Star Wars Episode VII (allowing for spoilers)

A general discussion forum, plus hauls and silly games.
User avatar
Dominic
Supreme-Class
Posts: 9331
Joined: Thu Jul 17, 2008 12:55 pm
Location: Boston
Contact:

Re: Star Wars Episode VII (allowing for spoilers)

Post by Dominic »

Spoilers in reference to the rating.

-as stated above, no sex/nudity.

-New Order commits an atrocity:
Spoiler
Ren orders a small town wiped out. This is plot relevant in that is the reason Finn abandons the Order.
-attack on neutral ground:
Spoiler
New Order attacks a neutral planet in the hopes of cornering Han et al. Bystanders and local defenders are killed.
-innocent people see it coming:
Spoiler
The Star Killer is used to destroy several inhabited planets. Inhabitants are shown reacting to their impending deaths.
This scene also has one of Abrams' more noticable scale issues.

-Kylo Ren is as bad as it gets for the movie's rating:
Spoiler
He kills Han in a pretty nasty way.
Pretty sure that Abrams is setting up for Ren to be completely irredeemable.

In other words, as I said earlier, it was possible to imagine a happy ending for Luke, Han, Leia and all the others. They had worked hard and won some major fights. Now it seems as though all of that was for nothing. They've spent the 30 years since ROTJ continuing to fight former Imperials and experiencing personal tragedy.
It was not all for nothing. The crawl establishes that the Empire was replaced by a Republic. The New Order is described as a new regime that is rising and taking territory.

Not sure how a new adversary (or even a continued fight) makes the movie bad though.
User avatar
Sparky Prime
Supreme-Class
Posts: 5225
Joined: Wed Jul 23, 2008 3:12 am

Re: Star Wars Episode VII (allowing for spoilers)

Post by Sparky Prime »

So, The Force Awakens....
I thought it was an excellent Star Wars film.

Can't say I thought the hyperspace thing was a problem like Dom did. Like Shockwave said, the only time they didn't cut away while the characters were in transit was at the end of the movie. But with how that was shot, I can't say that I thought it was an issue at all. I still got the sense it took them a while to get where they were going. I wish Abrams had done that with the warp drive in his Star Trek movies.

I really liked Kylo Ren as the villain. It was an interesting twist
Spoiler
having him say he felt the pull of the Light Side.Just interesting to me that the Light Side of the Force would have a similar pull to someone who had turned to the Dark Side, as the Dark side seems to have. Makes me really curious to know what exactly it was that turned him to the Dark Side. I also really liked how rough he seemed to be (such as with his lightsaber not being the smooth beam we usually see) with his training incomplete.
I also thought they did a great job showing
Spoiler
Rey's abilities with the Force. She's clearly a natural at it between showing her piloting skills with the Millennium Falcon and ability to take on Kylo Ren in a lightsaber duel despite having no formal training. It's everything they should have done with Anakin in episode 1. I think they're making it too obvious they're implying Luke is her father, so I'm expecting a twist to that in episode 8
.

Really overall, it was a great movie.
User avatar
Sparky Prime
Supreme-Class
Posts: 5225
Joined: Wed Jul 23, 2008 3:12 am

Re: Star Wars Episode VII (allowing for spoilers)

Post by Sparky Prime »

andersonh1 wrote:Exactly. With thousands of systems out there, there's no way the Empire at the time of episode 4 has enough of a fleet or enough personnel to keep a ship at every planet at all times. Hence the construction of the Death Star, a mobile planet destroying weapon that would use terror to do what the fleet could not.
No one is saying the Empire would or could have a Star Destroyer positioned at every planet though. The point I'm making is just that they'd need a large fleet to effectively patrol the galaxy. A few dozen ships isn't going to be enough to do that. And the Imperial Fleet was pretty intimidating even without the Death Star. It was just meant to be the crown jewel of the Emperor's arsenal to maintain control over the galaxy.
User avatar
andersonh1
Moderator
Posts: 6323
Joined: Fri Jul 18, 2008 3:22 pm
Location: South Carolina

Re: Star Wars Episode VII (allowing for spoilers)

Post by andersonh1 »

Dominic wrote:It was not all for nothing. The crawl establishes that the Empire was replaced by a Republic. The New Order is described as a new regime that is rising and taking territory.

