Saw it yesterday and I'm happy to report that it was good. Maybe not perfect, but I sure as hell had a lot of fun with it. I have to say, seeing the words "Episode VII" appear on the screen before the opening crawl gave me the goosebumps. It feels great to say that Star Wars is back and it's good again!
It was good in the same way Star Trek 2009 was good. A lot of witty dialog with inside jokes. Harrison Ford carried the movie. The plot was a stupid retread of the original trilogy, condensed into a boring mess that doesn't do anything new, but it's an introduction to a new trilogy and can be forgiven.
I really hope the next one builds on the lore, and doesn't just recycle shit. The ancient Jedi temple better be significant to Rey's origin, or even Snoke's rise to power. It better be missing from the archive map for a good reason, other than Luke not wanting to be found. I don't know what the fuck was going on with R2D2 sleeping through all the shit. Maybe Rey isn't Luke's daughter, maybe she's from the Temple and Luke hid her on Jakku because she's a freak show chosen one like Anakin was. Why the fuck didn't Ghost Vader show up to talk to Ben Solo and set him straight?
Snoke could be Darth Plagueis the wise. The real Anakin's father
God I love Adam Driver.
I just saw it tonight with a few friends and I was frustrated throughout and it was a HUGE LETDOWN for me. I know it was hyped to death and many like it but it just didn't work for me. I won't reveal why for now to avoid spoilers but will chime in later on in a few days.
Just came back from the theater. Overall, I liked it! I tried not to get too hyped about it before I saw it, so I wouldn't be disappointed if it want good.
I don't know how sensitive to be about spoilers, so I'll just be safe and tag a lot.
It was a bit fan-servicey, like it thought it might be. It sort of reminded me of (non plot spoiler)
phantom menace, just the way it crammed in references and characters from the original movies.
Some of the reveals were great, and others were kind of slapped on. I liked how (minor plot spoiler)
They reveal the Millennium Falcon in the beginning. I knew it would be in the movie, but didn't expect the reveal. The Han/Chewie reveal was also great an not expected. I knew they would be in the movie from the trailer, and yet the reveal got me by surprise. Some of the other reveals felt kind of "hey, remember this thing?!? Look's it's here too!"
The movie really reminded me of A new Hope(Plot spoilers)
with BB8/R2 having important info, the planet weapon in EP.7/the death star, Kylo/Vader the bar, and the unexpected force user.
There were a few big unexpected plot points. I won't reveal them, not even behind spoiler tags. A lot of it really got me by surprise, I don't want to accidentally spoil any of it for anyone.
It was a lot of fun watching it in the theater. A few people dressed as characters from the movies, and everyone cheered when characters were revealed for the first time. The original and new cast all were great, and it really felt like a star wars movie. It really got me looking forward to EP. 8.
Next time, I would like them to (barely a spoiler)
deviate a bit more, as this movie really seemed to be playing it safe.
The Force Awakens is sort of a reboot, remake and sequel all rolled up into one movie, so in my opinion it's fair that it recycles some of the concepts from earlier movies. It needs to cater to a lot of different audiences, and overall I think they handled it well.
There were three things in The Force Awakens that I didn't really like, none of them big enough to ruin the movie, but here they are all the same:
1. Starkiller Base. Aside from it being an obvious rehash of the Death Star, it wasn't very central to the plot. First, it didn't feel like much of a threat. Yeah they blew up a system of planets, but we didn't really know or care about anyone on there to feel like it mattered. Second, the way the characters responded was also more like "oh yeah, we're also going to destroy another death star on the side". It felt like just a box for them to tick off while they were busy confronting the bad guys. It also went down a little bit too easily.
2. Supreme Leader Snoke. Another Andy Serkis CGI Special. I didn't like the way he looked, nor did he feel very threatening or important. Maybe this will change when we see him for real in the upcoming sequels, so I'll give him the benefit of the doubt for now.
3. Rathtars. Cheap-looking CGI tentacle monsters reminded me too much of the prequel movies and felt out of place in this movie.
