was trained by Luke at some point, neither of which is particularly hinted at in the movie - people are just speculating).  These things will be explained, but I don't think another movie should be required viewing to understand the original movie.  Empire Strikes Back is very clearly the middle chapter of a series, but it is a complete story when viewed by itself.  The Force Awakens is clearly a first chapter of a bigger story and never tries to be anything on its own.

It's a fun movie.  It's an engrossing movie.  But there are Death Star-sized plot holes.  Weak characterization.  Telegraphed story points.  An incredibly weak villain and an incredibly powerful protagonist.  Outside of being "fun" - the movie fails in an extraordinary amount of ways.  The plot was wildly unoriginal and the script seemed to be torn between trying to introduce new characters and maddening amounts of fan service.

It's so much fun that most people can get over it.  I walked out of the theater thinking it was pretty great.  But the more I've thought about it, the weaker the film becomes.  I'm going to see it a second time this week and see if those issues are glossed over or become more obvious.

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All of the Star Wars films have had substantial plot holes.  The Force Awakens is no worse than the others in that regard.

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Freaking loved it. Yes, it was a major retread, yes it played heavily on nostalgia, and no, it didn't push many boundaries, but the magic was there, the characters were engaging and hilarious, and my heart sang again, unlike with the prequels. I couldn't have asked for anything more of the first installment in the future of this franchise.

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I'd argue that none of the original trilogy was completely self-contained. They all worked as films, but even in the original Star Wars (before it picked up the subtitle) we see things are are given snippets of information that only come into play in later films, or even the prequels. We don't know how the Empire supplanted the Old Republic. We don't know what went down between Vader, Obi Wan and Anakin. We don't know about the Clone Wars, or the Sith or Luke having a sister ("no, there is another!" - Empire Strikes Back). The list of unexplained references and circumstances goes on and on. That's actually one of the things that the original trilogy did better than the prequels. We didn't need backstory about trade federations or midiclorians or the workings of the senate, we just needed to jump into the story and figure out what was going on.

The real question is, do the loose ends and/or plot holes matter? Rey has spent her life rummaging around in old space ships and she knows how to fly. Is it really out of the question that she might know how these things work? She learns how to use the force quickly. Luke got pretty good with the force even before his training with Yoda. Also, she seemed to get better with it after each encounter with Kylo Ren, so in a way he was her teacher. You know who also was good at fixing things and learned how to use the force quickly? Luke and Anakin Skywalker. Does it ruin the movie if she's not related, but just a quick study that's unusually strong in the Force?

If I'm looking for a real plot hole, how in the world does anyone have a map to where Luke is? Particularly, how is most of the map contained in records from before the fall of the Empire? This is the MacGuffin, of course. We need a thing like the plans of the Death Star to find and/or keep from the enemy. Still, its existence makes absolutely no sense.

Might I be forgiving some things here that I would pick on in the prequels? Perhaps, that's difficult to judge. But here's the thing, the prequels were awful movies, regardless of these things. Forgiving them wouldn't have made them good.

Does this film serve as the first act of a trilogy? Absolutely, but I also think it works on its own. Even Episode IV had Darth Vader speeding off into space. I can recall my father, immediately after exiting the movie theater from seeing Star Wars the first time. "We'll see him (Vader) again." Likewise, we'll see Kylo Ren again, though I found him one of the less interesting aspects of the film.

BTW, if you're looking for a fairly comprehensive list of questions raised but not answered by The Force Awakens, have a look here:
http://io9.gizmodo.com/33-questions-we- … 1748953034
I don't expect all of those questions to be answered, but I'm betting some of them will. Some of them are, I think, already answered in the film in one way or another. If they aren't, though, does it really matter?

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Luke got pretty good with the force even before his training with Yoda

Luke went chasing after R2-D2 early one morning.  By late afternoon of the same day he was blowing up the Death Star.  I'd say he learned very quickly.

Rey, OTOH, had almost nothing to do with destroying the Starkiller Base.

10 (edited by Slider_Quinn21 2015-12-23 00:09:05)

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I watched it a second time today and focused on some of my gripes.  My feelings haven't changed but still had a freakin' blast watching it.

DieselMickyDolenz wrote:

Rey has spent her life rummaging around in old space ships and she knows how to fly. Is it really out of the question that she might know how these things work?

Nah.  I mean being a good pilot seems like being a good driver - most people can do it on some level.  The problem with Rey is how she's instantly amazing at things - she makes several comments about things being luck.  I think it's completely supposed to be Force-related, but the movie doesn't make any attempt to explain that.  She doesn't think she can fly the Millennium Falcon.  She crashes against a bunch of things to start - something that would be expected if she hadn't flown anything before (think a private pilot trying to fly a 747 with no assistance).  The problem is that instinct seems to take over and by the end of the flight, she's making really expert moves.  It's not that she's a pilot - she becomes an expert overly quickly (IMO).

She learns how to use the force quickly. Luke got pretty good with the force even before his training with Yoda.

(Note: I haven't seen the Original Trilogy recently so I'm gonna make some points that might be incorrect.  Please correct me).

Does he?  If I remember correctly, Luke doesn't do much in the first movie.  Nothing extraordinary, at least.  It isn't until the final trench run that he finally gives in and trusts the Force, right?  He does the Force grab of the lightsaber in Empire, but he'd at least had some teaching on how to use the Force at that point.  And it was a couple years later.

My main point on Rey is how everything is instinctual for her.  I'd be willing to bet that she has latent training somehow.  If she's Luke's daughter and he trained her and then wiped her memory somehow, then all of this would make sense.  She's acting on instinct using "muscle memory" - the problem is that the movie doesn't try and explain any of that. 

If they're holding onto some sort of "Rey is Luke's daughter" twist, that's fine.  But if they're hoping it'll be a big twist....well, most people have already guessed it.  And if they'd just said "hey, Rey is a Skywalker" then it'd pay off the mysteries in this movie.  Especially this day in age when people crowdsource theories.  It's what ruins twists on TV all the time - there was a twist on Dexter that people crowdsourced weeks before it was revealed.  Basically ruined the whole season.

You know who also was good at fixing things and learned how to use the force quickly? Luke and Anakin Skywalker. Does it ruin the movie if she's not related, but just a quick study that's unusually strong in the Force?

Well I mean, honestly, did either of those guys have anywhere near the level of Force-based instinct that Rey has?  Like whether or not she's completely unrelated, she does things that we haven't seen anyone do.  I don't think Luke or Anakin use the Jedi mind trick at all in either trilogy, do they?  I saw a video the other day that showed that the trick only works twice in the first six movies - Obi-Wan does them both - to the stormtrooper in ANH and to the sleezeball in the cantina in AOTC.  So for Rey to successfully do a Jedi Mind Trick when she doesn't even know what that is is a little bizarre.  The only thing I can think is that maybe she leeched it out of Kylo's mind when they were connected, but even that's weird because Kylo doesn't use the Jedi Mind Trick - he does something completely different to suck information out of someone.

(EDIT - Okay, I did some research and Luke does do it in Return of the Jedi - but, again, he'd seen it done before and had training)

Fixing things is fine.  Being a pilot is fine.  These are things that would make sense in Rey's world.  But she thinks the Jedi are a myth halfway through the movie.  She didn't think Luke was real.  She'd never seen a Jedi or a Sith before (Kylo isn't a sith).  She'd never seen force powers before her encounter with Ren.  And yet she's able to use a jedi mind trick and force pull (not accomplished by Luke in his first movie and only accomplished by Anakin after training with actual Jedi) expertly.  And she defeats a disciple of Luke pretty handily minutes after turning on a lightsaber for the first time.

It didn't ruin the movie for me.  At all.  But the problem is that Rey is an incredibly more-boring character if she's already a master in just about everything.  Superman is boring because he's great at everything.  It's why Superman movies suck.  The movie is good on it's own, but it would be better if we saw her grow through the films.  Luke gets his ass kicked in his first fight with Vader.  And Vader is clearly not trying.  I focused on Kylo in her fight with Rey and he is *absolutely* trying to kill Rey.  He's absolutely trying to kill Finn.  And while he defeats Finn, it's a decent fight and Finn hurts him.  And Rey clearly wins the fight with Kylo.  Yes, Rey can fight - yes using a lightsaber probably isn't that different than a regular weapon - yes Kylo was wounded and isn't finished with his training.  But the whole movie was Rey doing incredible things and people complimenting her - whipping the new bad guy's ass just adds to the Superman factor.

