Star Wars : Into Spoilers - The Spoiler awakens.

[HaemishM]

So far, she *is* a bit part. She barely has any screen time, and the only thing distinguishing her from the other troopers is her outfit.

Well, that's what I mean. Her spiffy armor, the casting and the marketing around the character made her seem important and the script... didn't. She was barely there. So either the character is more important but they didn't have enough screen time to tell us why (poor editing/directing/writing) or everybody is projecting things onto her because of the aforementioned marketing without any real basis for it. TBF, she had about as much screen time as Sam Jackson did in Phantom Menace and they later made more of him. So in a planned trilogy, it's not unheard of to have an important character be a bit part early on. Hell, Lando wasn't even in ANH and he ended up destroying the 2nd Death Star.

[Ironwood]

I think that's because there's not a lot to discuss about this movie.

Really.

[Phildo]

Maybe it was supposed to be like Daniel Craig's cameo but too many specifics got leaked.

[Khaldun]

I don't think you put a cameo performer into a visually distinctive outfit and go out of your way to give them a name, etc.: there seems to have been real intent to call attention to the character.

[Ironwood]

So much so that it was HUGELY disappointing to actually see her in the movie.  Doing nothing.  At all.  Ever.

[01101010]

So much so that it was HUGELY disappointing to actually see her in the movie.  Doing nothing.  At all.  Ever.

What? She gave some orders. Looked menacing. Pushed some buttons. I don't know what you are on about... 

She'll probably turn out to be Rey's mom.

[Ironwood]

Shiny.  And Chrome.

[Evildrider]

Just think of this as Phasma's intro.. Hell she was in the movie more than Luke at least.

[Azazel]

I think the movie was supposed to be as follows.

There's a whole lot of stuff out there on the deleted scenes and what other options were going to be explored but weren't in the end. Like 4 seconds to type it into google.

[Azazel]

Saw it this past weekend. Thought it was perfect to rekindle the old SW feel and had enough of the old guard to pass the torch on to the new guard. I agree with all the criticisms, it wasn't perfect or near perfect, but I think it was really well done for the new generations to have their own SW but enough throwbacks and old themes to rake in the old timers. Fast pace was a reflection of the ADHD generation...

No, its just a reflection on the director.

It's both. Go watch Lawrence of Arabia or The 300 Spartans or any older film and then compare it to anything made in the last 20 years. Hell, compare Lawrence to the original Star Wars. Films are speeding up as our ability to process information increases. Again, look at older music videos compared to modern ones.

Also, I do agree that JJ overdid it. The "Apocalype Now" shout should have gone for at least a few more seconds instead of the 2 seconds it lasted for, and the time compression was much faster compared to Star Wars. I guess there wasn't a lot of dialogue or action to happen between Rey and Chewie compared to the whole gang in the original, but even a wipe instead of direct cuts would have implied some additional time being taken - and been a nod to the original - I hear there were some other nods back in this new one...

[Goumindong]

It wasn't even paced that fast because most of the shit that happened wasn't important shit. Non-stop action does not make a movie fast paced, and a lack of action does not make it languid. They probably could have cut 20-30 minutes of the film without any real loss to the core characters. For instance its the same length as Star Wars but Star Wars puts far more important plot happenings into its run time. The entire Rathtar scene as well as finding luke could be entirely excised (end with Rey leaving with chewie or Leia hugging rey or talking to the recovering finn) with basically no loss*.

They also could have excised that for some down time so the emotional beats they're trying for would land harder(paying more attention to the time in hyperspace would have fixed this) such that they might earn leia hugging rey.

*not that i don't understand why its in the movie. But you could have used the time earning Rey's father figure reaction instead of a pointless action scene with bit players or actually done something interesting with luke besides remove a potential storyline for EP8

Edit: I am not sure what you're saying about the time compression. The entire movie took place in about 1 day.