Not sure how a new adversary (or even a continued fight) makes the movie bad though.
I'm not saying it's bad, just that I can see how it could mar the upbeat ending of ROTJ. Keep in mind I'm arguing this without having seen it yet, so I reserve the right to change my opinion afterwards.
User avatar
Onslaught Six
Supreme-Class
Posts: 7023
Joined: Fri Jul 18, 2008 6:49 am
Location: In front of my computer.
Contact:

Re: Star Wars Episode VII (allowing for spoilers)

Post by Onslaught Six »

Everything about Kylo Ren screams unfinished. On purpose. In the first half he struts around like a new Darth Vader, but in second half we see it's just a smoke screen. Even his lightsaber has an unfinished look to it, like the blades are somewhat undefined. It's rough around the edges because he's rough around the edges.
Bingo. I heard this somewhere else and I agree with it, Star Wars as a franchise has a problem of throwing these fully-formed supervillains at the heroes; Darth Maul, cool looking guy, he's a Sith, not much else there. Count Dooku, spooky Christopher Lee voice, he's a Sith, what else you got? Grievous, he's a robot that uses lightsabers and coughs and dies in ten minutes, who fucking cares. Even Darth Vader in ANH suffers from this, he's just a big scary black man in a big scary black costume; it's not until Empire happens that he gets even a little bit of depth and even then it's not much other than the bit about him being Luke's father; only in ROTJ do we really see him be a *character* as opposed to a blind antagonistic force. Kylo Ren, though, is a character, with real motivations and shit beyond "fight the good guys, because."
Sparky wrote:Makes me really curious to know what exactly it was that turned him to the Dark Side.
It's Snoke. It's always the big ugly guy in the cloak with the holograms and shit.

It's either that, or while Luke is training Ben, he's like, "Listen, you gotta know this: My dad, your grandfather, was this dude named Anakin who turned to the dark side and became Darth Vader. It was pretty shitty for a while. Don't turn to the dark side. It's bad." And all Ben hears is, "If I turn to the dark side I can be like Darth Vader?!"
It was not all for nothing. The crawl establishes that the Empire was replaced by a Republic. The New Order is described as a new regime that is rising and taking territory.
I think it's a two fold thing; not lonly did they fuck up by not decisively enough destroying the Empire enough for it to not become the First Order (I would really love for some more fiction to explore how this happened; you got two years, Disney, you better use 'em) but also there's a very clear personal failure in the lives of all three of the main characters from the OT; Han and Leia don't end up like they were supposed to and Luke is off crying over his dead wife or whatever's going on (entirely speculation btw) so in the end, nothing worked out.

Then again, two hours of everybody just hanging out having dinner would be boring as shit.
BWprowl wrote:The internet having this many different words to describe nerdy folks is akin to the whole eskimos/ice situation, I would presume.
People spend so much time worrying about whether a figure is "mint" or not that they never stop to consider other flavours.
Image
User avatar
Sparky Prime
Supreme-Class
Posts: 5225
Joined: Wed Jul 23, 2008 3:12 am

Re: Star Wars Episode VII (allowing for spoilers)

Post by Sparky Prime »

Onslaught Six wrote:It's Snoke. It's always the big ugly guy in the cloak with the holograms and shit.
Yeah, I know it was Snoke, but what I mean is more along the lines of how he got him to turn. I'd assume it has something to do with whatever work Darth Vader was doing Kylo Ren say's he's going to finish, whatever that is the movie doesn't say. But obviously that's what the sequels are for.

And speaking of the hologram, I was surprised to see the Star Wars universe has upgraded their hologram technology to make a realistic looking projection.
User avatar
Onslaught Six
Supreme-Class
Posts: 7023
Joined: Fri Jul 18, 2008 6:49 am
Location: In front of my computer.
Contact:

Re: Star Wars Episode VII (allowing for spoilers)

Post by Onslaught Six »

I don't think there was any "work," I think Kylo Ren is talking out of his butt and saying pompous mysterious things because he wants to be pompous and mysterious. There was a definite air of "This is how bad guys talk, right?"
BWprowl wrote:The internet having this many different words to describe nerdy folks is akin to the whole eskimos/ice situation, I would presume.
People spend so much time worrying about whether a figure is "mint" or not that they never stop to consider other flavours.
Image
User avatar
Sparky Prime
Supreme-Class
Posts: 5225
Joined: Wed Jul 23, 2008 3:12 am

