The Force Awakens Movie thread - Have seen the movie; see post 1

geecee

ziedth wrote: »

Rey obviously has the better of Ren so no fear there. Brining in a new baddie didn't work in Episode II so I hope that isn't the case. I guess a option could be Snoke and to be fair his scenes were good too.

As I posted over on the Films thread... nobody seems to mention that Ren had just been shot moments earlier by Chewbacca and was bleeding quite profusely!

Remember Chewies Crossbow sent a stormtrooper hurtling backwards in an earlier scene... so it packs quite a punch!

Given this I think Ren put up a pretty decent fight !

ziedth

Hmm, fair point. Does explain it in fairness

deseil

Just back. I loved it I was brought back to a 9yr old me watching the original trilogy back to back.
Loved Hans solo I really like Rey and can see her character developing very well.
Im not one to pick apart scenes or performances I either love it or I dont and I loved it and so did my boys.Unlike others I loved the final scenes as a lead into the next movie, Skellig looked great.
Cant wait for the next one!

Drumpot

Went to it for my second viewing this afternoon.

I think I enjoyed it more with balanced expectations. Also didn't feel the disappointment of solo death so could appreciate the rest of the movie more.

MarkY91

ziedth wrote: »

Right,

Finally back with a bit of time to type up:

The criticism above seems for the most part entirely fair. The duel at the end seemed far fetched and bothered me but an excellent point was made above that we don't know the level of training Ren received and I'm really glad they took a step back from the jumpy floating carry on from Revenge of the Sith.

Now, I have to say that I absolutely loved it. Sure it has its faults but for me anyway walking out I couldn't help but feel that this was the film that 15 year old me deserved when the prequels came out.

Anyway, first off the pros. Felt that although storyline essentially ripped off A new hope it was well acted and bar the ending (which I'll get too) perfectly paced. I thought Boydega, Ford and particularly Gleeson were all great in it. I liked that Ren wasn't just some faceless baddie ala Darth Maul and Driver had a chance to show a but of emotion be it anger,fear or whatever. All in all a bit better then I ever hoped it would be as I didn't love (but enjoyed) Abrahams Star Trek and felt that Super 8 was a complete train wreck. The comedy was fine and a few bits generally made me LOL With the BB-8 actually a highlight in some parts. Also really like the pilot (name escapes me) and think he'll be a good addition going forward. The high point by far for me was the dog fighting/flying scenes. I even felt the 3D added to it quite a bit.

Now the not so good, Captain Phasma was criminally underused. She looked bad ass and Christie is a very good actress using Game of thrones as the obvious example. Also for god sake why cast Yayan Ruhain in the film and not have him do anything apart from run from a monster, some of you might know him as "Mad Dog" in the raid where he was in two of the best fight scenes this year and is an incredible martial artist. My one hope is that he is going to be in the sequels somehow as well as the main star from the same film Iko Uwais who also had a small part in the same scene. The big one for me is the ending though, I can actually live with Luke not having any dialogue and just having finding him being the link into the next film but the ending itself was just odd. It just stretched out unnecessarily between the hike, slow turn and long stare. Just having a scene where she gets out of the Falcon to him standing there would have been fine. And finally I wasn't completely sold on Rey. A couple of lines were a little hammy and maybe could have been done better or is it just poor writing, I dunno. Maybe on a second viewing over Christmas I'll change my mind.

As for Han's Death I had heard the rumor before hand so was expecting but it was quite obvious anyway although to be fair I felt it was quite well done all in all. He was great in it but like has been mentioned above Ford was probably going all out seeing as it's his last crack at the character.

Going forward my main fear would be a Villain, Rey obviously has the better of Ren so no fear there. Brining in a new baddie didn't work in Episode II so I hope that isn't the case. I guess a option could be Snoke and to be fair his scenes were good too.

All in all I'm delighted, roll on Rouge one...

Sure but that hologram dude said that ren is now ready for more training so I'm sure he will be a lot fearful as will rey with lukes training

faceman

Back from it tonight. Didn't get me the same way it got lots of other peoples. It was enjoyable but very flawed.

The Good:
The Aerial scenes and fight scenes were great. Some of the best we have seen.

BB8 was great. Wanted more R2 though.

Ford pulled off an older Solo. Was so worried about it after the mess that was Indy 4.

Poe. More please.

Kylo Ren - one of the best characters in the whole Star Wars series. Cant wait to see more of him. Excellent performance and very well directed. If it wasn't for the strength of the character the film would have fell apart.

The Kylo/Han scene. Great stuff!

The Bad.
The fucking plot. A bad copy and paste from the original. Too familiar.

Rey and Finn. Very unbelievable characters whose development and relationship was forced. The more that Rey's powers and abilities emerged, the more irritated and taken out of the movie I was.

