Ep7 Reviews (Spoilers)

[NecronLord]

It would have made you give a shit about the New Republic and the destroyed planet/moons. The main reason why the Empire was such an evil villain, and why we understood the destructive capability of the Death Star as really menacing, is because we cared about Alderaan through Leia.

Yeah, sort of... Leia doesn't really seem to care much about Alderaan a few moments later, and they never talk about it again. She's back to sassy Princess mode two minutes later. The main reason we care about the destruction of Alderaan is because it demonstrates how evil the bad guys are and how critical those Death Star plans are, and it also demonstrates what they can potentially do to Yavin IV during the final battle sequence. It's more or less the same idea in TFA, but I agree that the whole Starkiller Base subplot feels somehow disconnected from the rest of the movie, most likely because, as you said, the whole thing has been about the map, up until after they have the battle on Maz Katana's planet, after which there's suddenly this new urgency about dealing with Starkiller Base. Honestly, it probably would have been better if the end of the movie was just like a rescue operation to get Rey - but the problem is we need some kind of ending space battle.

There's other reasons it's more effective; all the characters were going to Alderaan, so it's a near-miss for Han, Luke and others, they see the asteroids, they refuse to believe it briefly.

We even hear about Leia's father who was on Alderaan, even if he's not given a name. We don't hear about a specific person on Hosnian Prime.

[Gaidin]

Why mount a rescue mission for Rey, some random salvage girl? Because Leia explains privately to Han, in the movies big reveal (because we all know Kylo was Han/Leia's son from the beginning), that Rey is Lukes daughter and we unwittingly put her in danger searching for this map. After the rescue there is a scene of Leia meating with some New Republic Senators showing them images of Starkiller from the rescue, telling them "See I am not crazy, the Empire really is STILL a threat (because they did think she was crazy, and was operating against the wishes of the New Republic because of that) Same Rey finding Luke scene at the end. Fin.

Because that's what Finn is going to do. He literally all but decieved them about his knowledge about the base and forced them to wing a solution after getting past the shield. You're rescuing Rey because you've got a character that is rescuing Rey. The only way that mission isn't happening is if you tie him down in triplicate and stick him in a god damned cell.

[streetad]

With regards to the planetary shield, would it not have made more sense if Han was willing to disable all the safeties to enable him to exit hyperspace so close to the surface that they don't have time to actually turn the shield on?

It would fit with the 'planetary shields need an absurd amount of power' half explanation and would also sort of corroborate with Vader's little tantrum about exiting too far from Hoth in ESB.

Of course given the amount of power required to fire that planet killer gun the 'needs too much power to be constantly on' is somewhat questionable anyway.

[RogueIce]

I don't have a huge issue with how they shot that particular scene. A scene of the chick talking to the Senate and all would have been useful in its own way... but how? It would've padded the movie and made it a bit longer without really driving the plot of the primary characters, it only adds some background depth.

I don't dispute that; I'm honestly not sure where to add in that subplot either, without making changes to the rest of the movie. I was mostly responding to the fact that they weren't just some faceless crowd of "nobodies" added in as a cheap attempt to 'humanize' Hosnia's destruction; but instead they're apparently the remnant of a subplot and principally features a would-be minor character who ended up on the cutting room floor.

[atg]

Despite the fact that JJ probably doesn't want to do this, there is a pretty strong rationalization possible for the whole Snoke = Darth Plagueis connection.

I don't recall it myself but a friend mentioned that Snoke's theme music is the same as that playing in RotS when Palpatine is telling Anakin about Plagueis.

[Patroklos]

Because that's what Finn is going to do. He literally all but decieved them about his knowledge about the base and forced them to wing a solution after getting past the shield. You're rescuing Rey because you've got a character that is rescuing Rey. The only way that mission isn't happening is if you tie him down in triplicate and stick him in a god damned cell.

