Ep7 Reviews (Spoilers)

[GuppyShark]

It is ridiculous how much outrage is being generated over a scene where an armed protagonist defeats two mooks. Of all the contrived things in this movie that set off people's bullshit meters, it was that people are upset about?

Did anyone rage when Biff Tannen was decked in one punch by a weedy nerd?

[Gandalf]

I caught this a second time last night. It was so dull I fell asleep repeatedly.

[cmdrjones]

Assuming her latent Force powers helped her seems pretty safe, since that sort of thing happens with some regularity (notably with Anakin). Also, Bruce Lee was 5'7" and 128 pounds, about the size of the average American woman. Just something to think about.

Agreed. But, Bruce lee would have vastly different muscle composition than a female of the same size, latent force ability could be construed as handwavium of that factor for her though.

[cmdrjones]

AS for Rey's fight with the two thugs, we can assume lots of things, but my point is: we shouldn't have to if the writer and director had done their fucking jobs.

No, you don't have to assume anything. Because this is the scene that is there to teach you a thing, that thing being "Rey can fight". No assumptions, the film is teaching you things about its characters by showing them doing things (imagine that!).

You don't appear to want to get that, but I suspect it's because you can't cope with a female action hero because it makes your dick feel small.

If there was a scene of Rey lifting a crashed star destroyer, don't you think you'd like some sort of narrative explanation of how that's possible? If we see the Hulk do it, such questions usually don't arise because it is common knowledge that the hulk is super strong. We have no explanation for why Rey os SOOO good at everything APART from the heavy insinuations that she is force sensitive and possibly Lukes daughter. My problem, as I stated before is NOT even that she's a Mary Sue (which she is) it's that the WRITER and DIRECTOR put a mary sue character into an ensemble piece seemingly without enough background information to ensure that we suspend our disbelief and MORE importantly without regard for the effects it would have A) on the other characters and B) on the narrtive itself. I don't disagree with your analysis of the scene, (Your attempted insult is amusing though) I am simply stating that I agree with the reviewer and think that it could have been handled better.

[cmdrjones]

So you admit you're still confused, but you proclaim the writer of the article to be a moron...

My 'confusion' stems from the spectacle of watching a supposed Star Wars fan quote the moronic arguments of a moron with approval in a manner that repudiates a central tenet of the movies. The writer of the article is a moron, and so are you for approving of his nonsense.

well, if you're so well versed in it, you are free to follow the link to his site and show him how stupid he is..

Why, because you're incapable of defending that idiocy yourself? Its not my job to go travelling around the internet telling every jackass he's a jackass. You brought the swill into the forum.

(pro tip: ask yourself why if anger (and ONLY anger) can destroy vader, then why would Yoda warn against it so highly? Could it be possible that Vader is lying? Or is it possible that the situation itself is implausible at best?

Jesus Christ, you are fucking obtuse, aren't you? Vader is saying that because he is - duh - trying to seduce Luke over the dark side of the Force by making him give in to his hatred. Its got nothing to do with whether Vader is lying or not. You've missed the point completely.

What's the thread title again? Oh yeah "Ep 7 Reviews (spoilers)" so, we're here to uh, y'know... post REVIEWS... just because you disagree with it, and I do doesn't make me a "supposed star wars fan" and the thread title gives me the EXPRESS opportunity to bring those ideas here... cause it's a review.... as i said before, if you think the writer is a moron, go tell it on the mountain son and I'll be right there with popcorn. I will take your feeble insults and disqualifications with a mountain of salt since you expressly stated that you didn't read the whole review anyway.
Once you calm down and take a look at it, maybe we can continue, non?

[cmdrjones]

Or that Rey is a tough girl who's grown up in a harsh environment and is capable of defending herself. Like what we see her do.

But (invariably male) internet pisswads don't want to accept that girls can be the tough one, so they mewl and piss that it's "unrealistic".

Wrong. It is not "unrealistic" it is implausible.... space ships with laser guns, aliens, Lighsabers, and galactic empires are unrealistic.