Again, I liked the movie.  It was fun.  But there were some creative choices that made the movie flawed in my opinion.  I don't think its anywhere near as good as Empire or A New Hope, which work in so many different ways.  It's on par with Return of the Jedi and has a lot of the same problems that movie had.

I'm absolutely not trying to make the movie less enjoyable for anyone else.

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pilight wrote:

Luke went chasing after R2-D2 early one morning.  By late afternoon of the same day he was blowing up the Death Star.  I'd say he learned very quickly.

That's something that's always confused me - does he force-guide the torpedoes into the shaft?  "Use the force" instead of using the targeting computers always made it seem like he was just shooting based on feel instead of using based on the computer.  Like using a sniper rifle without looking in the scope.  I never thought he was actually guiding the torpedoes using the force, but I can see how that might've been what he was doing.

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Rey knew the legends of Jedi and the Force, including the Mind Trick.  Her encounter with Luke's light saber and Ren's mental probes had let her know she had Force sensitivity.  So she gave it a shot.

I never thought he was actually guiding the torpedoes using the force, but I can see how that might've been what he was doing.

That's what Obi-Wan's ghost was telling him to do.  Luke of A New Hope certainly never questioned what anyone else told him to do.

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pilight wrote:

Rey knew the legends of Jedi and the Force, including the Mind Trick.  Her encounter with Luke's light saber and Ren's mental probes had let her know she had Force sensitivity.  So she gave it a shot.

Rey thought Luke was a myth - that's the only thing she ever mentions in the film about it.  There's a pretty good chance there have been zero Jedi for her entire lifetime.  There's definitely a way to connect A to B to C to get where you are, but the problem is the movie doesn't show it.  I've seen it twice, and there's just not anything in the actual movie that tells you this. 

The problem with "the legends of the Jedi and the Force" is that we know nothing about what the general population knows about anything.  In fact, a line *from* A New Hope makes it seem like the galaxy was basically mind-wiped about the Jedi.  Han says he's never seen or heard of anything like the Force.  And in the context of solely ANH, this might make sense.  If Obi-Wan was one of the final Jedi, he might've retired before Han was born.

The prequels show that the Jedi were a *huge* deal during Han's lifetime.  Heck, during Han's childhood.  Chewie, his best friend, fought alongside the Jedi.  Chewie was on a first-name basis with Yoda.  That would be like people alive now talking about the Soviet Union like they were a myth.

My point is that information in this universe seems to be really hard to get a hold of.  And Rey seemed particularly uninformed since she didn't even know that Luke was real.

And, again, all this is easily fixed with a line or two that set it up later.  Maybe when Finn mentions Luke the first time, she says to herself "The Jedi are real?  Lightsabers, Jedi Mind Trick, all of it?"  And when Han confirms that he knew Luke, you show a moment of realization in Rey's face, and it pays off later.  But you actually have to show Chekhov's gun for the payoff to make sense.

In the movie itself, all we know is that Rey has heard of Luke Skywalker.  Doesn't show any indication that she knows he's a Jedi.  Then Han confirms that the Jedi and the Force are real.  Then Kylo uses Force powers on her, which would've been her first true indication that the Force even exists (outside of the vision she had when she touched the lightsaber).  Then she experiences a completely different way of mind-bending (I'll call it the Sith Mind Trick).  Then something happens in her head that we aren't privy to.  Then she successfully does something we've never seen an untrained Jedi do.

Not everything needs to be explained in a movie.  Over-explaining in a movie is just as bad as under-explaining.  But when you have someone who is as naturally talented as Rey, some level of explanation is needed on how such a thing is possible.  We all know how it's possible because we've seen the movies.  But she hasn't seen the movies.  And if she knows because she's heard all the legends, then tell us that.  If she knows because she saw Kylo do it, then tell us that. 

That's what Obi-Wan's ghost was telling him to do.  Luke of A New Hope certainly never questioned what anyone else told him to do.

All Obi-Wan says is "use the Force" - guiding the torpedoes seems way more difficult than simply trusting the Force (which is how I'd always interpreted it).  Keeping in mind that it isn't until Yoda's training that he can move anything other than his own lightsaber.

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Slider_Quinn21 wrote:

Han says he's never seen or heard of anything like the Force.

Well. no, he's clearly heard of it...

Han Solo wrote:

Kid, I've flown from one side of this galaxy to the other, and I've seen a lot of strange stuff, but I've never seen *anything* to make me believe that there's one all-powerful Force controlling everything. No mystical energy field controls *my* destiny. It's all a lot of simple tricks and nonsense.

He knows what the Force is, he just doesn't believe in it.  Obi-Wan might as well be talking about a flying reindeer with a red nose as far as Han is concerned.

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Yeah but Han was around when Jedi were still active and plentiful.  I have no idea what Han's backstory is, but even if he was raised in a place with no Jedi, Chewie has for sure experienced the Force.  Maybe they never talked about it, but that didn't seem like the first time Han had given that speech.

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LOVED IT.

I cannot wait for Rian Johnson get's his hands on it with the next movie and darkens it up and mindfraks everyone as only he can (if you have seen LOOPER or BRICK).

I got what JJ was going for and felt it worked even if it was a rethread of sorts. I prefer seeing it as a retrospective of sorts. We haven't seen these characters since RotJ. So see how they are NOW. The new characters know them as legends and that is pretty big itself.

That said...I loved Rey's Force vision (?) and that last scene took my breath away. It was prefect given the trailer with the vocals in it.

Yep. I saw Han was going to be a goner. P.O. but I understand.

Stuslide
SLIDERS: ALTERNATE SPIN
www.angelfire.com/ky/sliderspinoff
"Just think of the possibilities."

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Finally got around to seeing this (at home). I thought it was a pretty good pastiche of the original STAR WARS, but it lacks the originality and vision to be the cinematic event of the original 1977 movie because it's simply imitating the original -- and with a new cast. But that's okay. Repiloting can be tough especially when your core cast members are only willing or able to do supporting roles and you need to create a new team.

The stuff about Rey being a Mary Sue is stupid and Max Landis has become a tiresome bore, has been for awhile. Rey is notedly not good at everything; she can't negotiate bargains on her scavenged hardware. She nearly smashes the Falcon to bits her first time flying it. She is hopeless in handgun combat. The only reason she defeats Kylo Ren at the end is because Chewie shot him first.

Landis seems to take real issue with Rey knowing how to handle herself in her first fight at the settlement -- as though a young girl living all alone in a hostile environment with no law enforcement or stable society would have made it past puberty without knowing how to fight.

When Kylo Ren first Force-interrogates her, he reaches into her mind and then recoils as though he's being fought back while Rey's fear and helplessness are suddenly replaced with resolve -- his use of the Force in her mind unlocked something he's afraid of and he flees. Rey's instinctive trial and error results in patching the Falcon and using the lightsaber are part of her Force sensitivity guiding her hand.

In the first STAR WARS movie, Luke trusting the Force allowed him to:

(a) block blaster bolts with a lightsaber while BLINDFOLDED
(b) navigate the Death Star and escape with Leia from the cell to the hangar using a jumpline to swing across a chasm
(c) telepathically reach Darth Vader from across the hangar to pause the Obi-Wan/Vader fight to give Luke a last moment with the old man
(d) use the Falcon gun system effectively after a few missed shots despite having never used it before
(e) telepathically communicate with a dead man (Obi-Wan)
(f) fire two torpedos into a tiny ventilation shaft without a computer targeting system.

The original film alone establishes that the Force is fundamentally about its wielders receiving augmented instinct in making physical and strategic choices, trusting the guidance of the Force where knowledge or experience are not available. Force wielders who combine knowledge and experience with the Force become more powerful. While telepathy and telepathy are part of it, the main power of the Force is precognitive awareness of the plot. The original STAR WARS could see the word "Force" replaced with "Plot."

The prequel trilogy shot this to hell by making the Force all about briefly acquiring superstrength and superspeed in short bursts that, if sustained or repeated too much, would exhaust the user along with the telepathy and telekinesis. FORCE AWAKENS returns to the original conception of the Force with Rey.

