So, did you see the new Star Wars movie yet?

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Kylo Ren is a dire storytelling failure of “show don’t tell”. He claims to be conflicted between dark and light, but does only dark deeds. He is supposed to have depth, but has none. Therefore he fails as a character, let alone as a villain.

A certain phrase comes to mind… faith without works is dead. 👍

As a villain he commands neither awe nor dread nor respect, and he did that ludicrous laser freeze which not even Yoda or the Emperor could do, let alone Vader. So he is a bad character on multiple levels.

I dare say Darth Maul is a better character. Yes, Maul. He had no real character to speak of beyond being the Emperor’s hatchetman, but The Phantom Menace never presented him as anything else, instead of doing so and failing at it. (He does get fleshed out in the Clone Wars cartoon, which reveals he survived…)
 
It was disrespectful and underwhelming to have him regress to his smuggler days. Ford might have not cared about the franchise anymore and wanted the money for a quick exit to put it behind him. He should have lobbied for a more satisfying climax, like the old pilot in Independence Day.:

youtube.com/watch?v=NyOTaHRBTXc

Instead, it’s an anticlimax.
 
Kurisu35712 said:
Thank you so much for sharing this link. I’ve been pouring over his blog for the past 2 days, and now I have a huge list of books to read.
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You’re very welcome. Mr. Wright is one of the Good Guys.
 
I’m an old lady and not a die hard fan but was dragged along to it. Anyway, I thought that was a strange name too. It didn’t sound right everytime I heard it.

The other thing that I didn’t quite get was what was the catalyst for R2D2’s sudden reactivation? It just seemed to happen out of the blue too conveniently.
 
Pons said:
It was disrespectful and underwhelming to have him regress to his smuggler days. Ford might have not cared about the franchise anymore and wanted the money for a quick exit to put it behind him. He should have lobbied for a more satisfying climax, like the old pilot in Independence Day.:

youtube.com/watch?v=NyOTaHRBTXc

Instead, it’s an anticlimax.
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See, I felt the opposite. I thought this movie was the best we’ve seen of Han Solo’s character since ESB and a better send off for him than ROTJ was. (And I even like ROTJ a little more than the Force Awakens. Just a little.) Han actually mattered in this movie.

I just watched Return of the Jedi again, and one thing I noticed was how wasted Han Solo is in that film. He was not only neutered and made into a joke (the first third of the film he’s blind and always messing up and needing rescue) he was also pretty much sidelined. Sure he becomes a general, but he’s not crucial to the story or the mission. He’s given no character development at all. He’s exactly where we left him in EMPIRE. You could take him out of the film and not much would be different. Han’s not so much redeemed in that film as just…there. It’s not even clear at the end that he had given up smuggling for good. The movie doesn’t tell us much what they’re planning on doing now that the empire was gone.

In the Force Awakens on the other hand, he has a real impact on the story. Yes he went back to smuggling, (out of grief) but he didn’t completely regress. He’s not the selfish guy “in it for the money” that we met in the original. He still cares. He takes Rey under his wing and as soon as he realizes the droid can help find Luke, he jumps right back in to the thick of things.

And the final scene with him and Kylo is, in my opinion, the best possible ending for his character. It’s anything but anti-climactic. It shows how far he had come, not just in the movie itself but in the entire series. He had stopped running and taking the easy way out and was willing to face certain death for something bigger than himself. We never saw this part of him in JEDI. We’re told he’s changed, and everyone treats him like a hero in that movie, but he never got a chance to really prove it. He never had to face a choice like this. Not even with the Death Star. He didn’t want to face Ben, he thought it was a lost cause, but he walked out there anyways for Leia’s sake. He finally had come full circle. From “better her than me” to risking his life to save his son, however unlikely it was that he’d succeed. And say what you like, but Ford really nailed that scene. Some of the best acting he’d done in the franchise. You could feel the conflict and pain in his face before he stepped onto that catwalk.

Plus, his death was meaningful and is going to most likely have an enormous impact in the next film. Han’s death will push Rey in the same way Obi-Wan’s death pushed Luke and leaves a lot for the next film to explore. How is Luke going to react? Will Leia blame Luke? Will she still want to redeem Ben? Will Rey be out for revenge? Did killing his father actually make Kylo stronger like he thought it would or did it weaken him? Lots of potential now. I’m interested to see where the new director takes things after that.

(Jeez I haven’t had such nerdy conversations in years. I’m having way too much fun :p)
 
Maybe I’ve become an old curmudgeon or the whole thing is just past my time, but I was underwhelmed. It was an okay adventure movie, but it didn’t wow me at all. I LOVED the original trilogy and felt this was just dipping into the well to make more money off the franchise. I have no plans on buying the DVD, that’s for sure. I didn’t buy the main villain–he didn’t look a thing like Han or Leia or the basic premise, either. And poor Luke, once again he’s pushed aside so Han can be the star–he has nothing more than a cameo role. Disappointing all around. :rolleyes:
 
Besides that, someone always dies in the first entry of a Star Wars trilogy, so it was pretty much inevitable for me.

You’re right about Leia and Luke most likely. I just hope they get as much focus and as good an ending to their story as Han did.
 
