Star Wars : Into Spoilers - The Spoiler awakens.

[BobtheSomething]

It was fun.  The pacing was terrible.  Han's death was actually boring.  Rey, Poe and Finn are all written as contrivance characters who know or can do whatever a scene requires in order to move the plot immediately forward.  There was more homage and call back than original material.  Abrams had to one up the OT with a bigger Death Star that blows up more planets, an older Yoda, a Sarlacc pit that walks, no two walking Sarlaacs, and not two Greedos, not three Greedos, but two teams of Greedos.  Every single part of the movie involving Starkiller base and its destruction was equally dumb as the Wall in Pacific Rim.  Pacific Rim asked the audience to accept one stupid premise (the robots) and then ran with that with only the wall standing out as an aberration from the basic premise in stupidity.  TFA has stupid characters (Does Ren always take the sanitation department on I portent raids?  Aren't there special forces troopers to go with the special forces TIEs?), a stupid plot (a map of a completely charted Galaxy missing a piece, and neither the map nor the piece have enough I for to find the location?  How many coincidences does it take to tell a story?  I could go on), a completely stupid inability to deal with scale or even the basic premise (Starkiller base, coincidences, Han Solo the super famous smuggler putz, Luke quitting and running away like a Jedi), and a stupid resolution.  There really is far more about TFA that is stupid.  Pacific Rim had a more competent director and got more out his giant robot story even with a mediocre cast.  TFA had an amazing cast who were a joy to watch on screen.  They deserved a better director.

So you're the type person that can't enjoy anything. Got it.

No, I enjoyed the movie quite a bit.  The opening scene?  Loved it.  Escape from the Star Destroyer?  Awesome.  Pretty much everything on Jakku?  Made me misty with happiness.  The two azathoths that ate all those Greedos?  I want the toys.  Kylo Ren?  A stroke of brilliance.  Danceless light saber fights?  Yes Please!  All of that witty banter and chemistry between the protagonists?  I loved every bit of it.  The score?  John Williams phoned it in, but still glorious.

The problem is that I won't shut off my brain during the film and keep it off.  The plot had more contrivances than Independence Day and directing as obtrusive as in Peter Jackson's King Kong.  The movie was a thrill ride, but it was poorly plotted, ineptly put together, and stupidly executed.  The Hosnian Prime subplot, if you can still call it that, came out of nowhere and added nothing to the story.  The characters never really earned their victories.  Finn and Poe barely meet, then act like best buddies.  Every character moment in the film is slapped onto the screen by a director who doesn't know how to use his craft to tell a story and simply hopes the actors or the audience will add emotional weight and importance to the events that tick off on screen like stocks on a ticker.  He directs like Sheldon Cooper, someone who knows what people will say and how other people should respond, but with no idea why nor how to express emotions with anything more subtle than dialog.



As for the pacing...pacing can have bigger problems than being slow.  A constant chop chop chop cut to cut scene to scene robs the film of emotional weight and makes it feel monotonous.  With no time to breathe or reflect on events, the audience cannot process them to reach an emotional understanding of the story as it progresses.  It also killed the X-Wing scenes to cram so much business into so few shots with no concrete point of reference.  Compare that to Star Wars or Jedi, where the space battle effects reflect what the actors are talking about, and where the action  lasts long enough to form some tension.  I may not be explaining this quite how it felt, but I definitely felt like the movie was rushed, perhaps "water skiing" to keep the audience from thinking too hard about some of the rough spots.  In the end it made the film feel vapid.

[BobtheSomething]

Clearly this message board is not know for mocking people with awful opinions. Said movie was shit goes on to explain all the things he liked about it and parts that were worth the price of the ticket.

Let me dial it back then.  It was a fun movie.  It was an enjoyable movie.  A crowd pleaser.  I just can't call it a good movie.  Better than the prequels in most ways.  But compared to most action or adventure films made in the last decade, it was incompetent and embarrassing.  The chemistry of the cast and the heavy lifting of the effects and score are what saved TFA from becoming Star Wars Into Darkness.

[koro]

Went and saw again (good sign for Disney, showtimes were almost all sold out all day, had to sit in the front row, now have a headache), still enjoying it. Maybe even more.

