SPOILER THREAD: Discuss "Star Wars: The Force Awakens"

Thoughts? Don't keep us all in suspense

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Force Awakens is not a film, it's a commercial. Phantom Menace And Attack of the Clones are more of a film than Force Awakens is.

What I hated most about it was how awful it is at being a Star Wars film. It has no respect for the mythology and history of the franchise. It treats the original films like they never even happened, and it fails to establish its backstory to explain why its existing today (the backstory with Luke running off and the Knights of Ren, is still more interesting than the actual rehashed plot itself).

It has no respect for the force, no patience with dialogue or building any of the characters. It's a lame lame lame movie that manages to look and sound very good

I'm having trouble reconciling those critiques ("awful...at being a Star Wars film") with the almost universal complaint (even among people who enjoyed it) that it essentially copies A New Hope. They would seem to be mutually exclusive.

I'm not really sure how to answer the other critiques without some actual elaboration on how it has "no patience" or "respect for the force." Maybe you can elaborate, because whatever my issues with it, those (particularly the latter) would've been basically the last things I would've said about it.

I was brisk with my comment but what I was meaning was

Characters aren't built or given any characteristics, everyone was bland and kinda just happy to be there. it went through the motions with character development and instead relies on action set pieces to fuel the characters actions. Not that other SW films didn't do this, but there was more detailed living "people" from the universe that I thought TFA completely missed on.

Rey and Finn are more manufactured for mass appeal and theater distribution, because Disney now brands this with a cautious and bland but efficient strategy to market the movies like a Marvel film, with people wanting to tune into the next episode in a year. Star Wars used to be an event that happened every couple years, and now Disney will completely hammer it and milk it anyway they can. Rogue One does look solid from trailers, but TFA is the blueprint they now have and it worries me seeing what they've decided to "start with" in the new SW universe, which is basically tell us JUST ENOUGH to tune in next time.

Every Lucas SW film has a beginning, middle, and end. TFA feels like a middle, with no real organic way to begin or end itself. It lacks personality, not just like a little...like big time.

And I guess "doesn't respect the force" means that it doesn't pay tribute to how delicate and difficult honing the power of the force really is. It does take time, maybe Rey has a huge amount of the force in her, but Anakin still needed years of training. It seems very short sighted and skimpish for Rey to beat Kylo the way she does. The dramatic impact of the ending just isn't there like it could've been. IMO

Other posters have said it misses oppurtunities one after another the whole time, and I mostly agree with this.

Using action set pieces to fuel the characters is, to my mind, what good films do. It's bad films that have to stop to do character development, put it on hold for action sequences, and then have them sit down and talk again.

Anyway, I dunno how to unwrap why some people find the characters "bland" or less "living" and others don't, but I suspect it's really just a gut level thing that probably colors everything else.

I don't disagree on any one particular point, but I'm not sure how any of this is separable from the mere fact of their being a continuation of the Star Wars series, either. Of course, if you're seeing Rey and Finn and thinking about their cross-demographic appeal the whole time, I have no doubt that could spoil the movie.

Can't understand this part. It's beginning is just like every other Star Wars film, no? It thrusts us into immediate conflict.

This is the one thing I have to disagree with strongly. Anakin needed (well, had) years of training, but Luke didn't. The films that make a big deal out of Force training are the prequels; the originals take the opposite approach, and obviously they're the superior films. But on top of that, even the narrative of the prequels themselves seems to suggest the original trilogy has it right: the Jedi's emphasis on structure and formalization ends up hampering them, to the point where they don't see Palpatine coming.

The treatment of the Force is one area I'd expect Episode VII to receive nearly universal praise: it learns all the right lessons from the original trilogy and goes back to a version of it that's treated with wonder and based in psychology, rather than treated with scientific detachment and used largely for doing unnecessary flips.

maybe I can simplify my issues with better examples.

Finn and Poe's beginning Escape from the Death Star. Listen to their dialogue, how skimp it is, how much actual substance is lacking from anything is insane. JJ would rather use momentum to cover up the lack of logic pervading the film.

Maz and the castle, who is she? Where doe she go? How does she know all this exposition? Listen to Rey and Finn's dialogue in the cantina. Ugh It's awful. Rey runs out into the forest, then back, then out Into the forest again why.

