[CountBuggula]

Go ahead and discuss the movie here.  I saw it last night but am sleep deprived because it was at the end of a marathon of Episodes 1-7 and I was at the theater for over 24 hours by the time it was over.  So just a few initial thoughts from me:

• I liked it.  Overall, I found very little to not enjoy and can't think of much to criticize about it.
• I'm a glutton for nostolgia, and the movie was like injecting concentrated nostolgia directly into my veins.  So there's that.
• There wasn't really anything new or mindblowing, in fact it felt more like a reboot than anything.  It was like...reboot the original movie but set it 20-ish years in the future to not mess with existing movie lore.  And you know what?  It worked.  Yes, it might have just reused most of the main plot points from A New Hope and was pretty formulaic overall, but it felt so very Star Wars yet very fresh and interesting.
• The acting was great.  They all really sold their characters well.  And there weren't any characters that I found overly annoying or out of place.
• The Nazi tones were a nice touch.  Very obviously there without feeling like it was hitting you over the head with it.
• They made some cool subtle references to much of the existing Post-ROTJ EU lore without invalidating it all, yet giving them a chance to start fresh at the same time.  Yes, there was a New Republic created.  It's largely irrelevant now.  Yes, Han and Leah got married and had a kid together.  Yes, Luke established a new Jedi Training Academy and was trying to bring up a new generation of Jedi.  It eventually failed and is now irrelevant though, with Luke eventually exiling himself.  Overall, most of the existing EU storyline COULD have still happened in between RotJ and TFA, it just doesn't really matter anymore.  But I feel like that was a huge nod to the fans and a good way of letting everyone get what they want.  Serious kudos to the writers for pulling that off.
• I'm really excited to see Episode 8.  And whatever other one-off movies Disney decides to throw at us.  I feel like the franchise is in good hands.
• There were some great lines.  I'm gonna have to see it again just so I can remember them better. 

  Women ALWAYS find out.

[Dain]

Ok so if we're in full spoiler territory here...

It was obvious that Han was marked for death as soon as he took on the "old mentor" role. Nevertheless his death was far more impactful than Ben Kenobi's death ever was. Ben was an old man who seemed quite nice and who kept popping up afterwards.

Han is never coming back in any form. Han is an incredibly important character and pop culture icon. And he dies at the hands of his own son. Nasty.

On a similar note, the superweapon, while a bit of a retread, was a bit scarier than the deathstar. In the lead up to the film I was rolling my eyes at the power increase. "Now we can blow up entire star systems!". Seeing it in action was a bit different though. That thing has got range! Felt more like nuclear missiles than a big gun. I think the way it was shot with the citizens seeing the beam coming had a bit more impact than Alderaan blowing up.

Other random thoughts:

- I asked a while back if closing the s-foils would have any function in this mod. Well, Poe closing his to fly through the small gap in the wall was pretty cool.

- In fact all the X-wing action was awesome. The tracking shot of Poe in the sky blowing up one TIE after another was fantastic. Likewise the arrival shot of all the X-wings arriving across the water. Also it felt like all the "ordinary" x-wing pilots were actually very competent as well, as opposed to just being cannon fodder. It was nice to see a decent number of alien and female pilots this time.

- Kylo Ren is what Anakin turning to the dark side *should* have been like, rather than his "M'kay I'm going to go kill some children now".

[General Battuta]

I didn't like this movie very much. The characters were fantastic but I thought the script and editing let them down. Most of the back half of the movie feels like it's checking off callbacks without providing the connective tissue that made them work.

[zookeeper]

Well, for sure it was not bad like the prequels. But I probably wouldn't call it good like the OT, either. It did get a lot of things right, though. It was okay.

Basically all my main problems with it have to do with the villains, which were very expectedly the weakest link, because of course one can neither replicate or outdo Vader and the Emperor. I don't mind that Kylo was a bit of a whiny newbie (in fact, in some ways he seemed very much like "Anakin done right" to me), but it was very inconsistent how he was owning everyone in one scene and capable of insane force feats, and then losing to even newbier newbies in a lightsaber fight in another.

And... "Snoke"? Snoke? What the hell kind of a name is "Snoke"? Yo Snoke, wazzup man? Seriously? Besides, what was he supposed to be anyway?

I was a bit confused about the Republic-Resistance-First Order triangle. So the Resistance was fighting the First Order? Why was that different from the Republic? Couldn't the Republic have just wiped the floor with the First Order? What were those planets that got blown up? Where were they? The way it was shown made it look like they were in the same system or something, and only later it was mentioned that the beam was some kind of hyperspace thing. Also, the First Order seemed pretty small, how could they possibly have managed to build something even bigger and badder than what the Empire at its peak was capable of?