Same here. I took my dad to see it, and I ordered reserved seating tickets days in advance. Glad I did, because the theater hall was packed.

I still love this movie.

[UnSub]

It's a solid Star Wars film. But it's no more than that (from a movie stand point; from a franchising stand point: $$$$$$$$).

I think it benefits a lot from people saying it isn't as bad as the prequels, which sets the bar very low. Plus "The Force Awakens" rides a very heavy dose of nostalgia that means the new characters really don't get of personality building time. Rey can do anything the script requires her to - pilot and fix a ship she's never been in before, beat a trained Dark Side warrior, shoot down a Stormtrooper platoon. Finn blanches at killing people, and in the very next scene is shooting down Stormtroopers (his brethren just moments before) whooping all the way. 

It's a fun continuation of the Skywalker-family-screws-up-the-galaxy saga, and its major narrative successes are achieved by stealing significant plot beats from "A New Hope" or having Han Solo do something.

[Lakov_Sanite]

Finn blanches at killing INNOCENT VILLAGERS

Really, you missed that part?

[Samprimary]

Finn blanches at killing people, and in the very next scene is shooting down Stormtroopers (his brethren just moments before) whooping all the way. 

finn blanches at being ordered to kill completely innocent villagers and realizes that he is part of an evil empire that kills completely innocent villagers and that his conscience does not allow him to do this.

finn then does not express the same reservations in blasting his way out of said evil empire to save a rebellion pilot in an act of escape that his conscience does not have the same objections to.

of the movie's problems, the consistency in his actions here doesn't really register as a real one.

[Ghambit]

Just found out the theatre down the road from me is only 1 of 18 in the nation that actually shows the movie in the format many of the scenes were made in...  70mm 2D IMAX.  Evidently it was Disney over-riding Abrams with the whole 3D IMAX thing, which is why those of you who wanted the size had to deal with 3D only. 

I will be seeing it again in this format and report, but if memory serves other movies wherein I did this were absolutely glorious in standard museum IMAX 2D.  Seeing Star Wars in this way is worth the effort.

[HaemishM]

Rey can do anything the script requires her to - pilot and fix a ship she's never been in before, beat a trained Dark Side warrior, shoot down a Stormtrooper platoon.

I'm pretty sure they established that she had actually been in the Falcon previous as she knew many of the modifications that its previous owners had done to the ship from first hand experience. As for beating a trained Dark Side warrior, you forget the part about the Dark Side warrior bleeding out of his anus from a rather powerful blaster wound as well as the wound inflicted on his arm by Finn. And you also gloss over the fact that said trained Dark Side warrior was actually wounded in saber combat by a goddamn Stormtrooper with no training in the use of light sabers whatsoever. I mean, if you want to make Kylo Ren some kind of super bad ass Sith Lord, that's your call, but the movie took great pains to show that such an assumption is really really wrong.

[Lakov_Sanite]

Star Wars episode VII: The Knees Sharpen

[Khaldun]

One of the curious side effects of humanizing the Stormtroopers via Finn, though, is to slightly complicate the complete lack of a moral concern on the part of the good guys about killing tons and tons of them. If Finn can shake off the programming maybe others can, assuming there isn't something unusual or special about him. (Phasma and Kylo Ren did seem to almost anticipate that this particular trooper would be the one disobeying orders.) In the past no one in the Rebellion or now Resistance has seemed even slightly discomforted by blowing away tens of thousands of Stormtroopers. But then the SW universe has always had a moral coding that is kind of odd, I guess. The Jedi in the prequels were often more worried about adherence to their own internal code of ethics than they were about the consequences of their actions--e.g., I don't think we ever saw a Jedi in the main films (prequel or originals) conflicted about whether he was doing the right thing when that involved combat with an enemy or relating to a civilian who was a potential obstacle to their mission. Anakin knows he's supposed to take Dooku prisoner if he can but that's about the only time we've seen a Jedi really worry much about death or dismemberment of an enemy. Almost nobody in the SW universe worries even for a second about the sentience of droids--even the droids don't really react to mistreatment of droids per se, even if non-droid sentients treat particular droids as trusted friends and allies. The obvious human-centered bigotry of the Empire/First Order has never been a plot point in the actual movies, only in EU books. Expecting *any* SW film to pay nuanced attention to moral contradictions of most kinds except for the struggle of Force-sensitive characters with the management of their own emotions betrays a lack of basic familiarity with the entire series and its background universe. The most complex ethical dilemmas I can think of in SW that are canon only appeared at the very end of the Clone Wars animated series, particularly in Ahsoka's disaffection with the Jedi after she was falsely accused of misconduct.

