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Star Wars: The Force Awakens Reactions - SPOILERS HERE ONLY


goodhelmet

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Thinking about how little Luke's whole storyline did to actually change things in the long run and I wonder if the ways TFA mimics ANH don't point to something kind of poetic how the "balancing" that the force does is without any agenda other than balance itself.

 

"The force" seems to renew balance by pairing people up generation after generation to go through the same struggle leading to the same points over and over.  It really doesn't have a consciousness to care if good or evil wins or to make things better for people through this balancing, but just to keep the balance in place.  It's not a linear thing leading to an outcome.  Balance is a circular thing.  TIME IS A FLAT CIRCLE MARTY!!!

 

So 30 years after Luke/Vader we get Rey/Kylo.  How important are they to what would eventually have happened anyway politically in this world?  In terms of the big events not very.  But just enough so that the cycle of dark/light keeps going for more generations.

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If he had kept going, he would have never let them suffer such losses. His ego likely wouldn't have let him, if nothing else. Things wouldn't have ended up cyclical. You almost need a thirty year gap for that or else everyone would have rebelled against it.

The Force behind the Force abandoned Luke, basically.

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There were so many big swelling emotional moments at the end it's easy to overlook how downer the ending should have been and how royally fucked the galaxy is if all the resistance has is what we saw from them.  The First Order seem to basically have all the remaining fleet/weapons of the Empire (minus one death star and a few destroyers) and now an open field to run in.

 

One imagines that the planets that don't want to fall into their clutches will scramble to form some sort of alliance. But, like, their pretty doomed.

 

Pretty much this. The one criticism many people had was, "how could this just all happen again?" Well, we live in a world where that's happened time and time again. World War 1 and 2 specifically. And so now, neglecting what a problem the First Order could grow to be has lead to this point where the Republic is dead (unless some facet of leadership exists on Chandrila), Han is dead, the Resistance didn't have many X-Wings to begin with and only 3 or 4 made it away from Starkiller Base in tact, Finn is in a coma, Maz's place is in ruins and the artifacts there are presumably destroyed, Maz's status is unknown, and Kylo Ren is going to become even more powerful. Red Letter Media pointed out how this was really elements of Star Wars and Empire combined because it has a really downer ending that's overlooked. I wonder what the immediate reception was to the Empire Strikes Back and if it took time for people to see what a downer ending it had.

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The names of the planets in the context of the movie are irrelevant, but serve as a launchpad to the satellite content surrounding the movie, if you're into that. What you needed to know was that the planet with the Republic leadership, along with four other planets, were destroyed, and the Republic is no more. All that's left is the Resistance.

But I don't get how the Republic can be totally gone if Coruscant still stands.

I mean, of course there are possible answers to that question, but the movie didn't answer it satisfactorily.  Not a huge deal, but a little distracting.  I mean, you can tell me that this means the end of the Republic, but it's hard for me to feel it unless it's Coruscant that's getting starkilled.

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Right. After the Empire fell, the New Republic made Chandrila their home base. Then they decided to rotate the planet where leadership resided based on elections, which is why leadership was located on Hosnian Prime.

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The Hosnia system was mentioned. Not only that, but then you once again get into information overload where for most people, it's going to be confusing or distracting when the very basic thing you need to know is that the General Hux just destroyed the New Republic in one fell swoop, along with obliterating four other planets for shits and giggles. If you want to know the exact specifics, there are places for that, just like there was with the original trilogy.

 

You also referenced how Alderaan was mentioned repeatedly. It was because Darth Vader forced Leia to watch it's destruction, it was Leia's home planet, her adopted family lived there, and it was seen as THE base of the Rebel Alliance. Of course it would be mentioned by name, on a few occasions, because of everything involved with it. With TFA, what you needed to know was that Starkiller Base was going to wipe out the New Republic from the galaxy by blowing up it's leaders and other planets in the Hosnia System. Mentioning the planets by name in this scenario is a near pointless exercise. Shit, I still hear or see people not even know what planet the Death Star blew up. You're going to have to venture out to get those additional little nerd morsels, which if you care at all, you were going to do anyway.

 

I mean, I've yet to see what the added benefit would be for saying which planets were obliterated, what was on those planets, that the New Republic leadership wasn't located on Coruscant or Chandrila, or that the leadership bounced around to the home planet of the person elected leader. As I mentioned earlier, you get to one of the big problems with the prequels where you have massive info dumps that drag everything down when it could be summarized better or when other outlets exist to receive those same details.

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You also referenced how Alderaan was mentioned repeatedly. It was because Darth Vader forced Leia to watch it's destruction, it was Leia's home planet, her adopted family lived there

And that's why it was better. Alderaan meant something. It had personal stakes for one of the story's central characters. Alderaan is also central to the plot, as that is where all the characters are converging at that point in the story and the heroes finding an enemy space station instead of the planet they're expecting is a significant turn of events.

The Hosnian system has nothing to do with anything except for the 30 seconds it takes to blow it up. You could take it out and it wouldn't affect the movie at all.

