Yep, and so it was… Not that any of that matters now, since Kylo Ren is obviously Han Solo and Leia Organa’s offspring and the official trailer strongly alludes to Rey being the daughter of Luke Skywalker, even though it’s not in the actual film (“The force is strong in my family - my father had it, I have it, my sister has it, and you have it…”). The REAL question I want to ask is who is/was Rey’s mother, if that’s indeed the case?
shrug I actually don’t think it’s important at all. With how thoroughly they abandoned all EU history there isn’t much value at all in who her mother is. She’s obviously out of the picture for the majority of Rey’s life, and given that Luke has been hermit-ing for all these years we can assume she hasn’t been a part of his life either. They’ve thrown out the EU pretty much in its entirety, so may as well keep that going, and in that case it’s not like we’d know who she is anyway. And if they did try to throw a sop in there about Mara Jade being Rey’s mother at this point it would be a meaningless gesture that’s also a waste of a phenomenal character.
The mother can be some random harpy for all it matters to the current SW universe. She’s gone and Luke was gone, and that’s really all you need to know. Which I still maintain is a bastardization of Luke’s character, but whatever. 
Agreed! Seems like they cut a lot of scenes. Simon ( the guy from Shawn of the Dead) he play a creature in Raye’s village and he is briefly shown for like 2 seconds. I bet the extended edition will answer a lot of the gaps and holes we are questioning with cut scenes
2 seconds? That character that Simon Pegg played had like 3 whole scenes! 1 where he gives Rey meager rations, a 2nd where he offers her a lot more for BB8, and again when he sees “his” ship being stolen by Rey with Finn in tow…
Funny enough, I didn’t even realize it was Simon until I saw it on IMDB - that gave me a bit of a chuckle. Also, in case you’re wondering, that character’s name is Unkar Plutt.
Nope..Simon is the creature that is behind Raye in the food line, hunched over with the cargo containers on his back/hump…he also has a long goatee.
The guy at the counter is someone else.. I’m not sure who..unless Simon plays 2 characters?
Or do I have it all mistaken?? I can def be wrong.
Well considering that the guy in the back of the line doesn’t actually have any lines (as far as I can recall), and the other guy does, it makes sense to me that he’s the junk dealer - besides, I have IMDB on my side. 
Saw the film again today with my son.
First up, if you have the option to experience the film in an Dolby Atmos theater, I highly recommend it. The showing today was in a normal theater, and wow what a difference in feeling the film’s sound from Friday vs. today. Also, I hate it when the projector is too dark, which it was today. Ugh. Service your projectors, people!
Second, the film holds up really, really well on 2nd viewing. While the issues are still there, they actually DO stick pretty close in flow to how Star Wars worked. I still hold there’s not long enough scenes to let characters breathe, but aside from Kylo’s sociopathic stuff – which at this point I’m assuming is all setup for what he’s going to become when his training is complete – the new cast is set up well for what’s ahead. I really like Rey, and Finn has a lot of potential.
I’m hoping they don’t loosely follow the extended universe fiction though and make Rey Han and Leia’s kid as well. It would fit better, especially with the dialogue from the bar, that Rey is Luke’s daughter. Dunno. Just my take on it.
Anyway, I’d certainly put it above the prequels in terms of characters and potential. I think we’re on track for some pretty amazing sequels, honestly. Like others have said, if I could have walked out of that film and right into ep VIII I would have done so immediately.
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This statement is absolutely 100% true for me as well. It’s that entertaining - and after all, that’s what movies are for, am I right?
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you may be right…m just gong by what i seen on the behind the scenes video. Im prob way wrong 
Just what if…what if…Luke is Supreme leader Snoke and it playing 2 roles ala Palitene did? LOL… that would be crazy!
I know its not true but I just had to share that.
Luke def is ashamed and afraid he can be used for evil, and to hurt others and that he trained Kylo and is blaming himself for all the destruction and death Kylo has created.
I think Raye is def Kylos twin sister…that she doesnt know about because she was too young
Just watched it today, I really enjoyed it, the first decent Star Wars film in ages.
The only things I didn’t like:
At times it felt too similar to the older films. Some parts were hinting at history repeating itself which was cool, but some (Death Star 2.0) took it too far.
They killed off my favorite character. I understand why, but still…
Kylo Ren should’ve kept the mask on, lol.
Did anyone else think that Supreme Leader Snoke was an actual giant at 1st? I loved how he pulled the all-powerful Oz trick on us.