Cool, then leave it at that. And no, Finn was not going to rescue Rey because 1.) He can't fly 2.) He has no ship even if he could and I assume he isn't goint to start murdering his new comrades to do so like he did his old and 3.) He doesn't have the cool experianced ex-General awesome worldly pilot persona to pull off the hyperspace/shield trick.

And why can't they tie him down in triplicate? Or you know, just once?

With regards to the planetary shield, would it not have made more sense if Han was willing to disable all the safeties to enable him to exit hyperspace so close to the surface that they don't have time to actually turn the shield on?

It would fit with the 'planetary shields need an absurd amount of power' half explanation and would also sort of corroborate with Vader's little tantrum about exiting too far from Hoth in ESB.

Of course given the amount of power required to fire that planet killer gun the 'needs too much power to be constantly on' is somewhat questionable anyway.

If they could see Han at any point its all over, shield or no. The whole sequence relies on the fact that despite hypering in, landing on their HQ planet, walking through some sort of exterior checkpoint, murdering 20 odd personnel, walking through hundreds of kilometers of tunnels (thats right, did you see any facilities in the crash landing shots?) without anyone seeing them, reporting them, or missing anyone of the those killed personnel to include a senior commander.

That would have been a much better explanation though, the shield is not always up so we are hypering close to avoid them raising it. Or simple one line saying the shield has to be down to charge the weapon. Viola, done.

ST sensors have the same plot induced problems, so whatever on that count. Generally they are not worse than our own real world contemporary radars, but whatever. Its good to see JJ directing down to scifi tropes.

[MKSheppard]

EDIT II: I'm probably rehashing ground already trod over in the first 12 pages of this thread, but eh; time to do a stream of consciousness about TFA here and what came to mind.

-------------------------------

Rey is pretty much a walking Mary Sue; as is Finn.

Consider:

Despite Rey growing up on the Star Wars equivalent of Libya (WW2 tank wreckage scavenging was basically Libya's economy post WW2 before oil was discovered) and having no real skills other than scavenging the wrecks, and driving the equivalent of a bro-dozer; she somehow can jump into the Millennium Falcon and then manhandle it around just as well as Han.

This is about up there (and as likely) as Nux from Fury Road suddenly encountering a McLaren F1 racer, and driving it at 200 MPH down the post apocalyptic streets of baltimore without dying, despite the only experience he has in vehicles are relatively slow death traps put together by Immortan Joe's gang.

Likewise; Finn somehow can use a mass-less blade in combat and not cut his own head off.

EDIT: Also, who let Jon Snow into Star Wars.

[Patroklos]

EDIT: Also, who let Jon Snow into Star Wars.

At least he was newish, along with Finn. Rey is just a Luke clone regardless of how good her performance was.

[Kojiro]

Rey is pretty much a walking Mary Sue; as is Finn.

Finn is basically there to show how good Rey is. He can't fly, speak any languages, repair anything, runs away when he can and gets his ass kicked by Rey, a stormtrooper and Ren. He even needs Rey to line up a TIE for him. He gets saved by Rey when they're fleeing on the ground (after his attempts to lead fail), gets saved by her again from the monsters on Han's ship, gets saved by Han from the tonfa trooper and saved again by her from Ren.

Can anyone think of a single example in the movie where Finn excels, especially contrasted against Rey?

[Crayz9000]

she somehow can jump into the Millennium Falcon and then manhandle it around just as well as Han.

Did we watch the same movie? When she jumped into the cockpit and took off, I was cringing because it looked like she was flying either drunk or blindfolded. Possibly both.

I also don't think she became "magically competent" with a lightsaber. Ren wasn't exactly on the same level as Vader in the first place, and when she finally had to fight him, he was bleeding from a bowcaster shot, had been nicked by Finn, and generally speaking wasn't as focused as he should have been. It's still a stretch, but considering that they stalemated only because the ground started collapsing around them, it wasn't completely unbelievable.