CGI characters. Looked as bad as they did in the prequels. That character in the bar, can't remember her name, the one who looks like an aged Minion. Felt like the character had alot more to give but the CGI was dreadful. Same for Snoke.

A film of coincidences. We gave out about this with the prequels. Same sh1t again in this.

Hux. Wasn't needed and offered nothing

Lack of mysticism and spiritual nature that the OT had. Abrams doesn't seem to be in to that though.

2nd Act could have been tightened up more.

Summary
While Im listing some negatives, again I must stress that it is an enjoyable movie. I will see it again to try see how I feel about it now that I can wash away the nostalgic lenses and digest the movie a bit more.

jones

Just home from seeing it tonight in vue. Absolutely loved it very much in the style of the original trilogy. You could say it's basically a copy of the broad strokes from a new hope but I loved it regardless. some very funny scenes in it too, something I don't think happened once in the prequels I actually laughed.

Mr.Saturn

I'm gonna need to see this at least twenty more times before viewing it in anything resembling a self-aware goo. I can say this, however:

I fell in love with the new players. Wholehearted.

Perhaps the key to balance in the force is getting the fact as far away from the Skywalkers as possible.

Eugene Norman

OpenYourEyes wrote: »

I really enjoyed it. They might have overdone some of the BB-8 characterization too, but thats very forgivable.

It was perfectly cast, and Harrison Ford gave a really good performance (and he's now free from doing another one, which was probably a significant motivation!).

Like most people I thought Rey doing so well against Kylo Ren was a bit of a stretch. I found Kylo Ren really good in his struggle with the dark side, lack of confidence (if thats the right word?) and occasional outbursts of rage. I loved the tension between him and Domhnall Gleesons character too, who I thought was excellent.

I was hoping for a *bit* more Luke/Skellig, and for a few more hints as to Reys parents, but I really enjoyed it overall. Highly likely I'll go to see it again in the near future.

Edit: ALSO - you cant darken a sun without having catastrophic impacts on every planet in that solar system! Even if there is more than one sun!

I bet there was a lot more footage shot on Skellig for the next movie.

Whyohwhy?

Eugene Norman wrote: »

I bet there was a lot more footage shot on Skellig for the next movie.

Definitely, I think the original shoot there was eight days, then they came back later on for a few more.
It looked amazing tbh, there's so much that was edited out of this film... It's long enough at 2hrs.15mins,but I would have happily sat through 3hrs + for it not to be so disjointed and, well, just not quite right.

touts

Some thoughts:
It's basically a remake of Episode IV. It seems to be trendy at the moment to take a new film, say it’s a new story but actually surprise the audience by doing a remake.

That's what Abrahams did with the second Star Trek (a remake of Wrath of Khan) and what they did with the latest Bond being a remake of On Her Majesty's Secret Service.

Once you realise the film you’re watching is a remake you can unfortunately predict some of the scenes.

Initially I didn't like Driver as Kylo Ren. He looked too young and whiney. But then it twigged. He's basically playing his Grandfather (Anakin) if Anakin hadn't been badly burned. In that sense this is taking up the story of what happened after Anakin killed the Jedi children and became Darth Vader (Ben Solo did the same thing to become Kylo Ren). But at that point Anakin's training in the dark side still had to be completed by the Emperor. Even by the time of a “New Hope” Vader still calls Palpatine “Master”. Vader tells Obiwan that when they last met he was still an apprentice. It’s the same with Kylo Ren and Supreme Leader Snoke says as much. They have to “complete his training”. Therefore we have a character that has to take up the story of his grandfather and unfortunately to do so he has to also take on many of the whiney, moaning, petulant characteristics Hayden Christensen put into the character through his shockingly bad acting ability. As Leia says he has “Too much Vader in him”. They had to take on those actor flaws and dealt with them by building them into the new character and hopefully in the next film be able to push beyond them to show the transition from a tantrum throwing Christensen to the cool, calm and supremely evil character that was Vader.

Most of the effects were really good because they limited the use of CGI. But Supreme Leader Snoke had a whiff of “The Scorpion King” about him. Really badly done CGI and totally out of place in the overall film. It felt like we were watching a character from a cartoon. They should have had a real actor play the part and someone needs to tell Andy Serkis his time in cinema is up.

I was glad to see that Hux survived (I presume he did as he was told to leave the planet and we didn’t see him die). Tarkin was a good second tier baddie. So was Darth Maul. They were both killed off too quickly. I feared the same for Hux but now hopefully we’ll see him develop in the second and third films.

I liked the fact that they didn’t go into the whole Big City and galactic politics stuff that the prequels got lost in. In fact it felt like they were making a point when we saw what I assume was Coruscant for about 15 seconds before blowing it up. We’re sorry we ever did that and just to make sure we can never do that again lets blow the whole thing up.

