Ep7 Reviews (Spoilers)

[Channel72]

Look, there were a lot of great things about this movie. Honestly, it was exactly the same as JJ's Star Trek movies: enjoyable action flicks with good acting and clever dialogue, but utterly lacking any semblance of a logical or consistent plot structure.

Yeah, that sums it up pretty much. Except the characters and acting were just like, really good - and the whole thing between Han and Kylo Ren was very emotionally weighty. There was more emotion in the one short conversation between Han and Ren than in the entire Prequel trilogy.

Because of that, I'm inclined to forgive a lot of the incoherency of the plot. And to be honest, it's not that incoherent. Basically, the plot is fine except for everything involving the destruction of Starkiller Base (which is unfortunately a big chunk of the movie.)

It's likely this happened because either JJ or some Disney execs wanted the ending battle to be much more "Star Wars"-ish (i.e. basically a clone of ANH/ROTJ), so they changed the original ending battle into basically Red Squadron vs Death Star 3.0. If you look at the earlier drafts, the ending battle was very different - it involved a Resistance Fleet vs the First Order fleet (complete with capital ships) in orbit above the snow planet where the First Order base is, Leia was a General commanding the fleet, and the Superweapon involved wasn't something that blows up planets, but apparently just something that can destroy capital ships in one shot or something (I'm not sure, it's not too clear.)

At some point, somebody at Disney, or JJ Abrams himself, looked at the ending battle and was just like, no - let's just redo the ANH/ROTJ Death Star assault - I don't want to take any chances with this film.

Speaking of R2, though, just another in the long line of incredibly stupid and not-at-all-thought-out elements of this plot: R2 had the rest of the map stored in his memory banks, but they couldn't access them because he was in fucking "low power mode"? He's a fucking droid! The Star Wars galaxy seriously has no means of retrieving data out of a droid in "low power mode"?

The way I understood it, it's not that they couldn't retrieve the map from R2, they simply didn't know he had it. Either way it's a mess, I agree. The whole MacGuffin thing sucked - I still don't even understand why a map would be necessary at all. To find Luke they would just need coordinates. Why the hell would they need a map showing the path he took to get there?

Anyway, I still think overall the movie was very good. I simply could never really forgive the Prequels for giving us bland characters that are impossible to care about. This movie gave us excellent characters - I generally actually care about Rey, Finn, and Kylo Ren. Even Poe Dameron, who only really got a few scenes in the beginning, was an awesome character - I loved his lines and delivery when he was being interrogated by Kylo Ren. As far as I'm concerned, the movie is a success because of that. I would have liked the plot to be more coherent, and I certainly would have liked more exposition on exactly what the fuck is going on in the Galaxy at large, but that can wait for later films.

[Meest]

Want to add another little pet peeve, what was with all the fly under radar references? Was just another lazy device they used, when Han can find the Falcon supposedly within hours at most after it takes off. Chewie found Rey no problem at the Starkiller base. They even mention it when the Falcon crashes, what about all the orbital support, how come the Star Destroyer didn't pursue the Falcon fleeing Jakku? A simple reconnaissance flight is all they need to find a weak point in the Starkiller. Abrams was really trying to channel some Vietnam with the TIEs flying low from the sunset, forgetting that they came from orbit first. Remember when in ANH they could track escape pods easily.

Was just all over the place whenever it was convenient things were hard to find, other times a five second problem to be solved. Reflected my whole issue with the movie, very little danger or threat, everything was figured out in one simple conversation.

[Galvatron]

Just saw it again.

I'm now assuming that Maz Kanata's planet was in the Hoznian system since they were able to witness the destruction of Hoznian Prime and its moons from the surface.

Starkiller Base must be mobile if it needs to drain a star before it can fire. Also, it might be entirely artificial and simply disguised as a habitable moon just like Hethrir's worldcraft from the old EU.

Is Hoznian Prime's destruction really supposed to mean the end of the Republic as General Hux said or did he mean that symbolically since it was apparently the home system of their fleet? I took it to mean that it was essentially the Republic's version of Pearl Harbor.

Is the Starkiller weapon really as powerful as the Death Star? Hoznian Prime didn't explode nearly as violently as Alderaan did and I think that's what Saxton's legendary calculations were based on.