Rey is shown to struggle, screw up and figure it out due to perseverance / Force sensitivity. Max Landis' whiny rant about Rey strikes me as him inventing evidence to justify an inherent distaste towards a Sabrina Lloyd type actress being portrayed as anywhere near Tom Cruise capable because he has some internal discomfort for female characters who aren't designed to be damsels in distress.

The idea of the Force being a myth is an idea later contradicted by George Lucas' inability to keep his own mythos straight. The Force was an urban legend at best in the original trilogy; in the prequels, Force users are elected government officials.

The Force is not an ancient and obscure religion if your ****ing Senators and Chancellors are levitating spaceships and firing electricity from their fingertips. The script for AWAKENS takes a careful middle ground -- everything is known -- the Death Star run, the mind control, the levitation -- but not necessarily believed, which, given the crazy propaganda machine of the Empire and the devastation of the original trilogy war, is not unreasonable.

Slider_Quinn21 adopting Landis' absurd and provably false views strikes me as SQ21 (a) having a fuzzy memory of how Force powers worked and (b) having no memory of what Han actually said about the Force in the first STAR WARS (c) not noticing how the prequels contradicted Han's dialogue and (d) putting Max Landis on a pedestal, just as he puts me and Informant on a pedestal he shouldn't.

In my view, Informant is a skillful writer who does not pay as much attention as he might to reader satisfaction, ireactions is at best a pastiche artist with a self-mocking sense of humour and a willingness to buy story ideas when he can't come up with his own -- and Slider_Quinn21 needs to review Landis' material and consider it in the course of forming Slider_Quinn21's own opinion -- as opposed to defaulting to the assumption that Landis is never wrong, especially when Landis demonstrates not only poor familiarity with STAR WARS but with THE FORCE AWAKENS as well.

Chewie had SHOT Kylo Ren, for god's sake -- Kylo was desperately trying to shove his internal organs into shape during the fight with Rey. Landis has gone from being a capable firebrand to a tedious dullard in just four years and it's sad to see and his issues with women are further in that absurd 2013 interview.

The film has a lot of weaknesses and the weaknesses are primarily due to using the original STAR WARS as a stencil, recreating the flaws of the original without the originality of the original. The main problem, I'd say, is that Rey's journey from uncertain scavenger to Resistance warrior is not the main focus of the story due to the necessity to set up Finn and Poe and also bring in Han, Leia and Chewie as a nod to the original trilogy.

There are moments that could be highlighted further, like Kylo telling Rey that she waits for nothing on her home planet and her family will not return, using the Force to destroy her belief system. At one point, Kylo says Rey sees Han as a father figure, a baffling remark considering they only spent a few hours together.

Poe Dameron disappears for most of the film and it's hard to relate to strongly to him, meaning the aerial battle of AWAKENS is a token segment and of no real importance. AWAKENS, being a pastiche of the first STAR WARS movie, is still stuck in a world where there is inexplicably no means of data transmission; all data must be ferried in hard media carried in droids because the Internet didn't exist in 1977 and is being ignored in 2015.

But it's fun. It captures the same fun of the original. Daisy Ridley and John Boyega have great and instant chemistry. After the bloated self-importance of the prequels, it's nice to get back to FLASH GORDON whizbang -- but I hope that now that STAR WARS has repiloted, we can innovate and expand. Maybe the next STAR WARS movie will have the Internet.

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Slider_Quinn21 wrote:

Han's death also bothered me.  The first act implies that he abandoned his family after Ben went to the dark side.  Fair enough and fitting with Han's character - he was always the rogue, and it's hard for those guys to be daddy.  But there doesn't seem to be any indication that he's really worried about it since then.  Then he sees Leia, sees Ben, and that's what opens him up to be killed?  I'm not saying that he didn't love his son or that he was a bad father - I just didn't think the movie set him up for that to be his weakness.  But it was still very tense - my heart was beating out of my chest when it was happening.

This is one way to read it. Another way to read it is that Han would not have chosen to go out any other way. Which is not to say he hoped his death would come from being impaled by a lasersword wielded by his own son

But Han, even knowing his son was very possibly and probably going to kill him, had to give his son one last chance to redeem himself. He felt that, being Ben's dad, it was his obligation to give his son this final opportunity that nobody else would ever extend to Kylo Ren. And there is a certain symmetry to how the climax has a father reaching out to his child and the final scene is a child reaching out to her father -- all the grief and loss and loneliness and pain of abandonment on her face, salved by a small sense of hope.

But you can also look at it from the viewpoint that caring about your family can get you killed. It's probably both!

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Well, I haven't seen Force Awakens since my last post here.  It's really hard to really defend/discuss whatever opinions I had then, but I would like to defend a couple points.  As per usual, you've done a better job than me of really breaking things down, but here's my two cents.

1. First of all, I'm by ZERO means a Star Wars fanatic.  I've probably seen A New Hope 5 times all the way through.  I might have seen Empire 2-3 times.  Return of the Jedi twice.  Maybe.  The prequels one time each.  Now this is Star Wars and they're on all the time, so I might have seen bits and pieces of the movies a dozen or so times.  But sit down and watch Star Wars - it just never connected for me.  I can see the allure but cannot identify with it.

So, yes, my memory of the original trilogy required more use of Wookiepedia than actual memory of the movies.  And to me, I always thought Luke was a bit of a wimp and a wuss in the first couple of movies.  He's brave in the sense that he wants to get out there and is willing to go to great lengths to rescue his friends.  But I never got the sense that he was really a hero in ANH or Empire.  In the first movie, he wants to do more but his parents and his mentor get killed with him being powerless to do anything.  He accomplishes very little in the rescue of Leia.  Yeah, he blows up the Death Star, but at the time of watching it, I almost give Obi-Wan's ghost more of the credit.  In Empire, the very first scene of the movie, Luke has to be rescued.  Then he runs off to train, and all of the action happens in Cloud City.  Luke comes to rescue his friends, doesn't save Han, and has to be rescued himself after he's owned and disfigured by Vader.

If you just go by the first two movies, Luke sorta sucks.  If you're picking people to go on a mission, I'd rather have Leia than Luke.  She's more creative and just as brave.  I sorta feel like Luke would've given up the real location of the Rebel base.  It isn't until Jedi that he really feels like someone you want to bring into battle (although his plan to rescue Han goes horribly wrong and, again, has to be rescued)

With Rey, I just felt like she was never in any real danger.  In Empire, I think there was a real fear that Vader would kill him.  Even when Ren had his lightsaber to Rey's neck, I figured she'd get out of it.  And she struggles....kinda.  But it's the little things - that Han loves her instantly.  That *she* is teaching *him* how to fix parts of the Falcon.  That she has all the good parts of Han and all the good parts of Luke and all the good parts of Leia.  I don't hate her character - I just thought her character was boring. 

2. Yes, I agreed with Landis.  Yes, I have agreed with him in the past.  I don't actually like him that much as a writer (Chronicle was pretty good, American Ultra was fun but forgettable, I haven't seen Frankenstein and don't really want to, I have no interest in Me Him Her, I'd only see Mr. Right because of Anna Kendrick, etc), and he seems like an arrogant asshole most of the time.  But I value his opinion because I really think he cares about a lot of this stuff, and I think he comes at it from an interesting angle.  I thought it was a bit crazy that he got so much fire on that whole thing, and I guess it's just because so many people loved the movie and didn't want anyone to say anything bad about it.  And that we'd been waiting all these years for a female hero in Star Wars, and it felt like cheapening what was supposed to be a historic moment.

So, yeah, I don't think I was just taking his words and vomiting them as my own.  Since he's presumably seen the Star Wars saga more than 12 times all the way through, I respect his opinion on the matter more than my own.  And since his opinion melded with my original thoughts, I thought I'd let him explain moreso than me.

Now if the Force, as it was originally visioned, is supposed to give the Force-sensitive the ability to either be instinctively good/great at pretty much everything with or without any teaching, that's fine.  But I just felt like Rey had so many times where she just seemed to *know* what to do without being taught that it seemed a bit off-putting.  Many times in the movie she just "gives it a try" and pretty much succeeds every time. 

Now the explanation is probably that Rey has latent training.  But I guess I have an issue with pretty big things in a movie having to be explained in a second movie.  Hinting at something bigger is fine, but I don't even think they went that far.  But in today's film culture, I guess that's just to be expected.

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I find it difficult to believe that anyone would raise these concerns with the Rey character if the character were a man and played by Jesse Eisenberg.

