Star Wars: The Force Awakens

[Papaya]

I liked it. I liked the originals growing up, and I liked this. It was like the new Star Trek (~2007?) only not as good (and I have no history with Star Trek). 6/10, won't see it again. At least 20 minutes too long.

Nerd thought: I don't recall the Force ever being used to read minds.

Why I'm even writing this post? I was trying to figure out if and why a chic heroine would detract from a movie like this (or other action movie I suppose). I thought about it the entire drive home. It's not obvious. It's not like the entire time I'm hating the main actress, or feeling this insecurity because the hero is a chic. There's nothing overt about the hero in a movie being a girl. As such, I'm not a guy who says "it sucks because the hero is a girl" or anything like that.

I couldn't figure it out until it just dawned on me. It's because the inexperienced, poor, beta, unsuccessful, homeless, young woman is not nearly as low on society as a insecure kid (young Luke). The young hottie in this new movie...ok, she's inexperienced, poor, no family, etc...but she's still a totally hot babe. If she goes through trials and tribulations and defeats the Dark Side, she'll just be an older less attractive hot babe who defeated the Dark Side.

Young Luke Skywalker is a loser, not only to the characters in the movie, but to the audience. Young Rey is a gorgeous young woman to the audience, so if she's portrayed in the movie as a loser, it's not believable.

Far more believable as a young stupid *insignificant* loser kid -->

Not believable as a young stupid *insignificant* loser chic -->

That's because "female" as hero is always inauthentic. Throughout history and in every culture "the chosen one" is male. That's what resonates. This isn't my opinion but rather a cornerstone of Joseph Campbell's work. (I think anyone who is a true film / movie fan should understand his "Hero's Journey" premise at least on a basic level) Making a female as the primary hero is just contrived PC nonsense

Late in his life, Campbell had this to say:

“ All of the great mythologies and much of the mythic story-telling of the world are from the male point of view. When I was writing The Hero with a Thousand Faces and wanted to bring female heroes in, I had to go to the fairy tales. These were told by women to children, you know, and you get a different perspective. It was the men who got involved in spinning most of the great myths. The women were too busy; they had too damn much to do to sit around thinking about stories. [...]
In the Odyssey, you'll see three journeys. One is that of Telemachus, the son, going in quest of his father. The second is that of the father, Odysseus, becoming reconciled and related to the female principle in the sense of male-female relationship, rather than the male mastery of the female that was at the center of the Iliad. And the third is of Penelope herself, whose journey is [...] endurance. Out in Nantucket, you see all those cottages with the widow's walk up on the roof: when my husband comes back from the sea. Two journeys through space and one through time.[7]"

EDIT It's a well established fact that George Lucas modeled the original Star Wars saga based on the structure Joseph Campbell's "The Hero With A Thousand Faces" proposes

 

[germanico]

EDIT It's a well established fact that George Lucas modeled the original Star Wars saga based on the structure Joseph Campbell's "The Hero With A Thousand Faces" proposes

And Disney modeled The Force Awakens based on the original Star Wars.

 

[Paracelsus]

Welp, Abrams basically admits he couldn't come up with his own story and raped ANH for Force Awakens:

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/race/awards-chatter-podcast-jj-abrams-853171

It was obviously a wildly intentional thing that we go backwards, in some ways, to go forwards in the important ways, given that this is a genre — that Star Wars is a kind of specific gorgeous concoction of George [Lucas]'s — that combines all sorts of things. Ultimately the structure of Star Wars itself is as classic and tried and true as you can get. It was itself derivative of all of these things that George loved so much, from the most obvious, Flash Gordon and Joseph Campbell, to the [Akira] Kurosawa references, to Westerns — I mean, all of these elements were part of what made Star Wars."

So Abrams defends not being able to come up with something new and original by saying Lucas wasn't original either. Also implies that nerds wouldn't have recognised a Star Wars film if it didn't ape the original trilogy. What he's driving at here without putting the accusation squarely is that ANH itself is sometimes said to be a shot-for-shot ripoff of Kurosawa's film The Hidden Fortress. But Kurosawa's film doesn't have a Luke Skywalker analogue, and ANH does not involve attacking an enemy castle unless by squinting very heavily. And most importantly, the films don't occupy the same franchise or even the same culture anyway. I haven't got a real big problem with (heh heh heh) cultural appropriation of this kind, because sometimes the transition to another culture brings something new and interesting to the mix, but TFA does not have that excuse.

