Star Wars: The Force Awakens (SPOILERS)

[Rob G]

Holy shit the movie boards. I am bringing this shit back for this movie. This thread is really for those who have seen the movie.

[Ken]

Saw The Force Awakens yesterday. I agree with you. Good movie, not great by any standard. it basically rehashed episode 4. I can't believe they killed Han. In my own personal opinion, I'm a little sick and tired of the male characters retreating because of their wishy-washiness. 3 decades after the death of Vader, Luke should have Jedi's running around all over the place, not meditating on some mountain in Ireland somewhere. Give me a break already. Star Wars geeks are shooting loads in their pants over this movie, and I find it ridiculous that they have no ability to be objective. Some are calling for academy awards, but this was no where near that level. J.J. Abrams took the safe way out in my opinion, and if I was him I probably would have done the same thing. Hopefully, not that everybody has shot their loads, he can have more freedom for the second installment.


I still enjoyed the movie. Glad Star Wars is back. I felt I had to run to see the movie before all the assholes started spoiling the movie all over the place. By the way, who cares if Daniel Craig was a storm trooper? He never took off his helmet. So stupid.


Thought the battle at the end between Rey and Kylo Ren was ridiculous. How could Rey defeat a Sith who obviously has had so much training? Didn't make much sense.


Carrie Fisher looks absolutely horrible. And her voice sounded like she was drunk the whole time. I think they must have dubbed it or something.

[Rob G]

Dec 27, 2015 2:33:51 GMT -5 Ken said:

I felt I had to run to see the movie before all the assholes started spoiling the movie all over the place.

Yup, I had exactly the same fears. They did the Hollywood premier 4 days before the release. So I went on internet blackout from then on. Bought the tickets a month prior making sure I got into the movie before anyone got out. It all worked and I went in knowing nothing. Of course I highly expected they would kill Han and Kylo's most likely origin was that of being Solos son. That's what happened in the expanded universe books too except that kid was named Jacen Solo. Not Ben.

Dec 27, 2015 2:33:51 GMT -5 Ken said:

Carrie Fisher looks absolutely horrible. And her voice sounded like she was drunk the whole time. I think they must have dubbed it or something.

All things considered I thought Carrie fisher looked great. I was always a little hesitant about a proposed episode 7 with the old characters returning. I mean Harrison Ford went on to become a great actor and stayed acting great and in wonderful shape and all that. He would be fine. But Mark Hamill never did anything after Star Wars. So he just looks and talks like a haggert old creep. How can that dude play an old cool jedi. And worst of the worst was Carrie fisher. The drugs have destroyed her. Her face is all fucked up with failed face lift attempts. Her voice is hoarse like a mans. She also does not form her words fully like most drug addicts. And she weights 400 lbs. Theres just no way she can even appear as a regal queen and definatly not a bad ass jedi which was the assumed evolution of her character. BUT, as soon as episode 7 was announced Disney sent full time trainers to Fisher and Hamil. Got them both to lose like 60 lbs. I thought they did a great job with Fishers make up and hair. And they definatly modulated her voice to sound feminine. Storywise she just never became a Jedi nor a queen. Shes just a general. So it all worked out the best it could. I thought she looked and sounded way better than possible. I thought her acting was very very good too. Now I can accept that she did not choose the Jedi path. But in 40 years she better be able to do some Jedi shit. Especially if Rey can do so much with zero anything and Rey would not even be as naturally gifted as Leia would be.

[Rob G]

My take on Star Wars TFA
First time I saw it I know I loved a lot of it but I was picking a lot of it apart. I considered I was being too cynical and said let me see it again. I loved it the second time. Now its not as good as the original 3 but what could be. It does not even compare in many ways it does not even compare to the technical achievements of Revenge of the Sith. It’s a small story like A New Hope. Actual its really like a remake of a new hope. Like Ken Said, JJ abrams was playing it safe. Star Wars purists hated the prequels. So just make A New Hope again. I can live with everything except for a third deathstar (starkiller base). We just did that for the second time in ROTJ. Even if it had simply been a SUPER DUPER Star Destroyer.

I thought all the new charcters were great and funny and likable. Something the prequels failed to do. Finn (Stormtrooper L Jackson) was funny and his friendship with Poe was great. I thought Poe the X-wing pilot was awesome. I was rooting for him in every seen he was in. It remains unclear to me if hes a main character or more like a Wedge Antilles. I hope to see more of him. I thought Rey was great. I liked that in this day and age of ADD pleasing cinema they too their time to develop who she is on the dessert planet. She has to scavenge everyday for just enough food to survive. But we see even in these circumstances she wont turn over a droid she just met for lots of food. You come on board with this character right away because shes capable and compassionate. BB8 is fucking awesome. Right up there with R2D2. I love that fucking droid. I wanna see him and Poe go on adventures.

