Originally posted by CPT Space Bomb
I gotta say, some of the gripes you guys have are so minor it's hilarious. It's like you're reaching so hard to find things to diss. Can't you just enjoy the movie? If I wanted to I could criticize so many things about the OT (let alone the prequels).
I liked the movie.
Spoiler:
me pointing out the "Porkins" thing isnt criticizing. Just stating what I think was a homage to Porkins with another fat guy. imo. if that was directed towards me 🙂
Watched this morning' all in all, greatly enjoyed it. Easily my third favorite Wars, possibly second. Though that could just be the initial thrill talking and it will sit at 3rd. Will be seeing it again.
If anyone's wondering about turning 3D glasses into 2D glasses by swapping out lenses, did it myself with the theater 'Real 3D' glasses; it worked.
Originally posted by CPT Space Bomb
I gotta say, some of the gripes you guys have are so minor it's hilarious. It's like you're reaching so hard to find things to diss. Can't you just enjoy the movie? If I wanted to I could criticize so many things about the OT (let alone the prequels).
People aren't obligated to like a movie everyone else does. I'd love to love this flick but I just don't. I don't care about any of these characters(except BB8).
Originally posted by CPT Space Bomb
I gotta say, some of the gripes you guys have are so minor it's hilarious. It's like you're reaching so hard to find things to diss. Can't you just enjoy the movie?
I could say the same thing about people who criticise the Prequels. But end of the day everyone's entitled to their opinions. You can't just force people to enjoy something more than they actually do. And as I've said in the other thread, this movie had its moments, but I'm not the only one who was left feeling slightly underwhelmed by it.
Originally posted by Nephthys
Oh wow, we disagree what a shock.Not sure what was ballless about
Spoiler:
killing Han Solo, having black and female leads and bait-and-switching Kylo Ren into a whiny, entitled, backwards-looking, legacy-obsessed, easily-enraged fanboy.
Spoiler:The only people who had expectations to be subverted are fanboys. The majority audience isn't a particularly big Star Wars fan, they maybe watched all the films when they came out and liked them all, but has otherwise a fairly vapid interest in the franchise. That audience has very little expectations for the plot of these movies. Just like the comic book franchises.
Han Solo's death and the deaths of all the old characters are all about assured in this series. Harrison Ford wanted Han to die 30 years ago, and the old cast is far too old to keep doing these movies, even if they wanted to.Having minority leads is only ballsy to SJW's and, ironically, bigots. Normal people don't care.
Originally posted by ares834
It indicates that they will completely subvert people's expectations and [spoiler]kill of the most popular character of the franchise.That's very ballsy.
Originally posted by The_Tempest👆 Good review, I agree with almost everything with the sole exception of Kylo Ren. Repeating my sentiments from before, I feel that he's so far a better written Anakin.
Ultimately, I left the theater disappointed.There were scattered signs of promise, ultimately squandered. The opening scene was killer: a tasteful homage to the Imperial Star Destroyer's inexorable approach in A New Hope, but scripted and shot so differently as to be memorable and unique in its own right. Each scene conveyed the same information, but one could not truthfully be called an imitation of the other.
Several moments gave me goosebumps: the introduction of
Spoiler:with the flickering lights and scattered shots; the various pans across Jakku's landscape, pockmarked by shipwrecks;
First Order stormtroopersSpoiler:; and Luke goddamn Skywalker.
Vader's helmet ('nuff said)Also, credit where it's due: the three new protagonists were well-written and wonderfully portrayed. Oscar Isaac's Poe Dameron was an instantly likable smartass, John Boyega's Finn a hilarious and sympathetic
Spoiler:, and Daisy Ridley's Rey a delightfully badass survivor tip-toeing her way down a path
deserterSpoiler:. BB-8 was another highlight. 👆
once taken by Luke goddamn SkywalkerSpoiler:
u see wat i did thur?From the heritage ring, Harrison Ford slipped back into Han Solo effortlessly, and reigned supreme whenever he was on-screen. He and Chewbacca made for an entertaining pair. Can't say much about Carrie Fisher's Leia:
Spoiler:. And even
she wasn't given much to doSpoiler:.
less to say about Mark Hamill, whose sole contribution was a dramatic stare spanning 10 seconds or 30 minutes before the credits rolled. Fortunately, Luke Skywalker is appropriately a memetic badass in-universe, feared and revered by all around him. Hopefully the next episode will show us whyBeyond that, there's not much going for the film as far as I'm concerned. If the tragedy of the prequels is that the characters failed to serve the story, I submit that the tragedy of Episode VII is that the story failed to serve its characters.
This movie was marketed as a "continuation" of the epic saga; spiritually, it's more akin to a reboot. There's very little here by way of in-universe originality. For its entertainment value, I'm more inclined to thank George Lucas than JJ Abrams. That said, a reboot wouldn't have bothered me. I'd have much preferred Disney drop pretense and describe it for what it is rather than allow me 3 years of unfulfilled expectations.
Rather than the Empire, you have the First Order. The Resistance is substituting for the rebellion. No Death Star, but you have
Spoiler:.
the Starkiller BaseSpoiler:not around, but we have his honorary grandson, Hux, who could never in a million years capture the menace of
Tarkin'sSpoiler:. His speech to the rallied First Order troops was cringeworthy. Supreme Leader Snoke is desperately clinging to
Peter Cushing's Grand MoffSpoiler:. Not to mention yet another
the Emperor'scoattailsrobesSpoiler:....