Oh, and it was super weird how Rey was able to pull off mind tricks and force pulls without, like... any training at all? How did something like a mind trick even occur to her?

I liked Rey and Finn, the only problems were that Rey got major force powers immediately and Finn had quite a lot of that funny black guy comedy routine.

Surprisingly, BB-8 was not annoying at all. That was a positive surprise.

I figured that Han was the likeliest old character to die, but to me it felt a bit more like they just had to find a way to write him out? I guess it might pay off later.

P.S. The finnish subtitling had a hilarious and consistent mistake: every time, the word "system" was translated as "galaxy", not as "star system".

[Crashdown117]

As a huge fan of the OT (and the old EU) I was a bit disappointed by how they decided to continue the whole thing.
But I have to admit, that they've brought some refreshing ideas to the franchise and that the movie was way better than the prequels (which wasn't very hard to achieve in my opinion):
The storytelling was fine and didn't have that strange feeling to it, like some of the previous films had. The less important characters weren't just all useless and it wasn't like the main characters being the only ones to actually achieve something.
The close combat and dueling scenes weren't so over-focused on acrobatics as they were in the prequels, making for an actual fight rather than some jumping around. It's a battlefield, after all - not a circus.
I liked to see the TIEs and X-Wings fighting in atmosphere and actually serving as kind of an air support for the ground forces. And I agree that Kylo Ren is kind of like the missing link between Anakin and Vader in some way. As for the other new characters: Why do I get the feeling, that Rey is Han's and Leia's daughter?

Yet there is some stuff, I have to criticize:
First off, this movie contradicts the established logical construct of Star Wars in quite some points. Rey is just suddenly capable of pulling off mind tricks a la Ben Kenobi and lightsaber combat. Okay, she sure knows how to handle that staff-like weapon, but a lightsaber is quite different from that. The new villain and heir to Darth Vader is some super badass guy in the beginning - he stops a blaster beam in mid-air and breaks the resistance of Poe in seconds with a bit of Force trickery - and in the second half of the movie he steadily seems to...lose power(?) I mean, he's not being beaten by some Luke/Anakin Skywalker kind of guy or a large number of skilled Jedi, but by a renegade stormtrooper and a little girl. In the fight at the end, he's actually the only one who was TRAINED to wield a lightsaber, yet still he does not just finish off the two with his Force powers.
Also, Rey gets to be the new Jedi AND pilot of the Millennium Falcon, so she basically takes over the roles of both Luke and Han from the OT.
Han's death was necessary, but it didn't drive the plot forward enough so far. Maybe Ep8 will get that covered.
Overall there were the "wrong" revelations. We got to know that Kylo Ren is Han's and Leia's lost son and where Luke was in exile. What the film didn't tell us, are (complete) answers to some of the more urging questions at the beginning of this new story arc. What happened in the years after RotJ? How did the First Order arise? What about that shortly mentioned "Republic"? What became of the Rebellion or did it just change its name to "Resistance"? All these things are just there and I hope, that the missing connections will be made clear in the future.
And Luke doesn't say a single frakking word. He's just standing there, looking at Rey and that's it. They could have ended the movie right after the Falcon departing to search for Luke and there would not have been anything lost or gained.

Overall I think that it was some good Sci-Fi, but maybe not good enough for Star Wars. I guess, it would have been better, if they had decided for either a reboot of the OT or a new story with only new characters. But that's just my personal opinion and I know, that complaining is way easier than doing it right yourself.

[The E]

Saw it yesterday. Short review: If this is what Star Wars is like in 2015, bring it on.

Slightly longer:
It was a pretty good movie. About on par with A New Hope as far as I'm concerned, with a workable plot and engaging characters that I want to get to know better. The score is stellar as usual, the FX work and cinematography are very good, dialogue could use a bit of improvement (There's a few scenes in which characters feel the need to tell us what they're doing despite the viewer already knowing why and what they're doing), and the acting is pretty great.
The negatives: Well, for one, this problem has some of the same problems that JJ Abrams' Trek films had. Namely, that Abrams apparently does not understand what scale is and how to deal with it. Remember how in STID, the Enterprise was the only Starfleet vessel in Earth orbit? Or how Earth, Vulcan and Qo'noS seem to be more or less equidistant?
Well, in this film, we are continually confused by the relationship between the Republic, the Resistance and the First Order; When the superweapon fires, is the Republic now materially affected? What about the Republican Fleet? How could this First Order build a superweapon without anyone knowing about it? Finally, a weapon that needs to suck a star dry in order to power it but which is incapable of powered movement seems like a pretty bad idea....

[Crashdown117]

Finally, a weapon that needs to suck a star dry in order to power it but which is incapable of powered movement seems like a pretty bad idea....

