SPOILER FREE DISCUSSION FOUND HERE: The Force Awakens (no spoilers)
Well I thought that since we have a spoiler-free discussion thread already, one that was open to discussing the finer points of the film, including spoilers, was warranted.
For those that have not seen the film, HIT BACK AND GET OUT NOW.
So let’s start. Note: this is LONG.
I enjoyed the film, but I think it tried to do too much in its running time and cover too many elements just to set things up when it didn’t really need to. It also recycled some similar elements from previous Star Wars films for the sake of… recycling them for no good reason that I can see.
My primary issue with the film was that it didn’t give any time for the characters to breathe and just “be” in their element. A great example is when Han Solo gets onboard the Falcon. He never gets a moment to revel in that. Finn at a later point in the film mentions a moment (When Rey first sees him) to Rey that wasn’t held long in the first place, making it hard for anyone to connect it back to that moment so that there’s closure. Or the cantina - we don’t linger on anything at all – the creatures, the atmosphere, we just pass through like it’s all so common and trivial… and the wonder is killed in the process, implying it’s common and trivial.
Editing is also off for what I expect from Star Wars. There’s no longer any dissolve cuts. Where most of the Star Wars movies imply passage of time between scenes with dissolves, this film just cuts from scene to scene with no sense of taking a breath, which IMO is an integral part of why Star Wars works. It has pace and time passes. This rapid cutting also impacted how the music figures into the film. It rarely has time to swell and exist, because the pacing of the film is so cut-cut-cut fast. Scenes were “played out” by the score in the originals, and yet here, we don’t have that happen. That’s a loss.
Han seems to be in the film for comic relief and I dislike that. He’s much older, but they don’t set him up with dialogue that communicates his never-ending search for the falcon in a passionate way. There’s never a moment of childish glee that he’s got his ship back; they start to go there with a discussion with Chewie at one point, and then it just drops off. There’s never a moment when he’s alone with the ship and can just say “hi” to it again, so we can see that he really, really missed it. I blame part of this on Harrison Ford’s age – he’s just not got that energy any longer, and I don’t think that he could muster the character as well. I would have rather they tried to work around that, and make Han out to be much more of a “I’m done with all this” guy, set on living out his life as a shipping / freight hauler, but stumbling on the Falcon and seeing Rey and Finn’s plight rekindles some of his old spirit of adventure and is his call back to action to get involved. He was supposed to always be the “reluctant hero” if you go by The Power of Myth (highly recommend you check out that series by Joseph Campbell) definition, and yet I think they lost that here completely. He’s a plot device and a nostalgia play. I think he could have been better used.
Next, the villains blowing up planets with yet another death star type weapon was unnecessary. Since we never saw the people or the planet(s) that were destroyed until they were destroyed, there was nothing really for us to care about. It almost felt like the script discussion was “well we can’t just have them get in range and blow up the rebels, so we have to make the weapon inoperable for a bit. Let’s work backwards from that. How about they have to test fire it first? On what? Oh an alliance system? OK. Let’s make one up.”
Also, since we never saw the New Order (NO) enforcing their will beyond one planet and two settlements, we don’t know how powerful they are across the system, how oppressive they are, and what they were doing to everyone else. They come across as a fringe lunatic group that has massive resources; very, very dangerous, especially because they’re being commanded by a sociopath, but not omnipresent and scary as the Empire was by any means. They yell a lot and their leader throws violent tantrums when things don’t go his way.
Finally, there’s the rebels. What are they even doing? We get zero sense of any rebellion besides the initial skirmish, and then they just show up as plot devices. Again, I think giving some sense of what the universe is like under the thumb of the NO would have done wonders to show why there’s rebellion (still) and how the NO have taken up the Empire’s mantle of galactic oppressors. We just have to take everyone’s word for it until the NO starts blowing up planets.