As for Finn's proficiency with a lightsaber, he was pretty clumsy with it, and lucky he didn't amputate anything, but since the other trooper had some a force-baton it looks like the First Order troopers have at least some experience with melee weapons. He still got his ass kicked by the other trooper, and later Ren, so no big surprise there.

[Gaidin]

Because that's what Finn is going to do. He literally all but decieved them about his knowledge about the base and forced them to wing a solution after getting past the shield. You're rescuing Rey because you've got a character that is rescuing Rey. The only way that mission isn't happening is if you tie him down in triplicate and stick him in a god damned cell.

Cool, then leave it at that. And no, Finn was not going to rescue Rey because 1.) He can't fly 2.) He has no ship even if he could and I assume he isn't goint to start murdering his new comrades to do so like he did his old and 3.) He doesn't have the cool experianced ex-General awesome worldly pilot persona to pull off the hyperspace/shield trick.

And why can't they tie him down in triplicate? Or you know, just once?

My point is, largely, bitching about the last mission is missing the trees for the forest. He was going to put some group together to try and find her. Somehow, superweapon or no. You want to analyze the entire story, start with the characters. Finn had no interest with helping them with their little mission until his friend got nabbed and he had a personal reason to go. Hell he was trying to convince her to stay the fuck god away from the First Order and by extension the Resistance because of their job. He cares about her. What that is going to evolve into, I couldn't give two shits less about at the moment because we just don't know, but you couldn't drag him away from trying to and eventually finding a way onto that planet to get her off.

Or. You know. Ignore the characters. Because character analysis is the last thing we do here.

[Channel72]

Rey is pretty much a walking Mary Sue; as is Finn.

Finn is basically there to show how good Rey is. He can't fly, speak any languages, repair anything, runs away when he can and gets his ass kicked by Rey, a stormtrooper and Ren. He even needs Rey to line up a TIE for him. He gets saved by Rey when they're fleeing on the ground (after his attempts to lead fail), gets saved by her again from the monsters on Han's ship, gets saved by Han from the tonfa trooper and saved again by her from Ren.

Can anyone think of a single example in the movie where Finn excels, especially contrasted against Rey?

The movie pretty much went out of its way to reverse the usual audience expectations for a "damsel-in-distress" female character. They intentionally seem to make Rey hyper-competent in many ways, reversing the earlier role of Leia in ANH where she just sits around waiting to be saved, like most women in blockbuster action movies. Even when Rey is kidnapped, she escapes herself, rather than needing somebody to rescue her.

That said, they probably went a bit overboard, but really... it's not too hard to forgive, considering that for the most part, women in big blockbuster high-fantasy/sci-fi action movies are mostly overshadowed by male protagonists. (With some nice exceptions, like Sarah Connor, etc.)

Even so, Rey is a latent force-user, so it's not too much out of left-field to see that she's unreasonably "lucky", even if she doesn't know why. And Finn isn't exactly some bumbling idiot, just a normal guy with a very strong moral character.

[Patroklos]

Nobody is ignoring Finn in this thread, but in the movie everyone is once they get to the rebel base because he is fuck all inconsequential to Leia and the Rebellion. So in my alternate plot, which you are taking issue with (thus no way for him to laughably con his way onto a strike force that doesn't exist), where there is no super weapon to deal with you need a reason to convince the Rebels to help Finn pull of the rescue nobody else cares about and Finn can't do by himself. Hense why I gave them a reason, namely revealing Rey is Luke's daughter. Instantly Leia, and now all the rest of the rebels give a shit, because nepotism runs strong in this franchise

[Channel72]

Nobody is ignoring Finn in this thread, but in the movie everyone is once they get to the rebel base because he is fuck all inconsequential to Leia and the Rebellion.

They don't ignore Finn once he gets to the rebel base - quite the opposite, they treat him like a VIP because they think he might have some kind of inside information that will help them destroy the First Order base.

[Patroklos]

Channel, you are quoting me talking about an alternate plot. Maybe you didn't realize that. Address one or the other, because as much as I wish my version was reality the fact is it doesn't mean jack shit outside this thread.