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the movie was real hype for me, i had such a great time watching it. im not that into star wars, though i have seen it since i was a kid in the 80s. to me, i could care lesss bout the story and inconsistencies since i knew these guys werent going to write us a true masterpiece. the way the movie looked from the trailers, it was gonna be tons of fun to watch and i came out very happy. i know the story has its really glaring issues (i also noticed the parrarel between this and the old), but it sure as hell already blows the crappy prequels outta the water.
i enjoyed all the characters, though they’re so close to dropping the ball with kylo. he was a badass! shouldve left him as one, a real no nonsense cold blooded killer of a villain. but there they went, makin him a ■■■■ emo brat. FUUUU. also poe dameron is the man, i loved the dog fight scenes! this movie is easily my 2nd fav of the year under mad max fury road
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Terrific original post @TempusChaoti. I can’t really argue with any of it, except the scene wipes. I’m pretty sure those were added with the special edition movies and weren’t in the originals.
Most of the complaints amount to wanting more of the movie - so I’m on board with that. They tried to do a lot in one film. I am really looking forward to a home release with deleted scenes that will help fill in some of the First Order backstory. I have the impression that the FO is not as big or as central in the galaxy as the Galaecutc Empire. The Republic still exists but is not involved in the fight (I guess until the Starkiller Base attack). So I think there is some cosmic geography to explain.
The challenge is they can’t make the movie 3+ hours and they can’t use exposition. We would know better what is going on but we would complain that the movie was too long (well, people would, I wouldn’t) and that there was pointless exposition (this actually was a big complaint people had with episode 1).
I think the parallels to the first trilogy are interesting. The movie is arguably completely derivative. But I think this was done on purpose. Its sort of an homage, and there’s even a scene where the little computer animated cantina owner basically says there is no end or beginning its just the same conflict between good and evil with different players. I am able to forgive hackneyed things like the horribly named starkiller base (no worse than Death Star I suppose - you don’t call your base the Death Star if you think you are the good guys…). The big thing for me was the new characters. If you can’t like them you can’t watch the film and enjoy it. But I thought they did a great job making us LIKE the new cast even if we still want to get to know them better.
Hey @GalacticGeek you are correct on Simon. I re-watched the behind the scenes and got confused as they shown the camel creature seconds before Simon and I assumed that was him.
Also…did you guys know that Daniel Craig aka JAMES BOND is the Storm Trooper that Raye does the Jedi mind trick on while in the torture table? The one that releases the cuffs, leaves the door open and drops his gun?
**That’s JAMES BOND!!! lol **
This is probably my one main gripe with the movie, even as I thoroughly enjoyed it. Saying Starkiller Base is much larger than the Death Star doesn’t make it any less of a Death Star, so blowing it up at the end (or turning it in to a sun more or less) seemed like an unnecessary conclusion.
I tend to disagree with this a bit. I thought that every character (except for Leia perhaps) had their moment to shine. Their moment for us to take a look at their life and the world that they function in and I thought that was paced out very well, especially in the first half of the movie, where we got to learn a good deal about Finn and Rey especially.
My one worry is that they’re kinda bringing up these characters to be versions of past characters. Is Finn just going to be the “fly by the seat of his pants” improviser like Han was? Maybe he won’t be a scoundrel, but it definitely seemed as though they were trying to make him out to be somewhat Han-like at times.
Then of course, you have Rey, the poor character living on a desert planet who doesn’t know how much power she truly has. Honestly, it would’ve been much better had they simply put her on a different planet than Jakku.
With Kylo Ren, he certainly had some angsty teenage Vader in him. But I like that he’s both cold and sinister at times and unhinged and chaotic at others. They have a chance to grow him in to a great character if they can make him seem a little less like a petulant kid throwing a tantrum and more like a powerful force consumed by rage. That’s a tough tightrope to walk, but I’m hoping they can do it.
Still though, they do enough, and have enough in their backgrounds to separate themselves from comparisons to previous characters. I just hope that the next two movies can do enough to get away from the similarities and really emphasize the uniqueness of these characters.
Really? When you say dissolve cuts, do you mean where the picture starts going to black on the outer parts and then dissolving in to the middle in a circular shape? Because I saw that a few times.
Also not sure I agree with this. For one thing, they slaughtered everyone in the town on Jakku. That at least showed who they are. I think from that, we can draw any and all conclusions about how they treat other places. Had they spent time showing a montage of the First Order’s evil exploits across the galaxy, I think that would’ve hurt the pacing a bit and I honestly don’t think something like that was needed to convey why they need to be stopped or why the stakes are so high.