Re: Star Wars Episode VII (allowing for spoilers)

Post by Sparky Prime »

Onslaught Six wrote:I don't think there was any "work," I think Kylo Ren is talking out of his butt and saying pompous mysterious things because he wants to be pompous and mysterious. There was a definite air of "This is how bad guys talk, right?"
There was way more to that scene. It was all about the conflicting feelings Kylo Ren has between doing this "work" and the pull the Light Side of the Force still has on him, wanting to find the strength to resist the Light. That suggests there is some reason he turned to the Dark Side, something he feels he can't do by being on the Light Side.
User avatar
JediTricks
Site Admin
Posts: 3849
Joined: Thu Jul 17, 2008 12:17 pm
Location: LA, CA, USA

Re: Star Wars Episode VII (allowing for spoilers)

Post by JediTricks »

Before I post replies, here's my thoughts...

Saw it on Tuesday, theater has $6 Tuesdays for regular, and discounts on larger-format, 3D, and Dbox moving seats ( :roll: ). It's "fine", not as bad as Abrams' Star Trek movies, not as insulting to the canon, likable new characters for the most part, but still plenty of script issues and a few glaring technical ones, it doesn't feel inspired by anything other than previous Star Wars films, and it has a twinge of being a Hollywood sequel to an anti-Hollywood series. My take was 7/10. I will say that it didn't have much in the way that excited me, mostly it was Poe's material being brash and flying the X-wing. But it wasn't bad.

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

Slash-Film has the following notes from the Ep 7 script: http://www.slashfilm.com/star-wars-the- ... ns-ending/
as well as deleted scenes: http://www.slashfilm.com/star-wars-the- ... ed-scenes/

The stuff explaining the Republic's relationship to the Resistance comes off as very prequel-like, and further deconstructs the ROTJ victory.

Maz having Force powers would have been too much, had the prequels not happened I would have been ok with this, but now it's too late to just add random Force-adept non-Jedi who aren't with the Dark Side.

Chewie would finally have ripped someone's arm off.

If you think about it, it's really George Lucas' Happily Ever After which Ep 7 kills, that is the death Lucas' argument for a fairy tale feeling not killing main heroes comments upon to me. In fact, Ep 7 unintentionally argues in favor of the Prequels' interpretations of the Republic, going back to that system post-ROTJ leads to corrupt senators not acting against the First Order so Leia creates the Resistance (taken from script, deleted scene). The movie takes place 30 years after ROTJ, the timeline for the First Order has Finn being taken from his parents 24 years prior, which means that only 6 years after ROTJ the galaxy was already worse off, and it doesn't sound like Finn was only one. We are told the First Order isn't the Empire, so these aren't the same exact resources being extended. The undertaking of the Starkiller weapon alone is on a scale unimaginable by even Star Wars' standards, so it and the First Order forces seem to have been doing their thing efficiently since essentially Lando and Wedge were dancing with Ewoks.

-----------

Speculation on Rey...

The movie tries to suggest that she's a hero's daughter pretty hard, likely Luke's. Some of these moments are red herrings, such as the Rebel pilot helmet she picks up outside the AT-AT looks very much like Luke's but has slightly different markings.

I would prefer her not to be related to any heroes, it's too much and it makes whomever her parents are out to be awful people, abandoning her to the harshest life imaginable for a tiny child.

But she's also so ridiculously skilled in the Force without even a hint of training that either she's crossing beyond Mary Suedom into downright incompetent character writing, or this next theory...

Perhaps Rey is another student of Luke Skywalker's. He recognizes her because she was one of the survivor's of Ben's destruction of the new Jedi temple (Luke recognizing Rey and seeing the destruction of the temple are in the film's script). Rey, a small child, could have been early in training and orphaned by the act, Kylo Ben having killed her parents during his turn to the dark side. Perhaps she wasn't given saber training yet, but she had connections to the Force which had been honed just enough that the trauma hid those memories but the skills are in her.


This doesn't justify why she's so good at repairs, piloting, survival, speaking astromech droid language, or hyperdrive engineering; but it would explain why she can tap into the Force without seemingly any training and use it so well. Kylo Ben might not recognize her because he himself was a kid (albeit an older one) and not that connected to her during the training.