Kylo’s patricide fell resoundingly flat because we barely know a thing about his relationship with Han, and he was mired in evil for years, there was no real conflict in him despite the writers claiming it.

Han’s death is tragic because we grew up with him, not because the film itself convinces us.
 
It looks to me like Harrison Ford wanted to be done with Star Wars.

Anyway, I wish they had not made this rehash–I mean sequel. I would prefer to remember the main characters as they appeared in the final scene of “The Return of the Jedi,” young and triumphant. And they all lived happily ever after.
 
Terra_Rosarum said:
It looks to me like Harrison Ford wanted to be done with Star Wars.

Anyway, I wish they had not made this rehash–I mean sequel. I would prefer to remember the main characters as they appeared in the final scene of “The Return of the Jedi,” young and triumphant. And they all lived happily ever after.
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Just over a generation has passed since the original trilogy, and they want to flip the thing generationally. It makes sense.

ICXC NIKA
 
They’re not “canonical” now, but the Star Wars: Legacy comics have a better future scenario. Things went south for the Jedi too, but only many years after Luke’s time.



Here, Luke’s ghost is trying to help his descendant Cade. Why didn’t Vader’s ghost appear to Kylo and try to dissuade him?
 
Pons said:
They’re not “canonical” now, but the Star Wars: Legacy comics have a better future scenario. Things went south for the Jedi too, but only many years after Luke’s time.

https://imgur.com/MM88c8x

Here, Luke’s ghost is trying to help his descendant Cade. Why didn’t Vader’s ghost appear to Kylo and try to dissuade him?
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My sister told me that Anakin’s Force ghost was supposed to be in the Force Awakens haunting Luke and Kylo but since Luke should up at the very tail end of the movie, Anakin’s ghost might be in the next two.
 
I saw it. It was o.k. There wasn’t much too it. I was hoping for more story. It seems more like a warm-up act, or a long introduction for whatever movie comes next.
 
I thought it was just awful. It was comically bad at times. The villain is unmenacing and flat. The heroine, if you haven’t read online, is being called a “Mary Sue,” meaning she’s pretty much a do-everything-no-flaws-ridiculous-character. Feminists like her because she knocks around men 100lbs bigger than her and acts like she’s jacked on testosterone the whole movie. And then the retread plot lines from Episode IV all over the place, including the big weapon with the same flaws, etc, yadda. They didn’t even try. The writing was an insult. It’s a shame people flock to this Disney junk in droves because now we’ll get more of the same…. :yawn:
 
MarcoPolo said:
I thought it was just awful. It was comically bad at times. The villain is unmenacing and flat. The heroine, if you haven’t read online, is being called a “Mary Sue,” meaning she’s pretty much a do-everything-no-flaws-ridiculous-character. Feminists like her because she knocks around men 100lbs bigger than her and acts like she’s jacked on testosterone the whole movie. And then the retread plot lines from Episode IV all over the place, including the big weapon with the same flaws, etc, yadda. They didn’t even try. The writing was an insult. It’s a shame people flock to this Disney junk in droves because now we’ll get more of the same…. :yawn:
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You’re right: the whole Death Star redux was a…redux. A giant planetoid spaceship with an enormously powerful death ray that can be destroyed by daring Rebel pilots who fly down into its infrastructure to hit it at its vulnerable soft spot.

Not to mention the holographic image stored on the cute droid.

As for “Mary Sue”: Katniss Everdeen, I would have believed. Rey, not so much.

To me, in hindsight, it seems like the movie was rushed.
 
on_the_hill said:
You’re right: the whole Death Star redux was a…redux. A giant planetoid spaceship with an enormously powerful death ray that can be destroyed by daring Rebel pilots who fly down into its infrastructure to hit it at its vulnerable soft spot.

Not to mention the holographic image stored on the cute droid.

As for “Mary Sue”: Katniss Everdeen, I would have believed. Rey, not so much.

To me, in hindsight, it seems like the movie was rushed.
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Never saw any Hunger Games. But Rey is expert at scavenging, altruism, languages, piloting (anything), rappeling, climbing, fighting, martial arts, mechanics, to name just a few. Plus she beats up anyone, any size even when outnumbered all prior to ever using the force. She does it all. She’s a comical James Bond, even without so much as a speck of dirt on her face after a fight in the woods.
 
Luke also needed C3PO to translate for R2 and didn’t raise himself as an orphan and failed many times over long periods of time to grasp the force, etc… Anakin was closer to being a “perfect” skills character (until his gullible plummet to the dark side), but I think even in his youth he was more limited to piloting and mechanics and not so much of the fighting and linguistics as I recall, and he certainly lost any altruism pretty quick. But let’s also remember, we’re not reading anything into Rey—the director himself talked about how he wanted this movie to be special for mothers to take their daughters, and if I recall from earlier this year, he even wanted her to be a “kick ***” female character or something like that. Disney specifically engineered Rey to be appealing in this way and, for them, that means depriving her of imperfections - and they went way overboard by making her a laughable caricature—IMHO. If the next movie involves her training, it will be a waste because she can already beat the dark side’s best guy with no problem. Don’t tell Steph Curry how to adjust his shot - training will ruin him. 🙂
 
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