Star Wars: The Force Awakens Reactions - SPOILERS HERE ONLY

[Matt D]

 

 

I don't think I would count trusting a guy who is also being chased by the bad guys as a flaw.  The end fight was cool.  I thought they protected Kylo Ren enough, but it could have used another cut off spot.  

 

I don't see what's so silly about wanting a slightly less John Cena like character.  Or at least it doesn't seem silly in the context of this wrasslin message board, where we pick apart every little thing.  I don't get why people are offended by the very notion.

 

There are still two movies to go. Surely, Rey has flaws that we'll see later on. Hell, we already know that she has issues over her parents not being around. I assume that one we learn that she's related to the Skywalkers, we'll learn more about her character.

 

 

I would hope so, but all we have to go on is what has been presented so far.  The movie is awesome and I think it could have been better.  It's ok to criticize in the moment.  We don't have to wait 4 years.

 

It's funny. With all of the callbacks, the one that I really felt was missing was the Luke-Stares-Out-In-The-Distance-With-The-Suns-In-the-Background-and-The-Music-And-He-Decides-To-Be-A-Hero moment. There was always a sort of "pressure" to that shot that stuck with me. The closest we had was the far shot of Rey sitting on the AT-AT.

 

I liked Finn's "decides to be a hero" moment.  He goes from cowardice to all in during the planet explosion/Rey getting captured.  I dug it.

 

I still think we needed to see a more direct shot of Finn seeing the explosion. He just sort of showed back up next to Han.

[Jrag]

I'm pretty sure he is the first character to realize the Republic is gone.  He shouts it at Han with this really despairing look on his face.  

 

That ties into another bit of praise I have, John Boyega and Daisy Ridley are both great and perfectly cast.

[Craig H]

 

There really wasn't a new John Williams track on the level of Duel of the Fates. That was strange.

 

I dunno dude I LOVED Rey's theme.  They played it during her early scenes and also during the walk up to Luke at the end.  I think Craig mentioned it earlier, but it did have a LOST vibe to it.

 

 

"Rey's Theme" is fucking great. It's so damn whimsical and I can't help but smile whenever it, or a variation of it, played. And yeah, it did have that same Lost vibe.

 

The track I was specifically referring to was "The Jedi Steps" that plays at the end. The first minute of that feels like it came straight out of a Lost season finale and it transitions beautifully to the Jedi/Force theme when Luke turns to face Rey.

 

Fuck it. I'm listening to that again now.

[Tabe]

Someone mentioned that Daisy Ridley's resemblance to Natalie Portman may be a bit of foreshadowing for the eventual reveal that she's Luke or Leia's daughter.

Here's a side by side:

There's a couple photos on IMDB that show Ridley resembling Portman even more than that one.

[Tabe]

Saw this last night and loved it. I don't care about the nitpicks (SHE WAS TOO GOOD A PILOT!, etc). I wasn't at all surprised by Han Solo dying. Loved the Rey character and loved all the callbacks to the previous movies. Seeing R2-D2 come to life was just awesome. Honestly, I think the only thing I didn't like was how little we got of Luke. The ending was fine and all but...I wanted him to actually DO or SAY something.

And, FWIW, I am 100% certain that Rey is Luke's daughter.

[steve]

I just got back from finally seeing it. I don't see how Rey wasn't pretty flawed.

 

-She almost crashed the Falcon straight away

-She let those things out on Han's freighter by mistake

-It took her three tries to mind trick a generic Storm Trooper

-She initially ran away when she touched the lightsaber and had force visions

 

That's what I remember off the top of my head.

 

And I'm not trying to be argumentative. If she had been 100% flawless the whole movie, I wouldn't have cared. I'm way more of a "turn my brain off and enjoy" than I am a deep digging guy. I just didn't see it. John Cena doesn't show that much vulnerability.

[Matt D]

 

-It took her three tries to mind trick a generic Storm Trooper James Bond

 

[steve]

I knew that was coming the second I typed it. 

[Craig H]

I just had a bittersweet thought...

 

So in all this time traveling together, Han NEVER uses Chewie's bowcaster and then he finally gets to do so and looks like he's 30 years younger all of a sudden and then he gets to use it again later. One part of me thinks that it sucks that he didn't get more opportunities to use it and the other part of me thinks that it's really sweet that he gets to use it at least once before he dies. Thinking back, I liked that a ton.