Everything else was great. I liked the new cast, the new directions the story is going in, the unexpected surprises, and the whole look and feel of the thing. I'm already looking forward to the next episode. Fortunately this time we only have to wait 1.5 years instead of the usual 3 years.
I enjoyed it.
I thought it was spot on the money. Was far better than the prequels and better than ROTJ in some ways I thought!
I would definitely put this movie above ROTJ if i'm honest, I also kinda prefer where they will go with Kylo Ren as the villain over Vader.
I just watched it. Adam Driver was amazing. And Daisy Ridley definitely stole the show. Still was hoping more from Poe Dameron though.
P.S.> Why the need to cover-up the spoilers? It's a given plot details will be talked about in this thread. I didn't bother to open this thread until I'd watched it. Anyone opening this thread and not expecting spoilers are just doing it to themselves
I could complain, but it really was good.
This movie was the biggest fanfiction project ever produced. The plot was a total rehash. There were many holes, and lots of things unanswered. The biggest disappointments were the fact that the Republic was just as nonexistent as it was in A New Hope. And the Death Star III in the form of Starkiller? Completely unoriginal.
At this point, Disney seems to be intent on throwing out the prequels altogether.
That being said, it was still fun to watch. But amazing? Better than Return of the Jedi? No way. This is a decent movie for the fans. I'm excited for what direction Episodes 8 and 9 will go in though, because they can go in literally any direction from here. However, I hope to God that they don't just repeat Empire and Jedi with the new big 3 and call it a day.
7/10
Come on! Even the prequels were better than ROTJ :D
God, I hope so...Quote:
Originally Posted by Baloo
I watched it a second time yesterday, and it was still fun. Of course nothing beats watching a new movie for the first time, but the rewatchability of The Force Awakens seems to be strong.
I still think the movie would've been better off if it had kept its focus on the race for Luke Skywalker, instead of diverting its attention to that Starkiller Base thing.
I saw it yesterday and I loved it. It was great to see Mark Hamill with full Jedi garb . Starkiller base was cool but the delivery was poor. JJ used the same technique with his Trek sequel with Khan's ship. Ben Solo killing Han Solo took balls but was necessary to make Kylo Ren the evil villain he should be. I bet Rey is either Luke's daughter or a special gifted kid like Anakin. I bet Maz Kanata is another "Yoda type" is in a Jedi in hiding pretending to be someone else. Snoke is not your typical Sith lord. Snoke and Ren prevented Luke from reviving the Jedi with more intent than just "kill all the Jedi". Finn and Poe Dameron are simply the tough guy element to be the counter balance to Rey's female Jedi lead (BTW I have no problem with that, I absolutely adore Rey, she's absolutely awesome). Finn and Poe are just traditional tough guy filler to fill the void of Han Solo. We will just have wait to see why in 2017.
Definitely light years better than Phantom Menace or the Clone Wars, and yes, better than Return of the Jedi. I hate the idea of ROTJ's plush toys running around with spears and rocks against storm-troopers with blasters and AT-STs. I don't buy it. As a kid I wasn't convinced and today I'm not.
I give Awakens an 8.5/10.
My favorites to date...
1. Empire
2. New Hope
3. Sith
4. Awakens
5. ROTJ
6. Clone wars
7. Phantom Menace
I feel they had to play it safe with this movie after the prequels. Awakens is a movie that says "Hey! Look we can still make starwars films that feel like starwars films". If they'd gone risky people may have panned it crippling the franchise.
Finally saw it. Gotta say lots of meh going on there. Some of the cinematography was amazing. No complaints about the good guys. Kylo Ren on the other hand felt really lame. Despite being filmed on film on many locations the CGI still feels like CGI. I expected to hear Stars Wars but the score let me down. Too much crazy shit going at points and yet the story felt like it wasn't moving. Too one liners. It was better than the prequels but not great. It's really frustrating to me. There was so much potential. Many beautiful shoots and attention to detail but it just fails.