Now that you put it that way, I finally know, what that Starkiller-thing reminded me of: The Star Forge from Knights of the Old Republic. And a masked Dark Jedi/Sith also sounds quite like Revan, doesn't it?

Well, in this film, we are continually confused by the relationship between the Republic, the Resistance and the First Order; When the superweapon fires, is the Republic now materially affected? What about the Republican Fleet? How could this First Order build a superweapon without anyone knowing about it?

I don't think that Abrams himself ever asked a single one these questions. If he had done so, we wouldn't have to do it now.

[est1895]

I've heard that 3 & 5 were better.

[EatThePath]

And it's always possible some of these were addressed more directly in the script, but cut for the sake of flow. I'll be interested to see what the deleted scenes are when we get the disks.

[Phantom Hoover]

i vote lopsided javier bardem as best casting decision 2015, followed closely by 'rhymes with tonal' gleeson

[MatthTheGeek]

I've just seen it too:

- Gotta echo the part about the Resistance/Republic/First order relationships and powerplay. Being the first movie in a planned trilogy (which ANH wasn't 100%), they missed the occasion to lay down some deeper/more balanced universe-building in there. They did kinda compensate by building the characters quite more deeply than I was expecting. It's possible they're keeping the main trilogy centered on the familly plot, and keeping the universe building for the side movies they plan to do.

- You know how I feel about humans, the fact none of the new main characters and only one of the returning characters is alien (assuming that moncal wasn't ackbar and that sulustean pilot wasn't the one from ROTJ) is disapointing, but not surprising : the last thing they needed was another jar jar. On the opposite end, BB-8 is a good nuR2 and they did well not to shoehorn a 3PO replacement.

- A pilot main(ish) character! This is something SW sorely needed (Wedge's character building in the trilogy was so abysimal he doesn't count) and I hope we'll see more of Poe in the future - probably not a tough thing to hope here, since it's pretty much guaranteed they'll bring back BB-8 and that implies he'll follow suit (on this note, I think something that's really missing here is a few shots of BB-8 actually doing something on the back of the x-wing, like R2 in ANH, or Poe interacting with it from the cockpit)

- Rey vs Ren. I've got mixed feelings about this, it seems obvious that even a newbie, at least partially trained to the force, should easily be able to defeat a trooper and a girl that discovered the force like half an hour ago. The way both Rey and Finn were about to land hits on him strongly diminish him as a villain (I mean, even a random stormtrooper with an electric stick did better than Ren with a lightsaber against Finn). However, I've also got that feeling of Rey being very, very strong in the force, in a way both reminiscent of and superseding Anakin, and that it lays down the terrain for her turning to the dark side (I really got early dark side vibes from her in the lightsaber battle) and Ren coming back to the light in future episodes. Just a crazy theory here.
EDIT: actually, I just remembered Ren took a full wookie crossbow blast to the chest prior to the combat. That would certainly weaken him a bit.

- What were they trying to do with Phasma? Maybe they'll build her up later but she's pretty much on the Boba Fett end of the character building in this episode.

And... "Snoke"? Snoke? What the hell kind of a name is "Snoke"? Yo Snoke, wazzup man? Seriously?

yyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyup :|

And Luke doesn't say a single frakking word. He's just standing there, looking at Rey and that's it. They could have ended the movie right after the Falcon departing to search for Luke and there would not have been anything lost or gained.

My feeling with that is that they set up the meeting here so they can start ep8 several months later, way into Rey's training, without needing to put a flashback to set it up.

[swashmebuckle]

It's definitely watchable, but the whole thing felt pretty thinly strung together to me. The characters have personalities so it's already way better than the prequels, but it's also weak in areas where SW is usually strong. The editing of the climax was especially floppy compared to the stuff it's rehashing, and then the extended coda just didn't work at all for me.

The score seemed pretty uninspired at first audition, with the new themes getting buried and the OT leitmotifs getting all the big moments. The title crawl fanfare was just off. I dunno if it was a bad take or poorly mic'd/mixed or it just really misses the 20th Century Fox fanfare to establish the key or what, but it sounded pretty anemic coming out of the gate.

The cinematography often felt more like a modern comic book movie than the 1930s Buck Rodgers jam that the OT is all about, which I think probably contributed to the awkward editing. I was very aware of the camera in several action scenes.

It's 2015 and the talking CG alien characters are still completely unconvincing and immersion breaking. The alien lady who tries to give Rey the lightsaber and Emperor Snookie were both giving me the Jar Jar vibe. Stop screwing around and give us the muppets we crave!

Anyway it's pretty much what I expected after what Abrams did with Star Trek. I am curious to see where this trilogy goes. We've had a trilogy start at visionary and decline to watchable, we've had one start at abysmal and come up to almost watchable, but we've never had so-so as the starting point. The possibilities are...several!

