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(Spoilers) The Force Awakens will not stand the test of time and IJBM.

in Media
One foot in front of the other, every day.
I am going to relish the moment the hype finally dies down, people view this film with a fresh perspective, and realise that J.J. Abrams sabotaged his own good work. Because the fandom hype for this film is so utterly insufferable, with lay viewers and critics alike blinded by what amounts to brand loyalty. 

It's not that it's a bad film. It's mostly well done. There are lots of fun moments. There's a fair share of interesting moments. The Force Awakens just doesn't stand alone as a good film; it can't, as too much of its content is dedicated to winking and nudging in the direction of the context established by the original trilogy. For someone entirely new to Star Wars, some things are going to come across as confusing and out of place. For someone familiar with Star Wars, many of the references and repetitions are going to run thin after a small handful of viewings. I'm not talking about the plot-relevant pieces, because those explain themselves thoroughly enough throughout the course of the film. Taking the "piece of junk" Millennium Falcon at the last second out of desperation? Sweet, nice setup that leads our new characters towards Han Solo. Rey having intense visions upon touching Luke's original lightsaber? All good, the Force can run like that and it provides insight to knowledgeable and non-knowledgeable viewers alike. 

Those are examples of references to previous films that make sense in context of The Force Awakens as an independent movie, but link two separate trilogies together nicely all the same. 

It's all the little things on the side. The game board on the Millennium Falcon that activates and puts the film on pause for a few seconds is a great example. When I saw that, I was amused and pleased, but I doubt that'll be the case the second time around. That joke has run its course after the first viewing. Those few seconds of focus on the training droid Luke used to practise blocking blaster bolts. On a larger scale, that we had another Death Star-oriented third act that had nothing to do with the plot concerning the location of Luke. 

For all the things this film did well (and those are plentiful), it's dragged down by its indulgences. To my mind, they're just as bad as Lucas inserting gratuitous CGI into the remastered editions of the original trilogy. Pointless detractors in a film that already had sufficient references to its predecessors in terms of plot, characterisation, and humour.  

The better version of this film is simply a fan edit with unnecessary clutter removed, so we're not so often overtly reminded of the fourth wall. 

Comments

  • I don't think any of us expected it to be a masterpiece.  When I first heard it announced, I expected it to be almost entirely those self-indulgent references.

    It was fun, better than the prequels, and a hell of a lot better than their last Christmas special.  I'm happy with it.
  • edited 2015-12-19 21:28:18
    One foot in front of the other, every day.
    I wasn't expecting a masterpiece either, but I was expecting something a bit less amateur than this. This desperation to reference the original trilogy just took me out of the experience from time to time, and as a result, I didn't get the same "free spirited" experience from the film as I got from the originals. It's as though J.J. was basically terrified of the expectations placed upon him and decided to make a movie to placate the hardline Star Wars fanbase rather to actually reinvigorate Star Wars. This new trilogy was always going to require plot and character connection to the original trilogy, but it didn't need to be joined so desperately at the seams at every possible moment. 
  • "you duck spawn, refined creature, you try to be cynical, yokel, but all that comes out of it is that you're a dunce!!!!! you duck plug!"

    The style is the same, the length is the same, but...

    ...in a whole long post, not a single sentence whining about the inadequacies of lightsaber fight scenes?

    WHO THE HELL YOU ARE AND WHY DID YOU COME HERE IMPOSTER

  • edited 2015-12-20 03:55:12
    One foot in front of the other, every day.
    MY DECEPTION UNVEILED; TO THE SITHMOBILE. 

    Concerning the lightsaber fighting, I thought there was a good balance between character expression and technical actions. Finn doesn't need to know shit 'cause he's an ex-Stormtrooper who's established as an ace marksman, and Kylo Ren's whole character revolves around his emotions getting the best of him -- ergo his wide, sweeping attacks used just as much as psychological weapons as literal ones. Rey's performance is the one I found to be the best; there's this nice panning shot of her parrying several of Kylo's strikes while keeping him pressured with the point, and as much as she seems to love her own armpit, she doesn't send her blows flying too far out for a Star Wars film. 

    Also, I thought it was really cool how Luke's old saber had particular resonance with Rey. I didn't interpret her Force pull of the saber at the end as her being already more powerful in the Force than Kylo, but of the saber selecting her -- like a sword-in-the-stone moment. Shame that she's a Mary Sure to the maximum possible degree, though. I hope she has a really rough time of the upcoming films to redeem that a bit, although that can never be fixed for this movie as a standalone at this point. 

    tl;dr: I appreciated how the lightsaber fighting functioned dramatically in the film, and the choreographers saw fit to throw IRL fencers a bone with some of the techniques (and shots thereof) they decided to include. Can't complain too much about a cast of half-trained sub-Jedi, as much as I'd love to see hypertechnical lightsaber fights that aren't as empty as the prequels'. 
  • BeeBee
    edited 2015-12-20 08:42:21
    Yeah I noticed that Rey went for parry-thrusts more than the sweeping strikes you see in other Jedi fights.  Thought it was a nice variation.