[Thanas]

It is ridiculous how much outrage is being generated over a scene where an armed protagonist defeats two mooks. Of all the contrived things in this movie that set off people's bullshit meters, it was that people are upset about?

It is so very stupid and inconsequential to get angry over a girl beating two thugs. I don't get it.

[cmdrjones]

It is ridiculous how much outrage is being generated over a scene where an armed protagonist defeats two mooks. Of all the contrived things in this movie that set off people's bullshit meters, it was that people are upset about?

It is so very stupid and inconsequential to get angry over a girl beating two thugs. I don't get it.

I'm not angry about it, it's used as an example of the first instance of an ongoing "mary sue-ing" of the character... I saw it and thought: ah, waif fu, here's the tough chick... but then she was the smart chick, the multiligualg chick, the natural, the special one, the wisecracking rogue, etc etc etc and each time I groaned a little more... She should have just dumped finn off somewhere and completed the film on her own, he would've been better off.

[Galvatron]

It is ridiculous how much outrage is being generated over a scene where an armed protagonist defeats two mooks. Of all the contrived things in this movie that set off people's bullshit meters, it was that people are upset about?

It is so very stupid and inconsequential to get angry over a girl beating two thugs. I don't get it.

Apparently, it's too awesome a feat for anyone but a Mary Sue to achieve.

[Vendetta]

It is ridiculous how much outrage is being generated over a scene where an armed protagonist defeats two mooks. Of all the contrived things in this movie that set off people's bullshit meters, it was that people are upset about?

It is so very stupid and inconsequential to get angry over a girl beating two thugs. I don't get it.

No, evidently not.

Only male action heroes are allowed to have multiple competences in movies, girls might be allowed to be good at one thing, but if they look like they're getting too capable then dickless troglodytes will be sad.

cmdrjones is a dickless troglodyte (see also: threads about refugees in N&P), and so now he is sad.

[Me2005]

Since there's no way I can read all 22 pages, I'll put my thoughts here and talk about this "Mary Sue" business.

I also felt like Rey was way too good at *everything* for someone with no training. Then I largely wrote it off as a syndrome of modern film technique. Comparing her to Luke is pretty pointless, he was basically a backwater farmhand living with his family and not really allowed to do much. His best skills starting out were A) Flying, which he talked about doing with friends and was probably the only real thing *to* do and B) fixing things, which was a large part of his profession. Rey was a girl alone on a hostile world forced to scavenge every day for life; basically a high-tech street rat. Of course she's decent at fighting and running, if she weren't she'd be captured by others or dead. She's good at fixing things because that's all she does to survive. She probably does pilot for similar reasons that Luke did, and SW tech seems pretty interchangable. I didn't mind that she figured out force-suggest (Luke force-targeted the DS with little training in ANH), would have preferred she learn the other force stuff later on, but accept my above write-off as most of the reason. Fighting off and defeating (admittedly, with the help of a presumably trained Stormtrooper) the Sith that defeated Luke seemed excessive, that could have gone differently (MF comes in and shots him so she can grow in the next film and not just start out as the baddest thing around - as it was, she could have killed him there end series).

More important to me was: what on earth is going on with this Republic/Resistance/First Order nonsense? Who was funding the First Order such that they could build cap-ships and convert planets to weapons? Why were they able to just blow up the Republic willy-nilly? Wouldn't the republic have most of all the old Empire stuff? Even if the FO was remnants of the GE, I wouldn't think they'd have that much power. And wasn't there a line about the Republic helping the Resistance? Then why do they have only a handful of fighters? Even the Rebellion had capital ships. That cheapened the whole plot to me, made it feel like a re-hash of ANH with a more diverse cast to appeal to more people, at the expense of the universe's timeline. Maybe they'll patch that up in follow up episodes.

Also also, there was something I really didn't like about Fin. I can't put my finger on it, but he came off as a wuss. It's not that the couldn't follow an order to wipe out a civilian town, that shows a force of character. It seemed like he should have been more competent in battle as a trained storm trooper, and I just felt like he wasn't.

