Disagree on Finn - he's a Cowardly Lion with a good heart, but struggles between his need to do the right thing and his need to survive.
In RWBY, every girl is Best Girl.
The main protagonists have no backstory. They're both loners who grew up without a family.
Immediate self-contradiction.
I have a difficult time even saying Ren is Anakin 'done right'.
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>Immediate self-contradiction. You are right. I wanted to write "next to no backstory", but word count limit is against any nuance. However, the "loner without a family" is a lame justification for what I perceive as laziness. Just to compare with OT, since we all seem to agree it's a remake:
- Luke has friends and family and it's a plot point.
- Leia has family, allies and status in the Rebellion and it's a plot point.
- Han has enemies and his best buddy, and his enemies become a plot point later.
Only Poe has something, and he's only a decoy protagonist.
I haven't seen 7 yet but the originals weren't perfect for backstory either.
Luke kind of spontaneously decides to become a Jedi after his father after meeting Obi wan, and his whole family gets killed by the empire, his life is destroyed and that's the impetus for him to leave, but one scene later he doesn't seem to care and it's never mentioned again in the whole trilogy.
@Electric Nova The point's not that the prequels were perfect. The point is that at least they did try to give some backstory and motivation to the characters.
When Luke's adoptive family is killed, he has a personal reason to go after the Empire.
I still can't figure what Rey's motivation is to go after the First Order, outside of a generic "the force did it" (which is the lamest justification for lazy writing) or she's just Good and the First Order is Evil.
Rey didn't have a motivation to fight the Order... and that was kind of the point of the film I thought. She spends most of the time running and being afraid of the Order and afraid of being outside to comfort zone of her homeplanet. But once Kylo becomes personally involved in her daily affairs she's forced to confront her fears head on. She's now actively pursuing her dream of a "family" with Luke, who will presumably train her and give her a reason to fight the Order (you know if avenging Han and protecting Finn aren't enough).
The originals may have been far from perfect with backstory, but they had it. And they had story. I liked the way this film began. A few too many similarities to the old ones, but done fairly well. But at a certain point it sort of became just action scene after action scene. Star Wars has always had action, but there seemed to be very little time devoted to storytelling in this one. It didn't help that what little time was devoted to storytelling was the same story we've already watched, of course.
Really? Kylo Ren seems to be everything that the haters had against Anakin in the prequels. Except, he's even worse considering he throws genuine tantrums.
@Bluesteel. I get your point, but the storytelling didn't manage to express this to me. @Valentorg. I agree wholeheartedly. @The Real Yuma. Except Christensen can't act whereas Driver can. Also, Kylo's lines are waaaaay less stupid than Anakin's. Look at his dialogue before killing his dad (OMFG spoilers!!!!!111!!): is he asking for help to redeem himself? asking for his da' to kill him? And then suddenly moving back to the Dark Side? Or is he subtly manipulating him to lower his guard from the beginning? What doesn't help is that whatever your interpretation, he is clearly NOT lying when delivering those lines. That's not just decent, but good writing.
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An overly respectful remake that takes no risk
This is a rehash of the original trilogy, updated to current social norms. The protagonist cast is racially diverse, with a strong woman protagonist. There was a lot of ado about this... because here's the sole innovation by The Force Awakens.
The main protagonists have no backstory. They're both loners who grew up without a family. Strangely, they're both extremely able socially: trusting, flirty and able to bond immediately. They both walk on the edge of blandness. You can see John Boyega struggling, to give Finn some depth, against the bonds of a character so generic. Rey straddles the line of Canon Sue. (As a thought experiment, swap around Rey and Finn's genders...)
The original trilogy used well constant quipping between characters. It served to establish differences in motivations and outlook, then growing trust and bonding. The prequel trilogy did OK with that: Ewan McGregor salvaged all that could be on that front. Here, the pressure to jump from one action scene to the next leaves no room for character development. Protagonist starting motivations are understandable. It's difficult to guess why they trust and care for each other so rapidly. Only supporting characters grow, resolving some issue: Han, Leia and Kylo Ren. Leia and Han have the only non action scenes with emotional depth.
Kylo Ren is one good element. As Christensen proved, this archetype, a conflicted, not all-controlling, not larger-than-life villain is difficult to render without looking flat or whinny. Competing against the icon of Vader being impossible, scenarists did the best they could: making Vader an unreachable icon in context. The film goes out of its way to spell out Kylo is not Vader. While the storytelling expedient of Kylo's mask (wearing it when acting tough like granpa, removing it when vulnerable) lacks subtlety, it is subverted once to show which side he's growing towards. Kylo is Anakin done right, nothing new.
It's still a good movie. It'll please fans wanting a Star Wars of better quality. The movie wasted enormous potential: while Empire and Jedi brought new and exciting things to the formula, while Clones and Sith tried playing with it, Awakens recycles ingredients that made its predecessors great. Like Kylo afraid of being himself, Awakens is afraid of being its own movie, preferring to be a copy over the risk of failing as an original piece.