[Gaidin]

It's likely this happened because either JJ or some Disney execs wanted the ending battle to be much more "Star Wars"-ish (i.e. basically a clone of ANH/ROTJ), so they changed the original ending battle into basically Red Squadron vs Death Star 3.0. If you look at the earlier drafts, the ending battle was very different - it involved a Resistance Fleet vs the First Order fleet (complete with capital ships) in orbit above the snow planet where the First Order base is, Leia was a General commanding the fleet, and the Superweapon involved wasn't something that blows up planets, but apparently just something that can destroy capital ships in one shot or something (I'm not sure, it's not too clear.)

At some point, somebody at Disney, or JJ Abrams himself, looked at the ending battle and was just like, no - let's just redo the ANH/ROTJ Death Star assault - I don't want to take any chances with this film.

I've actually seen this in more than one story. Not just Star Wars. Sort of the common theme would be for a Fantasy series to have the first book be similar to LOTR to give comfortable ground to introduce the reader, while still being its own method and madness with the characters. It would then break off in a different direction thereafter. What I wonder from here is what will happen with our new characters and the future story in Episode 8.

[AniThyng]

On the capital ships bit general hux explicitly refers to the destruction of the republic's cherished fleet in the movie - they have capital ships, and the NRDF is not an insignificant force, and so are local defense forces, which still exist and which supply the resistance on the side.

[Noble713]

The whole MacGuffin thing sucked - I still don't even understand why a map would be necessary at all. To find Luke they would just need coordinates. Why the hell would they need a map showing the path he took to get there?

If Luke is in the Unknown Regions, perhaps a hyperspace route to where he is hasn't been mapped yet? Of course, then the question is "How the fuck did Luke get there? Forge his own hyperspace lane?" 20,000 years of recorded history and nobody kept the first Jedi temple's location and access routes in a database? Yeah, no matter how we try to rationalize it, it stinks...

[Galvatron]

20,000 years of recorded history and nobody kept the first Jedi temple's location and access routes in a database? Yeah, no matter how we try to rationalize it, it stinks...

IIRC, the Empire destroyed as many relics and historical records related to the Jedi as possible. This is why Luke is having such a hard time finding information about them in the new EU stories following ANH.

As for how he found it, my guess is they'll either consider it unimportant enough to explain, tell us in one of the next movies and/or leave it to the EU to tell us.

[Q99]

So, I'm hearing the trooper that Rey mind-tricked was Daniel Craig.

[Gaidin]

So, I'm hearing the trooper that Rey mind-tricked was Daniel Craig.

Yup...

One of the least crazy rumors about The Force Awakens was that somehow, James Bond actor Daniel Craig had filmed a cameo. Now we know it’s true, and who he played, so more spoilers for The Force Awakens! Also Daniel Craig, guess.

Ready? Hope so.

Remember when Kylo Ren imprisons Rey, and leaves her in that interrogation chair, guarded by a single Stormtrooper? That would be Craig, who joined the scene for “sh–s and grins,” according to a source quoted by Entertainment Weekly. (He’s the ‘trooper who tells Rey “I’ll tighten those restraints, scavenger scum,” in case you’re still having trouble placing him.)

So one Force Awakens mystery solved! Now, only a few dozen left to go...

[NecronLord]

Saw it. Didn't like it; derivative, and at times boring, the actors were alright, but Harrison Ford was by far the best, unsurprisingly.

I did hear someone in the command say something about a 'hyperlight beam' in the film, when they said the Starkiller Base would require immense power to operate.

I really hated the practical effects creatures; the pig-rhino thing at the watering hole and the thing that the guy who netted BB8 was riding. I am used to watching CGI creatures with more range of motion, these, particularly the mount, plodded along poorly, and shouldn't have been shown so extensively if they weren't willing to use proper CGI to make them look more organic. Every time I saw that guy on his mount I thought, 'Oh look, it's a Pantomime horse' and rolled my eyes because it seems plain that the puppet was explicitly being used to fluff CGI-hating fanboys.

Loved the more diverse casting on both sides.

[Tychu]

Am I (and my friend) the only one who thinks Episode VII is the worst Star Wars movie? I think it's a good movie but I'm not understanding the hype for it that the majority of people have.