Landis was not born an arrogant asshole -- he seemed to become one after CHRONICLE's success went to his head. He is super-talented, but when he became famous and successful (well, famous), he developed some very peculiar issues with women. If you are a successful filmmaker or  Hollywood leading man (like Jerry O'Connell), women will throw themselves at you in the hopes of fame or work and sex will be an underlying part of the bargain. However, the mistake is to see this one subset of women -- women willing to trade sex for work or fame -- and assume that the mindset of these women are the mindsets of all women.

Landis, in a particularly appalling 2013 interview, doesn't even see women as self-actualizing beings of self-determination. They're just extensions and reflections of his ego and someone like that would naturally take issue with a woman being her own person with her own independent ability to survive. He's done good stuff -- AMERICAN ULTRA was fun and unfortunately released in the cinematic dead zone of August with extremely poor promotion that didn't show what a wonky blend of genres it contained.

But he has serious problems with 50 per cent of the human population and I can't see how that isn't a factor in his absurd claim that Rey beat a super-experienced Force user while deceitfully leaving out the fact that this Force wielder (a) just killed his own father (b) had psychologically imploded upon himself (c) had been shot in the stomach by Chewbacca (d) was periodically punching himself in the gut to numb the pain and shove his internal organs back into place and (e) so weak that he struggled to beat Finn.

As for Luke -- he's captured by a flesh eating monster in EMPIRE. He uses the Force to escape the creature and it's only once he's escaped does Han find Luke. Luke doesn't use the Force in the Battle of Hoth, but he does come up with the idea of typing up the AT-AT walkers with harpoons and tow cables and, even after getting shot down, he takes down one AT-AT using a grapple hook and a grenade. He's not incompetent, although he doesn't really use the Force outside of training and, when facing Darth Vader, only uses telekinesis now and then.

That's part of the critique Yoda makes; Luke is not in tune with the spiritual / plot-driven side of the Force -- and when Luke does use it, he sees Leia, Han and Chewie in Cloud City and rather than assessing the situation, he charges right in, finds Vader despite having never been to Cloud City and having no idea where Vader could be, gets his ass kicked  and he telepathically signals Leia to rescue him later.

He's expressly presented as a flawed hero who proves Yoda right that he was not ready to go to Cloud City and was also not even needed there. But he demonstrated Plot power in that he knew the action was on Cloud City through the Force. Darth Vader also uses the Plot power of the Force quite significantly in luring Luke to him as well as  in one scene where he instinctively knows the Rebels are on Hoth even though the officers protest there's no evidence to single it out among all the possible locations.

In RETURN OF THE JEDI, Luke's Plot powers are even more in evidence (an awareness of Vader, realizing his presence in the forest moon ship was a mistake), but his main use of the Force is to feel Darth Vader's internal conflict and capitalize on it. Ultimately, that's the Force in the classic trilogy; a Force user gains awareness of the story they're in and begins to manipulate the story with this knowledge, but their awareness is sporadic, unsustained and does not lead to omniscience.

Rey is a very different character who has grown up in a harsh and unyielding environment with no real support structure or guardians, eking out a living on scavenging mechanical parts and having to defend herself on all fronts. Luke had clearly never been in a fight in STAR WARS. Rey has clearly been in lots.

STAR WARS made it quite overt that Luke's Uncle Owen manipulated Luke's life to prevent him from ever needing his Force sensitivity -- farm work, no physical dangers, no threats -- whereas Rey has had to survive on her own and has been using the Force to survive even if she doesn't know it. Her understanding of the Falcon's systems are driven by the Force as presented in first three movies: bursts of precognitive instinct that forward the plot, with Kylo Ren inadvertently unlocking that gift entirely.

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Oh, God, here's that 2013 interview. I just re-read and need to take a bath.
https://web.archive.org/web/20131005120 … max-landis

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I was just reminded that the first prequel has a nine year old boy defeat a fleet of spaceships in addition to winning a pod race and that didn't engender a flicker of protest. Which I think really underlines Landis' contempt for Rey. How dare a GIRL be competent, talented, capable and strong? Women can't be good at things, they're things to be owned.

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ireactions wrote:

Oh, God, here's that 2013 interview. I just re-read and need to take a bath.
https://web.archive.org/web/20131005120 … max-landis

To be perfectly fair, Max has come out and said that he's embarrassed by a lot of what he said in that interview and that he's grown since then.

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Now regarding Rey, I don't think she's a bad character.  I just didn't find her to be all that compelling.  I could be perfectly wrong, but it seems like Rey was trained and is already a Jedi / Jedi Master.  Which is fine....but I would've appreciated that information being in the movie.  And we aren't really watching the growth/triumph of a character as much as the realization of what she's already been.  Again, all that is totally fine - I just don't think it's all that interesting if Neo already was The One and just needed someone to tell him.

(For the record, I didn't find Neo to be all that compelling of a character either).

And I don't think it has anything to do with her gender.  I find a lot of characters (many of whom are/were also called Mary Sues) to be pretty boring if they start the story as crazy powerful.  John Wick, John McClane, Superman.  If Batman always has something in his utility belt to get him out of any situation, why would there be any reason to worry about him?

If Episode 8 starts with Rey as the ultimate Jedi warrior, fully unlocked who goes around mowing down First Order troops and restoring peace to the galaxy.....only to be defeated by a souped-up Kylo Ren or an in-person Snoke.....cool.  If they're setting her up to be a badass only to be torn down so we see who the *true* badass is....cool.  But if they're just gonna say "Anakin was powerful.  Luke was better.  Rey is the best." then I just think that's boring. 

I still liked the movie.

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Well, the sequel problems will have to wait for the sequel. But in a series where it's been established that the Force will make a nine year old with no space flight experience someone who can singlehandedly defeat an invasion fleet of killer warships, there is really no issue with Rey's talents. And if Landis takes issue with the Force making characters capable, why is he watching a STAR WARS movie? Again, there was absolutely no outcry whatsoever over Anakin toppling the Trade Federation in the very first hour of space flight he ever logged -- and the main difference between Rey and her grandfather is that her grandfather was a man and that's acceptable for male protagonists and Rey should go back to the kitchen and think about finding a good husband and raising children.

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Well, I can't speak for Landis.  If he's sexist and veils it with talk of character, that's his problem.

I thought everything in Phantom Menace was a disaster so I had issues with everything.  And I do think that there was an outcry when a kid blew everything up.  That Anakin shouldn't have been on the trip to Naboo in the first place.  That it was all played terribly for humor.  I mean, to this day, Jake Lloyd hates Star Wars because the hate for young Anakin was so great.  So to say that everyone loved Anakin or had no issue with Anakin in Phantom Menace is a bit too far.

And Landis said that if Rey were male, he'd be one of the worst characters ever, and people would absolutely hate him.  The fact that she's female is what's shielding her from criticism.  Again, his words, not mine.

To me, and you can believe this if you want and dismiss it if you don't, I just thought there was a lot that she was very good at to start.  Fixing things, fighting, piloting, force-pulls, jedi mind trick, lightsaber dueling.  Everyone loves her as soon as they meet her.  Han wants her to stay after being with her for a few hours (and Han didn't bond like that with anyone else that fast).  Maz has a special connection immediately.  Hell, when everyone returns to the Resistance base, Leia walks right by Chewbacca and hugs Rey!  And they hadn't even met!

That was my issue.  And it wasn't that it wasn't set up properly.  I can believe that she's a great pilot because she's grown up near a spaceport.  That she's great at repairing because she's a scavenger.  That she's great with the Force because it's either in her blood or she's been trained.  All of that is great.  But between a character that is already good-to-great at everything and a character with some room to grow, I'd rather have the character that has room to grow.

And if "well she's great with the force so that makes her great at everything" is just Star Wars.....well, then I guess that's the reason why this series isn't my favorite smile  And I'm clearly in the minority in that respect so my opinion can't be that great anyway smile

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A lot of the problems cited with Rey -- which I don't really see as problems to begin with -- are really issues with STAR WARS.

Slider_Quinn21 wrote:

I just thought there was a lot that she was very good at to start. Fixing things, fighting, piloting, force-pulls, jedi mind trick, lightsaber dueling.