And on that for a moment, what a waste of resources. Seriously. Blow up a planet? An entire planet, and workforce, and raw materials? And you just… blow it up? Hell, since this weapon consumes suns to fire, just EAT THE SUN AND LEAVE. Now that’s cruelty; a slow death to every inhabited planet in the system, and leaves a lingering message of their true power for any other systems that would aid the rebels.
Characters & future –
Poe seems fun because he’s witty and charming within his space. We’ll see where they go with him and how he figures into the films down the road. Right now, he’s very one-dimensional and fills the “help to empower Finn” role and that’s about it.
Finn is a wildcard, and I want to like him. I would have really liked more time with him before his crisis of faith moment at the settlement, as we had no idea he wasn’t just some average stormtrooper that’s done this 100s of times before, and his mannerisms didn’t allow him enough time to be conflicted. Also, the strangeness him being the only trooper every seen with their helmet off leads us to this weird “are they all clones minus him?” which is briefly mentioned later in the film during a villain power struggle moment, but that’s not really explained any further.
Rey I like. I like that she’s a savant with just about anything mechanical, and she’s obviously very, very strong with the force (how can she not be Luke’s daughter?), but I wish this manifested a bit differently than it did. I would have loved if this came across as her being less heavy-handed via suddenly focusing and calming herself and becoming uber-asskicker and instead just been her having incredible intuition, timing, and fortune. If the only true moment of her manifesting any sort of power in this film was in the torture scene (which was great), I would have been insanely happy with that, knowing a door has now been opened and she’s going to become a force to be reckoned with.
Kylo I’m hoping has zero chance at redemption at this point. I want him as an evil, cruel force in this new story line, one that exists only to tear things down and make others suffer. I never, ever want to see him redeemed at this point. While we clearly know the levels that Annakin stooped on his way to becoming Vader (killing kids, anyone?), Kylo has already gone past that in my mind. I will be very pissed if we get a Vader-like turn with him at some point. IMO, it should be Leia that kills him in the 3rd film (or has the opportunity to save him, but does not), or the Emperor himself, as Han alludes to. Funnily enough, I don’t care to know more about this character at this point. Just let him be the rabid dog, because I really don’t want to care about him after his actions in this film.
Han I’ve already mentioned, but I think again we just didn’t get enough time of him not wanting to come back in the first place – he’s tired, ashamed of his son, lonely and estranged from Leia, and doesn’t have the falcon – and he didn’t have enough scenes involving Kylo/Ben before his final confrontation for him to be conflicted about confronting his son and that he’s trying to bring him back more for Leia than because he believes he can change. Han was always supposed to go to his death knowing it was coming, as TESB sets up so well, but here, I don’t think he’s given a line that really cements that before he dies. The face touch gesture was nice, but yeah. Not set up well enough earlier on.
Leia needs more space to grow her new character. Age is a factor here as well, but I want to see her take Han’s death and turn that into pure motivation to bring Kylo and the NO down, using the rebellion and her brother to drive that.
With Luke it’s just too early to tell. I think he’ll get killed by Kylo in EP VIII in order to set up the Obi to Luke parallel for Rey. I hope that’s not the case, as it’s so easy to see it coming like that it’s disappointing me already just thinking about it. I’m hoping that Luke goes a bit off-the-rails on learning of Han’s death and realizes he has to put his apprentice in the ground. I would LOVE to see this eventually come down to Kylo as evil rage, Luke falling from the path into burning revenge, and Rey being the true walk-the-line Jedi she’s destined to become.
C3P0 & R2 weren’t in this long enough for me to really like them. I missed C3P0’s antics however. R2 was a plot device and a bad one at that – they really have NO IDEA where that section of the map fits in? R2 had that map sitting around for how long and they never downloaded it? Wouldn’t the rebels have at least a vague map of the entire galaxy? Hell, if Google ever gets out into space you can bet they’ll have recording drones going everywhere mapping everything. You really expect us to believe that this universe is so obviously lacking in information about their own territories that a simple pattern match wouldn’t have eventually found the area? It would have been nicer if R2 was the key - he had Luke’s location and everyone knew it - and was the only thing that could make sense of the encryption key (the mcguffin BB8 carried around) in order to show it. You could have even started R2 in the NO’s possession – hey that would be cool!