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

The Force Awakens Story issues, Technical issues, and Nitpicks

Keep in mind, these aren't meant to invalidate the film, they aren't crushing blows, the movie holds around 7/10, but these are part of why that grade isn't higher.


Story Issues
- BB-8 is a Mary Sue.
- Rey is a bit of a Mary Sue as well, she is automatically good at: repairing things, speaking astromech droid language, surviving in a harsh environment, piloting, interstellar travel, hyperdrive engineering, hand to hand fighting, pistol use, connecting to the Force, using the Force without one iota of training, and lightsaber combat; she's basically Lil Annie x3.
- Story moments feel inorganic, every event and character is driven by the script alone, everything is set to a series of whopping conveniences.
- Finn is somehow in sanitation then moves up the ranks to Stormtrooper and Phasma's elite squad pretty easily, yet either this is his first mission (the movie suggests as much) or this is the most brutal action he's encountered; Finn being a lowly trooper somehow also knows a lot about everything important in the First Order.
- Rey suffers ridiculously over the top levels of mistreatment, and scavanges just for food rations which feels overly narrow in focus.
- The end battle focus is drawn away from where it should be, no story beat really feels important except Kylo Ren's, including Poe Dameron's X-wing battle which should be a big deal, they may as well not have destroyed the Starkiller at all, just crippled it.
- The movie feels like 5 set pieces, even using real locales they don't feel like a rich world.
- There's no weight given to the destruction of an entire system, a system that appears to be Coruscant and the New Republic's capitol and senate.
- The Rebel base is totally exposed at the end, the villains are still well-armed and nearby.
- The end battle on the planet splits our heroes apart so perfectly that it's an eyeroll of a contrived plot device even in a film made entirely of contrived plot devices.
- R2 wakes up for no reason.
- Finn seems to have little compunction about killing so soon after being horrified by abject killing, these fellow troopers were the only people he knew and they were conscripts like him, he kills dozens of them in the first moments of his turn from the First Order.
- The political structure of the New Republic, Rebel Alliance, Resistance, the Senate, Empire, Old Republic, and First Order is muddled and confusing, and the scene cut from the film explaining more of it is very Prequel-esque.
- Major coincidences: Max von Sydow's throwaway character is in the exact same relative area as Rey, BB-8 has the entire planet from which to choose and finds Rey, Finn and Poe have the entire planet from which to crash and finds one closest to Rey and BB-8, the heroes are all in the same vicinity as the long-lost Millennium Falcon, Han finally tracks down the Falcon just as the heroes use it, Han's detour to Maz's castle just happens to be where Luke's lightsaber calls to Rey, Kylo Ren's decision not to keep hunting for BB-8 calling off the First Order strike, Finn knowing how to take down the shields of Starkiller base, Kylo Ren being in the same place as Han and company, Poe's X-wing success flying through the crack where nobody else could.
- BB-8 doesn't get humanized very well because his/her voice isn't properly defined by Rey acting as C-3PO, and there aren't many noble or brave actions on 8's part.
- There isn't a lot of emotional weight to Finn or Poe Dameron's characters as written on the page.
- Maz doesn't feel like a character that Han would know, and her style of having a statue of herself and a court of scumbags doesn't feel like a character that would have earned the wisdom she has.
- The denouement between Finn and Phasma lacked any edge or conversation worthy of the outcome, and there was enough supporting material suggesting it could have been a sharp, stinging duel of words.
- Finn was a conscript, but didn't feel converted-enough from that life, he stopped feeling like a fallen stormtrooper far too early.
- Kylo Ben calling out Finn as a traitor felt far-fetched, Finn was a conscript and a lowly stormtrooper, why would the First Order think twice about this guy at all, much less focus heavily on him when he's just another nameless number?
- Kylo Ben really doesn't feel weighted correctly, either he's fairly inept because he's angsty and in training, or he's a massive and powerful threat who sits near the top of the chain of command of the First Order, being both feels like a character conflict.