Poe Captured. Before conditioning Finn breaks him out. Next morning before First Order finds the wreckage finn makes it to the village. They immediately escape getting in the falcon. While still in orbit around Jakku they meet Han. Who during introductions gets ambushed and forces the hpyerspace jump to Maz's. Planet. During the journey Finn bandages Chewie and Rey fixes the hyperdrive and then they're there immediately. They land on Maz's planet and Finn makes to leave immediately. Before he can the First Order blow up the Republic AND send the force to attack Maz's planet. After the fight the FO return to the base in the same time it took them to leave. Interrogate Rey and Rey escapes. Back on the rebel base Finn immediately finds Poe and they go plan the attack on the starkiller base. starkiller prepares to fire on the rebels (why they didn't just attack with conventional forces who knows?) and before the rebels leave we're told the base if 40 minutes to firing (which they somehow know from across the galaxy). 40 minutes later they've blown the thing up.

There is no time compression to speak of because the movie is presented as happening with explicitly no downtime between events (its one of the things that makes it feel faster than it really is, because again, not that much plot is happening here).

So far, she *is* a bit part. She barely has any screen time, and the only thing distinguishing her from the other troopers is her outfit.

Well, that's what I mean. Her spiffy armor, the casting and the marketing around the character made her seem important and the script... didn't. She was barely there. So either the character is more important but they didn't have enough screen time to tell us why (poor editing/directing/writing) or everybody is projecting things onto her because of the aforementioned marketing without any real basis for it. TBF, she had about as much screen time as Sam Jackson did in Phantom Menace and they later made more of him. So in a planned trilogy, it's not unheard of to have an important character be a bit part early on. Hell, Lando wasn't even in ANH and he ended up destroying the 2nd Death Star.

She had a bit part and then the character took off after they had done her filming. So they ran with the marketing because cash money. But couldn't rewrite her into a larger portion of the film.

Poe, for example, was going to be a bit part and die on jakku, but got to the director before filming was over and they could rewrite him.

[Khaldun]

I have this vague sense that locking Goumindong and MediumHigh in a room together for 48 hours would produce something beautiful and tragic.

[MahrinSkel]

Saw it a second time with my youngest daughter, it holds up but I can agree with the "good not great" characterization. It had moments that rank up with the best of the Star Wars events, and other moments where fridge logic just gnaws at you (but so did all the others).

Some of the weak parts are covered by JJA rushing past them, others are created by that. One thing I really liked was the way that both Finn and Rey got a Hero's Journey arc in parallel, which wouldn't have worked without his high speed style, but I really didn't like it when it really would have made sense to have a little motivation exposition, and we didn't get it (Phasma, Maz, and to a lesser extent exactly WTF happened with the Knights of Ren). Sometimes JJA is in such a hurry to move on, he steps on his dick and ruins his own best work.

On the other hand, Star Wars has always had this way of introducing characters first and explaining their motivations later, so as long as they cover a bit of it in Ep. 8, I'm good.

--Dave

[Goumindong]

I have this vague sense that locking Goumindong and MediumHigh in a room together for 48 hours would produce something beautiful and tragic.

I thought the movie was good, its enjoyable, does what it needs to do, and feels more smooth the second time. I just feel like it could have been a lot better. I suppose my problem is that i watch too many movies (damn you netflix) to not see the things that i would otherwise ignore.

Biggest problems are dialogue and structure. The dialogue is not snappy and so makes things tough to deal with. Carrie actually takes this the hardest, both because her and han have these convo's where they have to unnecessarily exposit for you and also because she doesn't have any action scenes or one liners to break the monotony. On my first viewing i thought she just did a bad job but on my second viewing i kind of realized it was dialogue. You can see it in all the non-main character lines too, they don't have much interesting to say and so everything is delivered really flat. Most of the other main characters though are written very uhh Japanese where everything is repeated two or three times to make it sink in.

Case in point(I.E. the single biggest line that stuck out for me). Snoke says to Kylo. "The droid is on the Millennium Falcon, with your father. HAN SOLO." He really doesn't need to say Han Solo. We can infer that he does not mean Chewie or Finn or Rey. Han has lots of things like this too "at first i didn't believe but its true, the jedi the sith". All he really needs to say there is "at first I didn't believe", because both we and they know its all true. The implication of the map to luke and Han Solo right in front of you saying he was a skeptic prove that to Finn and Rey and we are watching a Star Wars movie so no need to prove it to us. Or when Han is first talking to Leia. "I saw him, i saw our son, leia, leia he was here". Good lord clean that up. "I saw him Leia, he was here".