Harrison Ford was totally great and Han Solo acted like Han Solo. Kudos to Abrams for bringing in Lawrence Kasdan, script writer for Empire, Jedi, and the Indi Films. They say only he can write Han Solo. In the scene when solo says hes gonna try and jump to directly to light speed while inside the ship bay and rey asks “is that even possible?” and solo replies “I never ask that until after I’ve done it”. That was some Han Solo shit. I thought Chewie got his moments and that was great. Killing Han solo is tough but he was even becoming an inconsequential character by ROTJ anyway. I would have preferred the He and Leia live happily ever after but he went out good. And he had a great long run at it. He and Leia couldn’t make shit work anyway. He was a pirate to the core and went out hard. But he went out telling his child he would do anything to put him out of pain. Even die for him. And he did. By the way it was great filmmaking that during that scene rey and finn run in and the doors stay open behind them creating a beam of light from outside that shines down on Solo and Ren. Then the sun burns out and the light turns to darkness. The darkness falls on Solo and Ren just as ren kills solo solidifying his fall to the dark side. Good shit.

I love the fan service of C3PO, Admiral Ackbar, Num Num and other characters. I love the original Skywalker Lightsabre turning up. The movie was fun and exciting and what more could you want.

Now the tough parts:
Remake of A New Hope: Yup no doubt about it. I like that Kylo Ren is like Vader, he is trying to be. The first trilogy is the rise and fall of Anakin. The second trilogy is the terror of vader and the redemption of Anakin. Star Wars is about Anaklin Skywalker. So these films must deal with legacy. So the Kylo is like Vader thing is a good thing. However starting with info in a droid again is no good. Another Deathstar is no good. Having a Stormtrooper rescue a guy from a Star Destroyer prison is over the top.

What is going on in the galaxy: During the film you hear mention of the New Republic. So we can assume what that is. Then theres the reistance. Who is the resistance. The bad guys should be the resitstance if the good guys are in charge. The first order is the regrouped imperial forces. But how many forces do they have. Do they have a section of the galaxy. All of this is unclear and should have been explained. Without these parameters we don’t know how important the victories are.
Too much shit happened in the interim: So Luke started a new jedi academy and began training lots of new Jedi. Han and Leia sent their kid there. At some point a Dark Force guy of impressive power manipulated kid solo in becoming Kylo Ren and turning evil. There were the knights of Ren. Were these other disciples of Snoke or did Kylo get some of Lukes other students to turn evil Either way KYlo and the knights of ren kill off the other jedi kids. But Luke does not stop then. Luke feeling like hes failed and can never do any good goes into seclusion. Snoke and Renn reorganize what remains of the imperial forces. They even have a new system for Stormtroopers. Instead of clones they have another special program. This is all entirely too much shit to happen between movies. Arent these events more compelling then the events of TFA. It feels like this is actually episode 10 and we missed episode 7, 8, 9.

Everyone still uses the same shit: 30 years later and the empire still wearing the same shit. Using Star Destroyers, Tie Fighters and Stormtroopers. Good guys still using X-wings.

And final and most importantly:
How the fuck does a totally untrained force sensitive person defeat Kylo Ren. We see Kylo ren do shit no other jedi has ever done. Stop lazers with the force while doing other things. Paralize a person while doing other things. Mindrape extraction. Knock unconscious with a wave of hand. Presumably he was trained a bunch by luke and then further trained by Snoke. So the guy is real good. So how does Rey beat him. Lets try to figure this. We see Chewbokas Bowcaster literally blow up like 3 guys with one shot. Chewy shoots Kylo with this and we can see he is suffering. So hes very wounded. We saw rey fight with he bow staff and fuck up a bunch of dudes. So she is good with a weapon. Shes not just force sensitive. She super force sensitive. Which is ok if shes a skywalker. More ok if she is an Anakin clone or conceived by the midichlorians like Anakin was. She made a connection with the force when she first touched the lightsaber. In those flashes she saw the interior of cloud city. She heard luke and yodas voice. And the final thing she hears is Obi wan saying “Rey, these are your first steps”. So that’s literally the ghost of Obiwan talking to hear in the present. So shes being guided by these ghosts and the force or some shit. I suppose if all of this is taken into account than we can live with it. But it’s a stretch.

That’s everything I can think of right now. But yeah I really like the movie. Loved it the second time and will see it again.

[Rob G]

Information gathered from Reading: The Force Awakens Novelization by Alan Dean Foster:

The opening chapter addresses the political state of affairs. The empire was a dictatorship and everything functioned within without question. The newly formed Senate cannot make decisions or act decisevly at all. It is due to this that the First Order is able to regroup and form. Even now the senate fails to act fast enough to respond to any threats of the First Order. Because of this Princess Leia and a consortium of allies asks to form an independent rersistance to stand against the first order. The resistance is backed by the New Republic but often times reinforcements and supplies arrive too late. Leia hopes that if she can find Luke the resistance can win. Though all they know is that Luke went to the location of the first jedi temple. But its location is unknown.