Technical Issues
- The sounds BB-8 makes are overly childlike and grating at times.
- CGI Snoke and Maz look very phony, CGI translucent skin and CGI mo-cap movement look very computerized, characters could have been played by humans or puppets quite easily.
- Some of the lens and angle choices are appallingly flat and plasticky, and the use of simple edits and fast wipes is disappointingly traditional much of the time.
- The score isn't particularly impressive.
- The Falcon and X-wing cameras moved too much sometimes to the point where it was overboard and the hyper editing was only making it worse.
- Phasma is photographed wrong, she's imposing and tall, yet never blocked or framed as such, never seen from low angles to suggest her intimidation factor.


Nitpicks
- The name "BB-8" is said by everybody, no shorthand like "Eight" or "you", only a constant stream of "buy products of this character" name-repetition a la Poochie.
- Rey constantly is emoting at maximum, this is on the direction rather than the actor.
- Han Solo's ranthtar adventure feels out of place and looks ridiculous, why didn't they eat Finn the way they did everyone else?
- Movie proves it's a reboot by calling this Episode 7, should really be called "Episode 8" as there are plenty of interrim story elements that would have been in its past between ROTJ and TFA which are crucial enough to justify story weight.
- Greg Grunberg is distracting here. Judah Friedlander's name in the credits is distracting. This movie is very Hollywood insider, the polar opposite of Star Wars' roots.
- The Starkiller Base never is seen moving, yet it appears to drain stars and fire a hyperspace-based weapon from system to system, it's kind of nonsensical even for Star Wars.
- Rey has Finn use the belly turret instead of the dorsal turret for no apparent reason.
- The Falcon takes a LOT of very serious hits without apparent damage.
- The First Order attacks on Jakku and Maz's compound all feel identical in the way they're presented - ground troops shooting random stuff, ground troops noticing heroes, TIE Fighters strafing.
- Elderly Ackbar looked bad with his muppet-mouth, and added nothing of consequence.
- The X-wing attack on the Starkiller felt too much like a video game.
- Jakku and D'Qar are far too similar to Tatooine and Yavin IV, respectively (Starkiller Base at least uses a different visual look from Hoth with its snowy setting sporting jutting rocks and plant life).
- Rey's fighting technique with a lightsaber doesn't use her skills fighting with her pike earlier, she mostly relies on thrusting rather than parrying and uses almost no slicing.
- The Resistence fleet is pretty meager.
- Doesn't feel like it's taking from anything other than Star Wars, nothing else really informs film.
- Blaster shots hit stormtroopers who react like they were hit by a truck.
- Using the Force to stop a blaster bolt in mid air seems way outside the previous abilities of the Force, or any abilities outside of The Matrix.
- Chewbacca looks too neat and clean, looks off.
- Han using Chewie's cocked bowcaster was fine, but when he kept using it he didn't pull the bow string, it seemed pretty silly he wouldn't have tried it before now.
- Poe's excuse about surviving the TIE crash is dumb and doesn't have to be. "I got thrown from the crash"? Did we see the actual pilot seat intact? That's the only reason not to say he ejected and blacked out the way Finn did, neither was wearing a pressure flight suit, so it would have made sense if he ejected and blacked out, but being "thrown" is asking way more.
Image
See, that one's a camcorder, that one's a camera, that one's a phone, and they're doing "Speak no evil, See no evil, Hear no evil", get it?
User avatar
JediTricks
Site Admin
Posts: 3849
Joined: Thu Jul 17, 2008 12:17 pm
Location: LA, CA, USA

Re: Star Wars Episode VII (allowing for spoilers)

Post by JediTricks »

Shockwave wrote: They did the same thing with the 1978 Superman movies and I think that's a lot of what was missing from Man of Steel.
But Superman Returns, gold! :lol: Man of Steel has so many script problems IMO that it's almost better the cast didn't work, didn't try to use charisma to hide a mess.
As for the Empire in ROTJ, it always kind of bugged me about the Empire being overthrown as well. I mean, sure, maybe it's like a snake, cut off the head and the rest dies, but... not really. That's not how politics works. Most political systems have protocols in place if the guy at the top dies. Or even the top two or three guys. So I've always wondered:
1. How did the other planets immediately know that the Emperor and Vader were both dead and
2. Why did they immediately start rebelling when they weren't before? I mean, one would have to assume that whatever Imperial force or presence that was there keeping said planets in line would presumably still be there so it's not like the average citizens would have be able to overthrow there local Imperial enforcement. And if they were capable of that, why didn't they do it sooner and make things way easier for the Rebel Alliance? In a series that centers a lot around the political structure of the society it's set in, there are several loopholes in this series.
First off, using Earth politics to define Star Wars is a bit silly, it's a fairy tale universe, says so from the first "A Long Time Ago in a Galaxy Far, Far Away..."