He continues, "I can understand that someone might say, 'Oh, it's a complete rip-off!' We inherited Star Wars. The story of history repeating itself was, I believe, an obvious and intentional thing, and the structure of meeting a character who comes from a nowhere desert and discovers that she has a power within her, where the bad guys have a weapon that is destructive but that ends up being destroyed — those simple tenets are by far the least important aspects of this movie, and they provide bones that were well-proven long before they were used in Star Wars."

I'm amazed that I have to say that George Lucas's prequel trilogy did an element better than TFA, but there it is. Lucas handled history 'repeating itself' in a much more subtle and satisfying fashion than Abrams could have dreamed. This is particularly so in Episode One: the podrace features the young Darth Vader in a twin-engined vessel chasing down an X-shaped vessel in a canyon ... but unless you're specifically looking for it you miss it. Big shit floating in space gets blowed up at the end of Ep 1 as well, but again you don't quite catch the Death Star analogy until afterwards, and it's inverted in an interesting way as it's Vader who's responsible for the "Death Star" blowing up, not Luke.

He adds, "What was important for me was introducing brand new characters using relationships that were embracing the history that we know to tell a story that is new — to go backwards to go forwards. So I understand that this movie, I would argue much more than the ones that follow, needed to take a couple of steps backwards into very familiar terrain, and using a structure of nobodies becoming somebodies defeating the baddies — which is, again, I would argue, not a brand new concept, admittedly — but use that to do, I think, a far more important thing, which is introduce this young woman, who's a character we've not seen before and who has a story we have not seen before, meeting the first Storm Trooper we've ever seen who we get to know as a human being; to see the two of them have an adventure in a way that no one has had yet, with Han Solo; to see those characters go to find someone who is a brand new character who, yes, may be diminutive, but is as far from Yoda as I think a description of a character can get, who gets to enlighten almost the way a wonderful older teacher or grandparent or great-aunt might, you know, something that is confirming a kind of belief system that is rejected by the main character; and to tell a story of being a parent and being a child and the struggles that that entails — clearly Star Wars has always been a familial story, but never in the way that we've told here."

This bit made me sick. It made me realise that Maz Kanata is a hypercompetent female character as bad if not worse than Rey is. Maz not only spits all the personal insights that Yoda did, she also is a female-voiced character who runs a burgeoning bar and antiquities dealership at the same time. But she's foisted on us without any real time or establishment of her character to make her interesting.

Consider how we first meet Yoda in ESB. He comes across as a peabrained comic relief, a little greedy, a bit out for himself. But one conversation with Obi-Wan's spirit and everything about him changes - he goes from seeming minor character or guide to teacher, and the transformation is intense. Compare that with Maz Kanata who just doesn't seem to have any hidden depths at all. She's just an old fucking junk dealer and barmaid who says she's not a Jedi but somehow still has a life-altering insight to offer. More female hypercompetence at work...this time to the post-40 empty womb crowd.

"And," he goes on, "yes, they destroy a weapon at the end of this movie, but then something else happens which is, I think, far more critical and far more important — and I think even in that moment, when that is happening, the thing I think the audience is focused on and cares more about is not, 'Is that big planet gonna blow up?' — 'cause we all know it's gonna blow up. What you really care about is what's gonna happen in the forest between these two characters who are now alone."

This is contempt for the universe and contempt for the story. Even watching ANH multiple times, Lucas's direction is still superb: you still feel suspense about whether Luke is actually going to make that crucial shot or not. That's what sets him apart from Abrams. Abrams by contrast just gives up any fucking belief in his own ability to make it suspenseful: "we all know it's gonna blow up." Fuck me, man! Are you that fucking jaded! Are you that infected by reading TVtropes you actually think it's impossible to make an audience feel suspense in the third act! Shit, did you consider the idea of using the audience's expectations and not blowing up the superweapon? Failure would be a lot more fucking interesting than just cynically saying "The audience knows we're gonna blow the thing up, let's show them a grrl-power lightsaber battle instead!"

I've got to say, I now want to see what Michael Arndt's draft of the screenplay was. He did a draft or two and then was kicked in favour of something by Abrams and Kasdan. It would be very, very interesting to see what sort of movie that might have been.