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Finally took The Wife to see it a second time. Now that my fanboy euphoria has been washed away a lot of things come across clearer. The Wife felt Kylo Ren was conflicted about killing his father but on second viewing it becomes more  apparent to me that it was a trap from the outset so he could totally, there was no conflict. They are making Kylo the  exact opposite of Luke, in that Luke was absolutely against killing his father, while Ben was 100% ready to do it without remorse. Him killing Han wasn't a change of heart thing, it was him luring Han in to a false sense of security so he could do the deed.

 

James

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Finally took The Wife to see it a second time. Now that my fanboy euphoria has been washed away a lot of things come across clearer. The Wife felt Kylo Ren was conflicted about killing his father but on second viewing it becomes more  apparent to me that it was a trap from the outset so he could totally, there was no conflict. They are making Kylo the  exact opposite of Luke, in that Luke was absolutely against killing his father, while Ben was 100% ready to do it without remorse. Him killing Han wasn't a change of heart thing, it was him luring Han in to a false sense of security so he could do the deed.

 

James

 

This is how I interpreted the scene. Honestly, until now, it never occurred to me they might have meant the scene to depict him as being conflicted.

 

On the other hand, I thought the scene made Han out to be more trusting (ie, dumber) than usual, so maybe it wasn't supposed to be entirely a ploy.

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I've only seen it once and while he was telgraphing that he'd already made up his mind it also seems a little odd he would put that much into the act when the old man was already standing in front of his light saber beam.  Like, was that just for the larfs?  That would actually be kind of disappointing because whether we think he's redeemable or not, his relationship with Rey is going to be way better if one of his weaknesses is his wavering devotion to the dark side.

 

Otherwise he's just an Alan Rickman style villain simpering for show and I feel like Abrams will want something more conflicted.

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Finally took The Wife to see it a second time. Now that my fanboy euphoria has been washed away a lot of things come across clearer. The Wife felt Kylo Ren was conflicted about killing his father but on second viewing it becomes more  apparent to me that it was a trap from the outset so he could totally, there was no conflict. They are making Kylo the  exact opposite of Luke, in that Luke was absolutely against killing his father, while Ben was 100% ready to do it without remorse. Him killing Han wasn't a change of heart thing, it was him luring Han in to a false sense of security so he could do the deed.

 

James

 

This is how I interpreted the scene. Honestly, until now, it never occurred to me they might have meant the scene to depict him as being conflicted.

 

On the other hand, I thought the scene made Han out to be more trusting (ie, dumber) than usual, so maybe it wasn't supposed to be entirely a ploy.

 

 

Pretty sure Han knew on some level it was probably a trap.

 

But it's his kid, so he had to take the chance that maybe he had changed his ways.

 

Not dumb, exactly. More about how people will do anything for their kids.  

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You also referenced how Alderaan was mentioned repeatedly. It was because Darth Vader forced Leia to watch it's destruction, it was Leia's home planet, her adopted family lived there

And that's why it was better. Alderaan meant something. It had personal stakes for one of the story's central characters. Alderaan is also central to the plot, as that is where all the characters are converging at that point in the story and the heroes finding an enemy space station instead of the planet they're expecting is a significant turn of events.

The Hosnian system has nothing to do with anything except for the 30 seconds it takes to blow it up. You could take it out and it wouldn't affect the movie at all.

 

 

Agreed.  I mean, there are planets in the SWverse that viewers have an emotional connection to.  We'd care if they got blown up.  The Hosnian planets are not among them.

 

Instead of "read the novels so you can understand that they moved the capital, and then you'll care that these planets were destroyed", why not just destroy Coruscant?  Or, I dunno, Yavin 4 -- that'd be heartbreaking!(*)  If those planets(**) were destroyed, it'd mean something to people who watched the earlier movies.  Instead, it's five planets we never heard of before and never even spent time on during this movie.  Heck, if Jakku had been one of the planets, we'd have felt for Rey. 

 

(*)and an interesting callback to Ep4, when destroying Yavin 4 was the Empire's nearly-accomplished goal.

 

(**)yes, I know

 

I mean, let's put it another way: suppose the movie told us that Kylo Ren's father was Blaarth Fendar.  Then near the end, Kylo confronts Blaarth on a bridge and stabs him through the heart with his lightsaber.  Would that have the same emotional resonance for the viewers as Kylo killing Han Solo? 

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I read the Han/Ren scene as Ren being conflicted.  He just got out-Forced by Rey during her interrogation, then clowned by Hux in front of Snoke for being out-Forced by Rey (and opting to ignore BB-8 in favor of capturing Rey, which backfired spectacularly), so I think he was a little shook & doubting himself.  The Han/Ren scene was basically Ren asking Han's permission to kill him to help soothe those doubts & cement him in the dark side.

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The first time around, I thought it was Ren being conflicted, but on second viewing, Ren saw it as an opportunity. He talks to Vader's helmet, asking for help and guidance in resisting the pull to the light. Snoke questions Ren on his devotion to the dark side. So when Han confronts Ren, opportunity is basically knocking. Ren tactfully lures his dad in by getting him close enough to run him through without dealing with Chewie because you know as soon as he sees Han, he likely senses Chewie and the others. Killing his father is taking that last step, crossing the point of no return to the dark side, and it proves to himself that he can totally resist the pull to the light side of the force.

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