Also, I think I gave pretty good reasons why the empire would fall after the Emperor was gone, their resources were exhausted, their centralized base cut off, etc.. The Emperor was their main guy, it wasn't a political system, it was a dictatorship.

How did the planets know that the Emperor was dead? Holonet newscast, Rebellion broadcast? Why did they start rebelling? Because, as Luke, Owen, and the cut scene with Biggs said, regular folks hated the Empire but felt there was nothing they could do about it, and here they saw something WAS done.

Sparky wrote:I never said it was, but that is the only thing we have to work with since the films don't give us any true indicator. And again, you're whole aruement here is also based on a presumption.
I make an argument citing evidence in the form of THE SCRIPT ITSELF and you chalk it up as "presumption". As Threepio would say, "typical!"
More likely the governors are only in place to handle day to day operations of their territories, making their power superficial at best. The real power is with the Imperial Navy, as again, putting their faith in the fear of the Death Star to keep star systems in line implies. They're banking of the show of force from the military to keep people in line, not the ability of the governors to keep people in line.
And I don't think Han's line is meant to be taken as an indicator of the size of the fleet. He's talking about the complete obliteration of a planet, something he's clearly shocked about and struggling to understand. As powerful as the Imperial Navy is, are their standard turbo lasers going to do that to a planet? No. It'd take weapons significantly more powerful.
Ignoring specific passages in the script that don't fit your argument doesn't change them, despite your presumptions.

Dom wrote:Han's line about what it would take to destroy a planet was likely meant as "passing comment" more than "technically precise".
Which doesn't change the framing of its suggestions, that the entire Imperial Navy couldn't do that kind of damage, and that they don't have anything close to 1,000 ships. It doesn't have to be technically precise to still be framed within accuracy.
And, how well would anybody expect things to go for former Imperial staff once the Rebellion becomes a new regime? Stormtroopers and data entry guys have no incentive to surrender.
They don't have to surrender, they can continue serving the ruling government in some capacity, it's just that the ruling government is no longer the Empire. The Rebellion was the last gasp of the Old Republic's most noble leadership, so they already have some idea of what law under them is. We know in TFA that The Empire and The First Order aren't the same organizations.

anderson wrote:In other words, as I said earlier, it was possible to imagine a happy ending for Luke, Han, Leia and all the others. They had worked hard and won some major fights. Now it seems as though all of that was for nothing. They've spent the 30 years since ROTJ continuing to fight former Imperials and experiencing personal tragedy.
That's my biggest disconnect in the new movie, it really was all for naught, and worse, it appears it was all for naught almost immediately after their Happily Ever After of ROTJ. Star Wars isn't meant to mimic real life so closely that today's victory is tomorrow's defeat.
Still haven't seen the movie yet. As always, getting a babysitter is an issue. We're thinking of taking my 11 year old daughter to see it and leaving the younger one at a friend's house. Any thoughts on whether it's appropriate for someone her age, since it has a PG-13 rating?
All that stuff I said in the previous comment doesn't invalidate this movie's watchability though, I don't mean to suggest that.

I don't know your kid personally, there isn't much in the way of gore - the only real blood is seeing a bad guy's blood after he gets shot by a heavy weapon, you don't see the wound itself, but there is a lot of blood as part of the reaction of someone else. There's fantasy violence and a lot of it, many stormtroopers get shot and go flying with real impact (to distraction IMO), a few drawn-out kills, but overall it's tame type of fantasy violence IMO. There isn't much in the way of scares either, and the intense emotions of certain scenes I don't think would be too heavy for a younger kid than 11. If she's very sensitive to fantasy violence or extreme cinematic motion, it could be a little much for her, but honestly, I think any age kid could watch this film overall. It's far less intense in that respect than any Prequel film. There were a lot of 6-year-old-ish kids at my theater, the only one who had to leave was a crying infant, the rest of the kids were engaged (one of the little ones, like 3, was engaged enough to ask the mom a lot of questions without a low voice, but that's SOP with that age). I would say a safe cutoff age is 6, any kid of even slower emotional development by age 6 should be able to handle this film -- especially with a parent next to them.