    She's totally a Sue though.  I'd have been okay with her winning the fight with Kylo on account of him having already spent ten minutes bleeding out from a goddamn bowcaster to the gut and taken a couple hits from Finn too.  But combined with the rest of the shit she did through the movie being not only a Force savant but also a piloting and technical savant...I mean, tone it back, yo.   She's only a scavenger on a planet even more destitute than Tatooine and probably has almost no education.  Not even Luke was that ridiculous, and he at least had an excuse for piloting practice.

    Still, Chewie successfully shooting a major Sith is probably his best moment in the entire franchise.
  • "you duck spawn, refined creature, you try to be cynical, yokel, but all that comes out of it is that you're a dunce!!!!! you duck plug!"

    But overally, I like that "changing of the guard" stuff. (Well, except for the part where they kill off... you know, in case somebody ignored the spoiler warning. They seriously made me unhappy with that. But let's go back to the topic.) It's like none of the three main guys knows what to do with that Force stuff. Even the bad guy, while a powerful Force user, is pretty much an emo kid with half-finished training and some serious issues. (Digression: in my language, I'd call him an "emofaggot", but it doesn't sound good in English.) I was surprised that the girl can pilot, her repair skills I can chalk up as a by-product of the scavenging. Likewise the Finn guy's talent for gunnery may come from his marksmanship training. But in every case, it looks like there was some unconscious use of the Force going on in there.

  • edited 2015-12-20 12:33:04
    One foot in front of the other, every day.
    New characters? No problems there. In fact, I'd have it no other way. They didn't seem to get much development, though. Rey is good at everything all the time, and Finn's conflict between his sense of justice and his fear of the First Order is resolved almost as quickly as it's established. As much as some of this stuff can be chalked up to the influence of the Force, that doesn't make it suddenly interesting. It's still pretty bland to see our heroes waltz through every trial they face without any real negative consequences. 

    Kylo Ren is my favourite character for exactly the traits you pointed out. He idolises Vader, but knows deep down that he's not big enough for those boots. But who else knows? Only Han, Leia, presumably Luke, Kylo himself, and us. He's the only character in the film who has unresolved weaknesses at the end that can carry into future films, and it's those weaknesses that make him interesting to me. He's the one with the biggest internal character struggle, and he's failing to overcome it. 

    That's drama, that is, and it's why I'm at the cinema in the first place. 
  • edited 2015-12-20 14:38:33
    "you duck spawn, refined creature, you try to be cynical, yokel, but all that comes out of it is that you're a dunce!!!!! you duck plug!"

    Now that I think of it, Luke's negative consequences were the death of family and the death of mentor. Both lead characters here have no family to lose. Perhaps that's why they killed off who passed for their mentor, apart from a cheap gut punch. 

    I mean, I personally had no problem with the characters in story proving surprisingly good at stuff they're new to. It kind of flew over me. I was more bothered by coincidences, you know, of all the places in the whole galaxy the Millennium Falcon had to be parked in Rey's place, and of all the people in the galaxy Han and Chewie had to stumble on it the first moment Rey and Finn made it to space.

    So, let me now tell you what I didn't like. The reused plotlines, that's what. One would think that after two failed attempts and thirty years, somebody in the Empire would wise up not to try out a Death Star for the third time. It seems that their combat doctrine is "this time we're gonna build a bigger one", feels like. This, and "no way they're gonna do that ventilation shaft trick once again". This is from the in-story point of view, of course. Externally, I've already seen complaints that the Expanded Universe can't come up with a better plot than giving the Empire remnants some yet another superweapon, each of them bigger and meaner than the last one. So when a canonical work does the same, it feels kinda stupid. Then of course the bad guy is a deep-voiced Sith Lord in a black cape and mask, answering only to some shadowed emperor. But at least, that made me quite surprised (in a good way) when he quite casually took it off. (The mask, I mean.)

  • One foot in front of the other, every day.
    lrdgck wrote: »
    One would think that after two failed attempts and thirty years, somebody in the Empire would wise up not to try out a Death Star for the third time. It seems that their combat doctrine is "this time we're gonna build a bigger one", feels like. This, and "no way they're gonna do that ventilation shaft trick once again". This is from the in-story point of view, of course. Externally, I've already seen complaints that the Expanded Universe can't come up with a better plot than giving the Empire remnants some yet another superweapon, each of them bigger and meaner than the last one. So when a canonical work does the same, it feels kinda stupid.
     