We know that they’re what rose out of the ashes of the empire. Now, would it have been nice to give some more detail on how that took place, where the rebels, the republic etc were when this happened and how Supreme Leader Snoke was involved? Absolutely.
Only problem with that though is how to convey that exposition without killing the pace of the movie. In all honestly, I think that information (ie the rise of the First Order) should be one of the offshoot movies. Several years have passed between the events of six and the start of seven. Simply saying what happened doesn’t paint a great picture.
Completely agree. You’d think by now the rebels would have more than what, eight X-wings? They seemed to have more types of ships and more ships in general in the original trilogy. The rebellion definitely should’ve been more of a presence and I think that starts with Leia, who should’ve been more of a force (no pun intended) in this movie.
With Han gone, I’m really hoping she’ll step up and be more of a galvanizing figure for the good guys. A leader, a charismatic figure, a speech giver / troop rall…ier (?) and maybe even someone that can be an influence on Rey in ways that Luke might not be.
Yeah, this was hard. In the end, there’s only so much movie to go around and I think they really had to put the meat of it into establishing the new characters, which kinda left some characters behind in more nostalgia-based roles. That said, I think he did enough, within that context, to establish the fact that he returned to his old life and didn’t want to have anything to do with the rebellion.
Would it have been nice to have drawn that out a bit more? Perhaps. But I think they really had to move things along by the time they got to reintroducing Han and Chewy to begin with. On the plus side, I thought it was really cool that both Finn and Rey recognized the name Han Solo, as it implied that what happened in the sixth movie had real reverberations throughout the galaxy and it wasn’t just a case of the Emperor dying and someone else taking his place.
I really hope not. As much as Episode VII mirrored A New Hope, I really don’t want to see them throw Luke in to the Obi Wan role, only to have him die the way Obi Wan died. To me, that feels like a huge waste of a very iconic character.
Han’s dying did a lot (to me) to establish Kylo Ren as a villain. Yes, he killed others offscreen, in the past, and he has the Knights of Ren, which is apparently… Something (?), but he now he’s killed one of the most iconic movie characters in pop culture history outside of the movie, and within it, he’s killed his own dad.
So honestly, killing Luke does nothing to establish him as more of a villain than what he did in VII. Now would Luke’s death maybe give Rey the motivation she needs to kill Kylo? Perhaps. But honestly, it’s telling the same story again. I really hope they can find something new and unique to do with Luke in VIII.
I liked the Cantina, but man, that whole scene went by WAY too quickly. Han tells them to be weary of everyone and let him do the talking, yet they don’t really set up anyone in the cantina to be threatening other than having two of the characters tell people where Han’s at. Seemed like the scene simply existed to pull Finn away from the group and push Rey to finding the lightsaber (which we still have no idea how it got in to that character’s hands).
It did what it needed to do from a plot standpoint, but it could’ve been handled better. I also think they should’ve ditched the whole “cantina” idea and gone with a different look, on a different “non-Endor looking” planet. You can make a galactic dive bar for lowlifes without giving off such a similar overall aesthetic as what had been done previously.
Now, I get that this is a lot of nitpicking, but I will say that I REALLY enjoyed this movie. If there’s one thing I want to see in the future though, it’s Kylo Ren going down a different path than Vader. I don’t want to him to be Snoke’s apprentice.
For one thing, Snoke’s a somewhat weak character design. He just seems like “stock bad guy.” He doesn’t have a tenth of the imposing presence of the Emperor, and while that could easily be chalked up to movie time, I still think that this is an opportunity to take Kylo Ren’s character and move him beyond Vader.
Have him kill Snoke. Not in a redemptive sort of way like how Vader kills Palpatine, but have it be an action grounded in opposite force. Have him learn what he can from his master and then destroy him. Maybe he even takes his own apprentice and kills his apprentice or leaves him/her to die somehow.
I totally agree that I don’t want this character redeemed, but I’m hoping they can do enough to establish him not just as an evil threat that wants to rule the galaxy, but as a chaotic evil threat that wants to destroy it. There’s not a lot that can be done to raise the stakes on what the Emperor and Vader were at the height of their villainy, but hopefully this can accomplish it.
Overall though, I’d say that this was a great movie. Loved it. Love the new characters, love that they didn’t rely quite so much on green screen the way Lucas did in the new trilogy, loved the humor, loved how the overall essence of what Star Wars has always been to me was so thoroughly captured.
Also loved the remnants of the empire in various places; the feeling that time had in fact passed, and that this was still connected to the original trilogy. I think that it gives us a world with great potential in the sequels provided they can take characters, as well as the overall plotlines, down new and unique roads.
