[Klaustrophobia]

...and yet, it's NOT objectively better, or there wouldn't be a massive debate all over the interwebz about whether it's good or not.

What, so you've never watched a film because it won or was nominated for Best Picture?

Absolutely never.  I wouldn't even know if it got one.  Also have never and will never see a movie because of a director or actors.  My sole criteria for watching movies is "is there a good chance I will enjoy watching this?"  A question usually answered by trailers, or the fact it's a sequel to a movie I enjoyed.

[NGTM-1R]

...and yet, it's NOT objectively better, or there wouldn't be a massive debate

If you think objective fact can't be widely disputed, you must be living in some other dimension.

[MP-Ryan]

If you think objective fact can't be widely disputed, you must be living in some other dimension.

This.

To briefly break it down:
-Acting:  Light-years better.
-Character Development:  There's more development and 3-dimensional characterization of Rey, Finn, Poe, and Kylo/Ben in one movie than Luke/Han/Leia/Vader in three.
-Set design and effects:  A New Hope has the edge in terms of cutting-edge tech; TFA managed to more seamlessly blend the tech with real sets.  It's pretty incredible that nothing in TFA is obviously/blatantly/painfully CG (granted, saw it twice).  ANH was the same.  I might be willing to call a tie on this.
-Writing:  Plot holes and missing exposition I lamented earlier in the thread aside, the writing itself was much better.  You care about these people, what happens to them, and what is happening in the galaxy.  I never got that feeling in ANH.  It terms of the story, its much tighter in relevance than both TESB and ROTJ, and still marginally better from the perspective of entertainment than ANH.  I could take my wife to this film, and she'd enjoy it.  She's tolerated through the OT thus far.
-Cinematography:  Abrams is a much better director than Lucas, and the way this was filmed shows it.  To be fair, the tech limitations on Lucas were greater, but this is comparing the four films today without being fair to tech advances, so TFA wins.

The only reason anyone would view any of the OT films as being objectively better films overall than TFA is nostalgic preference.  As a stand-alone entity, TFA is the better film.  Doesn't mean I don't still love the OT.  And you all can thank my wife as the reason I pegged onto this

At any rate, I have neither the time nor the inclination to engage in a line-by-line argumentation of this point, it was more an observation than anything.  People can feel free to disagree if they want, but if they'd like vindication, track down someone who's never seen anything Star Wars, sit them through TFA (no nostalgic advantage), then the OT, and ask them which is the best overall film.  I think TFA will win out every time.

[karajorma]

Writing:  Plot holes and missing exposition I lamented earlier in the thread aside, the writing itself was much better. 

"The food at the second restaurant was so much better than the food at the first one, if you ignore the turd in the side salad."


Yeah, the food might have been objectively better but you're not going to enjoy it as much now. You're going to keep looking for other turds and regardless of whether or not you find them, your enjoyment of the meal is ruined. I guess your objectiveness depends on how much the massive plot holes pull you out of the film. And this isn't just based on nostalgia. I said to the friends that I watched the film with that I'd say it was better than A New Hope if it weren't for the lazy plot line.

It's still a good film. But nostalgia works both ways. If this wasn't a Star Wars movie people would be ripping the **** out of it over the plot line. But it's got Han Solo and all the people we loved in it so we give it a lot more credit.

All I can say is that I can't wait for the Plinkett review.

[StarSlayer]

All I can say is that I can't wait for the Plinkett review.

As you pointed out it was overall a good film, with a few tweaks it could have been a better one.  TFA doesn't strike me as potentially great fodder for our favorite critical homicidal basement dweller.  I felt his perspective was more from a filming expert than a Star Wars technical geek.  The prequels had a treasure trove of issues to examine both fundamental all the way down to the minutiae.   The overall plot, the pacing, cinematography, directing, casting, character development all had problems that were apparent to the layman and even more so to a film expert.  These issues were the ones that formed the core block of his review, not not nerding out that hyperspace can't do this according to this bit in some tech manual.  There are certainly some legit plot hole gripes to be had with TFA but a by and large most of the stuff Plinkett pointed out in the prequels were rectified with this one.  I can for example certainly describe all the characters without resorting to physical appearance or occupation.

