Ep7 Reviews (Spoilers)

[Vympel]

H, are slightly modified and then placed in a similar situation (the Stormtroopers discussing the new BT-17 and the line about them "splitting up" and being on "level what-it-now-was"), are more than "superficial similarities". And a few things on the Falcon seemed to have been included just to please the audience.

Those are just homages, there was plenty of them in the prequels too, they don't really have a bearing on the plot at all.

[Eternal_Freedom]

Hmmm....I think I am going to need to watch it at least once more to judge where it sits in my overall ranking of SW films. That being said, I thoroughly enjoyed it, I certainly wasn't bored through any of it (which is the main thing, since I go to the cinema to be entertained).

My thoughts on the minimalism, yeah we see only one Star Destroyer, but my understanding is that we're only seeing the forces directly assigned to Kylo Ren (which is another interesting thing, that General is clearly not subordinate to Ren but more of an equal before the Supreme Leader), so him only having the one ship makes sense. As for the absence of the Republic fleet, I assumed it was elsewhere attempting rescue/salvage operations in the system that got totalled and/or coudl not get there in time and/or wouldn't have done any good against Starkiller Base.

As for the worldbuilding, yeah it was a bit lacking, but largely so was ANH. As a single film I would rate it as about 7/10, obviously we'll have to wait and see how it fits in to the larger trilogy, hopefully things will be expanded on.

finally, despite her wearing scavenger clothing through most of the film, Rey is pretty damn cute.

[bilateralrope]

the idea that some... random planet getting blown up would end the Republic was pretty hilarious to me.

All I can say for sure about that is that the First Order believed it. I have no idea if it's the truth or if all that did was make the Republic angry.

[atg]

I also agree Ren is lukes daughter... probably. Who the hell dug Luke his thousands of steps and wall if he is an isolated hermit?

Wasn't their mentioned that Luke went off to look for the first Jedi temple? I'd imagine that was where he was.

[Kingmaker]

It was okay.

I thought Kylo Ren was a really weak villain. Not any failing on the actor's part, but he's basically written as a wannabe version of a more effective bad guy.

[mr friendly guy]

Got a lot of ANH vibe. It just seems pretty similar, but characters taking a combination of roles from ANH.

Also disappointed that the Jedi Order never got set up properly. Yeah I know Luke set it up, but it all came crumbling down.

That being said, I thought the actors and characters pretty much nailed it, but the plot seemed just like ANH. I am hoping they try something new for the next movie.

[loomer]

I get the feeling Luke decided to just end the Jedi once and for all when Ren slaughtered the rest of the apprentices. If the Jedi just keep falling to the Dark Side over and over, maybe the Universe is better off without them.

[Elheru Aran]

Not much I could add to what has been said. Like Ace I had a grin through most of it.

One thing that I am left with- we know Kylo Ren is Leia and Han's son... But the implication was very strong, I thought, that Rey is Luke's daughter. She's a natural pilot and obviously very powerful in the Force, and Maz seemed to think the lightsaber was hers by rights. And Rey definitely seemed to remember who Luke was.when she saw him... Perhaps a memory brought up by Ren when he was trying to pick her brain?

More later when I'm not on my phone!

[Mlenk]

I'll give a very brief few first impressions for now. To put it simply, it was light years of a better start to a new trilogy than TPM, which admittedly isn't saying very much. After the initial first half hour after the euphoria of watching a new SW flick had died down, I felt it was a very "by the books" movie. JJ didn't take many risks and played it very safe. I felt it could have been so much more but am just thankful it wasn't so much less like TPM. I will be watching it again this weekend and I'll see how I feel after a 2nd viewing.

[Kojiro]

Just got back. Thought it was pretty meh. If it wasn't Star Wars it would be view much more harshly. I have so many questions... the number of times credulity/SoD was strained hurt the film in my eyes.

Better than the prequels, worse than the originals.

[Kojiro]

But the implication was very strong, I thought, that Rey is Luke's daughter.

I'm going to predict that Luke's affair was what caused Kylo to doubt and eventually turn. And that's why Luke blames himself- for not being the role model he feels he should have been.

[Mlenk]

Any word yet on when the next movie is tentatively gonna be released? Have they even written the script for it yet? Anything about who is directing it? I've essentially not watched anything about Star Wars in the last 5 years (no interviews, nothing, zilch) so I have no idea about anything. I realize that TFA was just released today but I'm already curious about where they are taking this story.