 

EDIT: Moved the Landis and review talk to a separate post.

[Craig H]

As for Max Landis, I made the mistake of watching the Screen Junkies spoiler review panel. It was not good. Landis' criticisms were centered on Rey not being Furiosa, that there weren't B wings and Y wings, and he kept repeating this point about them being video game characters where they're all awesome from the start. Um, I don't know, but the thing I don't like about video games these days is the amount of time you have to invest to unlock the cool shit and to level up. I Prestiged in CoD Black Ops 3 and what a fucking mistake that was. I grind out 55 levels and thought I would Prestige. I had never done this in a game before. I went right back to the start. Everything I worked to unlock was gone. I went from regularly having a 1.5 to 4 K/D ratio to barely getting 5 kills. Such a mistake. I also just started playing Fallout 4 and I have no goddamn clue what to do because there's so many options.

 

The Rey/Furiosa thing was particularly annoying, but not as annoying as the criticism over the lack of different spacecraft when what was used was FUCKING. AWESOME. Who cares that a B wing wasn't used! What, so you can watch a B wing get blown up instead of an X Wing? Stick with what works for crying out loud. Not to mention that it completely ignores the backstory that Landis is apparently so very well aware of. For the unaware...

 

- The Galactic Senate eventually signs a peace treaty/cease fire with the Empire

- Leia and others see what is happening with the First Order, but the Senate disregards her concerns by sticking their fingers in their ears pretending nothing is happening. The Senate also moves away from having a militaristic presence in the galaxy.

- Leia then forms the Resistance to protect the Galactic Senate and to watch them movements of the First Order. The Resistance is not a military wing of the Senate, they operate outside of it. They also don't have nearly the funds that even the Rebels had so they wouldn't have fucking B Wings.

 

Anyway, Landis wasn't even the worst part of the review. One guy on the panel says he saw the movie 4 times and yet didn't understand AT ALL why R2-D2 woke up at the end of the movie and wished that there was some explanation for it. How do you see a movie that many times and just be totally oblivious to why R2 woke up?

 

Honest Trailers, good. Movie Fights, eh, usually good. Reviews, awful.

[Death From Above]

I was going to say one of my nitpicks was Rey picking up a lightsabre and being instantly able to swordfight with Solo's kid, but then I remembered that scene near the start where she beats up a couple stormtroopers so they actually did establish her as having street smart fighting skills. There's more than a little bit of Mission Vao in Rey, which is fine by me.

 

Also one of the reasons this film definitely works is that Daisy Ridley and John Boyega don't just pull their weight individually but actually have really good chemistry. As much as they are fast friends in this film nothing they did was ever as forced as Portman and Christensen together who just had no chemistry with each other at all. Every single scene with Ridley and Boyega together is better than the best scene with Portman and Christensen.

 

Casting makes or breaks movies. Always has always will, and I liked it in this movie.

[Matt D]

I just had a bittersweet thought...

 

So in all this time traveling together, Han NEVER uses Chewie's bowcaster and then he finally gets to do so and looks like he's 30 years younger all of a sudden and then he gets to use it again later. One part of me thinks that it sucks that he didn't get more opportunities to use it and the other part of me thinks that it's really sweet that he gets to use it at least once before he dies. Thinking back, I liked that a ton.

 

EDIT: Moved the Landis and review talk to

a separate post.

 

I'd be curious to hear about that, actually. If you put a gun to my head and asked me, I'd say that it was probably Ford improvising off script and seeing the prop (having totally forgotten about it) and wanting to play with it. It was charming, but also kind of weird and offputting to me, just the idea that Han never actually paid attention to what Chewie was firing for three or four decades.

 

 

Also one of the reasons this film definitely works is that Daisy Ridley and John Boyega don't just pull their weight individually but actually have really good chemistry. As much as they are fast friends in this film nothing they did was ever as forced as Portman and Christensen together who just had no chemistry with each other at all. Every single scene with Ridley and Boyega together is better than the best scene with Portman and Christensen.

 

Everyone had good chemistry in this movie except for Harrison Ford and Carrie Fisher.

[EVA]

To be fair, there is literally nothing in the movie that explains why R2 woke up. It's all left up to audience inference, and pretty much nobody - in this thread anyway, I can't speak for the entirity of the Internet, obvs - guessed what the actual reason was, per JJ himself.

