Star Wars The Force Awakens discussion (SPOILERS OBVIOUSLY)

LunarWolf wrote:Anyways, over all a good movie. Was it as good as the prequels, no. It is on par with Jedi IMO, which I feel is the weakest movie of the three, and Jedi is still REALLY FUCKING GREAT.

I thought you meant the actual prequels at first and not the originals.. That might have been an temp ban with immediate effect

LunarWolf wrote:Finn, I will say I liked Finn, but I had higher expectations that he'd do stuff and be more important, I thought the reason he'd break away from the first order was cause he was force sensitive or something.

Something makes me think that he is still a force sensitive jedi candidate... Otherwise he's just kinda... there. Rey is better then him in every way (skill wise) and a jedi in the making, Poe is a better pilot then him, he isn't even suppose to be an awesome ground-trooper... He's the friggin' janitor... so why is he a main character?



The problem I had with Rey being Luke's daughter is that because the reveal didn't come in The Force Awakens, it becomes anticlimactic for the next film...
However, I have just heard a theory about Rey that has me more willing to believe that she is in fact Luke's daughter (the anticlimax I was worried about would be completely negated by the revelation of something else). I need to see the film again, specifically the scene in which Rey touches the lightsaber and has all of them visions... I think that scene is extremely important to suggesting Rey's origins

Oh yeah, I swear Alec's voice can be heard when she touches the lightssaber! Obi-wan Kenobi! ~

but yeah, I did not mean epiosde 1,2,3. I suppose we have to call them to orig trig from now on xD

and what was the theory ?

The theory suggests that Rey was already slightly trained with the force... Thus what we are seeing (and why she picks it up so quickly) isn't her learning to use the force, but rather remembering to...

It seems to be assumed quite widely that Rey is about 19 while Kylo Ren is about 30 at the time of The force awakens. Also that Rey was about 5-7 when she was left on Jakku... Jedi tend to start training young, so she had enough time to start her training... while also being young enough to possibly forget/repress a lot of traumatic events.

From what I can remember in Rey's vision, we see her as a child being left on Jakku... But just before that we see her as a child laying in the rain. The scene where Kylo is standing with his group of dark jedi is also set in the rain; The addition of Rey as a child seems to suggest that she was actually there at the incident when Kylo killed all of Luke's force sensitive candidates (and not just a vision of what Luke experienced).

Furthermore, it is written (although this I can't actually remember to confirm) that when child Rey is laying in the rain, another person (one of Kylo's associates) is standing over Rey with the intention to kill her... But before he does a red lightsaber stabs through them. If this is true, Kylo Ren probably saved Rey's life... As we know, Kylo Ren has struggled with killing relatives and back then his resolve was probably a lot weaker than when he succeed in killing Han.

It seems to fit... Kylo Ren seems particularly more agitated to learn that a girl is with the droid that escaped with the map... He is reluctant to kill her in the lightsaber fight they have (instead offering to train her in the dark side)... If Rey was left on Jakku at the age of 7, that would make Kylo about 18 when he killed all of Luke's force sensitives. The map to Luke was left on the same planet as Rey and (if as you said) R2D2 turns on in Rey's presence, it seems that the map was intended for her...

Simply being Luke's daughter wouldn't be enough to explain how she was able to pick up using the force so quickly for me... The idea that she was trained for a bit when she was really young and is now re-tapping into that power is more plausible in my mind

Things I liked:

Poe and his X-wing
Black Tie fighters
Cool Stormtroopers
Dog fight scenes with Finn running
Chewie's bowcaster
Kylo's outfit when he has his hood on
Starkiller. Jesus Christ, I was turned on.

Things I didn't like:
Kylo's face. Thought it was snape. Revealed way too early.
The ending. The should have waited with Luke.
Phaesma or whatever she's called. She did literally nothing. Turned down the shields way too fast.
How short the scene was for for the melee trooper and flamethrower trooper.

In short. Really enjoyed it. I'd rate it the best Star wars I have seen with Phantom Menace as close second. Yes I have seen the original but for me, they lacked a lot of things that they might have been able to implant at the time.

I saw it in the OV yesterday.

Things I liked:
Chewbacca. No further explanation needed.
Han Solo.
Dog Fights off all kind.
Millenium Falcon.
Stormtrooper turns good. Novel stuff for SW, I really liked it.
New Stormtrooper outfit and recruitment. Makes sense and is probably more cost effective, although the quality of your tropps will probably suffer.
Funny stuff like when Ben trashes the room where the girl was held captive and the two stormtroopers appearing just walk away in the other direction quickly.^^
References to other movies of SW. That was great nostalgy and storytelling. Seeing the scorched helmet of Darth Vader was a really cool touch.
Melee trooper fight.

Things I didn´t like:
No explanation why tihs or that happened. I felt really lost in the first half of an hour who the first order now really is and who that guy on the throne is. Me and my buddies kind of agreed that the emperor survived the fall after Vader threw him into the reactor. But you think he would have learned omething with Death Stars in general by now.^^
Villain. That face. That accent. Wow, why is every villain in SW an emo when he is young? I wonder if the Emperor, Darth Maul or Count Dooku were emos too when they were young. The new movies are really weak on this stuff...
Han Solo killed. Han Solo was the best character in the whole movies.
The movie was basically part IV and VI with some elements of part I and III mixed into it. A nice mixture. But still, a mixture.
Evil guys are obsessed with weapons of mass destruction that are more or less spotting a weakness by design.
Weak light saber duels. Ben is not only an emo, he´s also terrible with the lightsaber as it seems. The best lightsaber fight is still in Episode I, followed by Episode III and VI.
Double sided lighsaber = cool.
Lightsaber looking like a burning medieval sword = meh.