[Patroklos]

The good:

-The world felt real, and it looked right. None of the gratuitous and inappropriate CGI from the prequels. The only time I was pulled out the movie by crappy CGI was the glasses alien from the fake cantina scene. Even the stupid in concept Starkiller base looked like Star Wars at least.
- The new star destroyer in general. It looked good, and there was a lot of details for tech junkies like me to obsess over.
- I thought the internal First Order sets were especially good. I looked and felt like a really advanced and thus menacing military local, though how the First Order cam in possession of it or maintains it...
- The aliens looked good, unlike the cartoons from the prequels.
-The music and sound were great
- Han's performance Fynn's performances. With one exception...

The bad:
- Its established early on that a storm trooper blaster can disable an X-wing. Except we see a TIE fighter take a dozen hits from stormtrooper blasters a bit later with zero effect on what is presumably a more fragile craft.
- Rey is a simultaneously an awesome pilot who can fly an unfamiliar craft better than any other character we see in any SW movie for no apparent reason, is a gifted engineer for some reason, and is an accomplished swordsman who can beat trained Jedi. And not just a swordsman, but a lightsaber swordsman.

You say all Jedi are great pilots eh? Skywalker was good in ANH but its established he has experience as a pilot and is good at it early on, and at no point is he portrayed as particularly better than anyone he is flying with on the DS attack.

She is a scavenger so she is awesome at technical stuff eh? When you are comfortable letting my laboriously trained and certified Airbus qualified mechanic work on the Boeing you are about to fly on let me know. A little bit of tech savvy is cool and expected, it went a bit far in my opinion. At least in ANH there was R2 to do things like stop the trash compactor.

-She was good with a stick earlier in the movie you say? True, but why was she so good with it? She grew up in a rough place? Well apparently so did everyone else on that planet. The force made her automatically good? Somebody should have told Luke that when a target droid was zapping him in the ass. Its not like Luke was some sort of natural in ESB. Kylo is no Vader true, but Rey is no Luke either who at this point had known he was a force sensitive for a year, was at least familiar with a light saber and had also just finished intensive force training with Yoda. Non of those young lings in the prequels seemed to be naturals. And it goes without saying a stick is not a sword, and a sword is not a lightsaber. Its as stupid as Mutt being a swordsman in KOTCS.

-Speaking of the KOTCS, Leia was horrible. A totally throw away character and performance not unlike when they dug Marian Ravenwood out of the grave. The quality of the acting was about the same. Her scenes with Han were wooden, her roll as the rebel military leader could have been anyone else and should have been. I am not saying should couldn't have been made interesting and integral to the plot, she simply wasn't in this case. A Mon Mothma type would have been a better fit.

- Why is Leia a general? She was never hinted at being talented in that regard before. Her strength was always political as well as having the gravitas of Alderran behind her. She was in the briefing room for some of the military stuff but it was never her thing. Was that not Ackbar standing right there? My audience thought so and clapped when they saw him. There was no point to shoehorning her into that roll.

- Its ANH but BIGGER!!! I honestly thought they were making an inside joke when they showed the infographic about Starkiller (stupid name) being 20 times bigger than the Death Star. Like they were making fun of themselves. But then I remembered this is JJ Abrams here and he always has to have the BIGGER and BETTER version of everything. Are you happy to see Kirk's Enterprise again, WHAMMO look at that gigantic Narada! Well, we are in the next film so what should we do? BOOM, lets have a super dreadnaught USS Vengence come out of nowhere! You thought the Death Star was big? Posh, a mere moon. Starkiller is a whole PLANET. Speaking of planets, destroying one is so last season. Mine destroys multiple planets at once! And drinks energy from stars via a mechanism we are never told about. Overall it was a big roll eyes.

Hell, screw bowing up planets, sucking stars dry is FAR more impressive. I would love to see the math involved in storing the mass of a star inside a planetary sized body. With the energy of a star to boot! The mechanics of not having the star go supernova or generate some other calamity when screwing with it so much is Forerunner scale shit. I wonder if Abrahm's realizes how awesome his First Order actually is? Does he know that he succeeded so spectacularly in his one upmanship wank? Its funny to see him pull that off when being so minimalist with everything else.

Speaking of stellar engineering, what would happen if I modified a planet like we see at Starkiller base? It seems to me that would have some serious side effects that would need some pretty drastic solutions to keep the atmosphere, gravity and planetary stability we observe.

- Who was the First Order and what do they want? I was never told, so I didn't care. Who was the Republic that gets mentioned once before it gets destroyed? I was never told so I don't care. Who is the Rebellion exactly and why are they still around? I was never told so I don't care. Who is Snooki and what does he want? I am never told so I don't care. This is really important because while I might just be a nitpicking nerd, my wife who has never seen a Star Wars movie in her life and who humored me by going with me (we just moved so I have no nerd friends yet) asked these questions the second the credits rolled. And this is for a movie that has an opening scroll to explain these exact things.