The Empire in the previous decades had set about destroying all Jedi temples across the galaxy. Because of this endeavor and research done they have a lot of information about where the first jedi temple probably is. They seek prevent the resistance from finding luke. Snoke knows luke will be a powerful enemy and will make new Jedi.
There is more emphasis on Rey being left on Jaaku by her family and her being really sad about them leaving and she is waiting for them to return. She has dreams often of arriving at an island in a vast ocean (Luke).

The Max Von Sydow character named Lor San Tekka is a big fucking deal. Hes a famous soldier of fortune and powerful dude who has fought with the good guys in the last 30 years. He is close friend of Leia and has a map to the first jedi temple. However the map alone will not help as its in an unknown star system.

Leia knows about Snoke seemingly because of her force senses. She explains that Snoke was watching her son Ben from the very beginning. Was using the force to manipulate him to the dark side. She concealed this information from Han. She tried to keep her son on the right track. Eventually sending him to Lukes new Jedi academy.

The Snoke conversation at the beginning where he says theres been an awakening is much longer. Snoke talks about Vaders failure. How in the end his momentary sentimentalism for his son ruined everything. He compares this to Rens remaining sentiment. So by Ren killing his father he will essentially redeem vaders failure. Or something like that. Snoke also explains how he has tried to train many but none could be as good as Ren because ren has the pedigree bloodline.

Theres a whole chapter about how Poe Dameron survived the crash and got back to the resistance.

There is an explaination about how the resistance found the good guys at Maz”s fortress. After Poe was shot down but BB8 was not found this information was reported back to Leia. Leia then assigned C3PO to find BB8 by tracking BB8’s long range tracker. C3PO had not turned on BB8 tracker when he left because he was with a Pilot and saw no need. So C3PO conceives another way to find BB8. He sends out a transmission to all droids in his “network” to look for BB8. One of these droids sees BB8 in Maz”s place and reports it back. That’s how the X-wings arrive sometime later to save the day.

There is a whole scene in Maz’s bar where that asshole (Unkar Platt) that was ripping off Rey finds her at the bar. Apparently the old style imperial tracker that was put on the falcon in Empire Strikes back was still there. Unkar knew this and turned it on and tracked them to Maz’s. As Unkar is trying to accost Rey Chewbacca intercedes. Unkar notices Chewbacca has been shot in the should and challenges Chewbacca to a fight proclaiming lets see what half a Wookie can do against all of me. Chewbacca immediately rips his arm off at the shoulder and tosses it across the bar. This is the incident that draws the attention of the random droid who reports back to the resistance.

The Kylo Ren vs Finn fight: Kylo thinks Finn will be no challenge and takes him very lightly. As soon as Finn puts up a suprising fight. Ren refocuses and immediately takes Finn out.

The Kylo Ren vs Rey fight: As soon as Rey successfully draws the lightsaber to her Kylo looks on in shock and says “It is you”. Seeming to indicate that Rey is some powerful force person that he and Snoke were aware of but they did not know was her. So for the whole battle hes fucking with her trying to push her so he can turn her and train her. Hes not trying to kill her. He even says “I could kill you at any moment”. When Rey channels the force something awakens in her and seems to guide her. She comes at Ren with such ferocity that he is unable to react. She disarms and continues to attack. Using force blocks he continues to defend himself until she finally pushes through all his defenses and cuts down his face and his body. The ground does not separate them like in the movie. The planet is exploding and the Falcon is leaving. Rey has to go but wants to kill Ren. She thinks it would be so easy. One swing and hes dead. Theres even a force or something telling her to kill him. But she resists the urge to execute ren. She resists the darkside.

Later when General Hux is telling Snoke the battle Is lost. Snoke orders Hux to get ren and come to him. But he also mentions that it appears Ren was right about the girl.

At the end of the story back at base they are discussing how to find the base. Someone says the empire has all the information from their archives about jedi temples. That information combined with BB8s map could provide the location to luke. R2D2 in low power mode hears this and wakes up. Her says he has archived data files from imperial records (presumably from him having logged into the Deathstar) that may have this information. That is how they get the info to find luke.


Also Maz says she is 1000 years old. Snoke also talks as though hes ancient and sees the rise and fall of the empire. He has to be Darth Plaqueis.

The info in the book makes it sound like the knights of ren were other trainees of snoke. Not lukes jedi turned evil.

Rey meets Poe and thinks hes sexy. So maybe she will go for the white guy.

That’s about all I can remember. This more thorough telling of the story addresses all the issues with the movie to my satisfaction. Pretty cool.

[Ring]

Decent Acting. Great action pace. Very unimaginative plot. Bigger deathstar with secret sweet spot ect. Rob said it all. Aukward old people love. Sad. Well filmed. New droid was cool. 7.3 out of 10. Like Guardians of the Galaxy better for a recent space flick.This movie other than the hype of being a "Star Wars" film was mediocre. Jupiter Accendingish...but a little better. I have to see it again.

[JamesT]

Saw it last night will read everything here and post my feelings on it when I have a little more time.