 

[Blaster]

Quick summary of thoughts on this, since I disagree with some of the criticism (but not all). Warning: I am careless with spoilers. Sorry.

On the whole, I did not mind the way Abrams pilfered ideas and themes from ANH. It was the same way with Star Trek: Into Darkness and I enjoyed that, too. Overall there was enough originality that I can forgive that general strategy. The movie is a bit shallow. Whether that's a result of the general strategy or not I can't say. I do know that this kind of technique wouldn't work for a second time.

SJW pandering: Honestly not as bad as I expected. I don't care about the black and female leads. They don't bother me to the extent that they're mostly good characters.

Rey: I'm ambivalent. I like the actress. I really like that her character is smart, resourceful, and capable. It's quite reasonable to think that her youth and experience as a scavenger in a harsh environment has given her some useful skills. I also don't mind that she's force-capable. Even the part where she resists the mind probe completely was fine. On the other hand, I really don't like exactly HOW capable she is, particularly her Lightsaber and force-using skills. Perhaps more importantly, I don't like that her only apparent flaw is a fairly mild case of a lack of confidence. If training is not going to be a theme in this series (like it was in all the others), then what's it going to be instead? Blake Neff at the DailyCaller puts it well: If Rey has any flaw at all, it’s only an unwillingness to embrace how awesome she is and use it to save the galaxy.. I'd also say that she has a weakly presented "starry-eye" syndrome that hopefully won't come back.

Other minor gripes about Rey: This might be more about Finn, but the sequence where they meet she's kind of rude and bitchy to him. Granted, he keeps grabbing her hand for silly reasons, but that whole sequence I didn't like. I also think her technical skills are a bit overplayed.


Quick aside:

A friend of mine who has read the books for the movie claimed that she was trained as a jedi by birth, but memory wiped.

I don't entirely trust the books a source for what will be ultimately revealed, but the fact remains that an explanation, however valid, doesn't change my problem with the character. It makes her a superhero character, and the last thing we need right now is for Star Wars to be yet another superhero movie.

Finn: I was mildly disappointed by this character, but it wasn't too bad. I was hoping that his stormtrooper training and background would be a little more relevant and interesting. As it turns out, he has virtually none and his history includes being a janitor. However, at least this means he has plenty of room to grow. I would have been far happier if the balance of skills between Rey and Finn had been split up more evenly, but Finn has lots of potential. Him picking up the lightsaber was a bit of a WTF moment, but he does wind up seriously injured.

Kylo Ren: I liked him as I was watching the movie, but I think on repeat viewings I think my views will shift more towards the detractors who call him a whiny and incompetent villain not worthy of the series.

The Storm Trooper Parade: I hated this scene, as well as the name "The First Order". This gratuitous Nazi-inspired imagery is unwelcome in my Star Wars fantasy movie. Sure, the original imperial costumes and manners were inspired by WW2 Nazis, but that's as far as it went. The rest was fantasy or inspired by something else.

The Political Context: While I'm OK that the politics aren't really front-and-center in this movie, what is there is an absolute confusing mess. I'm not even going to bother trying to sort it out here to criticize, suffice to say that I hated it and won't mind at all if the next film retcons all over the place to fix it.

 

[Blaster]

I've got to say, I now want to see what Michael Arndt's draft of the screenplay was. He did a draft or two and then was kicked in favour of something by Abrams and Kasdan. It would be very, very interesting to see what sort of movie that might have been.

The original character sketch for Finn said he was supposed to be extremely charismatic.

 

[Paracelsus]

Rey: I'm ambivalent. I like the actress. I really like that her character is smart, resourceful, and capable. It's quite reasonable to think that her youth and experience as a scavenger in a harsh environment has given her some useful skills. I also don't mind that she's force-capable. Even the part where she resists the mind probe completely was fine. On the other hand, I really don't like exactly HOW capable she is, particularly her Lightsaber and force-using skills. Perhaps more importantly, I don't like that her only apparent flaw is a fairly mild case of a lack of confidence. If training is not going to be a theme in this series (like it was in all the others), then what's it going to be instead?

I had a horrible thought which I really, really, really hope isn't going to happen:

EU Grey Jedi concepts.