I saw this Wednesday. Overall I liked it, better than the prequels, but I didn't like it as much as the original trilogy.
I felt like it was rehashing too much of the same ground.
Ben was obviously a Vader stand in, and while it worked in the sense that he was obviously obsessed with him, he didn't have the same menace. They came out stronger with him, but the moment he took off the helmet he seemed to slide into being a petulant child more than anything.
Got a bit better post killing his dad, so hoping he's a stronger villain in the next one.
And the empire building ANOTHER giant dooms day device that a plucky band of rebel types destroy... give me a break. Whoever is greenlighting these projects would be put to death by now. It's just getting silly now.
All in all it was entertaining with issues.... That said, if we got this instead of the Phantom Menace back in the day, it would have been so much more awesome.
I liked it. The new characters were all very likable and the old characters delivered solid performances except for maybe Carrie Fisher who was a little soulless. Harrison Ford was surprisingly great. It's not a perfect film by any means, neither were the originals, but it is a good and fun space adventure film and that's all I ever wanted it to be.
They played it a little too safe in the plot department but I was expecting them to as they established the new characters. Hopefully we'll see it go its own way in 2017. I'm really looking forward to Rogue One next year since it should be a truly different Star Wars film.
So I saw it today and here's my thoughts:
The Good:
The old cast feels like they never stopped playing these characters.
Rey is a pretty good new hero to take the place of Luke in these new movies.
Lens Flare is no where to be seen.
The CGI isn't too ridiculous looking or out of place looking.
There was also a nice amount of practical effects.
The Bad:
There was still a bit of shakey cam that made me a bit annoyed.
The new music is completely unmemorable. Even the new music written for the prequels was more memorable and better.
It was literally a rehash of a New Hope. While not really bad, it's lazy and unoriginal.
Finn wasn't a very believable character. If he's to be conditioned from childhood to kill why would he suddenly get cold feet on his first mission?
Our new Darth Vader (Kylo Ren) is a whiny spoiled brat who throws temper tantrums. He makes Teenage Anakin look like Spock for crying out loud.
Hans Death seemed a bit pointless and more for shock value than actually being plot related like Obiwan's death was in A New Hope.
There wasn't enough emphasis on the fighter battle at the end.
The Stupid:
The plot is full of conveniences:
-The two new heroes know right off the bat how to use a Lightsaber, and Rey can figure out how to use the force without any kind of training whatsoever.
-When fleeing the New Order on Jakku the Millenium Falcon just happens to be right there for them to use.
-Rey knows everything about the Falcon without ever having flown it before.
-When they escape they escape right into the arms of Chewy and Han, how convenient.
-They go to a new planet to get a new ship because the Falcon is dirty, only to find Luke's old lightsaber to give to Rey, how convenient.
-The New Order has a newDeath StarDeath Planet that they wipe out the Republic with. Let's completely ignore how the Republic let what is essentially a terrorist organization not only stick around for a long time but amass such a huge army and enough resources to build such a weapon in the first place.
-We don't know anything about this new weapon! Oh wait yes we do, we can just attack this tiny part here to blow it up because the Janitor told us! Let's go blow it up!
The Death Planets weapon can somehow fire across systems and hit it's target in minutes(seconds?) after firing. So either it's literally right under the Republics nose, or it can fire faster than the speed of light, since at light speed it would take years for that shot to actually hit it's target, and that's assuming they took into account the planet's movement. Yes I know it's the movies but this is still pretty stupid. The Death Star was at least somewhat believable in this sense since it had to move to it's target first.
The whole thing seems a bit rushed so there's not a whole lot of time to get to know the new characters or develop them.
Overall it was better than I expected coming from JJ, but it still had the same requirement just about all his stuff has. You need to turn off your brain to really enjoy it. Don't think too much, it will reveal the plot holes and stupid. Personally I'm still of the opinion that they should have just left it at Return of the Jedi.