Well, despite her competence, I definitely got the sense that Rey was in trouble and turmoil in many points of the movie such as when she struggled to buy enough food to live on and found it difficult to pilot the Falcon and nearly crashed it or was overwhelmed by the Force vision that caused her to flee into the forest or when she fought Kylo Ren with a blaster and was promptly disarmed or when he mind-raped her or when even a wounded Kylo dominated her in a lightsaber fight until she finally tapped into the Force and beat him.

Slider_Quinn21 wrote:

Everyone loves her as soon as they meet her. Han wants her to stay after being with her for a few hours (and Han didn't bond like that with anyone else that fast).

Because she saved his life through the (insane and accidental) release of the monsters aboard the ship and also (inadvertently) retrieved the Millennium Falcon for him and (coincidentally) was willing to help Han find his old war buddy who had gone missing.

Han also offered Luke a job in STAR WARS.

Slider_Quinn21 wrote:

Maz has a special connection immediately.

Maz specifically says she can feel the Force in Rey -- which is also especially present because Rey is telepathically drawn to the lightsaber that Anakin and Luke carried. Ah, the Force.

Slider_Quinn21 wrote:

Hell, when everyone returns to the Resistance base, Leia walks right by Chewbacca and hugs Rey! And they hadn't even met!

Leia is Force sensitive as well (first established in EMPIRE when Luke reaches her telepathically) -- she felt Han's death through the Force (as shown in an insert where after Han's stabbed, Leia reacts) and felt Rey's reaction to Han's death through the Force. Admittedly, Chewie was likely grieving more, but Leia could actually feel Rey's sadness for Han and feel it mirror her own.

This just just how the Force works and has since 1977. I think the real issue, then, is the core weakness of STAR WARS -- the use of the Force to connect disparate events and direct characters in a fashion that, without the Force, would be implausibly nonsensical and random. The use of the Force to make characters possess knowledge and skills they haven't earned in precognitive bursts.

At its best, STAR WARS highlights use of the Force as self-awareness and awareness of the world and acting calculatedly yet honestly to others and to one's self and achieving harmony in both. At its worst, STAR WARS uses the Force as an excuse for narrative malpractice.

Nevertheless, to me, complaining about Rey's psi-powers and precognitive gifts is the equivalent of complaining that Batman is too good at fighting or Iron Man is too good at fixing machines or that Superman can fly. It also ignores numerous scenes where Rey is clearly in trouble. All Force users have demonstrated that their superpower is using the Force to very suddenly become super-talented at something they'd never touched before.

That is the universe this movie is set in, for better or for worse. Anyone telling STAR WARS stories either embraces it -- or finds a more logical franchise. It seems silly to criticize STAR WARS for using the Force. One might as well complain that DEADPOOL is unrealistic because the character is aware he's in a movie.

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How hard can lightsaber fighting be?  Finn held his own with Kylo Ren for a good while with no training and no force sensitivity.  Nobody seems bothered by that.

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What I find is that cinema is full of characters who are tragically orphaned and more powerful than anyone and every supporting cast member is a willing love interest for these characters with genius level intelligence, Olympic level athleticism and incredible good looks matched terrible angst that only makes them more attractive especially when these characters are hypercompetent and earn implacable loyalty and demonstrate the ability to win no matter how much the odds are against them -- and while that's an acceptable template for Tom Cruise, Batman, Jason Bourne, James Bond, Indiana Jones, Captain Kirk, Mr. Spock, Sherlock Holmes, it's apparently implausible and questionable if even a portion of that template goes to a woman.

Which is why I simply don't buy the claim that the male version of Rey would receive complaints about competence and ability. Rey is no more implausible than any heroic figure of cinema, but because she's a woman, it's an issue.

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Well, I mean I've already stated that these movies aren't necessarily for me.  If that's how we want to write it off, that's fine.  But I think a lot of the characters you mentioned are all boring in the same way that Rey is boring.  It's why I like a Batman Begins more than I like a Dark Knight, which seems a bit crazy.  But I like the person who is on the upward slope - not someone who starts out being pretty awesome at everything.  I don't like Bond movies.  I only really liked the first Bourne movie.  I've seen the Indiana Jones movies about as many times as I've seen the Star Wars movies.

When your hero has no room to grow, I'm just not that interested.  If the next time Rey is in a fight, the Force is always going to save her, then that's not intriguing to me.  And you can say that Kylo was injured and that's accurate, but I don't fear Kylo Ren in any way.  They didn't establish anything with Snoke to fear.  Phasma was irrelevant in the movie. 

So you have a movie where the primary hero is good-to-great at everything and the villain is generally pretty weak (I've complained that Finn does as well as he does - Ren should dominate him, injury or no).  By all means, now that Luke and Rey are together, the First Order should be destroyed pretty easily.  With more training, Rey easily beats Ren again, and Luke can handle Snoke.  The last movie can be about Poe making lemon squares for everyone smile

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I do not recognize this invincible, unchallenged character you describe. Rey in the film is clearly on her back foot throughout, struggling not to starve, isolated, alone, near the losing end of every fight, perpetually near defeat and only succeeding through sheer, dogged effort and a bizarre luck that can only be explained by the Force. STAR WARS is set in a universe where trying really hard actually counts. This Rey who never loses a fight and is never in trouble seems to be from some movie I haven't seen.

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Ha, well now that I've actually gotten off my ass and read it, now I can say "well, maybe I'm like Laurel Hills and am watching some version of the movie that no one else knows about" smile

And I can really only go off my (limited) memory, but here we go.

- Rey starts the movie alone, but I didn't really get the sense that she was struggling.  She had food, she had shelter, and she was a very capable scavenger.  When BB-8 shows up, she confidently brushes off the raider that has come for the droid, and he runs away.  She's clearly a known/respected entity, and he's afraid of her.  We know she can fight, this is fine.
- When she goes to sell the parts, the pawn shop owner does take advantage of her.  But from my memory, she doesn't seem devastated or hopeless about it.  It'd just mean she'd have to go back to the destroyed Star Destroyer and find more stuff.  Or just sell BB-8, which would've made her relatively rich from the context.  When people are sent to kill her, she fights them off with such efficiency that Finn is impressed.  Then she starts chasing him.  He runs away, terrified.  This could be the Force, but being able to handle herself, training or not, is fine.
- Escaping in the Falcon.  She did run into some stuff when they first took off, but she mastered it really quickly from what I remember.  For someone who'd "never flown anything like that before" - she did a really good job.  Now I have no idea what experience she had flying something, but if you threw me in a cockpit, there's probably a better chance that the plane catches fire than it getting an inch off the ground.  If it's a matter of my Air Force buddy moving from his cargo plane to a 747, then that's forgivable.  But that shot of the Falcon maneuvering was in the first trailers - people all assumed it was Han flying it.  It wasn't clunky, and she out-maneuvered First Order pilots in much more maneuverable ships.  If that's the Force, that's fine.
- The mess with the mercenaries.  I agree, this part was dumb.  But in the stretch between leaving the planet and the speeches with Han about the Force, Rey says "hey, let me try this" or some variation a bunch of times.  And in every situation, it works like a charm.  Whether it was releasing the monsters to save Han from the gangs or killing the monsters, everything Rey "tried" worked immediately.  If that's the Force, that's fine.
- On the Maz planet, the Force clearly guides Rey to the lightsaber.  That's definitely the Force, and that's fine.  And, yeah, she's overwhelmed by the visions and runs out into the wilderness.  This is the first time she's actually seems out of control in the movie (spoiler alert, it's also the last).  She's panting, she's out of breath, she's terrified, and she's easily captured by Kylo.
- On the ship, Kylo *attempts* to "mind-rape" her but fails spectacularly.  After the torture sequence, it's Kylo who runs off, overwhelmed and terrified.  He's a Sith Lord, and she/her latent training/the Force protects her completely.  Poe got mind-raped.  In the clips I was able to find, Rey looks confident and powerful.  Not struggling at all.  If that's the Force, that's fine.
- The Jedi Mind Trick - Again, I'd like to think, based on the previous six movies, that the Jedi Mind Trick is not Jedi 101.  It's used only a handful of times in the six movies, and it fails as often as it works.  But if we want to credit it to latent training or the Force itself, that's fine.  I just wish there'd been a scene earlier in the movie where she was able to convince the Pawn Shop owner to give her the extra credits or something.  It felt out of left field.
- Her rescue.  Leia was a badass in her own right, but she still had to be rescued.  When Rey is rescued, she's just out walking around.  She got no resistance getting out of her cell after that *one* guard walked away.  From the looks of things, there were only about 8 people on board the Starkiller at the time (Kylo, Hux, Phasma, Rey, Han, Chewie, that one stormtrooper, and maybe another).  It's played off as a sort of coincidence, but if that's the Force, that's fine.
- The lightsaber battle - Yes, Kylo was conflicted.  Yes, he'd just killed his father.  Yes, he was shot with the bowcaster (which killed tons of people throughout the movie and Ren just sorta shrugged it off).  I get that.  But Kylo is obviously trying to kill both Rey and Finn.  I took special care to pay attention to that the second time I watched it - he's out for blood.  If the injury is bothering him, the fight doesn't really show it.  He still acts like he's able to physically do everything that he wants to do.  He just can't kill either of them.  He beats Finn, but there's no reason that fight should've lasted as long as it did (imagine Han picking up a lightsaber and fighting Vader in Empire.  Or, heck, just remember the one time Vader and Han fought in the entire Original Trilogy https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uHH6YVHGh90 ).  But then Rey basically kicks his butt.
- The ending.  Okay, so I get that Leia is force-sensitive and Rey is force-sensitive.  That's fine.  But Leia walks *right by* Chewbacca.  She doesn't say anything to him.  She doesn't even acknowledge him.  This is Han's wife and Han's best friend.  Chewie and Leia go back decades.  And she walks by him to hug a stranger that knew Han for, what, a few hours?  Honestly, how long did they even know each other?  They meet on the Falcon, they have three conversations, they get to Maz's, and then she's captured. 