- Captain Phasm was completely wasted. She was a major advertising and merchandising point going in and I was assuming she would have some sort of pivotal role in the plot. Her absence was noticed and her part with the shields was jarring. The audience in my theater reacted with a noticeable "what the hell" when she not only was captured effortlessly but then treasonously deactivates the defenses for an entire planet on the eve a victory she was presumably personally invested in? BS and it was the greatest abuse of convenience writing in the movie. The movie stopped being fun for me at this point.

-Fynn, I really want to like you and do in a certain way but you were written all wrong. For one he is indoctrinated from birth. More on that latter. For someone indoctrinated to be a conformist super soldier from birth he sure seems really well socialized. But was he a super soldier? General forgettable pretty much says that but then we hear he was a sanitation worker? He is not a young guy and the First Order has had him from birth so he must have been doing sanitation for many years. So why is he a stormtrooper again? Does the super important main villian normally take the sanitation worker wipeouts with him? For their first mission no less.

My problems with Fynn go a bit further than that though. The way we are introduced to him is when he is visibly shaken by the death of a comrade. At first I thought this was great, stormtroopers are people and have feelings too! (this would be dashed of course). Even blood! These are soldiers fighting for and with people they believe in and even if I disagree with them and consider them evil I can still relate to that. And then he won't shoot the civilians, which is at odds with what we learn soon after about his upbringing but they mention a remediation program so obviously its not an outrageously uncommon thing to happen. Unfortunately this is all ruined when he starts casually murdering his former comrades in arms a few scenes later. Remember this all starts when he is visibly shaken by a comrades death. And its not like he is on some ideological crusade at this point, he is just trying to escape. Sorry dude, I don't believe it. It was jarring. Luckily the actor is so charismatic I can't turn my back on Fynn entirely.

-Baby slavers. AGAIN the writers screw this up. I am not sure why they can not understand that normal people who can be convinced to believe and act on a heinous ideology are FAR more sinister and evil that clones or some bullshit brainwashed Kurt Russel "Soldier" ripoffs. Its also reduces the stakes when the bad guys don't have families of loved ones just like yours back home. The world loses depth.

- Others have brought up minimalism and its a problem. I wouldn't mind it so much if they had a line about the First order being a super small extremist group but we see it can produce something hundreds of times the size of the Empire's most impressive achievement at the height of their galactic scale power. Yeah I said hundreds, because if that hologram was to scale which it obviously was meant to be it might be twenty times the size if we are comparing areas of a 2d silhouette but volume doesn't work that way.

The Rebels have a few dozen star fighters as their "fleet." I might buy this if I was told the Rebellion was some breakaway group from the Republic who they are somehow at odds with but I am not told that. Why is there still a Rebellion anyway? We are not told, so I don't care.

- Stormtroopers are even more shit. I don't think we see a single one shot while in cover. They are always standing in the middle of hallways or out in the open. We see them mowed down with thoughtless ease. It reminds me of the worthless throwaway droid armies of the prequels. And they ended up adding just as much tension.

- Han, Chewie, Rey and Flynn just waltz around Starkiller base like they own the joint. Nobody hears them killing people, nobody runs into them in the hallways. Those large open hallways, often times opening to chasms fill of windows and zero things to hide behind. Nobody notices the twenty odd dudes that are dead on the floor are missing. Apparently there was no security checkpoint to enter the base in the first place, and this happens multiple times as they go from facility to facility.

- Hey, when we see StarKiller's mcguffin weakness whatever explode why are Kylo/Flynn/Rey and yeah Chewie too not instantly killed. We watch the thing explode and everything for miles around it go to complete shit. I run a pretty well but even at my best in OCS I could just barely break a 9 minute mile and a half run on a track. They literally just stumbled out of the facility into mountainous snowscape covered in forest (though there were no trees in the distance shots of the place). And how did Kylo get in front of you?

- So did all of this shit happen in a single solar system? We are told the weapon is hyper scale in speed but we actually watch it on screen not be. Whats cannon, dialogue or observed reality? I am sure this board will argue it to death. The people at fake cantina planet watch the beams hit, did they just happen to be on a planet at the center of Republic power? That's horribly minimalist, convenient and stupid. Not unprecedented, where have I seen the same plot convenience used before...

-Why did the rebels not just abandon their base? This is not like Yavin. The Rebels presumably have the Republic somehow on there side so there are plenty of places to go. The weapon is already operational so there is no need to attack it this second. Maybe wait a few hours and attack in force, a Republic fleet at your back maybe?