[karajorma]

He has reviewed the Star Trek films too though. And a lot of his complaints about the Abrams Trek apply here too.

Yeah, a lot of the biggest complaints were resolved but I'd love to see him tear holes into the new ones that appeared in their place.

[zookeeper]

People can feel free to disagree if they want, but if they'd like vindication, track down someone who's never seen anything Star Wars, sit them through TFA (no nostalgic advantage), then the OT, and ask them which is the best overall film.  I think TFA will win out every time.

Well, those peoples' impression isn't objective either. They still look at and rate the film through a lens, it's just a lens formed solely by non-SW films. Sure, your point isn't that not seeing the OT makes one an objective movie critic but (presumably) only that you'd call their ranking of the two films objective because it's not affected by prior experience, and if that's the correct understanding then I'm sure you can appreciate how one can reasonably disagree on whether that's an appropriate use of the word "objective" or not.

I don't think anyone would object if you said that "the vast majority of people today who haven't seen any SW before will like TFA much more than ANH", but that's a very different thing to suggest than "...and that means TFA is objectively better than ANH".

[karajorma]

Now ask the same question of people in the 70s.

The Force Awakens is a modern film. Of course it is going to be more appreciated now. The question is whether it will be equally appreciated in 30-40 years when both films would be considered old.

You would hear that the modern film is the better one of the two if you took people who had never seen Trek and made them watch JJ Abrams Trek vs Wrath of Khan. If you're going to tell me Nu-Trek is objectively better than Wrath of Khan I'm..... well ****, I have nothing I can say to anyone that idiotic.

[Luis Dias]

Han Solo was alright but pretty much just Indiana Jones.

The funny bit comes when you learn that Harrison Ford was cast for Indy precisely because of his Han Solo character, so....

All I can say is that I can't wait for the Plinkett review.

Red Letter Media gave it thumbs up. Their "Half in the Bag" episode was pretty spot on on both the good bits and the bad bits, and they also have a funny video from before the release trying to pin down and guess the entire plot. It's amazing how many things they got it right.

If you're going to tell me Nu-Trek is objectively better than Wrath of Khan I'm..... well ****, I have nothing I can say to anyone that idiotic.

Don't go there, I don't want MP Ryan coming along and reporting you for name-calling him .

[karajorma]

Even Plinkett has admitted that no one cares about Half in the Bag.

[Klaustrophobia]

Some call the writing objectively good, I call it objectively bad.  See how easy that is?  You don't get to simply declare your own opinion the objective one.

The writing to me was awful.  The ONLY reason I thought the movie was even as good as b-level was the cinematics.  I could give a **** about character development (which I don't even agree was anything particularly noteworthy) if the characters exist in a stupid story.  But really, my reason for thinking the writing to be awful rests on one major failing - explaining the damn plot.  Having a reason for literally ANYTHING in the movie to happen.  Space Nazis.  Because we said so.  New Republic.  It's there, didn't you hear us mention it once, and read the opening crawl?  The resistance.  Because we need some good guys and can't be bothered to explain why we're ignoring the supposed new government.  I could go on, but I really don't want to.

[Luis Dias]

You're judging a movie based on what you wanted it to be and not on what it really is, that's your problem. The "Republic" is a republic. We all understand what a Republic means and we definitely do not need a 7th movie explaining what a republic means in a Star Wars movie. The Empire is gone and is now the "First Order". Reasons for its existence are just hinted at, but so was the case in ANH (wherein it's thrown somewhere in the middle that the emperor has just got rid of the cumbersome senate and so on).

The movie is focused not on these big political and technological backdrops but in the characters and in bringing about a new generation of heroes and villains into the story in an emotionally satisfying level.

It acomplished that perfectly. That they skipped a few minutes explaining better how the galactopolitics were at the time is a small sin. Star Wars for me was never a story about politics, but about family, love, camaraderie, between choosing good or evil, idealism on the brink of technological terror (shadows of a nuclear cold war past), and adventure. From all those points, it scored great. And that's all I can ask about a movie made in Hollywood.