[MediumHigh]

Not really innocent villagers. Most of them were shooting at the storm troopers as they were going. They lost the fire fight and gave up. Than Ren ordered them all dead, pretty unnecessary since even the storm troopers werent gunning them down once they stopped fighting. Actually finn panics way before the "burn the villiage" order. Finn is clearly freaking out and flailing like jar jar not sure what he's doing or even if anything happening around him is real. Again the movie kinda, ok not kinda, completely  glosses over what being a storm trooper "conditioned from birth" would actually look like or gives any context to his sudden desire for a career change. The fact that Finn paints it as a moral decision is the biggest groan of the movie though its the most convenient way to keep Rey from clocking him.

 The simpliest explanation is this is his first battle, storming the sands of jakku was too much for someone who was a janitor for years and finally the order to kill everyone who just surrended made him say "enough!". Or Rey is so strong with the force she subconsciously forced Finn to the light. Actually makes more sense. Finn crash lands on a earth sized planet and not only lands near Rey but within walking distance of Rey. I suspect she even summoms Han Solo who is heading in her direction despite not even looking for the falcon and just "finds" her. Feel the force.

Also storm troopers rarely die from blaster boltd there armor disperses the energy. They fall down because the impact knocks them out. Except death by light saber, Finn killed the shit out of a few guys with that.

[BobtheSomething]

Maybe he was condition from birth by Captain "Oh, you mean this gate key" Phasma.

[Lakov_Sanite]

So trying to defend yourself from being slaughtered means not innocent?  I bet all those kids were wearing hoodies.

[Riggswolfe]

<snip rant>

Please, just let it go. Your rants are not just wrong, they're incoherent and rambling messes that lack any kind of intelligent thought behind them. At this point you've moved way past "here are some issues with the film" to "WarghabargleReyWaaarghReyWarrghhabbbargleConspiracyTheoryWarragharbargleI'mRight"

Don't make me link that famous retort from the debate in that one Adam Sandler movie.

[Hoax]

Finn blanches at killing people, and in the very next scene is shooting down Stormtroopers (his brethren just moments before) whooping all the way.  

finn blanches at being ordered to kill completely innocent villagers and realizes that he is part of an evil empire that kills completely innocent villagers and that his conscience does not allow him to do this.

finn then does not express the same reservations in blasting his way out of said evil empire to save a rebellion pilot in an act of escape that his conscience does not have the same objections to.

of the movie's problems, the consistency in his actions here doesn't really register as a real one.

I think it was THE thing that marred the Jakku section of the movie.

He's freaking out a bit before the kill the villagers stuff. iirc it seems like he just can't handle the entire wade into battle and slaughter and die thing. Fmpov he was shaken when that other storm trooper gets blown away, in a very un-ST like gesture he tries to check on him or whatever and isn't that how he gets the bloody lines on his helmet so we can ID him? Except someone who is overwhelmed by the violence and killing is not that long after literally looking for high fives because he figured out how to blow people to shit.

Finn could have worked. He could have been scared and troubled and whatever and just wanted to avoid conflict, the fact that he's going to leave with those guys to the outer rim from the bar suggests that at least somebody writing the script was trying to go that direction at some point. But somewhere along the way someone decide that Finn needed to crack more jokes and he needed to be more fun. So instead Finn makes no fucking sense and isn't even badass or interesting he's just a nonsense character.

I think for me Finn made me feel old. Like he only makes sense if the characters in the movie have to work a certain way because its a movie for 8-16 yr olds. Which it probably was but his character really rubbed my nose in it.

It was jarring. His character is the absolute weakest link for me of the new cast in several ways.