(Side note - a lot of people are insanely quick friends in this movie.  I thought it was bizarre that Finn and Poe were so happy to see each other since their previous friendship lasted less than ten minutes.  I know Finn and Poe saved each other's lives, but it wasn't like Finn was devastated when he thought Poe was dead).

- Then there's the whole ending.  Rey inherits the Falcon (not Chewie, not Leia) and travels to meet Luke alone.  No Leia.  No Chewie.  Just this girl that, according to the story we have, he doesn't know.  This is probably the second-most scared she looks in the whole movie, I guess.  Wouldn't Luke like to see Leia (and vice versa)?  Wouldn't Luke like to see Chewie (and vice versa)?  Were they afraid too many people showing up would scare him? 

I don't see any instance in the film where she's struggling.  She's alone, yes.  But it seems like she's chosen to be alone until *whoever* comes back for her.  She is captured in the movie, but it's the only time she comes close to defeat.  And she follows up her capture by overriding Kylo's "mind-rape" and flipping it around on him, performing a perfect Jedi Mind Trick on her first-ever try, and then dominating a lightsaber battle with a trained Sith.  Seemed like a pretty nice day, all things considered smile

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Well, this is just from re-reading the two novelizations and the script (and the script is no different from the finished film -- my God, a J.J. Abrams screenplay is tightly edited) -- Rey is starving. Not to death, but she's constantly hungry. She is furious when the pawn shop owner offers only a half-portion of rations, so hungry she licks her plate clean.

The Falcon flight is haphazard and desperate throughout and Daisy Ridley plays the character as absolutely terrified and noticeably straining to control the ship when playing both co-pilot and pilot, whispering, "I can do this I can do this" and on the verge of tears throughout. Noticeably, the novelization and the prequel novel, BEFORE THE AWAKENING, mention that Rey's only entertainment is a flight simulator -- which is not in the script. (The prequel novel is canon.)

When the mercenaries board Han Solo's ship, Rey tries to trigger the blast doors but screws up, releasing the monsters.

All of Rey's suggestions for fixing the Falcon are voiced by Han Solo at the same time or based on her knowledge of how the pawn shop owner modifies his stolen ships (the compressor, the fuel pump). The script specifies that Han and Rey talk over each other saying pretty much the same things about the Falcon -- Han could and would make all these fixes except he's flying the ship. It's possible that Rey is unconsciously reading Han's mind and pulling knowledge from it.

After the Force vision, Maz tells Rey that Rey is deluding herself; this belief that she has to go home to wait for her family is a lie she tells herself. She knows full well that no one will return for her.

When Rey is captured, Kylo-Ren rips right through Rey's mind, telling her the same thing; he knows she's a scavenger and that she's alone and that she has been abandoned and she lies to herself. He also sees that the map fragment is in her memory, but that's the only thing he can't pull out of her mind because he gets in so deep she can read his.

Rey's first two attempts to use the Force hypnosis on the stormtrooper fail.

When Rey first tries to fight Kylo Ren in the woods, Kylo sends her flying backwards and knocks her unconscious from a Force blast. Rey awakens to see Finn fighting and defeated and then she grabs the lightsaber, but Kylo easily drives her to the very edge of a cliff and tells her that she doesn't know how to use the Force. At that point, Rey closes her eyes and -- I think -- begins to trust the Force inside herself, her feelings for Finn, her grief for Han, her acceptance that her life at home was waiting for something that would never happen -- and then the Force guides her in the fight from that moment forward.

Han and Rey bonding so quickly -- oh come on. This is a god-damn STAR WARS movie. That's how these things work. Han bonded with Luke in STAR WARS and that was maybe half a day, to the point where Han (extremely charitably) declared Luke to be "good in a fight," which is one of the most laughable things Han has ever said. Luke's daughter, however, is a scrapper.

I do agree that Leia walking right past Chewie was a mistake and JJ Abrams says he blocked the scene incorrectly -- that Resistance soldiers should have been surrounding Chewie and ushering him and Finn to the infirmary and that Leia should have been kept at a distance to establish that she was standing back to let the medical professionals do their jobs. Abrams apologized for this.

I can see some reasons for Leia sending Rey alone. If you're trying to get a warrior to come out of retirement, sending him a potential protege is probably your best bet; there's no way Luke doesn't know that the galaxy has gone to hell in his absence. He's chosen to stay out of it for whatever reason -- earlier drafts, I believe, were going to overtly reveal that Luke has become so powerful in the Force that a word or a breath could shatter worlds and he's isolating himself to protect people. Leia has a Resistance to run and a government to rebuild after the Death Star Mark 3 blew up the Republic core system. Chewie knew that Han would have insisted on flying Rey to meet Luke.

And Leia always hated the Falcon and considered it a hyperdrive equipped death trap; she would give it away in a heartbeat to the first person dumb enough to assume responsibility for that creaking pile of malfunctions and dysfunctions.

Thanks for reading the first SLIDERS REBORN script.

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I think we've reached the point, length-wise, where we just have to agree to disagree.  I'm going to just chalk it up to not liking certain things about Star Wars and the Force and so on. 

In my original post, I said that she was "a bit boring" - I've said at least a couple times that I liked the movie and thought it was fun.  This is not the hill I'm willing to die on, but I like that you, as well as millions of hardcore Star Wars fans, loved the film smile

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Han and Rey bonding so quickly -- oh come on. This is a god-damn STAR WARS movie. That's how these things work. Han bonded with Luke in STAR WARS and that was maybe half a day, to the point where Han (extremely charitably) declared Luke to be "good in a fight," which is one of the most laughable things Han has ever said.

Han risked his life for Luke at least twice the first day they met.

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I was actually asking about the timeline of Star Wars.  How many days does A New Hope take place during?  It almost seems like it's one day.

I just thought it was funny that Finn and Poe act like they're best friends when they're reunited, but they've only known each other for, seriously, ten minutes.  And Finn doesn't seem all that upset (if at all) when he thinks Poe died on Jakku.

I LIKED FORCE AWAKENS smile

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Slider_Quinn21 wrote:

I was actually asking about the timeline of Star Wars.  How many days does A New Hope take place during?  It almost seems like it's one day.

Essentially two days.

C-3PO and R2-D2 escape one day.  Luke buys them and cleans them up then R2-D2 runs while he's eating dinner and whining about having to stay when all his friends are gone.  Luke looks a little, but it's too dangerous to go after him at night with all the Sand People.

Early the next morning he takes C-3PO and goes hunting for R2-D2.  The rest of the movie up to the destruction of the Death Star and return to base takes place that day.

The medal ceremony at the end is probably a different day, if that matters.

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A New Hope is certainly brilliant with its simplicity smile

And, yeah, I guess I'd forgotten the iconic shot of Luke staring up at the twin suns.  That's definitely one night.  I'd always wondered if they slept on the way to Alderaan or if there was a big gap between the Empire discovering the rebel base and getting there.

