Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens

It's possible to find something to criticize in the best films, it's possible to find something good in the worst films. I personally have brought up issues that range from the overall narrative to individual lines of dialogue. I'll admit too, the more people fight to dismiss any criticisms the stronger I tend to criticize. Likewise, the more people hate on a movie the stronger I look for positive qualities.

Not to mention most of what we do is nitpicking, analyzing the tiniest details. It's why The Wiki Rule exists.

That one bothered me a bit, in how counter-intuitive it was. Han and Chewie have been partners for at least forty years now, and this was the very first time Han had ever tested his best friend's signature weapon?

Besides, the (old) EU always made a big deal about how Wookiee bowcasters were too powerful for humans to manage, like a kid trying to shoot an elephant gun.

Yeah, it said that the strength required to cock one was way beyond humans, though some had adapters. I guess Chewie's was one? Either that or Chewie had already had it cocked. Or they retconned "requires massive strength to pull back" into "perfectly manageable" or "just a fancy blaster".

I think the most likley answer is Chewie already cocked it, IIRC Han only took one shot.

Perhaps the battle on Takodana was the first ever firefight that Han realized he needed extra firepower without any sort of allied forces reinforcing him as he would grow accustomed to from the Civil War.

___

This may have been posted already before.

I think the dialogue was pretty Marvel-esque in some areas (I kept thinking of GOTG the entire movie), but that's not really a criticism so much as it is a general observation regarding movies and nerd culture in general. Snappy, quippy dialogue and snarky protagonists describe everything from the Avengers to Doctor Who these days.

I think there's a lot of well-written standout moments. I have an undying love for Hux's speech (though a lot of it has to do with the way it's shot and Gleeson's acting), Han and Leia's first meeting feels really natural and subtle. I think any awkwardness in the writing is masked really well just by how good the chemistry is between Daisy Ridley and John Boyega.

It's the difference in a leading duo that got off on the right foot immediately versus a duo like Ewan and Hayden who I think took a whole movie (AOTC) to get used to each other before they could really start selling their chemistry (in ROTS), and even then it's shaky.

TFA is far less quotable than other SW movies though. I mean, we have what? "Traitor!" and "That's not how the Force works!" and what else?

edited 11th Feb '16 9:27:07 PM by HisInfernalMajesty

Less quotable, but while in the theater I could see moments like Finn and BB's thumbs up and the stormtroopers NOPE-ing away from Kylo's rampage getting passed around, among others. Less noteworthy lines, but more noteworthy visual character moments and body language. The internet is a curious place in that now we can quote pictures as equally as dialogue, unlike back in the 70s.

edited 11th Feb '16 9:53:57 PM by Tuckerscreator

The dialogue was okay but I didn't like how modern it sounded. It was less epic and more quippy. Made it feel more generic to me.

The dialogue definitely isn't as iconic or memetic as the dialogue in the OT nor the PT. But I will give that it was more consistent in quality than both trilogies.

In general the dialogue in TFA is much better than the dialogue in TPM and AOTC though .

edited 11th Feb '16 10:19:09 PM by MadSkillz

But at least the dialog didn't have any of the cheesiness of Attack of the Clones.

Attack of the Clones? Never heard of that one.

I give the film credit for not going full blown with this, because when characters talk like that it just gets really distracting and kills any attempt at tension. Han's talk with those two gangs was probably the most guilty part of this for me.

Han always talked like that. "A boring conversation anyway."

My dad commented that the excessive humor in the film took away any tension they were trying to build up. No one really seems to really take the danger seriously. Like Han giddly praising the destructive power of the bowcaster, right before they are overwhelmed and disarmed. Or when he shoots a stormtrooper without looking. The camp on Jakku is being attacked and they have that little joke with Finn always grabbing her hand to lead her somewhere else, and she is protesting that. I would even say even the scenes with characters humorously reacting to Kylo's tantrums diminish him as a threat, like trying to steer clear of your boss' idiot son.

In comparison, think of the scene in ANH where Han is trying to placate the phone call from security over the weapons discharge. The humor is on him trying to be friendly and dissipate suspicion, his pained expression after asking "How are you?" is priceless but everything is riding on him succeeding. Then when he decides to say "screw it" the tension is even higher.

