What I have noticed is that this movie only fails if you keep up with the franchise as a whole and watch it as \"Part 7\" of an on-going story. But if, like me, you watch it in a vacuum and haven\'t seen any of the prior movies then you might like it more.
I think that honestly the movie fails on its own too, without all the previous \'baggage\' of the other movies. JJ Abhrams is a mediocre director at best.
For example, Force Awakens never give us a proper introduction to Rey\'s skillsets making it up on the fly (unlike for example Luke, we see him carrying guns, piloting his speeder, and boasting about being a pilot) the tone is all over the place, the pace is always rushing without taking a second to breathe and properly explain what\'s going on (We just escaped Jakku! Oh wait we are in a ship with monsters, we escaped the monsters and now we\'re in a cantina! Oh no the cantina is being attacked) and in my opinion, worse of all, the level of noise is such that it muffles the soundtrack by John Williams. How daft and amateurish can you be to direct a scene where the soundtrack is completely muffled by explosions? And I\'m not even touching his camera angles, shaky cam and numerous cuts that barely let us see what\'s going on.
I can't really fault the character work, more than enough was done to establish Rey, her situation and her skill set. And the constant forward pace isn't really a bad thing either for the sake of creating an exciting action adventure. For me it's the last minute introduction of Death Star 3 that dragged the movie down. That really sealed the movie as New Hope knock off stuff. They could and should have done literally anything else to better establish how the bad guys get back into power.
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It\'s difficult to compare anything made today to A New Hope because it\'s such a landmark of film culture. It had plenty of clichés, but also genuine innovation that has been copied so much it\'s hard to appreciate today, like combining space opera with western and jidaigeki.
But for me the big problem with TFA is that it was technically competent, but not trying anything new, which is the opposite of what the prequels were. A new empire, a new death star, ragged rebels once more. I would have preferred the trilogy to focus on the New Republic rebuilding itself and a different Sith menace emerging, though seen through a POV on the ground to avoid the stifling politics of the prequels.
Stories don't tell us monsters exist; we knew that already. They show us that monsters can be trademarked and milked for years.
- Skull Writer:
I have to agree with maninahat on these points, I also never thought that the characterization was wrong or that the pace was too fast. I thought the movie did well enough in those points.
I don't see how.
I also never noticed this either, probably because I don't care as much as you do for the soundtrack made by him.
- maninahat:
Yeah, I can see that point of view. I myself didn't care that much but that's understandable. I think a better idea would have been to make Rey's story a soft-reboot and the First Order would have been the new villains.
- What I have noticed is that this movie only fails if you keep up with the franchise as a whole and watch it as \"Part 7\" of an on-going story. But if, like me, you watch it in a vacuum and haven\'t seen any of the prior movies then you might like it more.
About that argument, there are two problems.
Firstly, it\'s called \"episode 7\" for a reason. The Empire Strikes Back is called \"Episode 5\" because I\'m expected to watch Episode 4 before it and it sets up the events of Episode 6. There is a reason James Bond movies aren\'t numbered, each of them is essentially an independent adventure. That\'s why it\'s not a problem if I watch Goldeneye before Diamonds Are Forever. There aren\'t many references to each other and I can easily understand the plot of each, regardless of whether or not I watched anything that came before. Most of the time at least. But Star Wars were never like that. The movies build on each other and you\'re expected to know the movies that came before before going into the next one. If that\'s not the case her, then it being called \"Star Wars ep VII\" is false advertising and I have a right be complain about that.
And secondly, this isn\'t entirely true, as some things ARE clearly intended for the fans of the old movies. When I see Ford\'s character, I\'m supposed to thing \"Oh shit, that\'s Han Solo!\" instead of \"Who TF are you exactly?\". When the opening crawl tells me \"Luke Skywalker disappeared\" I\'m supposed to know he was a major figure in the rebellion that overthrew the Evil Empire, and not ask \"who\'s Luke?\". So not knowing the previous movies still undermines some aspects of the experience.
Personally, I feel that the movies wouldn\'t be AS bad but they wouldn\'t be good either. At best it would be a popcorn muncher that would kill some time but which I\'d forget 5 minutes after leaving the cinema.
I\'m past thinking I\'m really going to ever change anyone\'s opinions on this subject, especially after it went and became a culture war issue (thanks Russian trolls!), but I will say that where the film failed for me, it was as an attempt at, yes, being A New Hope 2.0, but where it succeeded for me in the theater was as a character drama. It was on the heels of Mad Max: Fury Road, and I appreciated the decision to make the film\'s emotional core revolve around a henchman trying to turn his life around again.