People seem to be wondering how Rey could defeat Kylo with the lightsaber. Well this is a girl who has had to survive on her own among a den of scavengers and thieves since she was a child. She’s never used a blaster and has had to rely on hand to hand combat to survive. She’s become pretty handy with the staff. So when she fights with the lightsaber this isn’t as big a leap as you might think. Plus the “Awakening” of the Force that the film is about. Well it’s in her. Why that is and who she is are the big mysteries of the next film. But there were lots of hints as to who she really is. She walked off into the sunset so many times and she has such a natural ability with machines she has to be a Skywaker. She might be Leia’s daughter. Perhaps Han and Leia think she was killed when Ben Solo killed the children training to be Jedi. But my bet is she is Luke’s daughter. Luke thought he had to go into hiding from the First Order. Would he have also hidden his daughter who somehow survived the attack of Ben Solo. She wasn’t abandoned. Someone was holding her hand as she watched the spaceship fly away. Did he leave her with some friends who had moved from the desert planet of Tataooine to the desert planet of Jaaku and then something happened to them leaving her alone? That would explain the flashbacks she had and why she was so scared by them and by the lightsaber. The image of Luke and R2D2 and the cries of other children weren’t a vision. They were memories. That would also explain how she was able to use a Jedi mind trick to get the Storm Trooper to release her. She had begun Jedi training as a child and those skills are buried deep in her subconscious.

Overall I liked it. But I think we are going to have to see all three films to make sense of it all and that’s going to take 3 years.

OpenYourEyes

Eugene Norman wrote: »

I bet there was a lot more footage shot on Skellig for the next movie.

Ah yeah I'm sure! There'll definitely be a lot of conversations between Luke and Rey, and presumably training stuff similar to Luke/Yoda's scenes, and that will be for the most part on Skellig I'm sure. From the sounds of it they upped their game in terms of time spent out there, and resources brought over for filming etc this year, so that all suggests a bigger role for it in the next one.

Myrddin

Can anyone explain the planet-killer for me? From my understanding, it uses a star to charge itself before firing, thus destroying/draining that star in order to do so. There's no indication it can move/reposition itself, and given the star it used to charge itself died, does it mean that weapon is useless after one or two shots??

robdonn

Myrddin wrote: »

Can anyone explain the planet-killer for me? From my understanding, it uses a star to charge itself before firing, thus destroying/draining that star in order to do so. There's no indication it can move/reposition itself, and given the star it used to charge itself died, does it mean that weapon is useless after one or two shots??

I'd imagine that it can probably move, it moves into orbit around a star, drains it, fires, then moves on.

slave1

Eugene Norman wrote: »

I bet there was a lot more footage shot on Skellig for the next movie.

I highly suspect the closing scenes of Ep VII will merge into the opening scenes of Ep VIII, IIRC the second visit to Skellig was not pickups but Ep VIII opening scenes first shoots

Thought it was class, nice funny bits here and there and plenty of non-space aerial action which was quite new for SW and very well done, as a life long fan I was happy out anyhow.
Undecided on Han
As an aside it was not worth the 3D premium, very few scenes where there was a 3D impact and those pookers in Vue left the lights on for the first 3-5 minutes so I saw pook all of it...

SimonTemplar

I really can't understand the decision to have Finn fight a random stormtrooper outside Maz's place instead of Phasma. It would have made so much more sense dramatically, and would have given Phasma more to do and made her a bigger badass. If they needed her for the third act, they could have just left her wounded and not killed after the fight. It seems like a no-brainer to me.

colossus-x

Thought I'd sneak in a 5.30 showing today in the hope it wouldn't be thronged given the dire weather. Theatre was 1/4 full. Result.

Random Thoughts:

I thought that crinkly orange faced creature was really creepy - if the idea was to find her endearing/likeable it didn't work.

I thought that Supreme Leader Snoke ( a name that doesn't work ) looked a bit too Lord of the Ringsy, not StarWarsy. Just looked it up - played by Andy Serkis! Ha!

I though Chewbacca might have a few grey hairs but he didn't.

I though Daisey Ridley was very good. She looked good, she acted good, unlike that padme in the last trilogy.

I though Carrie Fisher is a good advertisement for not doing drugs.

I didn't find the plot in any way engaging so I focused on the excellent special effects instead. I didn't know what planet they were on half the time but then again people say that about me.

Why did Adam Driver hide that lovely big thick head of hair under that pointless mask , the design of which reminded me of a housefly.

Luck Skywalker looked like he's been taking the ferry over to the mainland for a few pints of stout.

In no way was it brilliant but I did enjoy the homage to the original and the special effects.

AbusesToilets

Some thoughts:

Was Vader's helmet not left on the 2nd Death Star?