[Tannhauser]

Just re-watched it and I guess I can see Rey more as Mary Sue now.  So I concede the point.  I just never thought one of the two main heroes would quality as a MS.  I was thinking of it if Wesley Crusher captained better than Picard, fought better than Worf and fixed things better than Geordi.  My main nitpick about Rey is not how she can Jedi, but how she can fly a ship; surely her 'captor' would not let her near a ship?  So maybe MS there.

The gun destroyed five planets in a single Republic system then it was aiming at the Resistance system they say.  So the Repubic wasn't defeated, but it sure took a hit (probably their fleet manufactories/shipyards?) losing that one system.  Yes, in the movie they do say the Republic was arming and equipping the Resistance to fight the First Order.  So I'm quite happy to hear that. 

Really glad to watch it again, very enjoyable.  To those of you who aren't trolling and didn't like it, welp better luck with the next one!

[Shannow]

I'm looking forward to where they take Finn..is he Jedi material? I also enjoyed the character because he was actually funny. You people think too much.

[Fabricated]

I liked Finn a lot more than Rey honestly.

[Malakili]

I never felt like I really got to know who Finn is in this movie.

[CmdrSlack]

I think it's because we're watching Finn figure out who he is. A bunch of his earlier laugh lines (after escaping the SD) seem to be based on figuring out how to be a normal person, not a trooper who has been conditioned from birth to be a trooper.

He finds a chance to get away (the outer rim guys) and then is pulled back in, just like Rey was trying to find a way to help just enough and get back to Jakka.

But I liked this a lot. I need to go back and see it in IMAX at some point soon.

[Shannow]

Emo Kylo Ren is magnificent.

[Draegan]

Finn just got a name for the first time and now he might not have a spine anymore. His character development will be interesting.

[Merusk]

Given the look Ren gives him at the massacre, and that Ren also noticed him enough to have memorized his trooper number I'm still convinced they're doing the double-bluff on the Jedi thing.

Every time the Force is mentioned by a non-Dark Side character you see Rey and Fin in-shot. It's never one or the other, always both. The sole time the Force is relevant and it's Rey alone is when she's finding the saber.

I'm even more convinced Luke is her father after reviewing the scenes with Maz. The cut from her asking, "Who's the Girl" of Han and then suddenly being all gung-ho for her to take the saber is too coincidental. Then the quote that goes, "The people who left you aren't coming back, but there's still one person ..."  Wish I could recall the exact line. It's just a direct pointer to Luke, though, and not said in a "hey be a Jedi" way.

[Lakov_Sanite]

Rey starts to turn, kills kylo, finn as jedi redeems her. Fin 

[Abagadro]

Emo Kylo Ren is magnificent.

[Tannhauser]

Rey starts to turn, kills kylo, finn as jedi redeems her. Fin 

That's my thinking also.

[Azazel]

Serious question: If you hated the film so badly, why are you still posting in this thread? I mean, it doesn't need to be a circle jerk echo chamber, but you seem to have really really disliked/been horribly disappointed in the film, and now mostly seem to be dedicated to shitting on it rather than discussing it.

What it comes down to is that some of us enjoyed a movie that you didn't. Why so upset with that?

Don't you understand? ALL OF US ARE WRONG AND HE NEEDS TO FIX US!

Will lights guide us home?

It was fun.  The pacing was terrible.  Han's death was actually boring.  Rey, Poe and Finn are all written as contrivance characters who know or can do whatever a scene requires in order to move the plot immediately forward.  There was more homage and call back than original material.  Abrams had to one up the OT with a bigger Death Star that blows up more planets, an older Yoda, a Sarlacc pit that walks, no two walking Sarlaacs, and not two Greedos, not three Greedos, but two teams of Greedos.  Every single part of the movie involving Starkiller base and its destruction was equally dumb as the Wall in Pacific Rim.  Pacific Rim asked the audience to accept one stupid premise (the robots) and then ran with that with only the wall standing out as an aberration from the basic premise in stupidity.  TFA has stupid characters (Does Ren always take the sanitation department on I portent raids?  Aren't there special forces troopers to go with the special forces TIEs?), a stupid plot (a map of a completely charted Galaxy missing a piece, and neither the map nor the piece have enough I for to find the location?  How many coincidences does it take to tell a story?  I could go on), a completely stupid inability to deal with scale or even the basic premise (Starkiller base, coincidences, Han Solo the super famous smuggler putz, Luke quitting and running away like a Jedi), and a stupid resolution.  There really is far more about TFA that is stupid.  Pacific Rim had a more competent director and got more out his giant robot story even with a mediocre cast.  TFA had an amazing cast who were a joy to watch on screen.  They deserved a better director.