Because why stop at making Rey an overpowered Force-user who masters entire Jedi arts in the space of 20 on-screen minutes. Let's make her capable of using both Dark Side and Light Side powers at once without any sort of cost to her soul. Christ Almighty I hope it's not headed for that.

 

[AnonymousBosch]

meeting the first Storm Trooper we've ever seen who we get to know as a human being

Haven't seen it.

Will never see it.

This quote, however, jumped out at me. I mentioned this before: SJW's always sympathise with the Bad [Psychological not Literal] Actor in any situation. Of course an SJW would be interested in 'humanising' a Storm Trooper.

 

[perdogg]

I think Star Wars is rip-off of the first three Dune novels and that Rey was modeled off of Siona.

 

[NilNisiOptimum]

The wife rented this off redbox tonight. I'd heard the complaints, including the big spoiler, and said "meh" to the idea because red box is $2. She knew my take on the movie was "rehash of ANH and I don't like Abrams' work".

I want to say one positive of the movie is that John Williams can still do a great score.

Kylo Ren... What a fucking whining shitty character. When he trashed the console in front of him after being told the droid was on the Falcon, I couldn't take him seriously anymore. And why does his voice sound like someone calling for a price check over the intercom at Walmart?

Funny enough, my wife fell alseep about a half hour before the end. Which is to say 10 minutes before I turned it off after Han was killed.

I knew it was coming. I knew I would hate it. I didn't know I would viscerally disgusted by it to the point of wanting to snap the rental disc in half. I don't know if it's the idea of beloved scoundrel Han Solo dying, the idea that the whiny bitch Kylo did it, or that the patricide was a blatant pandering to the SJWs, or if it was all three, I have never had such a reaction to a movie like this.

Abrams did a fine job wrecking Star Trek with Into Darkness, but he raised the bar to a new level with this.

 

[captain_shane]

Ended up picking this movie up from redbox last night since I had a free rental.

- Turned it off after 1:15 into it.

I felt like I was watching a movie made for kids around the ages of 10-14. The "humor" was extremely grating, I really just couldn't take the pathetic one liners from the cast in this movie. The original Star Wars movies had some pretty funny parts in them, but this felt like watching an ABC/NBC/CBS sitcom.

I'm not going to waste anymore time with these movies in the future. I'll just tell myself the original 3 are the only ones that exist and leave it at that.

 

[EDantes]

Ended up picking this movie up from redbox last night since I had a free rental.

- Turned it off after 1:15 into it.

I felt like I was watching a movie made for kids around the ages of 10-14. The "humor" was extremely grating, I really just couldn't take the pathetic one liners from the cast in this movie. The original Star Wars movies had some pretty funny parts in them, but this felt like watching an ABC/NBC/CBS sitcom.

I'm not going to waste anymore time with these movies in the future. I'll just tell myself the original 3 are the only ones that exist and leave it at that.

I'm getting around to watching it today; about halfway through and to be honest it look pretty awful, basically everything that people complained about with The Phantom Menace but even worse. (In spite of a lot of cheesy elements and forced cameos, the overarching plot about the Emperor's plan to take over the galaxy in the prequels was quite well done).

So far it just feels like nonstop cheesy CGI action scenes with little to no actual plot, and what little plot there is barely strung together, and almost serves more as just a string of cameos from the previous films.

(ex. The heroes coincidentally find the Millenium Falcon, which they coincidentally know how to operate, and then run into Han Solo's ship all by pure coincidence?)

I guess it suprises me just how fickle these critics can be; but hey on Rotten Tomatoes they gave a highly positive score to Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull as well.

 

[Kid Twist]

I agree, not only did Kylo Ren look stupid (as a human) he was too weird and emotional.

Looking back, I'd give it 2.5 stars max.

I think the 2nd will be pretty decent because it's not Abrams and Luke is the whole point of the series.

 

[Simeon_Strangelight]

I realized only recently that the Star Wars movie is actually a REBOOT of the original trilogies.

They did almost the same as they did with the new Cunt-Ghostbusters.

They changed the rules of the force, made women the main leads and killed off one of the big male old-toxic-masculinity heroes.