-Its called Star Wars, so why are there no wars amongst the stars? We get the faiiiiiiiintest hint of some orbital fighter action but that's it. Speaking of which where the hell did that Star Destroyer go? Anytime it could be useful, like say intercepting space fighters, its nowhere to be seen.

-Lets try something. I am going to give you a United States shaped piece of a map I cut out of a larger map. Additionally, all the geography of the United States will be on that piece but lets say no place names. How long do you think it would take you to figure things out? Or a five year old? I could understand it if the bullseye was on the piece you didn't have, even figuring out where the missing piece should go and just getting that info from another map means it is a large are to search through. But they had the piece with the bullseye on it...

- As others have said its ANH in all the broad strokes and a surprising number of small ones. With some VERY slight modifications you could just call it a reboot of ANH.

-Would someone FOR THE LOVE OF GOD show actors how to hold and shoot weapons. The number of times I see characters limp wristedly and one handedly toss a blaster bolt here and there with zero recoil effects was frustrating. The most glaring example is when Rey, who we establish has no idea how to use her weapon, starts plinking stormtroopers (standing in the open for no reason of course) from fifty yards with a hand gun like it ain't no thang. She just daintily flips her wrist this way and that way, making shots a Navy SEAL couldn't make. Uncommon accuracy is not a sin for action movies, but you are actors, ACT like you are shooting a real weapon. Han gets a shout out about this too. At one point when he is coming out of the collapsed fake cantina he kills two troopers in front of him quick like and then ever so lightly just swings his wrist over to shoot a trooper behind him without looking. I don't even think the barrel ever even lines up with the target. I am sure that was supposed to be badass, it just looked really fake.

- For us tech junkies there is some real issues with firepower from this movie. For one we see a slight TIE fighter strafing can take out the main turrets of a Star Destroyer. To me that means these new ones are glass cannons sans their shields. Then we see X-wings make perfect one round shots on storm troopers on the ground (something no TIE fighter does though we see they strafe many times). Not only that but when the X-wings do that the shots that hit a stormtrooper cause no more visible damage than a normal blaster rifle. Just something to think about it.

- Obligatory X-wing flying inside something to destroy it sequence. I was unimpressed though because apparently you don't need legendary badasses like a Lando or a Han or even established ace pilot like whats his name. Any old podunk scavenger girl can pull that off ace, you ain't impressing anyone with that shit.

-Penetrating shields by hyperspace jumping. Verrrrry convienient. It probably could have helped on a lot of other occasions. Maybe like, when there was this moon sized battle station where you know, the shield around it was a really big and insurmountable deal. Maybe you had to go on this near suicide mission to disable said shield (who was in charge of that mission again?), and then when you almost fucked it up your buddies were stuck on the wrong side of it and really would have loved a way to get on the right side of it. Good thing there was no enemy fleet that you could have avoided by hyperspacing past it right onto your target avoided lots of headaches. Come to think of it wouldn't a certain group of X-wings attacking a planet have hyperspace capabilities too?

-Fake Cantina. You knew you couldn't do it better so why go there? It wasn't even Jabba's Palace quality. In fact that whole scene was stupid. It was completely unnecessary from a plot perspective. And why the hell did Leia show up there? Good think that Star Destroyer wasn't there I guess. Though since it never does anything I bet the Rebels are used to pretending it doesn't exist.

-So this Republic. Its the new galactic government presumably and thus a big deal? Enough for the First Order to build a doomsday weapon to destroy as its first target. Yet once its destroyed it is never once mentioned again. Leia doesn't bring it up when we see her, including some of the situational expository scenes at the Rebel base. Supposedly it was protecting her and her forces somehow. I assume the galactic government failing might be a big deal. No mention of the billions that died. Nope. Never. Mentioned. Again.

Overall it had great bones, they just can't resist the urge to fuck things up with their writing. Its the same dumbass mistakes in movie after movie. Even then I would have been happy up to the attack on Starkiller base. After that every single scene was another convenience, mcguffin, out of character action or just plain didn't make sense.

Still better than the prequels. I have to ask though, what the hell are they going to do in the next movie. They burned through a lot of material on this one.

[Grumman]

On the issue of scale, is it any worse than ANH? Don't forget that besides the Death Star, we only saw a trio of Star Destroyers.

A New Hope's plot did not demand that the Empire use its full strength. As far as they're concerned it was a pest extermination mission gone horribly wrong, when a handful of traitorous fighter pilots found a way to punch way, way harder than their weight class and take out the Imperial "flagship." It was never meant to be an existential threat to the Empire, only a moral and political bloody nose that told everyone, Empire and Rebel sympathisers alike, that this was something that needed to be taken seriously.