    Right. I guess we might say that TFA, in many respects, feels a lot like fan-fiction. Which it very much is, I suppose. I was hoping the professionals would steer it in a different direction, though, and make it feel a bit more fresh. 
  • There is love everywhere, I already know
    tl;dr : So did Luke turn evil or what?
  • One foot in front of the other, every day.
    Yes.
  • There is love everywhere, I already know
    As a person who has never seen a Star Wars movie I still have to wonder if Disney paid journalists to write all those "Luke might turn out evil" stories to throw people off (obviously Disney paid certain people to write certain articles but the certain things part is far less certain that it should be).
  • One foot in front of the other, every day.
    As a person who has never seen a Star Wars movie



    I can read the words but the sentence doesn't make sense. 
  • edited 2015-12-20 17:54:20
    I always assumed I saw every Star Wars movie but within the last year or so I realized I never actually watched episodes 5 or 6 (and still haven't). So something.
  • Honestly what bugged me the most was that Abrams did the same thing as in his Star Trek reboot where everyone can see the horrifying planetary destruction in broad daylight from several star systems over.

    SPACE DOES NOT WORK THAT WAY.
  • "you duck spawn, refined creature, you try to be cynical, yokel, but all that comes out of it is that you're a dunce!!!!! you duck plug!"
    Damn, I didn't notice that. Or more like, did notice but for the wrong reasons.
  • "you duck spawn, refined creature, you try to be cynical, yokel, but all that comes out of it is that you're a dunce!!!!! you duck plug!"
    I just wanted to chime in with some thoughts. By now I have gathered enough informations about the setting, the plot and so on from various sources, so it kind of begins to make sense. The catch is, now it looks like they really made the film for the fans. You know, with an assumption that everyone interested in more than two hours of mindless popcorn-munching will look for supplementary materials. Which isn't that far-fetched, but, I dunno, kind of lazy?
  • There is love everywhere, I already know
    The Star Wars movie was Symphogear?
  • That makes so much sense.
  • ☭Unstoppable Sex Goddess☭
    With Disney's advertising budget (which exceeded the films actual budget) and had basically LIMITLESS merchandising budget, this movie was going to get really annoying real fucking quick.

    As the fags from my highschool once said, 10% movie, 90% merch.
  • The funny part is most of the shots in the preview weren't actually in the movie.
  • "you duck spawn, refined creature, you try to be cynical, yokel, but all that comes out of it is that you're a dunce!!!!! you duck plug!"
    Pissed me off, they did. X-Wings over water was like half of my reason to go watch it.
  • Vorpy wrote: »
    As the fags from my highschool once said, 10% movie, 90% merch.


    That's the whole business model for all these tentpoles though
  • One foot in front of the other, every day.
    It has also come to my attention that this film has far too few swipe cuts between scenes. 
  • I was wondering when someone would mention the somewhat smaller overabundance of gratuitous scene transition effects.
  • edited 2016-04-07 17:15:03
    Finally got around to see it.

    It's the fanfic with the highest production value I've watched.

    Can't say I didn't like it, but as mentioned above, a lot of stuff did bother me (Rey's sueness, Ren's characterization amounting to edgy rebellious son (and looking the part), etc). Hopefully the incoming movies will make these retrospectively better.

    Gotta admit it, I enjoy those "I understand that reference" things for things I like, as long as it's not too in-your-face, and I guess I like Star Wars just enough not to find most of these references jarring.

    (Finally my username makes sense.)
  • One foot in front of the other, every day.
    Unfortunately, I think it's going to become retrospectively worse. Its production quality will be dwarfed one day by another big thing, but A New Hope will always have the advantage of focus and pacing. 
  • I'd actually argue that TFA has the best acting, dialogue, and humor in any Star Wars film, period, but it's not a coincidence that the main problem people have is that it's a retread of A New Hope. It's better than the prequels, and I'd even argue better than Return of the Jedi, but I'm coming from the perspective of a fan who saw Star Wars Poetry on Vimeo and YouTube - I knew about the "cyclical" nature of Star Wars before I saw the film, so it didn't bother me when I saw the references in TFA.

    What will bother me, though, is if Episode 8 and 9 end up being rehashes of Empire and Jedi. THEN I can look back at Episode 7 negatively, but right now, I can say that Abrams played it safe and used it as an anchor between the originals and the sequels while removing the stench of the prequels. I'll take it as a reboot of a new era, but I will not accept the sequel trilogy if it's just retelling shit from the originals.

    And no, Rey is not a Sue because the first thing she does is... crash the Falcon when she uses it, needs to use the Jedi Mind Trick three times on a Stormtrooper for it to work, fail to take the safety off her gun and miss on several of her first shots, get captured by Ren.... yeeah, not very Sue-ish. You can criticize her for learning too quickly, but don't call her a Sue, because she's not.
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