[karajorma]

I don't know. I think it suffered a lot compared to ANH because it was quite obviously the first part of a trilogy. Compare it against something like Fellowship of the Ring and you might see my issue. Too much of the film was almost 4th wall breaking "We'll explain this in a later film." It's one thing when the audience are expected to wait for the next film for answers, it's another when even the characters seem willing to do the same.

At no point in FotR did I feel like the characters were being told "Do this and we'll explain why in The Two Towers." Everything the characters did had an explanation that felt logically consistent at the time. But in TFA no one seems to question why R2 is powered down, or why Luke went away. Sure the question is answered at a very superficial level, a bunch of his apprentices died and he blamed himself. But why would anyone have faith in Luke to put the universe right when he'd already walked away from the whole thing at one point? Why would you trust him? Why would you expect him to come back? Sure Han and Chewie know him, but everyone else seems to have a lot of faith in him for absolutely no reason. This sort of thing does pull me out of the film. Not just when I'm discussing it on the internet, but when I was in the cinema watching it for the first time. It didn't feel like something the Luke who went to Cloud City just to rescue his friends would do. Certainly not without a hell of a lot more explanation.

In the original trilogy these sorts of questions never really arose. Even when Luke says that he feels there is good in Vader, or Vader reveals that he is Luke's father, there's no reason to question it, even though we've always previously believed that Vader was simply an admiral choking bad guy.

As a trilogy these sort of questions may or may not be answered. Or maybe we can make up our own explanations for them. But each film in a trilogy should stand on its own. The actions of the characters should make sense based on the information they have available (once again, cf FotR), and in that respect I tend to feel that TFA had some real issues.

[Galemp]

Throughout the trilogy ... none of the characters ever seemed to have legitimately changed. (At least in a progressive and believable way)

Luke went from frustrated and naive, to impatient but loyal, and finally to courageous and serene. That's a phenomenal character arc.

Han went from callous and self-serving to a leadership role. Vader went from brutal and self-loathing to self-sacrificing and loving. Even smaller roles like Lando saw development over the course of a single film.

Yes, there was character development in TFA, but the internal struggles of the OT cast were hardly insignificant.

[Phantom Hoover]

You're judging a movie based on what you wanted it to be and not on what it really is, that's your problem. The "Republic" is a republic. We all understand what a Republic means and we definitely do not need a 7th movie explaining what a republic means in a Star Wars movie. The Empire is gone and is now the "First Order". Reasons for its existence are just hinted at, but so was the case in ANH (wherein it's thrown somewhere in the middle that the emperor has just got rid of the cumbersome senate and so on).

The problem is that TFA establishes that there is a Republic and a Resistance, and that they are separate entities, and then spends the rest of the film conflating them.

[Akalabeth Angel]

This.

To briefly break it down:
-Acting:  Light-years better.
-Character Development:  There's more development and 3-dimensional characterization of Rey, Finn, Poe, and Kylo/Ben in one movie than Luke/Han/Leia/Vader in three.

3-dimensional characterization? Yeah Finn REALLY seems like someone who has been raised since childhood to be a soldier.  Just like Gamora in Guardians of the Galaxy really seems like someone who has been raised since childhood to be an assassin.  Both isolated from society and likely taught to dehumanize the "enemy" and yet both are quickly shown as caring, selfless well-adjusted and sociable individuals.  Thus both hollow, meaningless backstories with no impact on how the character operates.

Finn - The guy raised since birth to be a janitor soldier, assigned to the one of their most important retrieval missions. Traumatized by death and terrified of the empire but runs headlong into battle, killing his former comrades both on the hangar, the deathstar, the falcon escape, and on the smuggler world, coming to Rey's aid in the market, getting his jollies off on threatening chrome dome for having the audacity to tell him to keep his helmet on ("my word! what a heinous villian")

Rey - Girl who has lived her life being independent and dealing with people constantly screwing her over,  almost instantly trusts a completely stranger, running away with him and pleading with him to stay. Kind-hearted except when she's bullying and stealing valuable droids from other scavengers.