The whole point, the suggestion I was making, was to remove Starkiller Base from the plot as anything but a reveal for the next movie thus making all the stakes and motivations in this movie align. Its just a treasure hunt for the map, which is what most of the characters think for 3/4ths of the movie anyway. If that is the case, Finn has no special knowledge. Finn is irrelevant once they get to the rebel base.

On a separate note, I finally just saw Ant Man tonight and when AntONY gets killed by a bullet I was far more emotionally impacted than anything that happened in TFA. Thats how irrelevant JJ made everything through lack or world building and stakes. 100 billion people dying when a planet blows is less substantial than a CGI ant smushed by a bullet.

[Havok]

I have to say, after seeing it again, the things that bothered me, don't much anymore.

The whole rehashing A New Hope... well it really doesn't. It takes some cues and certainly has some homages, but it's far different enough that I feel you have to really nitpick and be overly critical to get there. I think people just recognized the similarities so much because they've been watching, memorizing, and loving them for almost 40 years and they were easily spotted. Once you take the movie in as a whole on it own, I think they blend in and become similarities that almost all movies of this type share.

The scale/distance issue is still there, yet having the resistance base close enough to a Republic stronghold system makes sense. So seeing the Hosnian system explode isn't that far fetched. The way they portray hyperspace in this movie makes everything just seem like it's around the block which is kinda jarring because the OT gives travel some sense of distance and passage of time.

StarKiller Base isn't any more silly than a Death Star, if much more fantastic.

Really though, it's the characters that make this movie. I wasn't prepared for my instant love of Rey and Finn. Kylo Ren was the biggest surprise for me though as while watching him, the only person I felt like he was connected to was Anakin, which was brilliant in that his struggle was to be evil, while Anakin fought against it. It's more like watching the maturation of Palpatine where there was never a question about redeeming him. I'm looking forward to him going full evil in the next episode, but how does one top killing Han Solo?

My only significant complaint is that the score was bland. I wanted new musical cues to excite me, but it was the same old same old and that is my biggest disappointment.

All in all it's a great Star Wars movie if not a great movie overall. Time will tell if it finds itself higher than Return of the Jedi on my personal list, but it is already up there.

P.S. Luke Mother Fucking Skywalker!

[NeoGoomba]

Yeah I'm with Havok. The majority of issues that popped up for me the first time really faded the second time through*. And I find that I actually really dig Kylo Ren. He's pretty much what I'd expect an early 20's-something who turns his back on the only life he knew to live out some fantasy of being an evil Dark Lord, even though he knows he isn't up to the task to be. If they had made him some Darth Vader-like juggernaut, I think he'd actually be a little boring.


*Luke abandoning his post still does concern me a bit. As has been mentioned, it kind of destroys any sort of character arc he underwent already. Plus it does make him rather responsible for a lot of shit that has happened, and without a really plausible explanation, it is going to undermine him as the hero we know he is.

[Galvatron]

I enjoyed it more the second time I saw it. Not sure why.

At the risk of beating a dead horse, is it possible that the people on the surface of Takodana (Maz Kanata's planet) were watching a holographic projection of what was happening in the Hoznian system? I realize we didn't see it fizzle out or anything else to indicate it was a hologram, but it makes sense to me that the First Order would want to demonstrate their weapon to the galaxy and would broadcast it all over the place just to make sure everyone knew that the Republic was in deep shit.

Am I the only one who thinks they should have left Finn unconscious in a bacta tank just to emphasize to us that he was alive and healing?

I don't mind Luke taking his ball and going home. With the Republic being run by assholes and Snoke seducing his own nephew to the dark side, I can imagine that he'd throw in the towel. Maybe the Force told him to find the original temple and expect the arrival of a new apprentice that would save the galaxy. Who knows?