[Phantom Hoover]

The coda was clearly there for the sole purpose of being able to say Mark Hamill was in the film.

[Crashdown117]

assuming that moncal wasn't ackbar and that sulustean pilot wasn't the one from ROTJ

Not sure about Ackbar, but the credits clearly mentioned "Nien Nunb", Lando's copilot from ROTJ.

[coffeesoft]

My opinion, the movie was ok, but many things are horrible.


- Han and Leia´s son looks like a stupid child.

- The new Dark Emperor looks like Gollum, not very scary like Palpatine.

- It was not necessary to create another Death Star, specially in the first movie, and how they build it ?

- Why not Chewbacca pilots the Falcon after the death of Solo, and not the girl.

- Maybe it would have been better to die Leia rather than Solo.

- A couple of guys, without any training, can use LightSabers, the Force, even defeat a Dark Lord.

- Why Luke don´t knows anything about  what is happening...

- And many confusing things about resistance, New Order....



The best was the android BB-8   

[General Battuta]

It's definitely watchable, but the whole thing felt pretty thinly strung together to me. The characters have personalities so it's already way better than the prequels, but it's also weak in areas where SW is usually strong. The editing of the climax was especially floppy compared to the stuff it's rehashing, and then the extended coda just didn't work at all for me.

The score seemed pretty uninspired at first audition, with the new themes getting buried and the OT leitmotifs getting all the big moments. The title crawl fanfare was just off. I dunno if it was a bad take or poorly mic'd/mixed or it just really misses the 20th Century Fox fanfare to establish the key or what, but it sounded pretty anemic coming out of the gate.

The cinematography often felt more like a modern comic book movie than the 1930s Buck Rodgers jam that the OT is all about, which I think probably contributed to the awkward editing. I was very aware of the camera in several action scenes.

It's 2015 and the talking CG alien characters are still completely unconvincing and immersion breaking. The alien lady who tries to give Rey the lightsaber and Emperor Snookie were both giving me the Jar Jar vibe. Stop screwing around and give us the muppets we crave!

Anyway it's pretty much what I expected after what Abrams did with Star Trek. I am curious to see where this trilogy goes. We've had a trilogy start at visionary and decline to watchable, we've had one start at abysmal and come up to almost watchable, but we've never had so-so as the starting point. The possibilities are...several!

These are all my feelings too, the editing really bugged me.

[CountBuggula]

I agree that the ending was a bit weird.  Probably should've ended sooner than it did.

So I feel a bit differently about all the stuff that wasn't answered for us.  Personally, I like the fact that a bunch of that was inserted without bashing us over the head with explanations for everything.  To me, this makes it feel more like it's just a natural part of a much bigger universe, and it leaves a lot of less important details up to the imagination, or to get fleshed out in later movies, or whatever.  For the purposes of the movie, it was only important to establish that those elements were there, not give us a comprehensive exposition detailing the backstory.  It works for me, I guess.

So the lightsaber stuff:
My understanding about lightsaber combat is that it's much more about The Force than it is about physical sword-fighting training.  Being a master fencer wouldn't necessarily make you great with a lightsaber against someone skilled in The Force.  This is made very clear in the original script for Empire Strikes Back, where Luke describes his experience wielding his saber vs the wampa, and that all of a sudden he felt far stronger and more competent than he should have been given his lack of experience.  The Force guides you and gives you insight to your opponents actions, the ability to sense the immediate future, and to an extent can control your actions (how else could they deflect blaster bolts?).  So it's not a stretch to imagine that someone with a very strong connection to The Force would be able to hold their own against another, even untrained.

All that said, yeah, the scene vs the Stormtrooper with the stick that could block lightsabers was kinda dumb.

[jr2]

I didn't like this movie very much. The characters were fantastic but I thought the script and editing let them down. Most of the back half of the movie feels like it's checking off callbacks without providing the connective tissue that made them work.

Agreed.

[Galemp]

I'm mainly on board with Zookeeper's comments.

All that said, yeah, the scene vs the Stormtrooper with the stick that could block lightsabers was kinda dumb.

This should have been Captain Phasma. I fully expected her to be the 'miniboss' of this movie.

Can we all appreciate how REAL all this felt, though? The actors interacted with their surroundings! They picked things up and moved through space! It surprised me how much of a relief this was after the prequels.

[Crashdown117]

Can we all appreciate how REAL all this felt, though? The actors interacted with their surroundings! They picked things up and moved through space! It surprised me how much of a relief this was after the prequels.

Jup. No Jar Jar, no Midi-Chlorians, none of all that stupid stuff and the background wasn't just static. This movie had an eye for details and the plot was neither inconsistent nor was it beyond any belief. Just a little bit to similar too the OT in general and ANH in particular, that's all. And I definitely agree on Phasma vs Finn.