Seemed a bit crazy that the Resistance couldn't muster up more firepower to attack the Star-Killer beyond 8-12 X-Wings. Even allowing for the destruction of the planet (Hosian Prime?), that was a fairly weak effort.

Is the Resistance separate from the New Republic? Surely Leia would be a prominent feature of the Republic's leadership.

Enjoyed it overall, Ep. VIII is way too far away.

Grandeeod

Wow! A lot of criticism here. Life long Star Wars fan. Heading to the Savoy One in Dublin on Sunday to see it, with my 7 year old daughter. (A Star Wars fan due to me.) I know the plot/spoilers, but I decided to find out as I want to be prepared for my daughters reaction to it. Seeing Han die will be an arm around her moment for sure.

Im not interested in the 3D thing, so I chose Savoy One as I was 7 when I saw A New Hope there circa 1978 on that massive screen.

Grandeeod

AbusesToilets wrote: »

Some thoughts:

Was Vader's helmet not left on the 2nd Death Star?

Did it not end up on the funeral pire on Endor and thats why its melted when seen in TFA.

AbusesToilets

Grandeeod wrote: »

Did it not end up on the funeral pire on Endor and thats why its melted when seen in TFA.

I can't remember, obviously the scene where he takes it off talking to Luke sticks in the memory. Beyond that, I'm unsure.

robdonn

colossus-x wrote: »

Luck Skywalker looked like he's been taking the ferry over to the mainland for a few pints of stout.

Grandeeod

AbusesToilets wrote: »

I can't remember, obviously the seen where he takes it off talking to Luke sticks in the memory. Beyond that, I'm unsure.

Yup. The Helmet was off, but it was on the funeral pire on Endor and that's why its melted when we see it with the Kylo lad. But how Kylo got it, is a whole different ball game.

I look forward to giving a review on Sunday night.

Michael D Not Higgins

SimonTemplar wrote: »

I really can't understand the decision to have Finn right a random stormtrooper outside Maz's place instead of Phasma. It would have made so much more sense dramatically, and would have given Phasma more to do and made her a bigger badass. If they needed her for the third act, they could have just left her wounded and not killed after the fight. It seems like a no-brainer to me.

I reckon they're saving that for one of the following movies. That's why she was left alive after disabling the shields.

SimonTemplar

Just realised we'll never see Luke, Leia and Han onscreen together again

Hococop

Just back from the cinema, I really enjoyed it, I agree if felt plot wise very similar to episode lV, I thought the cast was good and the comedy was done very well ( bb-8 and chewy) no Ott style of comedy,

Harrison ford did a great job as han solo again unfortunately saw one pic a few hours after the movie was released spoiling his death, was hoping it was just some edited pic but no some people just want to ruin it for everyone else,

Overall really enjoyed it but like some said some cast members were underused but I'm guessing it will be done for episode Vlll

Whyohwhy?

Luke us gonna be killed off in the next one, or the one after.
Hamill seems to be the only one outta the original cast that truly has enthusiasm for it.(I know he was barely seen) I reckon he'll be killed off in the third.

Rey will defeat kylo, Luke will sacrifice himself to make that happen. Won't happen till the third movie, maybe.

I hate that Disney have said that the Eu isn't canon, but I bet they pick stuff out of it when it suits.

uck51js9zml2yt

Grandeeod wrote: »

Wow! A lot of criticism here. Life long Star Wars fan. Heading to the Savoy One in Dublin on Sunday to see it, with my 7 year old daughter. (A Star Wars fan due to me.) I know the plot/spoilers, but I decided to find out as I want to be prepared for my daughters reaction to it. Seeing Han die will be an arm around her moment for sure.

Im not interested in the 3D thing, so I chose Savoy One as I was 7 when I saw A New Hope there circa 1978 on that massive screen.

Will be interested to hear how your daughter gets on.
I've a 5 year old and am debating bringing him. Don't know if 2 hours is too long for him.

Saw the original in the savoy as well.went to the light house on Thursday lunchtime.

Really enjoyed it but was surprised with the sudden ending.
Some of it was a rehash of the original and the Hans , leia mushy seen was well... mushy!
Didn't see Han getting killed.
Looking forward to 2017.

SimonTemplar

Domhnall Gleeson is a great actor but I think they needed someone older and with more gravitas to play that role. I know that would have drawn comparisons to Tarkin but a younger actor in that role just seemed off. Hell, even Domhnall's father would have done a good job.

colossus-x

Whyohwhy? wrote: »

Luke us gonna be killed off in the next one, or the one after.
Hamill seems to be the only one outta the original cast that truly has enthusiasm for it.(I know he was barely seen) I reckon he'll be killed off in the third.

Spoilers are allowed. But not for the next one. Or the one after that. Or the one after..