Yeah real believable characters there.   har har

-Set design and effects:  A New Hope has the edge in terms of cutting-edge tech; TFA managed to more seamlessly blend the tech with real sets.  It's pretty incredible that nothing in TFA is obviously/blatantly/painfully CG (granted, saw it twice).  ANH was the same.  I might be willing to call a tie on this.
-Writing:  Plot holes and missing exposition I lamented earlier in the thread aside, the writing itself was much better.  You care about these people, what happens to them, and what is happening in the galaxy.  I never got that feeling in ANH.  It terms of the story, its much tighter in relevance than both TESB and ROTJ, and still marginally better from the perspective of entertainment than ANH.  I could take my wife to this film, and she'd enjoy it.  She's tolerated through the OT thus far.

Much tighter in relevance? What does that even mean. Other than the fact it's an evasion of simply saying it's a much tighter story, which it isn't.
Again a simple question, what is the story of Force Awakens?  The answer is that it doesn't have one.  It has two stories, completely unrelated, one of which is solved deus ex machina @ the end.

And as for the Galaxy, what's happening in it? Who are the First Order? What is the Republic? Who are the resistance? The movie doesn't establish any of this.

The only reason anyone would view any of the OT films as being objectively better films overall than TFA is nostalgic preference.  As a stand-alone entity, TFA is the better film.  Doesn't mean I don't still love the OT.  And you all can thank my wife as the reason I pegged onto this

My wife prefers the Prequel Trilogy to all of them. Complained that despite great characters and acting the Force Awakens is just the same story, again. Anecdotal opinion doesn't count for much in an objective discussion.  The reason your wife prefers TFA likely isn't because it' s a better film. It's because the central protagonist is female. Ask her what she likes best about the movie and odds are she'll say Rey.

[Phantom Hoover]

akalabeth how do you find so much effort to devote to disagreeing with people on forums

[Akalabeth Angel]

akalabeth how do you find so much effort to devote to disagreeing with people on forums

How do I find so much energy? They sell it at starbucks by the pound. Dark Roast Coffee. Komodo Dragon Blend. Served over Ice and copiously consumed.

[Luis Dias]

You're judging a movie based on what you wanted it to be and not on what it really is, that's your problem. The "Republic" is a republic. We all understand what a Republic means and we definitely do not need a 7th movie explaining what a republic means in a Star Wars movie. The Empire is gone and is now the "First Order". Reasons for its existence are just hinted at, but so was the case in ANH (wherein it's thrown somewhere in the middle that the emperor has just got rid of the cumbersome senate and so on).

The problem is that TFA establishes that there is a Republic and a Resistance, and that they are separate entities, and then spends the rest of the film conflating them.

Incorrect. The distinction exists clearly. The Republic is the regime that the Resistance as a movement fought for it to survive the empire.

But in TFA no one seems to question why R2 is powered down, or why Luke went away. Sure the question is answered at a very superficial level, a bunch of his apprentices died and he blamed himself. But why would anyone have faith in Luke to put the universe right when he'd already walked away from the whole thing at one point?

If by "superficial" you mean "glaringly at your face", then I could agree with you. Hell, it's right there in the crawling introduction saying how Leia is trying to track down Luke, and you only have to watch Kylo Ren to know why would she do such a thing. And R2's explanation is flat out told within seconds. I'm really not getting these things. I'd love to go around poking fun and joking about what I truly found lacking in these movies, but you guys seem interested in such irrelevant nitpickings.

Yeah Finn REALLY seems like someone who has been raised since childhood to be a soldier.  Just like Gamora in Guardians of the Galaxy really seems like someone who has been raised since childhood to be an assassin.   A hollow, meaningless backstory with no impact on how the character operates.

His first mission was to kill the village he was born (AFAI could listen), and he just couldn't cope with it. It's not that hard of a concept. Within an army of thousands or millions, you'll have "defects" like this one. His character "arc" is what he does next, when he realises he has to do something different to what he has done so far. And he *does* have a character arc. From borrowing a new fake identity to cover his ass, to befriend new people, to try to save them, to snap off and try to flee the whole ordeal and finally coming back to do the right thing. He's fumbling all the way through, which feels right and believable.

Denying he has a decently written character is silly. Drop it.

Finn - The soldier raised since birth to be a janitor soldier, assigned to the one of their most important retrieval missions. Traumatized by death and terrified of the empire but runs headlong into battle, killing his former soldiers both on the hangar, the deathstar, the falcon escape, and on the smuggler world, coming to Rey's aid in the market, getting his jollies off on threatening chrome dome.