Cirno wrote:Phaesma or whatever she's called. She did literally nothing.

I guess the original shot of boba fett in a New Hope (which I know didn't make the initial cut) had him doing literally nothing as well; he was just there for foreshadowing... I expect her to be utilized much more in the up coming films and she was just there for this film so that we are aware of the relationship between her and Finn

Cirno wrote:I'd rate it the best Star wars I have seen with Phantom Menace as close second.

Harrier wrote:No explanation why tihs or that happened. I felt really lost in the first half of an hour who the first order now really is and who that guy on the throne is.

The beginning 3 paragraph text crawl should have focused more on explaining that the New Republic had been established after the battle of Endor, that they demilitarized after chasing the remnants of the empire to the outter rim... And that Leia joined a military resistances because she believed the remnants were being gathered by an unknown sith lord.

A lot of what they said in the actual text crawl could have been explained in dialogue in the first few scenes of the movie

Cirno wrote:Starkiller. Jesus Christ, I was turned on.

Harrier wrote:Evil guys are obsessed with weapons of mass destruction that are more or less spotting a weakness by design.

This film didn't need a bigger scale death star for the story they told... It also raised some niggling questions: How were they able to build it with the Republic and Resistance on their back? Why would they set up *another* friggin weak spot that will result in its complete destruction?
What is it about the Empire and "If the whole planet doesn't go BOOM, we ain't doing it right!"?

Really, I think it would have been more believable and more terrifying if they had a revamped super star destroyer with a weapon that immediately ignites a planets O zone or eradicates living tissue. In terms of the story, the only things they would need to have changed is the scenery in the lightsaber fight and the way in which the falcon boarded it.

It became more obvious in the movie that the empire had lost considerably in power with the crashed Star destroyer on the desert planet being scavenged for a prolonged time. If you watched the other movies, you also knew that the men of Ben were kind of associated with the empire or had at least shared military traditions with the empire. But there was no grip to the big story somehow. I am a more or less casual Star Wars fan and had already heard and read a little bit about the First Order, but that was long ago and don´t realyl remember them as I thought that they would never see action in a real movie. So I can imagine that someone who sees this movie first is going to miss out big time regarding how awesome the background really is.

There are obviously lots of people that agree with Cirno(not me!) that Phantom Menace is the best movie of them all. It is at least the most commercialy successful up until the awakening of the force and has a very good cast with Ewan McGregor and Liam Neeson. And probably the best light saber duel between Qui Gon Jin, Obi Wan and Darth Maul. And an ok war scene. In all other regards, it royally blows.^^

I went to see it a second time, so a couple of corrections:

Kelsea wrote:From what I can remember in Rey's vision, we see her as a child being left on Jakku... But just before that we see her as a child laying in the rain.

We don't see her as a child laying in the rain, Rey tries to back away when she appears in the rain and trips... One of the knights of Ren (presumably) then moves in to try and cut her down but is stabbed from behind by the red lightsaber.

Kelsea wrote:The scene where Kylo is standing with his group of dark jedi is also set in the rain

Despite being called the Knights of Ren, they wield an assortment of different weapons... Only Kylo wields a lightsaber out of the group. This seems to suggest that they are not necessarily dark jedi. They all have their faces shrouded, which makes me wonder if it will be later revealed that Captain Phasma was one of the Knights of Ren


And a couple of small things I noticed:

Kelsea wrote:Kylo Ren seems particularly more agitated to learn that a girl is with the droid that escaped with the map

There is actually two scenes where "a girl" is mentioned to Kylo and both times he reacts, when he captures Rey he mentions that he finally gets to meet the girl he has heard so much about. It all makes me think that Rey is of more significance to him at this point then what the film has shown (ie a relative or someone he knew of)

When maz kanata talks to Rey, she makes her realize that whoever Rey was waiting for on Jakku wasn't coming back and then goes on to say that there is another that may still come (offering the lightsaber, indicating that she should go find Luke).. So I feel that Luke wasn't the one to leave her on Jakku, father or not

And finally when leia and Rey first meet, they hug silently. When I first watched it, I thought (for some reason) that Rey was with Han and Fin when Leia came down and the hug was for the loss of Han... But she was... so the first time Rey and Leia meet, complete strangers, and they hug it out? Interesting...

The portrayal of Princess Leia is weak in general in this movie, so I am not sure about that even if it sounds logical. Especially thinking that Leia is also force sensitive and probably felt the light side or the power of Luke with Rey or that she was there when Han died. Admiral Ackbar from episode VI is about as important as Leia was in this movie, they should have had the same amount of text imo. And "Concentrate fire on that super star destroyer!" had more impact than anything Leia said here^^

And on a funny sidenote, George Lucas thinks the movie is a rehash and basically sucks. Of course he thinks the reason this happened was that he was not as creatively involved as he wanted. Although he is right with the first part of the statement, if he did not like how SW was going in that direction, maybe he should not have sold to Disney in the first place.^^

I don't think Leia is Rey's mother if thats what you thought I was saying... If she were the mother, I'd expect her to have a bigger reaction, the reaction lends more support to the idea that Rey is Luke's daughter and thus Leia's niece (hence the hug)... But they've tried really hard to leave us guessing as to who Rey's true parents are, in such a way that it is a little unnatural in scenes like that

Harrier wrote:And on a funny sidenote, George Lucas thinks the movie is a rehash and basically sucks. Of course he thinks the reason this happened was that he was not as creatively involved as he wanted. Although he is right with the first part of the statement, if he did not like how SW was going in that direction, maybe he should not have sold to Disney in the first place.^^

Aww diddums... His vision of Star Wars is being pooped upon by someone creating a new film and putting things into the universe he didn't like? As someone who knows how this feels like, I would like to offer him some heart felt sympathy

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