Next Star Wars question I've always had.  Can the Death Star travel at hyperspeed (is that what it's called in SW?)?  It has to, right?  That would've been quite the visual.

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According to the various technical manuals, the Death Star had hyperdrive -- but all the books before April 25, 2014 have been declared apocryphal. They are now labelled as STAR WARS LEGENDS. So now, it's kind of a gray area.

**

In other STAR WARS news -- well, in February (so not news, really), fan editor Peter Harmáček released version 2.5 of his DESPECIALIZED STAR WARS. These are versions of the original trilogy where all the SPECIAL EDITION changes have been removed -- and they're in high definition.

Very neat stuff. Harmáček received a variety of donations to make this happen; fans calling themselves TeamNegative1 tracked down 35mm prints of the unaltered films and did scans and restorations and gave some of their stuff to Harmáček. Harmáček took the SPECIAL EDITION blu-ray versions and mixed them with the 35mm versions and the unaltered but low-res DVD footage to recreate the original films.

He used rotoscoping to lift the original effects and put them on top of the SPECIAL EDITION video, covering the CG additions. For example, the SPECIAL EDITION STAR WARS created a new Leia hologram; Harmáček kept the HD version but covered the new Leia hologram with the original. He also recreated all the edits so that shots removed or altered in the SPECIAL EDITION have been restored to the DESPECIALIZED version. The original sound mix has been reinstated. All blu-ray colour alterations (designed to make the original films' tan, low contrast image match the bright, high contrast look of the prequels) have been undone.

Harmáček also restored errors. He recreated matte lines, scanlines, incorrectly placed matte paintings and visual artifacts, aiming for historical accuracy. It's called DESPECIALIZED, but that implies there've been changes; these releases are STAR WARS (1977), EMPIRE (1980) and RETURN (1983) as shown in theatres. Fans no longer need George Lucas to sign off on unaltered HD releases; they've made it themselves.

Earlier versions of the DESPECIALIZED version did not have material from the 35mm prints available. Harmáček made do with other sources: a 16mm print scan of STAR WARS, the low-resolution DVD release of the unaltered trilogy and a few 35mm sequences here and there as they came in. Harmáček also received film cells that he used to create matte paintings to restore original backgrounds to shots.

Sometimes, the unaltered materials were of a very low resolution and had to be upscaled to blend with the HD blu-ray footage. In some cases, it was no big deal -- for fast motion scenes, the original effects could be blurred to blend; for the space battle scenes, there was so much movement that the absence of fine detail wasn't an issue.

In others, you'd have a sharp and pristine shot suddenly becoming jagged and rough, or there'd be a low resolution effect on an HD shot. These were isolated instances, but enough to distract -- such as the final scene of RETURN OF THE JEDI where Harmáček removed Hayden Christiansen, but the Anakin in the shot was low resolution where Yoda and Obi-Wan were in HD. With version 2.5, areas where the visual quality dropped have been replaced by 35mm material, sufficiently cleaned up so that mismatches, while noticeable if you pause to examine, are invisible during normal viewing.

I like some of the SPECIAL EDITION changes. I think it's ridiculous to alter scenes to insert CG slapstick comedy like robots in Mos Eisley fighting each other or amp up the space battle sound effects so much they drown out John Williams' award winning score or recolour the films so badly that all shadow detail is lost.

But there are some things worth doing -- like correcting special effects errors where planets show up inside asteroid fields or redoing the glow effect on the Millennium Falcon to look consistent or adding more stormtroopers to the Death Star hallways. Changes that don't make the movie look like it was filmed in 1977 but only got edited and received special effects in 1996.

THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK, if you set aside the crushed blacks and bad colouring, is a pretty good example of what a SPECIAL EDITION should be. The changes are minimal; the airspeeder windshields are now completely transparent where they were translucent and bluescreen artifacts are removed. Cloud City has windows digitally inserted to make the place seem bigger. The Falcon exterior hatch, once a vague, white space, now has mechanical texture and detail. It's not obvious what has been put onto the film after the fact; these changes are unintrusive while additive.

The SPECIAL EDITION versions of STAR WARS and RETURN are unwatchably schizophrenic for me. I'm glad Peter Harmáček has released this new version which isn't even new at all. Crazy how much work he had to do when Lucas could simply have new transfers made.

He put his 2.5 releases up on Torrent sites, merely stipulating that anyone downloading them should first buy the SPECIAL EDITION releases.

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BTW, another aside - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pegJQPIzfs4 - the Honest Trailer.  I think this captures the movie pretty well.  The movie has flaws, but they're easily overlooked/forgiven if you're a big-enough fan.  The movie had *insane* expectations, and for the most part, it succeeded really well.  But as someone who wouldn't consider himself to be a big Star Wars fan, some of the plot/character issues affected me more.

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Slider_Quinn21 wrote:

Next Star Wars question I've always had.  Can the Death Star travel at hyperspeed (is that what it's called in SW?)?  It has to, right?  That would've been quite the visual.

It clearly had some kind of FTL capability.  Otherwise it would take hundreds of years to get from system to system.

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Slider_Quinn21 wrote:

BTW, another aside - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pegJQPIzfs4 - the Honest Trailer.  I think this captures the movie pretty well.  The movie has flaws, but they're easily overlooked/forgiven if you're a big-enough fan.  The movie had *insane* expectations, and for the most part, it succeeded really well.  But as someone who wouldn't consider himself to be a big Star Wars fan, some of the plot/character issues affected me more.

What the hell is this? Looks like the FORCE AWAKENS teaser intercut with clips of the prequels and some commentary on top, based largely on reviewing a teaser trailer.

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pilight wrote:
Slider_Quinn21 wrote:

Next Star Wars question I've always had.  Can the Death Star travel at hyperspeed (is that what it's called in SW?)?  It has to, right?  That would've been quite the visual.

It clearly had some kind of FTL capability.  Otherwise it would take hundreds of years to get from system to system.

I wondered if they would eventually get the range so powerful on the Death Star that it wouldn't need to move. But the books declared it had hyperdrive, so I always went with that. To be honest, I'm not entirely clear if ships in STAR WARS can even move faster than light -- off the top of my head, the characters only refer to going at "light speed" but then the use of hyperspace suggests that reaching light speed lets them enter a realm where ships can 'jump' to a farther location without travelling that distance.

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ireactions wrote:
pilight wrote:
Slider_Quinn21 wrote:

Next Star Wars question I've always had.  Can the Death Star travel at hyperspeed (is that what it's called in SW?)?  It has to, right?  That would've been quite the visual.

It clearly had some kind of FTL capability.  Otherwise it would take hundreds of years to get from system to system.

I wondered if they would eventually get the range so powerful on the Death Star that it wouldn't need to move. But the books declared it had hyperdrive, so I always went with that. To be honest, I'm not entirely clear if ships in STAR WARS can even move faster than light -- off the top of my head, the characters only refer to going at "light speed" but then the use of hyperspace suggests that reaching light speed lets them enter a realm where ships can 'jump' to a farther location without travelling that distance.

In The Empire Strike Back, only a few minutes after the Millennium Falcon appears to take off from the asteroid field Needa tells Vader the ship could be "on the other side of the galaxy by now."

Really, though, all the ships move at the speed of plot.

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ireactions wrote:

What the hell is this? Looks like the FORCE AWAKENS teaser intercut with clips of the prequels and some commentary on top, based largely on reviewing a teaser trailer.

You've never heard of Honest Trailers?  They've been doing them for a while - fairly popular.  They do a trailer for the film, usually using it as a (comedic) review of the film.  They typically point out flaws in the movie (sometimes obvious, sometimes stretching).  One of my favorites was when they pointed out that, in the final battle in the Avengers, the team was speaking to each other as if they had earpieces in (when it was clear they didn't).

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But this Honest Teaser you linked to has no specific film commentary. It's just commenting on the trailer.

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Oh wow, I'm an idiot.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vs3sVrm … tml5=False

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I'm watching MR. RIGHT, written by Max Landis, and the invincible hitman played by Sam Rockwell who can pull knives out of mid-air and never loses a fight and wins Anna Kendrick's heart in 30 seconds makes me suspicious of how Landis is totally okay with hypercompetent, indestructible characters so long as they're men.

.....................................................................