Then maybe I am misremembering, but it seemed like they didn't use the orchestral tracks that the Star Wars franchise has always used (not just the same songs, but an orchestra period). They did the star wars tune at the opening and closing and that seemed like it.

Captain Phasma seemed like a pushover. Never did anything other than bark orders, first person to hold a gun to her (his? I'm really not sure, other than the voice and chrome she/he looked like any other storm trooper) head gets the keys to the galaxy gun without a fight. She could have pushed the "summon troopers" button instead of the "lower shield" button and I don't think the protagonists would have known.

Last thing I thought was odd was how R2D2 was off (why?) then came back on when convenient to plot (again, why?).

I liked that the Storm troopers seemed more like useful troopers, and less like bumbling mooks. And that they brought up the difference between clone troopers and recruited troopers. And despite all my issues, I'd see it again.

[Grumman]

Only male action heroes are allowed to have multiple competences in movies, girls might be allowed to be good at one thing, but if they look like they're getting too capable then dickless troglodytes will be sad.

Look. Dumbass. We aren't accusing you of being a racist who hates black people just because you support the movie pissing on Finn by having a trained soldier made to look like a fool by an untrained space hobo beating him at his own game. So have some fucking dignity and extend us the same courtesy, okay?

[NecronLord]

Yes, there's really plenty of space to say 'they had Finn look like he was going to help Rey out a few times and then he didn't, just to make her look better' without saying you don't think any girl can be a badass.

For instance, I simultaneously think that it would have been better if Finn had helped rescue Rey there, rather than faking the audience out, and that Phasma should have kicked the shit out of Han or Finn later on.

[Borgholio]

Phasma should have kicked the shit out of Han or Finn later on.

It should have been Phasma dueling Finn instead of that random Stormtrooper. That would have made more sense.

[K. A. Pital]

J. J. Abrams is being typical himself. The film is ruined by a script that looks like a cheap ANH remake. It is especially regrettable as the first part of the film looks fresh and new. The only thing the Empire's remnants are good at is building Death Stars? Why? What exactly is the purpose - it took Palpatine decades to build up his Empire, converting the entire Republic into it. It took the resources of the entire Empire to build a Death Star; and it seemed to have a certain function, in the overall scheme of things where the all-powerful Empire would do away with the necessary bureaucracy (the Imperial Senate).

It is a major point in the Star Wars saga that the Sith are always two; that the master passes his skills and knowledge to an apprentice, and that this apprentice either kills the master or is himself killed by a stronger contender.

Who is that Gollum guy? Am I supposed to even consider him to be as menacing as Palpatine?

Just as Kylo Ren is a cheap Darth Vader wannabe (and ugly as fuck, which made the whole movie hall laugh when he took of the mask), but at least he admits it, so is the new "master" of the Dark Side just a cheap Palpatine knock-off.

The protagonists were funny, sympathetic, especially the renegade stormtrooper, but lame bad guys just killed the fun. FFS a bunch of Star Wars themed computer games and books had better villains than this film. As much as I hate to say that.

Someone should stop Jar Jar Abrams from doing what he does with both Star Wars and Star Trek. Heh. At least we still have the original SW and everything that Lucasfilm made prior to 2014.

Thankfully I can still be Darth Revan, but I am sure Revan cried when Kylo Ren, that ugly Harry Potter refugee, took... Off.. His. Mask!

[Patroklos]

Phasma should have kicked the shit out of Han or Finn later on.

It should have been Phasma dueling Finn instead of that random Stormtrooper. That would have made more sense.

Agreed.

I went to the movies to see another film on Christmas Day and noted that Phasma was center stage on the cinema poster. I look forward to some behind the scenes stuff coming out about how she ended up the way she did.

What the hell were they going to do if she didn't shut down the shield? Execute her? The whole scene doesn't make sense. We see two stormtroopers dead on the ground in the shield generator room. How did they get them to open the door? In ANH they had armor on and even a fake prisoner to lull all the people in the hallway and any security checkpoints into disalarm at least. They even had R2D2 available to feed them information they needed to pull the ruse off. Here they are dressed in civilian clothes. Zero inside information (Finn was a known traitor, that random stormtrooper recognized him as such). No codes, keys, maybe some sort of FOB from wearing armor. Its just so lazy.