Here's where it lost points for me.
The comedy seems forced. Why is Poe making jokes while talking to Ren while the villagers around him are being rounded up to be killed? The short slapstick between Han and Finn (why are you doing this ::head nod::) is not entertaining... I thought Chewbaccas moments were funny however.

Now we all know that George Lucas can't write dialogue, but he knows how to tell a story. Act 1: set up and introduce your characters, though a battle or conflict in. Act 2: focus on world building and develop your characters. Act 3: the climax/final battle. With this JJ Abrams take, dialogue wasn't cringeworthy but it was all over the place. The new characters weren't fleshed out and we got no world building. I want to know how things work. How did Stsrkiller Base move after it destroyed "New System #1"?


I threw a spoiler cover on just in case.
Believe me, I want to move this movie up past Attack of the Clones; but after two viewings it's still sitting low for me.

[Tychu]

Somehow, JJ managed to surpass Lucas in crappy worldbuilding (by basically having none whatsoever), but meh, whatever.

Actually that was among the best elements of the prequels overall. It gave a nice variety of interesting locations to interact with. Things like a 1950s diner on Coruscant or a sinkhole world with extremely tall aliens were fairly interesting.

George Lucas' world building is what I enjoyed most about the prequels as well. I loved knowing how people lived and more importantly how the governments worked.

This movie had none of that.

[Terralthra]

I see regrading the plasma and mass, but that is irrelevant to my point that a lightsabre /= sword / = every other melee weapon is interchangeable, and thats true even if we are talking about two experts, which we are not. JJ fucked this up, you are just going to have to deal with that. If it doesn't bother you fine, it still happened.

So, let me make sure I have this straight. You're unhappy that a non-Force-user (albeit one trained in melee combat with other weapons) picked up a lightsabre and used it and lost, multiple times, because he...didn't lose badly enough? I'm confused. He not only lost - badly - to a Force-user, in short order, even though that person was significantly wounded; he also lost to a generic stormtrooper wielding an electro-weapon, too, in short order, and had to be rescued. Are you seriously saying the director/screenwriter "fucked up" because he didn't lop his own limbs off? That seems...a bit over the top.

[Noble713]

Am I (and my friend) the only one who thinks Episode VII is the worst Star Wars movie? I think it's a good movie but I'm not understanding the hype for it that the majority of people have.

Here's where it lost points for me.
The comedy seems forced. Why is Poe making jokes while talking to Ren while the villagers around him are being rounded up to be killed? The short slapstick between Han and Finn (why are you doing this ::head nod::) is not entertaining... I thought Chewbaccas moments were funny however.

You think the comedy in Ep7 is worse than the cringe-worthy stuff from Ep2:

C-3PO: "Oh this is such a drag!" "I'm quite beside myself." *pukes*

The new characters weren't fleshed out and we got no world building. I want to know how things work. How did Stsrkiller Base move after it destroyed "New System #1"?

Probably the same way everything else in SW, including the DS1 and 2, moves: via hyperdrive. SKB is just a bigger, longer-ranged DS, with a powerplant charged by sucking up a star. I think it's safe to assume that the base reserves enough power for a hyperjump between charges.

[Adam Reynolds]

Am I (and my friend) the only one who thinks Episode VII is the worst Star Wars movie? I think it's a good movie but I'm not understanding the hype for it that the majority of people have.

After processing it for a day, I would agree. While I certainly enjoyed it when I watched it, upon reflection it really started annoying me with dozens of little things. The prequels, even with the flaw of being prequels and thus telling a story that we already knew, had interesting stories.

Now we all know that George Lucas can't write dialogue, but he knows how to tell a story. Act 1: set up and introduce your characters, though a battle or conflict in. Act 2: focus on world building and develop your characters. Act 3: the climax/final battle. With this JJ Abrams take, dialogue wasn't cringeworthy but it was all over the place. The new characters weren't fleshed out and we got no world building. I want to know how things work. How did Stsrkiller Base move after it destroyed "New System #1"?

In trying to avoid the flaw of the prequels of talking about politics, they removed any sense of context to the film. I wonder if Abrams problem in this sense is that he got his start in television in which this structure is less true.

Believe me, I want to move this movie up past Attack of the Clones; but after two viewings it's still sitting low for me.

I suspect upon subsequent viewings I will say the same.