To be fair, Anna Kendrick's civilian character who has never been in a fight is also revealed to innately possess the same knife-catching superpowers, so maybe Landis doesn't mind women being awesome so long as he writes them.

Also to be fair, this is actually a pretty fun movie.

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I'm pretty sure he's said something about that, but I can't remember what and I wasn't able to find it in a 2-minute search on Twitter.  I don't even remember if it was defending the characters or explaining that they're invincible for whatever reason.  I also haven't seen it so I can't speak my own opinion.

What's funny, at least to me, is that I don't think he ever really thought it was a negative thing.  Just that she's a fanfic character.  He didn't think she wasn't awesome, and I'm not even sure he's disputing that there are valid reasons for why she could be awesome.  Just that she's a fanfic character who's great at everything and everyone loves her.  And that it made her a boring character.  He's said several times that he liked the movie....he just didn't love it.  He was much more critical of BvS than he was of TFA.

I've watched pretty much this whole thing unfold, and I know that he didn't mean it as a sexist term (whether or not he's actually a sexist I cannot say).  He claims it's just a misunderstanding on what "Mary Sue" actually means and any already-sexist connotations that are connected to it.

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I haven't read through all of the other comments yet, but I wanted to say that I finally got around to watching the movie. Finally, I will understand the jokes that people make in reference to the movie.

Rey is pretty.

Please be informed that the political, scientific, sociological, economic and legal views expressed in Informant's posts and social media accounts do not reflect any consensus of Sliders.tv.

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In my view, Informant is a skillful writer who does not pay as much attention as he might to reader satisfaction

How did I get dragged into this?

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He was referring to me thinking you're a good writer, in reference to me liking some Max Landis views smile

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I just thought it was funny, reading through Star Wars comments and then seeing myself pop up. smile

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Rey beat a super-experienced Force user

I just watched this again last night.  I'm not sure where people get the idea Kylo Ren is super experienced.  He barely beat Finn in a lightsaber duel, the same Finn who got his ass handed to him by a random storm trooper with a riot baton just a day earlier.  He struggled to retrieve Luke's lightsaber from the snow.  He didn't actually do much to suggest he's super experienced.  He seemed more like someone who had rudimentary training of a marginal talent.

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Well, I think it might've been in the presentation.  Yes, he struggles with the lightsaber, but he also is adept enough in the Force to stop that blaster and hold it in the air for a while.  We saw Vader deflect/absorb Han's blaster fire in Empire, and maybe one is harder than the other.  But it's something we'd never seen before from any other Force-user, and I think it was supposed to be impressive.

Then there's the fact that Ren appears to be in the "Vader" role for Snoke.  So Snoke is the master and Ren is the apprentice.  Now, maybe Ren is an apprentice in the true meaning of the word and is simply learning the ways of the dark side and the Force, but it'd be odd for Snoke to entrust someone who could've easily been killed by a couple people with no experience.

The problem with the "Is Rey too powerful" argument is that you have to weaken your villains to make it work, and I'm not sure that's any better.  The Force Awakens has three villains: Snoke, Kylo Ren, and Phasma.  Snoke and Phasma are barely in it and don't do much so almost all the "villain" weight falls on Kylo Ren.  And if he's just a very-Force-sensitive guy with "rudimentary training" and "marginal talent" then he's not much of a villain.  I know they're going for a villain who's conflicted and maybe someone who will rise to power on the same level as our hero, but Star Wars has a legacy of strong villains that the hero has to rise to overcome (even in the prequels).

To suddenly have an inexperienced guy who doesn't really know what he's doing isn't a great way to go either.

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Vader was a fully trained Jedi before he turned.  Ren was a Padawan who had barely begun learning the ways of the force.  If Ren is Vader's equal then training doesn't mean that much and Rey's (and Luke's) ability to use the force is not at all surprising or out of character.  If Ren is less powerful than Vader, then Rey (and Finn) being able to compete in a fight with him is not surprising or out of character.

The idea of Ren being a villain who has a lot of power he doesn't fully understand or know how to use is an interesting one.  Snoke says at the end that Ren's training is incomplete.  You have to wonder whether he is deliberately keeping Ren from reaching his full potential to avoid meeting the same fate Palpatine did at the hands of his right hand man.

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I mean I understand that but I don't fear Kylo.  I don't fear Phasma or Snoke because I don't know anything about him.  So I walk out of Episode VII without really understanding who's what.  I walked out of Episode IV understanding that Vader is still really powerful and that, while our heroes won, there's still a lot of work to do.  It was clear.

My problem with TFA is and was that it's a pretty good setup to a movie that might be great down the line.  It's a pilot for a cool TV series but not a standalone movie.  It's the ultimate culmination in the storytelling we're seeing at Marvel or DC or Fast and the Furious or these tween movies - where each movie is a chapter that builds on each other.  The Force Awakens is a first chapter that an only be truly understood/appreciated once the whole story is complete.

So that's why I didn't love it.  I felt like it was a prologue to the new trilogy - not the first entry in one.

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I watched it again.  I still just don't see the appeal of this movie.  It's just nostalgia...there's nothing more to it.

The problem is that I leave with so many questions that I wonder how it's possible that I've just watched a 150-minute movie.

Things we know about Rey: she's brave, she's strong with the Force, she has a mysterious past.
Things we know about Finn: he's brave, he's noble, and he has a mysterious past.
Things we know about Poe: he's brave, he's a good pilot, and we know nothing about his past.
Things we know about Maz: she's been around 1000 years with a mysterious past.

And these are the main characters! 

I know Luke and Han aren't great characters in A New Hope, but we knew some things about Luke.  His father died at the hands of Darth Vader.  He was a great warrior, a great friend, and a great pilot.  Luke lives with his aunt and uncle.  He wants to leave the planet because he feels a pull to the bigger conflicts.

All we know about Rey is that she feels a pull to the bigger conflicts and wants to fight....but instead of wanting to leave, she wants to stay.  But we don't know anything about her parents and almost nothing of her past.

The movie is so secretive, not letting us know anything to try and set up a number of "I am your father" moments, but that means that nostalgia has to carry the entire film.  And for a lot of people, that was enough.  For me, I'm wondering what the Hell happened.

I watch the scene where the Starkiller base fires and destroys that system, and it raises a hundred questions that the movie refuses to give any insight into.  How did the First Order rise from the rubble of the Empire to, once again, be the most powerful force of the galaxy?  Who is the New Republic, and why is its capital in some system we've never heard of (instead of Coruscant?  Why are the Resistance and the New Republic separate?  Shouldn't the Resistance just be the fleet of the New Republic?  Why does Princess Leia work for the Resistance and not the New Republic?

And I get that this is a movie that can afford to raise questions and not answer them because movies 8 and 9 would be coming no matter what.  This is season one of a show that's guaranteed to be renewed.  And, yeah, there's enough fun stuff in the movie that you don't ask the questions until later.

But, really, this movie couldn't afford to give us anything?  Anything at all?

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The feeling in the cinema when I saw it was quite good.  Perhaps it doesn't have a ton of rewatch, but JJ succeeded when it counted, when I saw it the first time.  I always thought the great wonder of the original trilogy was that things WEREN'T explained.  The prequels seemed to try to do this, and it failed badly.  JJ makes some "dumb movies" but he succeeds in the fun, awe, and excitement of the movie going experience.  One other point to consider is that this is the 1st of a new trilogy, and therefore perhaps we need to see the follow ups to properly judge it as part of a larger story?

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I'm not a big Star Wars guy. I've mostly remained quiet on this one because fans seemed to like it and I didn't see a need to attack something that they enjoyed. But I really didn't see why they liked this movie. Much like the Star Trek movies that Abrams made, The Force Awakens was mish-mash of plot elements from the older movies, with not much new material added. They didn't try to explain the hows and whys. They didn't try to develop characters. They bet on being able to get away with a lot of crap, as long as they had enough nostalgia. I guess the bet paid off. But I don't see why someone would feel a need to watch this movie over the original trilogy. If anything, this movie just damages the original trilogy by attempting to reset the story.

If it works for the fans, I'm happy for them. I do have to wonder how long the template will work though. The Star Wars universe is about to be more saturated than its ever been, with new movies being released one after another for years to come. Can Disney's Marvel road map work for Star Wars?

Please be informed that the political, scientific, sociological, economic and legal views expressed in Informant's posts and social media accounts do not reflect any consensus of Sliders.tv.