How do you rate it with the other SW movies?Quote:
Originally Posted by TrekkiesUnite118
Well I'd probably rate it somewhere in between the prequels and the originals. For the Originals I liked Return of the Jedi the most, the Ewoks didn't really bother me that much. Empire is 2nd with A New Hope being a very close 3rd. With this new one I think it sits either above or below Revenge of the Sith but not above any of the Originals. I'd need to sit down and watch Sith again to refresh my memory on some of it's stupid. The Prequels I liked Sith the best, then the position of Episode 1 and 2 flip flop.
It's not really a bad movie, or a bad Star Wars movie at that, it just falls into the same trap that it seems a lot of JJ Abrams stuff falls into. To really enjoy it you're required to turn of your brain and not think about anything too much.
I thought Kylo Ren was going to be Jar Jar Binks.
I totally agree. It had been a long time since I had seen the Star Wars trilogy so I watched them last week before going to see the new movie. It was so much like the original Star Wars plot that I was almost bored. I was surprised afterwards to see that the movie was only two hours and change, it felt much longer. I did think it was very well made and would have been entertaining if it was an original idea. I don't think the original Star Wars needs to be re-made but I wish this had been a re-make so I could have just avoided it.Quote:
Originally Posted by Baloo
So many re-cycled ideas in this movie:
- Desert planet with an untrained future Jedi
- Everyone searching for a robot with secret information
- Villain with a mask
- Villains have a weapon that can destroy planets
- Outgunned rebels destroy the weapon against the odds
In every case, the original Star Wars did it better. In the new movie, nobody even really seemed upset that planets were being destroyed; they expressed it much better in the original. Darth Vader was clearly a better villain than some whiny brat. The search for the droids was more interesting and the information R2D2 was carrying was more interesting, too. I mean, really, a treasure map? And then there is the untrained Jedi, clearly done better in the original since Luke needed training. Obi-Wan helped him even after he was dead. Rey could just already do everything.
How come is it that Rey was skilled at everything? I didn't have a problem with her being a skilled fighter or mechanic, given her background, but how could she possibly be that good at flying the Millenium Falcon? Or fixing the Millenium Falcon all at the same time? She was better at it than Han or Chewie even when they were working together! It doesn't make sense. I never figured Han Solo as somebody that was easily impressed, yet he was obviously impressed. It's not like the story needed her to be that good at it. They could have had Poe (an ace pilot) and Finn meet Rey together. Then Poe could have done the fancy flying, Finn do the shooting, and Rey could be the mechanic. That would have made some sense. For some reason, they just left Poe out of the story for most of the movie. I'm surprised they didn't have Rey blow up the super-weapon, too.
J.J. Abrams did the same thing with Kirk in Star Trek that he did with Rey in this movie. A newbie with no experience skips right to being the Captain of the Enterprise / skips right to being the best pilot and Jedi. Whatever happened to character development? This is what kids want today, I guess, everything without having to earn it. I'd rather see a hero that needs to learn or needs help early on.
Some other character complaints:
What was Finn, a sanitation worker, doing in a battle? Again, makes no sense.
What was the point of the chrome Stormtrooper? She could have been a great character, looked cool but they made her a complete wimp. She should have been the Stormtrooper with the baton that Finn battled. That would have at least made her interesting.
What was the point of Poe? He was barely in the movie.
If I had never seen the original Star Wars trilogy, I'd say this movie was great visuals, okay story, unbalanced heroes and weak villains. But since I have seen the trilogy, this movie was a waste of time. :hand:
No shade, but it's so funny that people think Clone Wars is better than Phantom Menace, since Menace is legit that fucking bad.Quote:
Originally Posted by Lan Di
Freaking Battle for Endor is better than the prequels. At least a person can go into watching it without the presumption it might be good.
I think overall my biggest single complaint, aside from the retread of story ideas, is that they used the fact that this is movie one out of a series to be lazy with.Quote:
Originally Posted by Bones Justice
Why is Rey so damned good at everything? Stay tuned to future movies for her mysterious origins that might explain it all!