[Craig H]

Fair enough regarding the "official" line from JJ. JJ, on more than one occasion, not just with Star Trek: Into Darkness, has gone back on what he's previously said. And this is inference, but...

 

C-3PO says that R2 went into sleep mode when Master Luke left and no one had any idea why or how to wake him up. Maybe...just maybe...a character in the cast, one that could be related to Luke, would get flooded with the Force and that would lead to R2 waking up.

 

Rey lets the Force flow through her and lets say that Occam's Razor is correct and she's a Skywalker. She returns to the base and, huh, how about that, R2 wakes up, almost like a Skywalker deeply connected with the Force was in R2's presence, which caused it to come out of its slumber.

 

That guy in the review was totally clueless as to why R2 woke up, not even making the connection I made, that my girlfriend made during the movie, and that plenty of others have made and he also doesn't even try to make an inference.

 

For what it's worth, I think JJ is as full of shit as ever, even with his apology for Into Darkness. A tiger doesn't change its stripes and he's still in the business of being associated with some of the biggest money making properties in entertainment so he's always going to be involved with obfuscating the truth.

[EVA]

Fair enough regarding the "official" line from JJ. JJ, on more than one occasion, not just with Star Trek: Into Darkness, has gone back on what he's previously said. And this is inference, but...

 

C-3PO says that R2 went into sleep mode when Master Luke left and no one had any idea why or how to wake him up. Maybe...just maybe...a character in the cast, one that could be related to Luke, would get flooded with the Force and that would lead to R2 waking up.

 

Rey lets the Force flow through her and lets say that Occam's Razor is correct and she's a Skywalker. She returns to the base and, huh, how about that, R2 wakes up, almost like a Skywalker deeply connected with the Force was in R2's presence, which caused it to come out of its slumber.

 

That guy in the review was totally clueless as to why R2 woke up, not even making the connection I made, that my girlfriend made during the movie, and that plenty of others have made and he also doesn't even try to make an inference.

 

For what it's worth, I think JJ is as full of shit as ever, even with his apology for Into Darkness. A tiger doesn't change its stripes and he's still in the business of being associated with some of the biggest money making properties in entertainment so he's always going to be involved with obfuscating the truth.

I think there's a pretty significant difference between things JJ might say to protect a movie's major surprise prior to release and JJ giving a Q&A for the express purpose of explaining the movie post-release. There's just not value for him in lying in the latter context, especially considering it's a relatively minor, but I would argue necessary, bit of shoe leather to the plot.

Maybe Rian Johnson thinks it's a lame coincidence, too, and attempts to retrofit a better explanation in VIII, but for now, that's all it was, according to the writers themselves.

[Niners Fan in CT]

 

 

And I'd argue she's not a Mary Sue as she was so fixated on staying on Jakku when evidence pointed to the obvious, that her family was not coming back to get her. 

 

That's an interesting one.  It's the only thing that can maybe sorta kinda be looked at as a flaw.  I'm having a hard time finding any other examples.

 

 

She ran away from her destiny and had to be talked into fighting.

[goodhelmet]

I wanted to watch the movie again before responding but how is Ray freaking John Cena? She is an abandoned little girl who had to survive on a desert planet full of villains and smugglers.  She wasn't a polished fighter in the lightsabre scene but (as already noted) she had already proven she could defend herself. She spent a lifetime around the wreckage of old Imperial wreckage probably learning a thing or two about the technology. Her grandfather could build protocol droids and fly pod racers at 8 years old (it's canon) so she probably has some innate mechanical skills. I think she was a mechanics / spaceship nerd who probably obsessed over that stuff the way we do wrestling. I think they did an amazing job making it believable that she could figure out how to fly a spaceship, work her way around the Starkiller base, and save the life of her friend with an electric sword. Makes complete sense. 

[Craig H]

 

Fair enough regarding the "official" line from JJ. JJ, on more than one occasion, not just with Star Trek: Into Darkness, has gone back on what he's previously said. And this is inference, but...

 

C-3PO says that R2 went into sleep mode when Master Luke left and no one had any idea why or how to wake him up. Maybe...just maybe...a character in the cast, one that could be related to Luke, would get flooded with the Force and that would lead to R2 waking up.