In hindsight, I don't think the movie was actually trying to build the First Order and Kylo up as credible threats. It's not a design choice I personally enjoy, but points for being mildly interesting, I guess.

The humor was there, but I would hardly call it excessive. It was mostly situational humor, and Han and Chewie snarking while in a firefight feels like something that they've probably done quite frequently over the past 30 or so years.

It sure is amazing that, after living like a criminal for thirty years and scamming the most deadline men in the galaxy, Han even survived long enough to visit Ben and get stabbed. He and Chewie both probably expected to get gunned down by some random thug eventually, especially given that neither are especially good criminals.

edited 12th Feb '16 4:41:51 PM by Wackd

I just ran across a plausible explanation for why Han had apparently never tried out Chewie's bowcaster before.

He'd never fired that particular one before. Chewie had built several of them over his extended lifespan, and was always tinkering with them, modifying and upgrading the various examples. So this could be a completely new one or an improved version that Han had never used until now.

It's a bit of a stretch, kind of like the "Kessel run in 12 parsecs" explanation, but whatever works for you...

We don't get to see Chewie being a mechanic enough, so sure, I'll buy it.

Sounds plausible. A bowcaster doesn't look like the kind of weapon you could just buy off some ordinary weapons dealer, and Chewie does have experience as a mechanic.

Regardless of what explanation is given, it doesn't make any (tactical) sense for Han to fire Chewie's bowcaster in that fight. For one, it deprives Chewie of his weapon. Second, there's no guarantee that Han is going to be successful at shooting it. Third, Han's own outlook seems to be more of "Gosh golly gee, let me try!" rather than, Oh fuck, kill or be killed.

It's a moment aimed only at the fanboys. It took me completely out of the scene.

Why didn't the bowcaster have that kind of knockback before, anyways?

In-universe, Chewie likely engineered the latest version to be able to fire explosive bolts.

Out-of-universe, the writers likely wanted to give Chewie a characteristic weapon that was different from the Force users' lightsabers or muggles' firearms.

Speaking of which, I'm quite sad that Han's signature blaster was likely lost with him plunging into the reactor core. It would have been a nice memento for Rey to keep as a piece of Han, especially if Kylo eventually is killed not from a Jedi's lightsaber, but a shot from the chosen weapon of the father he killed.

"I have an undying love for Hux's speech (though a lot of it has to do with the way it's shot and Gleeson's acting)"

Yeah me too, you can see his disgust against the republic and everything they represent.

Actually it would be very cool if Kylo decide to kept that weapon as memory of his father for "helping him" to wake up his true destiny, just to kept his "Mentaly unestable kid" charaterization.

I know it's unlikely, but if Rey had the same Sword and Gun combo that Luke did in Empire at some point, I think it'd be cool, but so would everything from the basic lightsaber to a saberstaff to lightsaber blades emitting from the staff she already uses. But anyway, Kylo getting offed by blaster would be pretty great, and actually a nice bookend to his introduction.

He first appears stopping a blaster bolt, but in his final moments, he's too weak to stop one heading toward him. And it's just a quick, anticlimactic, normal death for a guy that was so strong in the Force.

I really enjoy the Badass Normal characters in Star Wars and think there's far too few of them. I guess that's why Finn scraping Kylo a bit didn't bother me. It's a nice little win for the normies going up against the Force people for once.

I like Badass Normal in star wars, but I think their fights against force-users should be handled very carefully. The Clone Wars did this best: Normal people could provide a match to Jedi and Sith, but only in specific scenarios to level the playing field. Cad Bane had an assorted mechanical trickery to help him win (like jet boots, electric shocks, smoke bombs, random wires, Quick Draw pistols, the like), and Hondo Ohnaka tended to rely on the Jedi going easy on him and on cheating outrageously (like when he fights Anakin, he keeps a tank moving around and firing to break Anakin's concentration).

So basically, "normies" won by wit. But for example, when Cad Bane tried fighting Obi-Wan in a straight lightsaber fight, he's promptly disarmed and beaten in a few moves.

The lesson is: you can fight force-users, just level the playing field with pragmatism and trickery. What I dislike about Kylo vs Finn is that it sort of violates that rule, as it has Finn going on a straight fight against Kylo and surviving for way too long, and the excuse of "Kylo just sucks that hard on everything" doesn't really cut it for me.