In the next movie they can kill of Luke and have the new Super-Mary-Sue-Jedi meet a super-duper-duper female Jedi. Maybe the green turtle will turn out to be a secret female Jedi. She will be her new Yoda. There is a deleted scene in the movie where the turtle lady used the force. So it's likely that she is a powerful force user - maybe they will then claim that she was more powerful than Yoda anyway, which explains why she got the light sword.

In any case - I expect Luke to die tragically and then they will have succeeded in killing off all white toxic males and they will be free to reboot the entire franchise into the full-blown Social Justice Wars.

 

[Kid Twist]

^^^ LOL

Yes, what's funny is that game of thrones has gone full retard, amazingly, in the whole "Girl Power" realm, as well. Maybe there is a race ... to the bottom, as it were. Unreal.

 

[Kaii]

^^^ LOL

Yes, what's funny is that game of thrones has gone full retard, amazingly, in the whole "Girl Power" realm, as well. Maybe there is a race ... to the bottom, as it were. Unreal.

Don't spoil it, but I watch Game of Thrones religiously. It's the same as it's always been. Not sure how you think it's gone full retard. Can you elaborate?

 

[kbell]

The actress who played the Mary Sue has some sort of skin disease which might wrongly call endometriosis.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/daisy-ridley-reveals-struggle-endometriosis-160610316.html?ref=gs

When I googled the disease it sounds like an infertilty ovary disease.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endometriosis


Somehow talking about the disease she has empowering. Having a crappy disease is not empowering at all, I know from experience.

 

[Kid Twist]

^

Lakshmi whatever her name was had it too, a lot of this is a lottery

Another reason why physician assisted reproduction should never take place

 

[Simeon_Strangelight]

^^^ LOL

Yes, what's funny is that game of thrones has gone full retard, amazingly, in the whole "Girl Power" realm, as well. Maybe there is a race ... to the bottom, as it were. Unreal.

Don't spoil it, but I watch Game of Thrones religiously. It's the same as it's always been. Not sure how you think it's gone full retard. Can you elaborate?

Game of Thrones was practically from the beginning a show where the positive male characters were killed off and the Dark Triad ones left alive. Also part of the SJW twist is marooned in the casting where the positive characters were picked as shorter and less imposing than the negative ones.

By now it has turned into a Queen of Thrones:
+ Dragonlady
+ Slave girl counselor
+ Dickless counselor soldier
+ Dickless spymaster
+ dwarf
+ Queen of Thrones - old lady ruling the king city
+ young queen of Thrones ruling the little prick idiotic young king
+ Cersei the maniac idiotic Lannister
+ In the north you have now Sansa Stark (Queen of the North) and Arya Stark the super-assassin
+ In the sea you have the new almost queen of the Iron Islands and her armada, who is a dyke
+ In Dorn you have the king being assassinated by his sister and a bunch of women

So essentially Game of Thrones is dictated by 80% women. If Jon Snow died, it would be all women vs the White Walkers.

I am sure a good portion is by the author with more moxy being added by the TV show creators.

Game of Thrones is becoming a feminist shitstorm. Women vs old toxic masculinity.

-------------------

And back to the Star Wars Justice Wars. That main chick displaying her skin diseases as something endearing tells it all. If a man did that, then he would be met with disgust and scorn.

That is why young male heroes from zero to hero work and female ones don't. Young hot actresses have intrinsic sexual market value no matter what they do. If a hot smart 18 year old Daisy Ridley marries a billionaire genius and becomes his powerful wife, then no one bats an eye. Try doing that as a poor 18 year old streetrat boy. No matter your looks and abilities, you are at first nothing. You build value by learning stuff and becoming a better man. Daisy Ridley automatically is imbued with value. And in addition she learned the force suckling on air.

 

[Leonard D Neubache]

...
Game of Thrones is becoming a feminist shitstorm. Women vs old toxic masculinity...

Anyone who played/followed the Legend Of The Five Rings card game/roleplaying game would remember a period in which nearly all the clan leaders ended up being women. Mysteriously this occurred when a woman was given control over the franchise. For a setting based on feudal Japan it was a real laugh and lots of people I knew simply stopped buying any of the affiliated products.

This was a bit over ten years ago now, so it's nothing new for an SJW to completely ruin a franchise with their bullshit.

Even now, if you Google Images "Legend Of The Five Rings" you mostly get a bunch of women pimped out as empowered mangasluts.