What would I have done differently?
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Set up the NO a lot better. Have them oppressing the hell of out everyone, obsessed with exterminating anyone that shows any hint of connection to the force, because they know Jedi could stand up and be a rallying point against them. They’re searching for Luke at the same time because he’s the only one that could train a Jedi force against them. It would have been hugely impactful on Finn to be at one of these “force sensitive cleansings” before we roll onto Jakku, so we understand how vicious and cruel this group is and how far they’ll go to oppress jedi powers. It would have been nice to get a moment of resolve in the face of death from a captured force-sensitive family too, so Finn had a glimpse of what it means to stand defiant as that crack in the armor of the NO’s indoctrination that then snaps on Jakku’s raid.
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Set up Han as stubbornly retired from life, just drifting, aging, and making deals, but not really with his heart in it. When he stumbles on the falcon, that’s the first crack in his crusty shell that eventually, through multiple cracks, gets him back in the fight, back on the ship, and back to Leia. I would have had a scene with him and Chewie discussing the idea too, as it would have given some depth to Chewie in a nice way. He makes his hard choice by confronting Ben, knowing the likely outcome.
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Given Finn more of a setup with the NO so his obsessive fear of them is more warranted (see above). He’s got enough support around him that his growth out of the indoctrination and the lingering after-fear and slow confidence building would work. I would have made him a bit more hesitant to fight at first though, so that you can see development through the film for his character as he grows from “fear of the NO” to “standing up to the NO”
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Likely removed the bar and the Yoda replacement character, given Leia the task of embracing Rey and still having Luke’s old lighsaber, as that would make sense. It almost felt as if Leia was supposed to be running that bar, then they changed it at the last minute in the script, instead going for a female version of Yoda and an exposition character instead.
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Set Rey up on Jakku after being established (and showing how lucky she is for some reason) that she’s captured by the NO and detected as force-capable (i.e. she’s going to be exterminated) before being rescued by the rebels to show them ACTUALLY DOING SOMETHING REBELLIOUS on Jakku. She ends up with BB8 after the rescue goes a bit sour, the rebels are rallied and have to flee from the NO and we’re off from there.
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Removed the starkiller (nice nod to Luke’s original last name there) base weapon, or changed it to be less death star kaboom and more about oppression and control. Honestly, I would have been happy if the rebels just permanently disabled it instead of blowing up another planet, rendering the zillions of credits worth of construction entirely useless unless they want to just ram it into another planet, as it would never get a chance to fire.
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Pivoted the film around hard choice moments being made for each character. Finn makes his early; Kylo makes his choice clear; Rey makes hers in abandoning the idea of her family returning (but surprise! You found them and you don’t know it yet!) and going to seek Luke; Leia realizes her son can’t be redeemed and sets the rebels on the path to stop him and the NO; Han makes two - one to start living again when he finds the falcon, then another to stop living when he knowingly gives his life trying to save his son from the dark side.
So while I just picked at the film a lot, I have to say I have nothing but respect for the creative talents and work that went into rebooting Star Wars in a way that was entertaining and fun. It’s easy to critique from the sidelines after-the-fact. I’ve been lucky enough in my career to have worked on several Star Wars games and with the IP so I’m very passionate about it. I think there’s tons of promise in the new characters and story – I just want it to feel a bit more like Star Wars without just being a repeat of the original three episodes.
So what did the rest of you think? Agree with me? Disagree? Other ideas? I’d love to hear your thoughts on the film.
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) , and I just can’t get behind where they decided to take things. I don’t care if Ford doesn’t want to play the character anymore - there are better ways to deal with that.