[bilateralrope]

Random thoughts:
- Since Fin wanted to leave the Jakku system, he clearly thought that the TIE fighter he stole had a hyperdrive. While he's only a janitor Poe, the experienced pilot, didn't disagree. Thus I'm pretty sure that those TIEs have hyperdrives in them.
- What I'd like to see with Captain Phasma in the next movie is that her actor gets replaced without any comment to imply that she was executed over turning off the shield and replaced, leaving the name and armor as indicators of position.
- What I'm afraid of is that she is made into the badass people thought she was in the trailers.
- Starkiller bases weapon was called something referring to hyperspace. So that leaves three possibilities. 1: All the planets are in the same system. 2: Hyperspace weapons look odd when viewed from sublight. 3: The weapon has some acceleration and deceleration time, leading to it being STL for the shots we saw of it firing and hitting but it was FTL during the cut between those shots. Possibility 1 is the hardest one for me to swallow.

Though the rationalization of it blocking its own weapon makes sense, it does not make sense that they would have this setting active at all times. This isn't like an exhaust port that presumably always needs to be open. Ships don't open docking bay shields unless they are launching fighters.

Is it a setting they can change, or is the shield generator only capable of running on that setting ?

With the time it took for the trail from the star to reach the planet, it looks like the plume from the star was travelling faster than light. Which means that the shield blocking everything would prevent the weapon charging. They had to let FTL particles through to charge it.

that's ignoring that most military facilities are built in a way that makes then considerbly more durable against external attacks then internal ones.

Unless they are built by someone cutting costs due to a lack of resources and/or corruption. If they assume that nobody would be crazy enough to jump through the shield, then cutting costs by reducing the number of stormtroopers running around the base and the armor on the critical weak spot could look like a good idea. If the engineers didn't have the resources to properly armor and build the functioning weapon in time, then I could see them cutting back on the armor so that they don't get punished for failing to achieve the impossible. Even if they get punished after it's blown up, they still delayed their punishment.

How often has some major construction in real life suffered from cost cutting, greedy and/or incompetent middlemen ?

The whole MacGuffin thing sucked - I still don't even understand why a map would be necessary at all. To find Luke they would just need coordinates. Why the hell would they need a map showing the path he took to get there?

If Luke is in the Unknown Regions, perhaps a hyperspace route to where he is hasn't been mapped yet? Of course, then the question is "How the fuck did Luke get there? Forge his own hyperspace lane?" 20,000 years of recorded history and nobody kept the first Jedi temple's location and access routes in a database? Yeah, no matter how we try to rationalize it, it stinks...

I remember one EU novel where Luke used the force to find a quicker hyperspace route to his destination that the mapped routes. While that novel is no longer canon, the idea can still fit given that the force gives precognition and space is very empty.

Or maybe the map is just a list of directions of the form "travel on heading x for distance y", "watch out for this landmark", "turn x degrees to the right, etc. Directions that are useless unless you can match a specific location to a specific entry.

Directions that could simply be the navigation computers log file. The ship knows how fast it travelled in hyperspace. It knows how far it turned when it turned. It knows what stars it could pick up on sensors. Maybe it has a compass equivalent. But it doesn't know where it is because it never picked up anything that would give a definitive current location.

[biostem]

My thoughts & nitpicks:

Finn said he was taken as a child, so my impression is that these stromtroopers are *not* raised from birth, but rather forcibly conscripted & indoctrinated.

I think killing Han and his defeat are two key events that Ben/Kylo Ren needed to experience, to truly tap into his rage and hatred. I imagine that he may now try to go after Leia and Luke, as his only ties to his past self.

I was kind of annoyed that Mark Hammil got billing over Carrie Fischer, and he literally had no lines.

Did these new TIEs demonstrate the use of that other turret in any of the other battle scenes, or did Finn & Poe take some other model of TIE? Speaking of that scene, I guess the inside of a TIE cockpit isn't just kept as a vacuum while in space...

So the First Order nukes several of planets, and the New Republic doesn't even send *any* forces? If they had made a greater case for the Resistance actually being the New Republics "plausible deniability" branch, then I could understand that more.

I was a bit disappointed that we didn't even get to see the Chrome Trooper do anything - there was no big gunfight that she was in or anything. It would have been cool to see her kinda hold her own against Han, Chewie, and Finn, for a least a little bit, before she caved in and cooperated in lowering the shields - that's some true loyalty to the order there. It's no wonder Finn broke from their indoctrination. I'm just surprised more of their troops didn't defect.