[Galvatron]

It took the resources of the entire Empire to build a Death Star;

Where did you get that impression? The Empire captured the partially constructed Death Star from the separatists and then spent the following two decades finishing it in secret so the Imperial Senate and the rest of the galactic populace wouldn't find out about it until it was fully operational. They managed to do this while building an enormous fleet of new warships at the same time.

[K. A. Pital]

That is true, but the films did make the Death Star construction last two decades, did it not? The Separatists could have started with something (although the films seem to be ambigious on whether they did: Dooku brought the plans to Palpatine before they built anything, as the leader of the geonosians said: "If they find out what we are planning to build, we are doomed"), but the Empire certainly invested a lot of effort into completing it. The Empire did it in secret - so should have the new bad guys ("First Order" or whatever that Gollum-led band of planet destroyers was called by Abrams and Kasdan), because otherwise the Republic would know. Not sure why destroying five bloody planets meant "destroying the Republic" either, as it seemed to be a massive, vast Galaxy-spanning superstate in the original SW. Both the GR and the Empire, actually.

I just feel that it kind of underplays the Empire, and all the pains the Sith villains had to go through to build it up, create its massive military (they had to engineer a civil war to militarise the society) and so on...

[Galvatron]

While Hux may have exaggerated some, I believe the destruction of the Hosnian system was intended to deal a crippling blow to the Republic because it was the current home to both the Senate and their starfleet. It was also the Starkiller's first strike and an act of war by the First Order after an uneasy peace had been achieved between the Republic and Empire decades earlier in the Galactic Concordance.

[Patroklos]

The insanely expensive and resource intensive Manhattan project was done in secret, but it still took an economic power the size of the US who was at that point something like 50% of the worlds GDP to pull off while they were building the worlds most powerful conventional military.

While Hux may have exaggerated some, I believe the destruction of the Hosnian system was intended to deal a crippling blow to the Republic because it was the current home to both the Senate and their starfleet. It was also the Starkiller's first strike and an act of war by the First Order after an uneasy peace had been achieved between the Republic and Empire decades earlier in the Galactic Concordance.

How convenient that the entire starfleet of a galaxy spanning nation is located in one system. Even the Brits were not that stupid with Scapa Flow. Pearl Harbor didn't even host the majority of US Pacific forces let alone the ENTIRE US fleet. Does no place else in the NR require a military presence?

I hope this is dialed back a bit in the next movie where we see significant surviving NR forces.

[Borgholio]

Could the First Order have been supported by the Empire similar to how the Resistance was being supported by the NR? That could have helped with the resources needed to build Starkiller.

[K. A. Pital]

That whole plot looks just so lazily written (I would even say sloppy - come on, everyone saw the Empire crumbling in the Episode VI finale). Hidalgo wrote it? I guessed that halfway through. Whatever criticism I have for the prequels, Lucas at least had his overarching vision. Hacks like Hidalgo, Kennedy etc, are just there to milk the cash, and I feel sorry he actually lets them run the story now.

But that, like I said, is basically nothing compared to "Snoke" played by freaking Gollum. FO looks like a lamer version of the Empire - with cooler weapons, but lame bad guys. Lame villains who are fake Vader and fake Emperor? Thanks. Darth Maul at least had something original; Dooku was charismatic. But this pair? Nuh.

[Patroklos]

Could the First Order have been supported by the Empire similar to how the Resistance was being supported by the NR? That could have helped with the resources needed to build Starkiller.

They didn't say that, so I didn't care.

I would have preferred it to have been primarily built by the Empire at its height under Palpantine, but then left unfinished during the upheaval following the emperor's death. Sitting half finished and largely forgotten about for 30 years, the First Order (a recent breakaway from the remaining Empire) revives the project and marshals the forces to finish just the main weapon (but not the defenses ie shields and turbolaser batteries or engines hyperdrive) to provide two or three shots off the sun it currently orbits before exhausting their energy source and having to abandon it again. They want to get those shots in to even the odds a bit.