Kylo was a bit of an ineffective villain? Just wait! Now that he's killed his dad and getting trained by space gollum, he will get better!
Fasma looked cool, but was completely useless? Well, she'll be back with a vengeance is fan reaction is any indication of her popularity!
This movie has the possibility to be elevated retroactively by its sequels, but unfortunately it just was too damn sloppy on its own. It's not that you can't set up stuff to be answered in a later movie... but when such huge swaths of your movie... especially the first in a new series, seem to be absolutely nothing but setting up events/questions to be handled in the sequels, it's pretty crappy to me.
Despite all that, it's still enjoyable. I'll give it that. But it's not a movie that, on its own merits, I'd be thinking about and talking about in 30 years time. Hell, it's been less than a month since I've seen it, and I've barely given it a second thought expect when it's brought up by others.
After thinking about it more, there's another thing that really bothers me with this movie:
Due to them going the easy and lazy route of redoing A New Hope, the Original Trilogy has now been reduced to that of a pointless filler arc. By re-establishing the status quo of a big evil empire versus a rag-tag resistence our heroes celebration at the end of Return of the Jedi is now pointless because in the end they've accomplished nothing.
Just what the hell were they all doing for 30ish years after Return of the Jedi to allow a piece of the Empire to only survive but amass such a huge force and build a freaking death planet right under their noses?
Poe was originally going to die in this movie and the comment about "The plot is full of conveniences", EVERY Starwars film is full of conveniences!!!
Poe's reappearance was too convenient; if not idiotically explained
The only two I can really think of in a New Hope are C-3PO and R2D2 being picked up by the same Jawas after going separate ways on Tatooine, and the first R2 unit Luke buys blowing up. Which the first one can be explained by the two droids really not covering that much distance on foot. The 2nd one is really the only convenient one that comes down to dumb luck. I can't really think of any in Empire Strikes Back, and the only one I can think of in Return of the Jedi is the Ewoks in general. But it's been a while since I've sat down and watched all 3 the whole way through.Quote:
Originally Posted by matteus
I suppose I was too harsh in my criticism of this movie. It's not bad, there is a lot of fun stuff in it. I just wish the plot had been more original. :|
Honestly, I've very mixed feeliings about this one. Trailers were better than the movie, as often.
Hello all!, it's been a long time since I logged into this forum. Thought I pop by to say hi!
Quote:
Originally Posted by tryphon
I agree that the official TFA trailer is better than the movie. Although I did like the movie my first going seeing in the theater. It is not till I watched it several more times afterwards... bootleg of course, where I began to see the many flaws it has.
Just seen this movie last Monday, and was nothing short of a disaster. Had no idea it was going to be this bad as I went in with low expectation since my brother said it was bad. But yeah, this series is officially run into the ground. And nothing short of removing this film from cannon and making another episode 7 will save this franchise. Along with this movie being removed from super corporate Disney hands.
Only good thing to come from this deal is if Disney release the orignal unaltered Trilogy on BlueRay. That is it. Everything else is like I've said. Total disaster. I honestly can't believe how badly they messed up this movie. Like, lol, why is everyone praising this soulless corporate written trash we've just been feed? Seriously. But all will return to normal soon as the hype wears off. But by then it will be far too late. Ep8 is already started on, but ep7 needs enough fan backlash NOW to be scrapped entirely. lol.
Because he was supposed to be dead. lol. Abrams spaztasic writing skills at their best. Why movie is full of plot holes, lore issues and other issues. (ie. Spaztastic editing that flaps faster then a bee)Quote:
Originally Posted by QuickSciFi
When I get back home I'll talk more about the major issue of this flick. Need to step out and get some stuff done. Brb
I'll be waiting...
Total disaster? Seriously? Having watched the original trilogy and prequels (yes those too) multiple times over many months before release, I honestly see nothing wrong with this film. I think you need to stop placing IV, V, VI on some a weird pedestal of perfection...Quote:
Originally Posted by Thief