Why does the First Order blow up 3 planets we know nothing about? What is their reasoning in killing millions of people? Why not the planet our heroes are on? What does this have to do with anything? It looks and sounds good while it's happening but it doesn't make sense.

The castle battle has no rhythm as an action scene, watch it slowly as a compilation of scenes. Han shoots 3 stormtroopers, uses the gun given by chewy, Finn fights the random dude who turns his gun into a sword and fights Finn in the middle of the battle, Han kills him, then they get captured, held at gunpoint, then the resistance shows up. The way the editing and flow of the scene comes together isn't coherent. It's like **** is missing in between these scenes and it's not organically happening in front of us.

Leia and Hans dialogue is very dissapointing.

Finn and Poe aren't given a real reason to be friends. They just become friends, it's strange. It's Disney, everything is demonstrated at face value, where the film almost doesn't have to earn anything and already "is"

That's my point when I say the film is all middle, even the opening dialogue is a strange start to the film, we aren't givin anyone's name whose speaking or what exactly is happening due to the lack of a patient script and director.

Do you think it earns the ending where Rey defeats Kylo?

Does it earn the twist where Han is Kylo's father? It just TELLS us this randomly. Snoake just adds this in as a tidbit to Kylo, why not save this for the ending right before Han dies?

Hans death visually looks cool but it doesn't make sense for the plot, everything just stops because it has to happen.

Rey has no arc. I wish she felt real, she doesn't.

Finn is terrible as the token black man who is sweating and panting the entire film. Boyega is a good actor but his character sucks so much in this. I'm surprised his portrayal hasn't been called out to be racist because it's almost insulting how they treat his character as a politically correct modernly casted black man.

I think it's Amatuer filmmaking with a gigantic budget. Lucas had a much more interesting and creative vision for the world. Disney just uses the memories the fans have of the characters and tries to duplicate that to the safest extent possible.

I tried to rewatch it the other day and there is nothing memorable to return to. Even the prequels have memorable events because of the scale and build up to the set pieces.

Is there anything remotely close detailed wise in TFA compared to the pod race? The gungan city? Theed on Naboo? The cloning facility? The giant arena? The ending clone army fight? Kashyyk? Mustafar?

The sense of place is GONE. Vapid.

I could go all day, but just wanted to delve more into the specifics of why I hate TFA

Appreciate the elaboration, but I think the examples are becoming less helpful rather than more, simply because they're increasingly subjective (IE: there's no way to respond to just calling dialogue "disappointing," or just saying you didn't think a character "felt real"). And the only things mentioned with real specificity, about the Force, seem to have already fallen by the wayside.

Re: "the middle." As I mentioned in my last post, doesn't the original just thrust us right into the action, too, expecting us to pick up who everyone is as they go?

Regardless, I've been meaning to watch The Force Awakens again, so I guess this is as good an excuse as any. I'll try to keep an eye out for what you're talking about, but it feels very much like this is just going to end up being a gut level thing where not connecting with the characters (for whatever reason) is coloring everything else.

It's cool if you don't remember scenes and dialogue as well. I've seen it a few times by now and I didn't want to type an entire novel on my phone.

Leia and Han's dialogue is this, and the movie in a nutshell. See how they fill in the audience with lazy expostion? It's because the film takes no time to explain anything. Is this really how the characters would talk after seeing eachother after so long? No. This is the screenwriters talking to us saying "we know your lost, here's why this is happening" and it takes away the actual characters that these actors used to play.


Han Solo: Listen to me, will you? I know every time you... Every time you look at me you're reminded of him.
Leia: You think I want to forget him? I want him back.
Han Solo: There's nothing more we could have done. There's too much Vader in him.
Leia: That's why I wanted him to train with Luke. I just never should have sent him away. That's when I lost him. That's when I lost you both.
Han Solo: We both had to deal with it in our own way. I went back to the only thing I was ever any good at.
Leia: We both did.
Han Solo: We lost our son. Forever.
Leia: No. It was Snoke. He seduced our son to the dark side. But we can still save him. Me. You.
Han Solo: If Luke couldn't reach him, how could I?
Leia: Luke is a Jedi. You're his father. There is still light in him, I know it.
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Leia: Can't believe I was so foolish to think I could find Luke and bring him home.
Han Solo: Leia.
Leia: Don't do that.
Han Solo: Do what?
Leia: Anything.
[Leia walks off]
C-3PO: Princesses.
Han Solo: I'm trying to be helpful.
Leia: When did that ever help? And don't say the Death Star

Also a favorite of mine that Han says

"Ever since Luke disappeared, people have been looking for him"

gotcha Han.