See, here's the thing, Mr Probable Sockpuppet. A couple of the things that you wrote make sense, but you lost me in your desperation to tie every fucking thing that you saw in the new film into the OT as a throwback of sorts.

[Rendakor]

Finally saw this, good way to restart SW. I disliked the CG bigbad and felt the pacing was a bit off in places, but otherwise great flick.

Saw it 2d, non-IMAX; the first theater we were going to see it at was sold out Saturday evening so we had to drive across town.

[Surlyboi]

I've yet to see this in 2D, that star destroyer scene, man.

[Mandella]

I think for me Finn made me feel old. Like he only makes sense if the characters in the movie have to work a certain way because its a movie for 8-16 yr olds.

That's really the thing though. Star Wars doesn't really work at all if you try to assign it some more refined ethical code than your typical 8 to 14 year old holds. At first Finn was fighting for the "Bad Guys" and he didn't like it. Now he's with the "Good Guys" and everything is fine.

Fortunately for me, my inner 14 year old is strong, and I don't have much of a problem at all at sitting back and just letting things be simple for a couple of hours of movie watching fun...

[jgsugden]

There is more nuance than what you'd see in an 8 to 14 year old animated show.  Finn and Solo are both selfish jerks that can't bring themselves to screw over everyone.  They're not quite so black and white.  They want something, and to get it, they kill (mostly bad people), they lie, and they put people in jeopardy.  Yet, when all the chips are on the table, they come through for the heroes... barely.  It is pulpy, but there is more than black and white ethics there.

On another note: Side theory floating around out there: Ben Solo was not a Solo at all, but another spontaneous Force birth like his grandfather.  It would explain the Vader worship, the rebellion against his "father", etc...  and add a different level of meaning to him killing Solo.  I don't buy it, but it is another theory I'll have in my brain as I watch the film again.

[Lakov_Sanite]

On another note: Side theory floating around out there: Ben Solo was not a Solo at all, but another spontaneous Force birth like his grandfather.

Anyone who has ever thought or uttered this out lout or in text can fuck right off.

[Mandella]

There is more nuance than what you'd see in an 8 to 14 year old animated show.  Finn and Solo are both selfish jerks that can't bring themselves to screw over everyone.  They're not quite so black and white.  They want something, and to get it, they kill (mostly bad people), they lie, and they put people in jeopardy.  Yet, when all the chips are on the table, they come through for the heroes... barely.  It is pulpy, but there is more than black and white ethics there.

That's why I didn't say black or white, or even simple. 8 to 14 is actually pretty complicated, ethics wise. But you still have good guys bad guys, or maybe just "our" guys versus those guys. As bad as Solo is/was, he's still presented pretty clearly as being one of "our" guys. (And fake edit: straight up good guys/bad guys is pretty boring to your average 8 to 14 -- conflicted heroes are pretty much the meat and potatoes of that demographic.)

I'm actually agreeing with your point here, I just don't think it makes sense to overthink Finn's ability to cause carnage on the side of his new buddies. Especially since he is mid process of struggling to define himself. He doesn't even know himself how much he was morally conflicted and how much was just fear and cowardice, not to mention just becoming aware of and resenting the First Order conditioning he's been subjected to.

[HaemishM]

On another note: Side theory floating around out there: Ben Solo was not a Solo at all, but another spontaneous Force birth like his grandfather.

Anyone who has ever thought or uttered this out lout or in text can fuck right off.

This needs to be repeated.

[jgsugden]

Interesting reactions: If it turns out to be true (unlikely, but still possible), I wonder if it would set off massive nerd rage across the interwebz....