[Channel72]

It's probably because on a second viewing you basically know what to expect - so you just roll with it. On an initial viewing, certain things might jump out as jarring a bit. The sudden turn the plot took to attack Starkiller Base (with Han all of a sudden pulling off a crazy stunt in like 5 seconds of screen time) kind of jolted me out of the fantasy the first time I saw it. The second time, it wasn't a big deal.

I somehow imagine that if I were to watch ROTJ now, for the first time, as an adult, I'd probably feel similar things: Oh that's convenient... you stole a shuttle? Nobody noticed it was missing? Okay, you're not going to explain how you stole this shuttle? What about Luke's training? Dammit... Okay fine...

[Jade Owl]

On the subject of Hosian Prime being in the same system as the planet we saw it exploding from: The explosion took up more room in their sky than our moon does in ours. Just being in the same system wouldn't be enough. Have a look at Mars or Venus in our sky. They are just points of light. If they got hit by Starkiller base, I doubt anyone on Earth would see anything more than the point of light being brighter for a bit, then going out. We certainly wouldn't see anything that takes up more of the sky than our own moon.

The same applies to Vulcan exploding in ST9. Just being in the same system isn't enough to explain the visual. They would have to be unusually close. Probably with one in orbit of the other.

I like the explanation Pablo Hidalgo posted on his twitter.

https://twitter.com/pablohidalgo/status ... 4239360004

@pablohidalgo @starwars Can SOMEONE please explain how the heck you can see Hosnian Prime from Takodana? #theforceawakens

@WollyWollenberg @starwars They're seeing a tear in hyperspace created by the Mega Big Evil Gun. (TM)

I know we shouldn't take the stuff he posts in there as canon, but it makes a fair amount of sense and I would be surprised if it doesn't end up being the official explanation in future canon stories.


BTW, is there any way to embed a tweet in this forum?

[Galvatron]

Pablo Hidalgo
@pablohidalgo

Creative Executive, Lucasfilm Story Group. Duly appointed defender of the Tyrest Accord. Holder of the Sacred Chalice of Rixx. Don't cite tweets as canon.

I'm not on Twitter. Could someone run my hologram theory by him and see if he bites?

[streetad]

At the risk of beating a dead horse, is it possible that the people on the surface of Takodana (Maz Kanata's planet) were watching a holographic projection of what was happening in the Hoznian system? I realize we didn't see it fizzle out or anything else to indicate it was a hologram, but it makes sense to me that the First Order would want to demonstrate their weapon to the galaxy and would broadcast it all over the place just to make sure everyone knew that the Republic was in deep shit.

Works for me. First Order psyops prior to their attack.

I enjoyed the film enough that I am willing to make excuses for this kind of thing.

Also, who let Jon Snow into Star Wars.

We were referring to him as Darth Severus....

[Jade Owl]

Pablo Hidalgo
@pablohidalgo

Creative Executive, Lucasfilm Story Group. Duly appointed defender of the Tyrest Accord. Holder of the Sacred Chalice of Rixx. Don't cite tweets as canon.

I'm not on Twitter. Could someone run my hologram theory by him and see if he bites?

Which is why is wrote:

I know we shouldn't take the stuff he posts in there as canon, but it makes a fair amount of sense and I would be surprised if it doesn't end up being the official explanation in future canon stories.

[Galvatron]

I know, but what I'm proposing is using Twitter to plant an idea in his brain, Inception-style.

[Patroklos]

@WollyWollenberg @starwars They're seeing a tear in hyperspace created by the Mega Big Evil Gun. (TM)

That's fucking stupid. Even if that were plausible, and it is not in the slightest, it would still be convenient that that tear is visible from a random planet, in the perfect point in the sky (so much that its in between trees of a forest) to be observed. Can it be seen from everywhere in the galaxy, or just conveniently from this random place? Also, what a convenient resolution.

Its BS, and its okay to just say its BS. The only thing worse than giant plot holes is when the creators pretend there are not giant plot holes. If that's not what you cared about as an artist, where you wanted to put your effort, I might not agree with you but at least I understand your priorities and vision. Own it instead of trying to be cute about it.