Spoilers ahead, but the IMDB parental guide page for TFA should help clear it up for you:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2488496/parentalguide

Here's the MPAA's PG-13 descriptor: “sci-fi action/violence” and “sustained sequences of sci-fi action/violence”
This is why the MPAA is up its own ass. The original Star Wars was going to be a G-rating, "General Audiences", Lucas had to put in a scene of Beru and Owen's burned corpses (and then a SECOND shot, because the original wasn't enough) so that audiences wouldn't dismiss it as just a kiddie film. The Force Awakens has more realistic versions of the violence than ANH, but not significantly enough to justify the same level of inappropriateness that a movie with nudity and sex (PG rating for Barbarella, PG-13 for Total Recall [2012], The Fifth Element, Across the Universe), violence (PG-13 for The Bourne Identity, World War Z, Expendables 3), scares (PG-13 for The Dark Knight, The Grudge, PG for Ghostbusters), or language (PG for Sixteen Candles, Airplane!) has. The MPAA is its own worst enemy by being so political and arbitrary.

Dom wrote:It was not all for nothing. The crawl establishes that the Empire was replaced by a Republic. The New Order is described as a new regime that is rising and taking territory.
Says and expresses are 2 different things. The script has a deleted scene showing the Republic is just as corrupt now as in TPM, which is why Leia creates the Resistance, so it's standing in conflict with the idea.
Not sure how a new adversary (or even a continued fight) makes the movie bad though.
You are conflating "bad" with "deconstructionist". A new adversary that's more powerful and more dangerous than the one they shed so much sweat and blood to defeat? Classic heroes who have failed at everything important they fought for, who instead of living happily ever after go into exile or continue to have to fight the fight or run away after losing a child and destroying their relationship?

Sparky Prime wrote:So, The Force Awakens....
I thought it was an excellent Star Wars film.

Can't say I thought the hyperspace thing was a problem like Dom did. Like Shockwave said, the only time they didn't cut away while the characters were in transit was at the end of the movie. But with how that was shot, I can't say that I thought it was an issue at all. I still got the sense it took them a while to get where they were going. I wish Abrams had done that with the warp drive in his Star Trek movies.

I really liked Kylo Ren as the villain. It was an interesting twist
Spoiler
having him say he felt the pull of the Light Side.Just interesting to me that the Light Side of the Force would have a similar pull to someone who had turned to the Dark Side, as the Dark side seems to have. Makes me really curious to know what exactly it was that turned him to the Dark Side. I also really liked how rough he seemed to be (such as with his lightsaber not being the smooth beam we usually see) with his training incomplete.
I also thought they did a great job showing
Spoiler
Rey's abilities with the Force. She's clearly a natural at it between showing her piloting skills with the Millennium Falcon and ability to take on Kylo Ren in a lightsaber duel despite having no formal training. It's everything they should have done with Anakin in episode 1. I think they're making it too obvious they're implying Luke is her father, so I'm expecting a twist to that in episode 8
.

Really overall, it was a great movie.
Abrams' problem with warp drive and the turbolifts wasn't just that they went from A to B in a wink, but the whole pacing of the stories around them matched. So even if they had cut away to a different event (and I think they do once or twice), it still doesn't feel like much time is passing between taking off and arriving. That's more a symptom of Abrams not liking Star Trek and having to jazz it up for the summer popcorn lowest common denominator crowd though; he doesn't really need to hypercharge Star Wars as it's already fast-paced.

Luke also tiptoed into the Dark Side without fully succumbing to it. Hell, the prequels suggest without saying that Obi-Wan does as well, he gets angry, gets attached, uses the Force for attack, and he's our bastion of the Light. So it felt pretty grounded to have Kylo Ben feel that pull, and even is horrified by the choices he made in killing his father.

O6 wrote:Then again, two hours of everybody just hanging out having dinner would be boring as shit.
Tell me you wouldn't love to have seen that Cloud City meal between Vader and Boba Fett, and Han, Leia, and Chewie, and Lando too. :mrgreen:

But seriously, there could have been a different way to create drama and threats without tearing down our heroes' achievements.
Image
See, that one's a camcorder, that one's a camera, that one's a phone, and they're doing "Speak no evil, See no evil, Hear no evil", get it?
Post Reply