[Anacronian]

Completely unfounded speculation : I think JJ and the gang were surprised by the positive reaction they got about captain phasma prior to release - my guess is that she was originally meant to die in the movie but after the reception she got they cut her death scene and kept her alive for the subsequent films - that's why we see so little of her.

Though that is just my personal theory.

[Pelranius]

Phasma seems to have folded rather quickly regarding the Starkiller Base shields, and she seems to have lied to Hux and Kylo Ren about Finn not having any behavioral problems before hand (I'm assuming that she omitted him taking off the helmet), though the latter could just be ass covering on her part.

She could be a mole from whatever is the actual ruling entity of the post Jakku Empire, if it exists (I don't think she's a Resistance or NR agent, because she was gunning down civilians on Jakku when Ren caught Poe).

[bilateralrope]

So the First Order nukes several of planets, and the New Republic doesn't even send *any* forces? If they had made a greater case for the Resistance actually being the New Republics "plausible deniability" branch, then I could understand that more.

If that planet was their seat of government, they are probably still trying to reassemble a chain of command and figure out WTF just happened by the end of the movie.

I was a bit disappointed that we didn't even get to see the Chrome Trooper do anything - there was no big gunfight that she was in or anything. It would have been cool to see her kinda hold her own against Han, Chewie, and Finn, for a least a little bit, before she caved in and cooperated in lowering the shields - that's some true loyalty to the order there. It's no wonder Finn broke from their indoctrination. I'm just surprised more of their troops didn't defect.

I'm seeing her as some kind of loyalty officer. Someone the Stormtroopers fear. But also someone faceless and replaceable. Which is why I'm hoping that they change actors but keep the name and armor for the next movie.

[Noble713]

"They've somehow created a hyper-lightspeed weapon built within the planet itself."
"A laser cannon."
"I'm not sure how to describe a weapon of this scale."
"It's another Death Star."
"I wish that were the case."
....
"How is it possible to power a weapon of that size?"
"It uses the power of the sun. As the weapon is charged, the sun is drained, until it disappears."
"The First Order is charging the weapon again now. Our system is the next target."

^Exact lines from the movie Re:SKB, in case anyone is curious.

[biostem]

Yeah... draining the sun??? Unless it somehow put the sun in some kind of time acceleration and actually collected millions or billions of years of its output in only a few hours, then it is just a really dumb concept.

[Terralthra]

I'm pretty sure that if you took a sun's worth of hydrogen and compressed it inside the volume of an Earth-sized (gravity seems about the same on SKB), there'd be a massive quantity of energy one could use. Fusion would be happening at a much greater rate than it would based on just gravitational compression.

[Patroklos]

I see regrading the plasma and mass, but that is irrelevant to my point that a lightsabre /= sword / = every other melee weapon is interchangeable, and thats true even if we are talking about two experts, which we are not. JJ fucked this up, you are just going to have to deal with that. If it doesn't bother you fine, it still happened.

So, let me make sure I have this straight. You're unhappy that a non-Force-user (albeit one trained in melee combat with other weapons) picked up a lightsabre and used it and lost, multiple times, because he...didn't lose badly enough? I'm confused. He not only lost - badly - to a Force-user, in short order, even though that person was significantly wounded; he also lost to a generic stormtrooper wielding an electro-weapon, too, in short order, and had to be rescued. Are you seriously saying the director/screenwriter "fucked up" because he didn't lop his own limbs off? That seems...a bit over the top.

You seem to be confused as to whom you are talking to. I suggest you go back through the thread. And Finn did not "lose in short order."

[Nephtys]

The thing I took from the movie was not that Starkiller Base ate the sun then fired. Rather, it took some energy from the star, but not enough to destroy it per-shot. Presumably the star that the base was orbiting in would still be usable for many shots, more than enough to destroy the First Order's enemies.

As to the NR's lack of response, it makes sense. No weapon of this type has any precedent. The Death Stars were the ultimate weapons in people's minds, and that was just a big spaceship that still gives some warning as it flies in system. Not some crazy innovation of a ds-like beam able to remotely blow up dozens of planets every few hours with zero effort.