The main problems with the structure is that the lack of appreciable down time/travel both contradicted how the other movies worked (and also makes lots of plot holes*) but also negated one of the primary themes which is kind of dumped on you in the middle of the movie when Kylo tells Rey that looking at Han as a father figure will disappoint her. This would be a really great line if we had any indication that Rey looked to Han as a father figure, or any amount of implied time passage such that we have an indication that she has known him for more than two hours. This is why the leia hug at the end falls flat. You think she should hug chewie because holy shit chewies life partner just died and the two people closest to Han who also have a deep history might have a moment?  What they were probably going for was that leia sensed reys connection and is treating her like a daughter. But its not earned because Rey has known Han for all of three hours at this point.

*because space travel is pretty explicitly "fast" a lot of things don't make sense at all. No hyperspace jump after leaving Jakku means they should have been beset by that first star destroyer immediately on leaving the planet. Short travel times means there is no reason to not just send the entire resistance fleet to jakku in order to get the map, its an hour round trip. Short travel time means that the first order could/should have destroyed the rebellion base with star destroyers since we have been told that the only thing keeping them from doing so was the existence of the Republic which was just destroyed. That being said the only one that really stood out to me was the lack of the star destroyer on jakku because it was such a mirror to the first film and also an obvious and effective escalation to the action.

[Azazel]

Edit: I am not sure what you're saying about the time compression. The entire movie took place in about 1 day.

There is no time compression to speak of because the movie is presented as happening with explicitly no downtime between events (its one of the things that makes it feel faster than it really is, because again, not that much plot is happening here).

 

[Azazel]

You think she should hug chewie because holy shit chewies life partner just died and the two people closest to Han who also have a deep history might have a moment?  What they were probably going for was that leia sensed reys connection and is treating her like a daughter. But its not earned because Rey has known Han for all of three hours at this point.

*because space travel is pretty explicitly "fast" a lot of things don't make sense at all. No hyperspace jump after leaving Jakku means they should have been beset by that first star destroyer immediately on leaving the planet. Short travel times means there is no reason to not just send the entire resistance fleet to jakku in order to get the map, its an hour round trip. Short travel time means that ....

While I agree with you on Leia>Chewie, the travel times thing is more of a structural/pacing problem with the film. Because I've seen previous Star Wars films, I'm aware that Hyperspace doesn't take three seconds to get somewhere (remember how long it took to get to Alderaan?), so I've let that slide. If you take this film as shown, and without any previous knowledge, you might understandably think that it took Rey and Chewie about three seconds to get to Luke/Wales from the Rebel base. I understand why the film cut it down (wasn't much else to say/do/show at that stage, and a conversation between Rey, R2 and Chewie woudn't exactly have been scintillating filler since only one of the three speaks English, but not spending literally five seconds in some manner to suggest "this actually takes a day or two to get there" in some manner causes the issues that you're touching on (and does so multiple times throughout the film).

After all, if the transit times were as fast, instant and teleporty as you've been writing about (and to be fair to you, the film doesn't do a good job of showing or telling), Han could have dropped Finn off in the Outer Rim and then taken BB-8 to the Rebel base in less time than it takes me to take a piss. Even so - and with the poor feel for the plapse of time in the film, I'm not sure how many other people feel like the whole movie took place over the course of one afternoon. Probably not that many. Otherwise Star Wars also happened in one day, two max and Empire was also (potentially) 2-3 days while to me it felt like probably several weeks or even a month (mostly due to Wampa'd Luke and the Dagobah Montage).

[MediumHigh]

I have this vague sense that locking Goumindong and MediumHigh in a room together for 48 hours would produce something beautiful and tragic.

