Having worried considerably longer than most people, I saw the flick on new years' day.
GOOD:
returning characters
- fluid action style pacing/scenes (*unlike frozen stage direction of Lucas)
- entertaining characters
- immensely convincing/smart use of Empire ships and battle destroyers
- good evil character (the general guy not the Knights of Ren fella
BAD:
- Really just a set up for act two
- little screen time for Mark Hamill
- Rey gets her powers so quickly without training (unbelievable unless she's of Skywalker blood and an oddity)
- Snoke looks poorly made. Unrealistic
- cheesy battle at the end where the ground breaks up conveniently isolating the two
- c'mon. .. with THEIR budget! ???
-rehashing the old series with a possible change (kylo and ren ... twins? .... ... Evil baddie general a twin? A shape shifter? ..
Anyways. ..... theories? .. thoughts?
SPOILERS !!! Ignore my post if you don't like spoilers !!!
GOOD :
- nice visuals, I felt like I'm watching action taking on another planet, not like action taking on in a small room with green screen walls like in almost every scene in the prequels
- BB-8 is cute and funny, just like R2D2 before the prequels
- it's nice to see Harrison Ford actually acting and looking like he gives a shit
- I like Rey (the character, not the actress)
- the movie actually starts slowly and lets us know our characters as humans, I would actually love if the beginning was even slower. Character development is so seldom in modern movies.
BAD :
- I have no clue who are the villains, who are the heroes and generally what's going on
- who are the First Order, how much power exactly do they have ? Who are the New Rebellion (no idea if that's the correct name), how much power do they have, how many of them are there, who is financing them ...
The old movies were simple - the Empire is bad, and it's actually an empire, the Rebellion is good, they're trying to destroy the Empire and convert it back to the democratic Republic. This VITAL information is missing in this movie.
- the new Death Star. It's stupid, boring and feels forced. I had a feeling like I suddenly switched to a completely different movie. I thought (and still think) that Kasdan and Abrams didn't have this in the script, but then some Disney official came and said "C'mon people, this is Star Wars, we have to blow shit up " so they rushed to get it in. The sad thing is that if you remove the new Death Star subplot (or "scene") it would be the same and maybe even better movie!
- what exactly is the new Death STar? Is it a real planet inside which they built a machine? Is it another space station? Why does it have earth and trees and vegetation and shit? Again, important information is missing.
- after the destruction of the DS which you would expect was the climax, suddenly the movie continues and basically does not even mention the DS
- I was seriously hoping ILM would return to models, they STILL didn't learn how to do realistic spaceships :-( Just like the new Star Trek movies, the spacecraft looks like taken from a videogame
- the plot - the plot is the same as Star Wars with some twists from The Empire Strikes Back
- the lightsaber - why does the weird monster lady have it? And why the the sabre "speak" to Rey? What's going on?
- who are the miliatary guys? What's the "chain of command"? Are they above the new Darth Vader or is he their boss or is he just an "outside observer"?
- who are the stormtroopers? They apparently are no longer the clones of that New Zealand guy, because one of them is a black guy. So who exactly are they now ? Seriously, why does this movie think explanations are dumb?
Final thoughts :
- a GOOD movie, but it has nothing in it which would make it LEGENDARY as the original trilogy. And much, MUCH better than the prequels.
- I think Rey will be Luke's daughter and not Leia's
It's definitely high up there, and definitely just as good as 'The Empire Strikes Back'. JJ Abrams managed to bring back the good things about Star Wars, improved the weak aspects of the film. It's an obvious homage to 'A New Hope' and the storyline develops in quite a similar way, with some more interesting twists.
Looking back now 'A New Hope' is a weak film in term of storyline, which seemed like a predictable fairy tale in space. Everyone holds it in high regard for being the first Star Wars film they saw, and the impact it had based on cinematography was outstanding for the time it came out, but in all seriousness the film had weak acting, weak dialogue, among other flaws.
I hear ya. As for the stormtroopers not being clones, that's merely an inconsistency that was brought up in the prequels.
In the "war room" (with the round table) in episode IV (or was it this one. .. episode VII) it's alluded to that they're dispatching troopers and not clones.
The clone wars are alluded to a few times when Luke first meets Obi Wan.
- if you follow things Lucas has said about the films, his initial thrill was to recreate Saturday morning serials (prior to television episodes) where you'd enter the story "mid-plot" and the initial bit would remain a mystery until it's alluded to later, if at all.
- yeah... The two full CGI characters look terrible. Maz Kanata and Supreme Leader Snoke.
.... that light saber was presumably dropped in EMPIRE Luke fought then dropped away from Darth.
... she MUST be drawn to it like a necessary event (Lucas wanted to rip off bits of the Isaac Asimov series FOUNDATION which followed a series of "coincidences" foreseeable in the future)
I'm guessing her flash backs are the give away that she's related (*also given that each of the trilogies focuses on another generation of Skywalkers)
- some have suggested that it could be Obi's kid. But that makes no sense given the cultish way of the Jedis. Only Anakin seems to have deviated from that cult (*by having children *)
- taking too much about a fictional film, my energy would be better used elsewhere. ;)
.... also. Kylo said he sawa land with vast water and trees when he was mind reading Rey. (*exactly where we wind up at the end with Rey on a mountain)
... but then again .. every charlatan says "the girl will be found near water" when looking got significance in murder infestations etc. ... it's simply too vague.
It would be great if the whole thing was a ruse and he truly had no idea.
In terms of overall placing, I'd say it's on par with Return of the Jedi. In some ways, it's better, in other ways not.
1) The Empire Strikes Back
2) A New Hope
3) Return of the Jedi / The Force Awakens
4) Revenge of the Sith
6) The Phantom Menace /Attack of the Greenscreen