He wasn't traumatized by death, he was traumatized by the slaughter.

Rey - Girl who has lived her life being independent and dealing with people constantly screwing her over,  almost instantly trusts a completely stranger, running away with him and pleading with him to stay. Kind-hearted except when she's bullying and stealing valuable droids from other scavengers.

"stealing valuable droids", ok that's a sign you're just trolling now. He saved that droid's ass and you called that "stealing". Come on, shame on you. He doesn't "trust" a complete stranger. She has good reasons to believe he's from the Resistance: he knows what happened to the owner of the droid (jacket, etc.), and he saves her ass by pushing her from Tie bombers' ordinance. You don't have to trust a "complete stranger" to realise this guy is on your side and if you want to live with such low odds, you'll take whatever help you got, questions later.

And if you don't even realise that fighting wars together has a unique quality to bring people into skyrocketing trust levels, then I guess you never have had family people fighting wars and telling you stories about it. Good for you.

Much tighter in relevance? What does that even mean. Other than the fact it's an evasion of simply saying it's a much tighter story, which it isn't.
Again a simple question, what is the story of Force Awakens?  The answer is that it doesn't have one.  It has two stories, completely unrelated, one of which is solved deus ex machina @ the end.

Name the Deus Ex Machina. Name it, and god forbid you **** up what "deus ex machina" means.

And as for the Galaxy, what's happening in it? Who are the First Order? What is the Republic? Who are the resistance? The movie doesn't establish any of this.

Where's Coruscant? Where's Jar Jar? What about the economic trade markets that are operating within the galaxy? More importantly than anything else, whatever the **** happened with the Ewoks? I mean, this movie should have had established EVERYTHING that happened beforehand! We know this is what should have happened because it's right there in the Manual of Excellent Movie Writing, written by none other than God himself!

NEVERMIND that in ANH the only piece of news we get from how the politics works in this whole new world is that the "senate" was dismantled in the middle of two other sentences. And that there's an "emperor". Somehow, this seems enough. In TFW, similar hints on how things are now operating are just too little for all these new generation of brains to fill in the blanks. It must ALL be laid out plainly or else it's "bad writing".

I respectfully disagree*.

My wife prefers the Prequel Trilogy to all of them. Complained that despite great characters and acting the Force Awakens is just the same story, again. Anecdotal opinion doesn't count for much in an objective discussion.  The reason your wife prefer TFA isn't because it' s a better film. It's because the central protagonist is female. Ask her what she likes best about the movie and odds are she'll say Rey.

Now that was just plain rude and unbecoming. Please learn to have a "asshole detector" and have it scan your words before hitting Post.


*rewritten in order to abide to a very questionable reading of the third commandment of the Bible

[Dragon]

Don't bother, he did the same thing at the thread in FoTG board. That's why it's closed now (it was a bit redundant, TBH, so it isn't a big loss, but still). If you waste your time on trying to explain every little detail to him, he'll either ignore or don't understand you. He's just a troll who couldn't care less about having fun from the new Star Wars movie, instead derailing threads about it with arguing over minutae (while never picking on any actual issues the movie had, like everything with Starkiller base's physics).

Oh, and my parents like the prequels, too. I liked them too when I was a kid, precisely for the reasons many people dislike them (Anakin was a kid my age doing badass stuff. Nuff said). You just need not to take them too seriously, especially episode I (which is pretty decent if you think of it as "Star Wars for kids"). I still think they aren't as bad as people make them out to be, though not particularly good, either.


Back on topic, I kind of feel that truly answering the question whether TFA is better or worse than the OT movies would be better left until after the next two episodes come out. It is a very good movie, but it does suffer by too blatantly being the first part of a trilogy. ANH was a "complete" movie with a few sequel hooks, while TFA leaves so much hanging that if taken alone, it'd be enough to take it down a few pegs. The character development we do get in TFA might be a bit larger in scope than what happened to the original "Power Trio", but I felt it kind of lead nowhere when the movie ended. It's up to the next two movies to bring about a satisfying conclusion.