 

Rey lets the Force flow through her and lets say that Occam's Razor is correct and she's a Skywalker. She returns to the base and, huh, how about that, R2 wakes up, almost like a Skywalker deeply connected with the Force was in R2's presence, which caused it to come out of its slumber.

 

That guy in the review was totally clueless as to why R2 woke up, not even making the connection I made, that my girlfriend made during the movie, and that plenty of others have made and he also doesn't even try to make an inference.

 

For what it's worth, I think JJ is as full of shit as ever, even with his apology for Into Darkness. A tiger doesn't change its stripes and he's still in the business of being associated with some of the biggest money making properties in entertainment so he's always going to be involved with obfuscating the truth.

I think there's a pretty significant difference between things JJ might say to protect a movie's major surprise prior to release and JJ giving a Q&A for the express purpose of explaining the movie post-release. There's just not value for him in lying in the latter context, especially considering it's a relatively minor, but I would argue necessary, bit of shoe leather to the plot.

Maybe Rian Johnson thinks it's a lame coincidence, too, and attempts to retrofit a better explanation in VIII, but for now, that's all it was, according to the writers themselves.

 

 

You're looking at this as one movie though, when it's three movies. If it ended here, then that's fine, but giving a bullshit answer post-release is at least similar to giving a bullshit answer in the pre-lease period of Episode VIII.

[Niners Fan in CT]

I'm in full agreement with that RE: Rey.  I think the other criticism that's off is about Finn being a worthless character who had to be saved multiple times. That's so far off I don't even know where to begin. Finn is more of a driving force that gets shit done than anything. He reminded me a lot of Han because even if he didn't have a plan he had a "let's figure it out" attitude and usually accomplished the end goal. Sure, he did want to run because he saw firsthand what they were going to have to deal with in regards to the First Order but eventually he decides to fight and he fights well. We don't think he's force sensitive so for a regular guy who has moderate combat training to accomplish what he did on the battlefield and hang in there with Kylo fucking Ren was a huge achievement.

 

Also, him running away from his problems at first... it's realistic as anything and not far from the exact thing that Rey did before she decided to be heroic.

[RIPPA]

At the end of the day - all I really care about is that I watched my basically 11 year old mark the fuck out as Rey and Finn were making their baby face comeback.

I've never been happier

[Matt D]

At the end of the day - all I really care about is that I watched my basically 11 year old mark the fuck out as Rey and Finn were making their baby face comeback.

I've never been happier

 

Did you have thirty minutes of discussion about how the Starkiller probably draws power from the core of the planet to stabilize the energy it gets from the sun?

 

Mine apparently wants to become a military engineer.

[odessasteps]

At the end of the day - all I really care about is that I watched my basically 11 year old mark the fuck out as Rey and Finn were making their baby face comeback.

I've never been happier

 

Did you have thirty minutes of discussion about how the Starkiller probably draws power from the core of the planet to stabilize the energy it gets from the sun?

 

Mine apparently wants to become a military engineer.

Have JT hook hm up with his DARPA buddies

[Death From Above]

 

At the end of the day - all I really care about is that I watched my basically 11 year old mark the fuck out as Rey and Finn were making their baby face comeback.

I've never been happier

 

Did you have thirty minutes of discussion about how the Starkiller probably draws power from the core of the planet to stabilize the energy it gets from the sun?

 

Mine apparently wants to become a military engineer.

 

 

It's simple it works just like the Knights of the Old Republic Star Forge.

[Rev Ray]

Saw it last night.  I really liked it.  It's not a perfect movie, but it felt right.  Made me feel happy about the series again since the shit awful prequels.

 

I'm happy to learn that Luke Skywalker has been studying the nesting habits of space puffins on his little rock island hideaway.

 

I had a a spoiler scare as I had been avoiding as much as I could about the movie and a couple hours before I went I got asked by my mom if Luke had always been a good guy making me wonder if he had done a heel turn in the movie so when they're talking about Ren's bloodline leading him to the darkside I was thinking he was Luke though him trying to get a map to find himself would be pretty dumb.

 

I also spent awhile trying to figure out who Max Von Sydow was.... they should have given him the Ming the Merciless beard.

 

 

A considerable difference watching this in 3D considering I saw the first Star Wars in a drive in.

[Brian Fowler]

My one big fan theory I haven't seen anyone else say (but I'm sure someone has out there on the interwebs)

Kylo Ren didn't kill the other young Jedi, he led them away and they are the Knights Of Ren.