[Galvatron]

The insanely expensive and resource intensive Manhattan project was done in secret, but it still took an economic power the size of the US who was at that point something like 50% of the worlds GDP to pull off while they were building the worlds most powerful conventional military.

The US during World War II was not a peacetime economy though. The Death Star and all those brand new classes of star destroyers were constructed after the Clone Wars ended and during a time of relative peace, order and prosperity.

I would have preferred it to have been primarily built by the Empire at its height under Palpantine, but then left unfinished during the upheaval following the emperor's death. Sitting half finished and largely forgotten about for 30 years, the First Order (a recent breakaway from the remaining Empire) revives the project and marshals the forces to finish just the main weapon (but not the defenses ie shields and turbolaser batteries or engines hyperdrive) to provide two or three shots off the sun it currently orbits before exhausting their energy source and having to abandon it again. They want to get those shots in to even the odds a bit.

I like that idea too.

[Mad]

5.) Dodged some enemy fire eh? Its almost like you except every person on their first mission to instantly die. Hint: they don't.

Interestingly, most of the Rebel pilots who had enemy TIEs on their backs did instantly die once the locked-on TIEs opened fire. As I recall, the only pilots we saw take hits and survive were Red Leader, Wedge, and Luke. And Luke managed to survive more hits than the others.

6.) We are shown that the only reason Luke hit anything, being turbo lasers or the exhaust vent, was via force/divine intervention. Did we get any prompts like that in the case of Rey?

It was setting up her Force sensitivity. Rey expressed surprise that she lined up the shot; she shouldn't have been able to do it. So, why? A mystery. At least, to her. When the movie confirms that she is, indeed, Force sensitive, the mystery is resolved. (On the other hand, a viewer who has seen the previous moves just thinks "yep, she's Force sensitive.") And, more importantly, when the reveal does occur, it doesn't come out of nowhere. It's easier to accept because we already saw the evidence.

Remember: Anakin was the only human able to podrace. A Force sensitive kid, untrained in using the Force, was able to do something no other human (that weren't Force-sensitive, at least) could do because of unconscious use of precognition. Rey achieving something similar (precog absolutely would have helped with lining that shot up) should be no surprise, and it's definitely not unprecedented.

You didn't like the presentation, and that's fine. But what the movie did was very straightforward and even predictable and with precedent.

Again, living down to the prequels is an admission of defeat.

No; throwing out canon evidence that weakens your position is an admission of defeat.

(Hey, we're not allowed to pretend they don't exist any more than you are.)

He shoots TIEs in open atmoshere, which we see plenty of people do. YAWN.

We don't see anyone else do it as quickly and efficiently as he did. It was actually absurd how effective he was. Everyone else requires a couple seconds to get a target lock and fire, and he's taking them out more quickly than any target lock we've ever seen in the movies. His piloting ability actually is unprecedented in the Star Wars movies.

Now, if he were able to maneuver a near broken down freighter to bring a stuck dorsal turret to aim off center to best a trained fighter pilot WHILE flying through a wrecked star destroyer THAT would be some real flying. What character did we see do that again?

Nobody. Rey was out in the open when making that turn. Blue sky and dunes.

And no, Poe's oscillator shenanigans were not impressive (relative). He sneaks through ONE tight spot (Rey did half a hundred) with a dedicated combat craft he is trained to use and familiar with (as opposed to a large freighter one has never used before) and is not being followed and shot at while inside it (unlike a certain MAry Sue who is flying through hulks). If Rey's stupid scene hadn't been there it would have been impressive, but alas Poe is just one of a series of potentially cool characters who have their role usurped by Mary Sue.

So, Rey, who was likely familiar with the layout of the wreckage, and who had the Force to assist her (which can make an untrained 10 year old better than any other human pilot, mind you), is more impressive than Poe's flying inside a structure he had never seen the inside of and was aiming at weak points? What Poe did was practically impossible. What Rey did, Lando and Anakin were also able to do (well, again, more impressive for Lando since he didn't know his way around the interior of the second Death Star and had no Force assistance).