I'm not going to tell you that's good dialogue, but the problems you're describing exist throughout the series. Examples from the very first scenes:

"Did you hear that? They've shut down the main reactor."

Yes, of course he heard it: he was right next to him. The only reason C-3PO says that is for us, the audience.

"There'll be no escape for the Princess this time."

Same thing. No reason for him to say this, except to start to fill us in.

And then:

"Secret mission? What plans? What are you talking about?"

He's literally repeating what he says back to him!

Now, I'll give them credit for doing bad expository dialogue in the best possible way, which is to say that the exposition is less obvious because it's given to robots rather than humans, and to a robot that we can't understand, which in turn gives them an excuse to have the other robot repeat it for us. But that's all pretty marginal obfuscation of what's otherwise just blatant "bring the audience up to speed stuff." I think The Force Awakens is a bit worse for not even bothering with that much, but I don't think this is something the series has ever been particularly good at.

But they never conveyed 30 years of backstory with 8 lines. I think that's the problem

Disagree with pretty much everything Diggler is saying. I will touch on a couple of points, but I think I will avoid countering each and every point as I feel that someone that likes the prequel films (especially the abysmal pod race and ridiculous Gungan city sequences) is someone that I share very little in common with as far as taste in film is concerned. I must also go on record as thinking that the Star Wars prequels have some of the worst dialogue and character interaction of any film I have ever seen. There is the ocassional spark of brilliant drama and vision (Anakin and Palpatine at the opera, for instance), but for the most part, it's shite, IMO.

Back to TFA:

Rey is great character. I am unsure how her development is much different from Luke's in Star Wars. A young person, stuck in a task-based, mundane life style on a barren planet, who dreams of life beyond the stars (note the small details in Rey's home of the X-wing pilot doll etc.). They cross paths with a small droid carrying secret plans, inevitably getting drawn into a conflict between two warring factions. The character is shown going about their tasks with some random character interaction thrown in to develop the character a bit. The difference, to me, is that Daisy Ridley's acting is several notches up from Mark Hamill, so I found her instantly enduring as opposed to a bit annoying in the case of Luke. Both characters are enduring, mind you, but I think Rey is at least equal to Luke as a character.

Without C3PO hanging out with the main character, the film needed some early comic relief to keep it from getting too dark, too early. Finn pulls off several great exchanges with BB8, Rey and Poe that had everyone in the theater laughing. His character was fun and also instantly likable. I must say, I hear very few complaints about Finn, even from folks that disliked the film.

As far as being "just a middle" is concerned, I think A New Hope (episode 4, in the middle of a saga) would be just as much a culprit, if not more. At the beginning of the film, Vader says "There will be no one to stop us this time." Setting aside the fact that this line flies in the face of the prequels, during which no one stopped them and the Jedi lost everything, we are clearly plopped down in the middle of something larger from the start. The Empire Strikes Back does not have a big, triumphant ending, and feels very much like the middle chapter it is. Leveling this complaint at TFA is questioning the very structure of pretty much all the Star Wars films and the saga in general.

Calling TFA amateur film making is a bit of a laugh, seeing as how Star Wars itself was the very definition of amateur film making. Abrams knows exactly what he is doing, is clearly a consummate professional, and basically took on a project with ridiculously high expectations and knocked it out of the park. The results could have been WAY worse (See: Star Wars Prequel films).

I definitely agree that TFA was half-reboot/half sequel, but I just didn't have a problem with it. It looked, sounded a felt like Star Wars again, which the prequels failed at, completely and utterly, on almost every level. They were clunky, insipid and overblown, and TFA is 1000 times better, IMO.

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How was the first SW Amatuer?
Or any of them?