Jedi purgeWhich leads me to Kylo Ren. Much has been said about him, so all I'll say is this. Even with the concession that Kylo Ren was as cheap an attempt as any to cash in on Darth Vader, I'll admit that he was entertaining behind the mask. A curt smartass, unlike Vader, which made me think of an evil Iron Man. But when that mask came off, he lost me.
Spoiler:. Except we had three movies to acclimate to
Because Adam Driver was channeling Hayden Christensen in every scene without his motorcycle helmet, every iota the same chemically-unstable loonSpoiler:and his struggles; we have absolutely nothing for
AnakinSpoiler:and his, beyond a few bits of throwaway dialogue. Why should we care? Where's the investment? Any bit of appreciable emotional investment to the character derives solely from his relationship to
"Ben"Spoiler:, not because of his own strength. Which again, would be fine, as I don't need to shed tears about a villain to find him or her successful, but as of now, Kylo doesn't do much for me.
Han, Leia, and LukeSpoiler:
By the way, unlike the murderous outbursts of Christensen's Anakin, Driver's Kylo lashes out by randomly and petulantly attacking inanimate objects for extended periods. Not impressed.Then there's the fact that this movie gives us startlingly little information about the state of the galaxy. Bare-bones exposition might have served A New Hope well, but that was because it was the first chronological introduction to a galaxy far, far away. The lack of information only serves to cripple The Force Awakens further, as it is a continuation of events. We need to know much more about the state of affairs, even if Disney doesn't want to dedicate a prequel trilogy explaining it.
Disney ultimately failed to give us anything new; no proper "continuation." Nor did they have the fortitude to simply drop pretense and call it what it is spiritually: a reboot.
Speaking of prequels, those movies might have been soulless; but this one was ballless. 👆
double posted it, my baaaaaad
Spoiler:A common criticism of Anakin's character in the PT is that his relatively late introduction as a Jedi in the franchise meant that we didn't get to really see his personality change. He was a fairly normal happy-go-lucky child in the first film, a fairly normal whiny and entitled teenager in the first half of the 2nd film and then suddenly he was murdering people, but even that wasn't a really a good indicator of his instability because his murder-spree was revenge for the death of his mother. The audience might not advocate the act, but we're sympathetic to it. It isn't until the third film that we actually start to see him unhinged, and it's rather jarring when he goes from being the Anakin that we've seen for the last two films, to wiping out children in cold blood and choking out his pregnant wife.
I liked his mashing of inanimate objects because they ring out to me as the start of a character arc. He's beating up computer consoles today but tomorrow it'll be a person, as he gets progressively more unhinged.
Spoiler:
By comparison, Ren going postal on inanimate objects is likely a foreshadowing of what's to come later. If he goes into a berserk rage and slaughters hospital staff in the next movie, it will be an act that has precedent. He has an established obsessive-personality, and my prediction is that he's going to become more and more monstrous as the trilogy goes on and he competes with Rey to become more powerful then her.
Originally posted by Darth ThorNo. The prequels were legitimately bad in almost every way.
I could say the same thing about people who criticise the Prequels. But end of the day everyone's entitled to their opinions. You can't just force people to enjoy something more than they actually do. And as I've said in the other thread, this movie had its moments, but I'm not the only one who was left feeling slightly underwhelmed by it.
1) Horrible acting across the board (a few exceptions)
2) Awful, unbelievably bad dialog/script
3) Horrid, awful cgi and way too much of it.
Now, everything else (like whether or not Jar Jar annoyed you) is a matter of opinion. But those 3 things are facts. I'm not expecting everyone to like this movie. But I wasn't expecting it to be taken under the microscope with people bringing up the smallest gripes as reasons they didn't like it.
OBVIOUSLY, it's a matter of opinion. But man, it just seems some people were bound and determined to not enjoy it going in.
Originally posted by TzeentchSpoiler:
Han Solo's death and the deaths of all the old characters are all about assured in this series. Harrison Ford wanted Han to die 30 years ago, and the old cast is far too old to keep doing these movies, even if they wanted to.Having minority leads is only ballsy to SJW's and, ironically, bigots. Normal people don't care.
Spoiler:
It's pretty ballsy to have him murdered by his own son though. There were other ways to write these characters out. They didn't have to make it super tragic.
I kind of thought that it was obvious that it was ballsy because of bigots. Like, no shit? That's kind of the whole point? Also I assume by "normal people" you must mean "white dudes" because I've been seeing a lot of women responding positively to Rey and a lot of people excited about the diversity. So not really just SJW's.
Originally posted by TzeentchSpoiler:
By comparison, Ren going postal on inanimate objects is likely a foreshadowing of what's to come later. If he goes into a berserk rage and slaughters hospital staff in the next movie, it will be an act that has precedent. He has an established obsessive-personality, and my prediction is that he's going to become more and more monstrous as the trilogy goes on and he competes with Rey to become more powerful then her.
Look at this guy actually making me appreciate Ren just a little more.
You're pretty okay Blax. ^_^
Originally posted by NephthysSpoiler:
It's pretty ballsy to have him murdered by his own son though. There were other ways to write these characters out. They didn't have to make it super tragic.I kind of thought that it was obvious that it was ballsy because of bigots. Like, no shit? That's kind of the whole point? Also I assume by "normal people" you must mean "white dudes" because I've been seeing a lot of women responding positively to Rey and a lot of people excited about the diversity. So not really just SJW's.
Same on the second part