While I tend to have to convince myself that Episode I wasn’t THAT bad and that Episode II and III were improvements over it, I don’t have to convince myself that I liked VII at all.
I loved it, from each new characters appearance and the choices they made to the older characters and where they fit, the air battles, the cinematography, the fight between Rey/Finn and Kylo, Han’s death scene, his reunion with Leia, the Luke “reveal” at the end… I thought that it was a fun adventure that went to many places, accomplished a lot while having so much to convey, and ultimately brought the kid out in me and that’s really the best I could hope for from this franchise. It’s what I’m looking for and on that note, I think it delivered in spades.
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Oh yeah, and sorry to double post, but I figured it’d be better not to add on to that behemoth above, but two small things here…
The acting and the dialog were, to me, leaps and bounds above the new trilogy. Where Hayden Christiansen, Natalie Portman and Ewan McGreggor seemed rather flat and almost stunted in their line delivery at times, I thought that the actors in this movie really showed range and the quality of the dialog seemed to enhance this. I don’t blame Christiansen, Portman or McGreggor for that though, as I’ve seen all of them be much better in other things.
So yeah, I think that the dialog helped a ton, and the acting was a definite cut above. These two things, perhaps more than anything else, led to my enjoyment of the film and made everything seem more natural and familiar, while still providing a great adventure to take in.
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Whenever you see good actors in a movie and their performance seems bad you have to look at the director. In the case of the prequels, it’s Lucas. I’m not someone on the “lets bash Lucas” bandwagon because he gave me a huge gift that basically defined my childhood. I think he is a visionary and a terrific VISUAL director. But I don’t think he knows how to work with actors. I think they were trying to capture the formal, uptight nature of relationships for Jedi and Republic high officials, but it just came off as wooden and stuff.
My favorite scene in The Force Awakens is the one where BB-8 tells Rey that Finn stole his master’s coat and she charges at him. And Finn is looking around like “wow, she’s ■■■■■■■ wait, she’s coming for me?” There’s no lines of dialog, but their personalities come through and it’s funny - which makes both characters more relatable. There just wasn’t any of that in the prequels. I give JJ Abrams a lot of credit - he did a good job making me like characters that could have been completely overshadowed by my childhood heroes in this film. Somehow I want to see episode VIII because I want to know what happens to Rey, not because I want to know what happens to Luke and Leia.
Good points, I agree for the most part. Some of my issues:
–Probably my biggest gripe is the lack of exposition. We have zero idea as to what happened between ep. VI and ep. VII. The overall climate in the galaxy isn’t explained at all. I understand that a lot might be explained in the future, but we are discussing TFA here, not a new trilogy as a whole. Where does the FO get such an insane amount of resources, why the hell does the Republic need a resistance, why did Ren defect to the dark side and many other questions are unanswered. This issue hurts current events as well. Like, omg the death star XL blew up the capital system, but why am I supposed to care? They didn’t even mention the name of the system or those planets.
So yeah, the events in the movie lack a background. You can’t afford that SEVENTH film into the franchise.
–This one stems from the first one, it’s pacing. This movie is basically one action scene stacked on top of another and it goes at a breakneck speed. You know, it would be nice to cool your jets once in a while and provide some exposition. But the worst offender is the final part of the movie. We discover that there is a system-destroying base, like, 30 minutes before the end and it is blown up 15 minutes after that. NO TIME TO EXPLAIN, GET INTO AN X-WING AND BLOW ■■■■ UP. Also, why didn’t they have BLOODY BOMBERS (Y-Wings) for this mission? Why did FO did such a ■■■■■■■■■ job of defending their super-weapon? Why was it so easy for ONE person to disable the shields?
–There are some characters I didn’t like. Ren. I understand what character development is, but a whiny, incompetent, unintimidating kid as a villain is a massive detriment to this movie. Maybe he will be more menacing later on, but in TFA he is just pathetic. Now, who lacks character development, it’s Rey. She is a strongindependentandable woman right off the bat, i.e. a Mary Sue. Whatever she does, she excells at. Discover the existence of the force and in a day with zero training effectively use advanced force powers? Don’t mind if I do. Defeat an ex-Jedi Knight in a lighsaber fight while holding the lightsaber for the first time in your life? Peace of cake. I’m just gonna leave it here:
Overall, it’s a decent and enjoyable, but ultimately disappointing movie that struggles to stand on its own.
…but she’s NOT a perfect shot. She had to fire twice to kill a Stormtrooper, because she missed the 1st shot.