I'm letting the fanboys have the schuluk at this point, and mostly because I'm not the only one who sees this as bland and repetitive with high production value. I remember the praises to the Lucas gods for episode 1

[Goumindong]

You think she should hug chewie because holy shit chewies life partner just died and the two people closest to Han who also have a deep history might have a moment?  What they were probably going for was that leia sensed reys connection and is treating her like a daughter. But its not earned because Rey has known Han for all of three hours at this point.

*because space travel is pretty explicitly "fast" a lot of things don't make sense at all. No hyperspace jump after leaving Jakku means they should have been beset by that first star destroyer immediately on leaving the planet. Short travel times means there is no reason to not just send the entire resistance fleet to jakku in order to get the map, its an hour round trip. Short travel time means that ....

While I agree with you on Leia>Chewie, the travel times thing is more of a structural/pacing problem with the film. Because I've seen previous Star Wars films, I'm aware that Hyperspace doesn't take three seconds to get somewhere (remember how long it took to get to Alderaan?), so I've let that slide. If you take this film as shown, and without any previous knowledge, you might understandably think that it took Rey and Chewie about three seconds to get to Luke/Wales from the Rebel base. I understand why the film cut it down (wasn't much else to say/do/show at that stage, and a conversation between Rey, R2 and Chewie woudn't exactly have been scintillating filler since only one of the three speaks English, but not spending literally five seconds in some manner to suggest "this actually takes a day or two to get there" in some manner causes the issues that you're touching on (and does so multiple times throughout the film).

After all, if the transit times were as fast, instant and teleporty as you've been writing about (and to be fair to you, the film doesn't do a good job of showing or telling), Han could have dropped Finn off in the Outer Rim and then taken BB-8 to the Rebel base in less time than it takes me to take a piss. Even so - and with the poor feel for the plapse of time in the film, I'm not sure how many other people feel like the whole movie took place over the course of one afternoon. Probably not that many. Otherwise Star Wars also happened in one day, two max and Empire was also (potentially) 2-3 days while to me it felt like probably several weeks or even a month (mostly due to Wampa'd Luke and the Dagobah Montage).

Before the leave to assault the starkiller base they say the weapon will be ready to fire in 40 minutes. When they get to the starkiller base they say the weapon will be ready to fire in 15 minutes. Ergo it took at most 25 minutes to lightspeed from the rebel base to the starkiller base.

You see similar things in every other hyperspace jump, where the duration is explicitly small. We start with the jump to lightspeed and the issue with the hyperdrive being immediate and pressing. We end with the hyperdrive being fixed and then they're there. The jump to maz's planet from jakku explicitly takes as long as it takes Finn to bandage chewie and rey to troubleshoot the fuel pump.

Similarly the rebel/fo battle on Maz's planet. We have no wipes/breaks from the point where they are scouted by the respective spies and the enemies show up. Finn negotiates leaving, rey finds the lightsaber and leaves. -> FO made the jump from the starkiller base -> Resistance made the jump from their base.

Whereas in Star Wars we have full downtimes with lounging, screen wipes, and rest.

But yes, it is more of a pacing/structural issue than simply missing a character beat. But it does contribute to missing one of the more important character beats in the film, which makes me wonder how it could have been missed

[Speedy Cerviche]

starkiller prepares to fire on the rebels (why they didn't just attack with conventional forces who knows?)

Haha good point, the rebels only seem to have about 2 squadrons of fighters anyway.

[Goumindong]

starkiller prepares to fire on the rebels (why they didn't just attack with conventional forces who knows?)

Haha good point, the rebels only seem to have about 2 squadrons of fighters anyway.

An explicit plot point is that the First Order does not attack the resistance with conventional forces because the Republic would retaliate and in a stand up fight Republic v First Order Republic wins. The first order cannot rid themselves of the resistance because it would tip their hand to the main power in the galaxy.

So the First Order builds the starkiller base to first strike the Republic and their fleet so that the resistance (and such the rest of the galaxy) is open season and then... doesn't attack the Resistance, removing the one last threat that might bring skywalker back.

I mean, in the grand scheme of things its not really a big deal. Clearly done so that JJ could have his "destroying the death star" repeat moment from the first movie. Its just another little thing that gets broken by super fast space travel

[lamaros]

Films are speeding up as our ability to process information increases.