[Patroklos]

The Death Star conference room in ANH quite expertly set the table regarding the strength of the Empire and the insignificance of the Rebels. You can't walk away from that scene and not understand there is a great disparity in strength. Talk about other star systems, a galactic government and emperor/senate, how the DS is new and powerful but its not like the Empire wasn't powerful without it. Then later on we have the scene between Leia and Tarkin to put icing on the cake.

This movie lacks such a scene. In fact its almost like it intentionally lacks it given how many opportunities there are to have a scene like that. There is nothing everyone likes more than a movie plot you can't understand until the next movie comes out two to three years later. If they even bother to explain it then.

[Patroklos]

DP

[Kojiro]

Patroklos, thank you for typing that out and saving me the effort. If Rey doesn't qualify as some sort of Mary Sue nothing will.

The firepower numbers are going to be very interesting from this.

[Patroklos]

NP, I had to get it off my chest. Like I said my wife isn't a SW fan and wasn't tolerating my rants for a second!

Another thing to think about. General whomeverheis mentions that the has been raising his troopers from birth. Boyega is 23, so if we assume he is this age in the film or there abouts and its strongly suggested he Boyega was not the first round of recruits if the First Order has been on the Rebellions radar for years and this is Finn's first combat experiance, that pushes the General Idon'tcareabout's activities in regards to raising troopers from birth really close to if not concurrent with ROTJ.

[Anacronian]

I do not see how Rey is more than a Mary Sue than Luke Skywalker or Anakin Skywalker?

[Grumman]

I do not see how Rey is more than a Mary Sue than Luke Skywalker or Anakin Skywalker?

Luke Skywalker was fine - he was a bush pilot-turned-fighter pilot with good instincts for when to pull the trigger. He wasn't doing anything egregious until Return of the Jedi, and by then he'd been in the business for years.

Anakin Skywalker is a terrible yardstick for quality, because the movies' handling of Anakin Skywalker sucked.

[Kojiro]

I do not see how Rey is more than a Mary Sue than Luke Skywalker or Anakin Skywalker?

Could be all three are. Whether or not they are doesn't impact whether she is one bit.

She's just too good at everything. She's a brilliant pilot, speaks all the required languages (the fuck did she learn wookiee), can take on two thugs even when ambushed from behind by one, shoots pretty well, doesn't loose her cool under fire or in the face of adversity like Finn, can fix the Falcon of all ships surprising even Solo, not only resists the mind probe but reverses it, pulls a mind trick out of nowhere, manages to sneak through a FO base that knows she's escaped and of course pulls a lightsaber away from a trained sith. Which she proceeds to defeat in lightsaber combat moments after she first picked it up.

All this from a twenty something hobo living meal to meal in an AT-AT shell.

Luke on the other hand had his aim slightly augmented after his squadron helped out and Han saved his ass.

[Darth Tanner]

Additionally Anakin didnt really do anything incredible until he was a trained Jedi... the attack run on the droid control ship was all a 'oops accident' as silly as that was - here we have the equivelent of 10 year old Anakin beating Darth Maul the first time he picks up a light saber. Luke didnt do anything that amazing other than have a force intuition to fire at the right time until he too was a trained Jedi.

[Grumman]

Luke on the other hand had his aim slightly augmented after his squadron helped out and Han saved his ass.

He also had his arm slightly augmented after the first time he tried to fight a Sith.

[Anacronian]

Should be noted that by the time Rey fights Kylo Ren he has both been shot with Chewbacca's big gun and been hit by a lightsaber (Finn).
She also did have experience in flying freighters before, perhaps even the falcon (at least she knew it was trash compared to the other one that got blown up).
Her shooting doesn't seem to be better or worse than Luke's.
Leia resisted Darth Vaders mind probe, It may be that as soon you are force-gifted in any way it becomes natural to resist.
It seemed from the movie that pretty much everybody can walk around and do what they want on Starkiller base - Rey is not the only one doing shenanigans down there.

[Anacronian]

Additionally Anakin didnt really do anything incredible until he was a trained Jedi... the attack run on the droid control ship was all a 'oops accident' as silly as that was - here we have the equivelent of 10 year old Anakin beating Darth Maul the first time he picks up a light saber. Luke didnt do anything that amazing other than have a force intuition to fire at the right time until he too was a trained Jedi.

He is the only human that can do pod racing ..and he's 10.

QUI-GON : They have Podracing on Malastare. Very fast, very dangerous.
ANAKIN : I'm the only human who can do it.

SHMI looks askance at her son.

ANAKIN : (Cont'd) Mom, what? I'm not bragging. It's true. Watto says he's
never heard of a human doing it.