JJ compared to Lucas? Compared to Irvin Kirshner?

Anyways, seeing as you hate the prequels, yes I see our taste being vastly different.

Eh. I can sort of understand this, but seeing as how the alternative is dedicating a lot of time to back story (which isn't really feasible), then the critique seems to apply less to the dialogue and more to the choice to set it after the original trilogy at all (which they pretty much had to do, for reasons both thematic and logistic).

Maybe it seems more jarring simply because those are the characters you and I already know, so it feels weird for them to retreat into the background/back story. Summarizing people's history in a few lines is perfectly normal if those characters aren't the main characters.

And that, I think, is what's going on here: we still want to think of Han and Leia as the main characters! But they're not. They're passing the baton and hanging around a bit on top of that to smooth the transition. Every minute they spend taking their time describing those intervening years is a minute they're not spending on the new characters. They're mutually exclusive things, yet both had to be done. That's really tough, and while I have my gripes with the film, I'm a bit more forgiving simply by keeping that insane degree of difficulty in mind.

There are lots of funny stories (some of them maybe exaggerated or apocryphal) about the shoestring production and the funny shortcuts Lucas and the crew took. They obviously did a great job under the circumstances, but apparently there was a lot of amusing improvisation with sets and props.

It has to be noted that this is a pretty rare opinion (not that it should be discredited for that reason alone). That said, maybe some argument can be made for them, but I'm having trouble imagining that argument coming from someone who's already expressed a distaste for hackneyed dialogue.

I wholeheartedly agree with the dialogue of the prequels being "amateur". It sucks.

At the same time, Phantom Menace is IMO, and whole reasoning behind this semi rant of mine....

It's better at being Star Wars. The world is there. The immersion is there. Lucas still crafts things with care. You can see it.

Attack of the Clones is awful. Agreed.

Revenge of the Sith is a great Star Wars film. It seems dear and sincere to the bone, regardless of some sloppy dialogue (and yes it is sloppy) that movie is all heart and I wouldn't believe it if a Star Wars fan told me he hated Episode 3. I think it's absolutely wonderful.

I think this is why cinema is so amazing. We can see things in a completely different light even if they are subjectively concerting to one another.

I think the prequels try a hell of a lot harder than TFA does. If you disagree, tell me how TFA tries harder with its main characters, how it pulls off the atmosphere of SW better, how it seems like an organic continuation of episode 6, better than what the prequels pulled off? I truly don't believe there to be much of a difference. If anything , TFA makes me miss Lucas and his impact he had on the prequels: maybe it's just me 😕

Okay, I love TFA even though it does have plenty of flaws, I just didn't think that there were any flaws that were extremely glaring.

The effects alone can show how TFA actually tried harder, wanna know why, PRACTICAL EFFECTS, they actually built suits, anamatronics, and sets, it makes it feel more like the actors are in the setting, because they are actually in the setting, thus it makes it easier for them to be in the moment and give better performances.

Speaking of performances, name one actor aside from Ewan McGregor, that actually emoted realistacly, sounded like they gave a crap, and didn't have the interest of a plank of wood that just realized it's a plank if wood.

And Diggler, the characters is where TFA is truly the strongest. The first 10-15 minutes or so demonstrates this perfectly, bith of Finn and Rey's characters current situations were setup up almost entirely with visuals, which is impressive all by its self, but it left it to where you still want to know more about them.

I think Liam Neeson is solid in TPM.

Ian Mcdermott as Sidious is fabulous IMO

Dooku isn't terrible by Christopher Lee but he's not written well

Hayden does a "tad" better in 3 but he's wooden. I agree.

Portman is pretty awful in some scenes but she had nothing to work with.

It's up and down. There's good and bad as far as acting and cast. Samuel L is solid as Mace Windu if a bit cheesy.

i think Driver is good in TFA , he seems to be the only one who is a character with a discernible personality. I didn't get that from Rey or Finn.

Thanks for putting up with me btw, I've enjoyed the discussions I've had with you all on this board, no matter how intense I get I love talking shop with all of you. I used to write reviews and post at Joblo and that site closed down its online community, so I was happy to find this place. Everyone has been gracious and wonderfully conversational