What information? The movie is empty.

[Draegan]

Saw the movie again with my 3 year old daughter. Was just as great the second time. My kid was running around the house slaying stormtroopers with a light saber.

[Lakov_Sanite]

This is canon to me now.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FaOSCASqLsE

[Tannhauser]

SNL occassionally still does a great skit.  Loved this.

[Ghambit]

Adam Driver is damned creepy to me.  Frankly, I thought he made a good Kylo (due to inherent creepiness), but his script was too much teen disney angst.
That SNL skit was gold.  Pure gold.

[Riggswolfe]

So I'm reading the novelization and it clears a few things up and opens up some speculation on other things. They two big things it cleared up for me:

1) Starkiller Base - The weapon fires through another version of hyperspace. One character says "it doesn't fire across the galaxy, it fires through the galaxy." I was picturing the description of how the ship works in Event Horizon which amused me because then my head went to the weapon firing through Hell. Heh.

2) Kylo Ren initially has it easy when he goes into Rey's mind. What stops him isn't Rey but he runs into a "block" that puzzles him when he tries to look deeper into her past. When he hits that block is when Rey is suddenly able to turn things on him and look into his mind and he flees after her Vader taunt. The book doesn't come out and say it but my read of the scene is the block was put into place by someone else and when Ren touched it it sort of activated her latent Force abilities.

Edit: I see my point two is covered in that article linked on the last page. Still, since the novelist is working from the script and the novelizations of movies are considered canon that is interesting. JJ should have thrown in a bit of dialogue about that.

[Ironwood]

Yes.  Instead of both things being retarded on screen.  That's his problem.  He never gives a fuck.

Indeed, it's clear that probably the novel writer made it up when he realised there was no fucking sense to the scenes.

[01101010]

2) Kylo Ren initially has it easy when he goes into Rey's mind. What stops him isn't Rey but he runs into a "block" that puzzles him when he tries to look deeper into her past. When he hits that block is when Rey is suddenly able to turn things on him and look into his mind and he flees after her Vader taunt. The book doesn't come out and say it but my read of the scene is the block was put into place by someone else and when Ren touched it it sort of activated her latent Force abilities.

So a Charles / Jean Grey thing? 

[Hutch]

The Dark Phoenix saga, retold in a galaxy far far away?

As long as they're recycling IP's, they could do worse.

[sickrubik]

This is canon to me now.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FaOSCASqLsE

http://nerdapproved.com/toys/undercover-boss-kylo-ren-figure/

[eldaec]

The part where Rey becomes a super jedi isn't bad because no in universe explanation is possible. It's bad because the no on universe explanation is presented and because the film script hasn't earnt enough trust to make you believe there is an explanation other than plot requirements.

[Riggswolfe]

The part where Rey becomes a super jedi isn't bad because no in universe explanation is possible. It's bad because the no on universe explanation is presented and because the film script hasn't earnt enough trust to make you believe there is an explanation other than plot requirements.

Not to beat a dead horse but she doesn't become a super Jedi. She mind tricks a stormtrooper, uses the force to pull a saber to her and beats an almost mortally wounded and exhausted Kylo Ren in a duel. Barely.

[MediumHigh]

The part where Rey becomes a super jedi isn't bad because no in universe explanation is possible. It's bad because the no on universe explanation is presented and because the film script hasn't earnt enough trust to make you believe there is an explanation other than plot requirements.

Not to beat a dead horse but she doesn't become a super Jedi. She mind tricks a stormtrooper, uses the force to pull a saber to her and beats an almost mortally wounded and exhausted Kylo Ren in a duel. Barely.

Its funny that the only people defending the third act are the ones who saw it 5 times. The fact that none of those feats are in anyway consistent with any star wars cannon for even the most casual of fans is just hand waved cause "reasons".

[Lakov_Sanite]

I saw it once, you're still wrong.

[MediumHigh]

I saw it once, you're still wrong.

Can't wait for your nostalgia runs out.