And while I never gave a toss about Rey\'s family drama (I was mildly interested in whether or not she might\'ve had some previous Jedi training or something, but whatever), I did at least find her likable enough, and all that \"Mary Sue!\" bullshit is unfortunately telling, since she doesn\'t do anything Luke didn\'t do far, far more egregiously in the first film, and everyone gives him a free pass \'cause nostalgia. (To say nothing, prequel-heads, of Anakin in The Phantom Menace, for all that that one\'s a hit below the belt.) It\'s a movie main character being a movie main character, as movie main characters have done since the dawn of time. It\'s always a treat when something like North By Northwest bucks the trend, but let\'s not pretend this is some weird new trend in cinema.
Rey was likable enough and worked as part of an ensemble cast. I don\'t love any of the sequels, and everything about Starkiller base is bleh, but I\'ll at least stump for this first film being a perfectly sound foundation, and not deserving to catch flak for the incompetence of its successors.
...Well, there\'s my piss into the wind. C\'est la vie.
...I wish I knew why I can sometimes edit comments and sometimes not. Oh well.
- N Ninja:
Reminder that Star Wars is the same franchise that released Episode IV before Episode I was even a thing. We are talking about the same franchise that released episodes in backwards order, it proves my point that such episodes can be enjoyed in a vacuum.
Then I hope you do the same with ep. IV, after all, the fall on the same boat.
Some, not all. I am speaking from personal experience here when I say that this movie can be enjoyed very well without knowing much of what is being referenced about.
Since when is this a bad thing? Are you expecting for every movie to be this magnun-opus that revolutionazes cinema as a whole?.
- Spectral Time: I agree with all your points.
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The Farce Awakens
I've seen a lot of complaints that this move is basically a rehash of a New Hope and there is a lot of truth to it. But there is one key difference.
A New Hope didn't have 6 films to build on.
When we're introduced to the empire in the New Hope, we understand that there is some big country ruling the galaxy. When we're introduced to the Rebels, we understand that not everyone likes the empire. We understand why when the empire blows up Alderaan. We're introduced to the Falcon when Luke and company need a ship to fly off Tatooine and we're introduced to Han the Smuggler because they need a smuggler to smuggle them out. All of these things work because the New Hope introduces us to the universe we've never seen before and we know nothing about.
Then the next 2 movies happen. And then the previous three.
And then we're introduced to The Farce Awakens.
Now TFA introduces us to the First Order and the Resistance that resists them. But in the previous (chronologically) movie the Empire had fallen and the new Republic was seemingly restored, so... what is it doing about the First Order? This set-up would've worked if the conflict was "out there", outside of the Republic's boundaries, but the Empire was supposedly ruling the Galaxy, so where is this "out there"? And if the First Order is the remnant of the Empire, why is the New Republic not actively fighting them? Star Wars always had just enough politics to make us understand what is going on, but now we don't. Apparently, the creators thought that they just needed to tell us "order bad, resistance good" and that's enough, but the result is just confusing. Muh Rey Sue finds the Falcon in the sand, but what's it doing there? It's not some random ship she needed to get off Jakku, it's a ship we've seen being used by Han and Lando in the previous movies, and seemingly still in Han's hands. How did it land on Jakku? She then meets Han the Smuggler, but why is he the smuggler again? The plot doesn't need him to smuggle anything and it doesn't make sense for his character. In the previous movies he was in debt with Jabba, but then Jabba was killed along with his debt. He got some serious character development and became a major figure in the rebellion, finally, he fell in love and scored a hot princess for a wife. Then TFA happens and he's back to smuggling because reasons. JJ wanted Han to be a smuggler because we remember him as a smuggler, but in doing so he forgot that things happened in ANH for a reason, and as a result, he undermined his entire character arc. The Death Star being built by a huge empire made sense just as it made sense that destroying it would deal a heavy blow to them but wouldn't win the war by itself. But the Starkiller Base? It's a huge feat of engineering and technology, not something that can be built by a broken remnant that would have a fraction of the empire's power at best. And if they somehow built it, then destroying it would definitely cripple their ability to wage war, if not destroy them outright. The launching of the base not only creates a precedent of an energy bolt that can somehow travel interstellar distances but also serves no point. Destruction of Alderaan demonstrated the capability of destroying planets which established the dramatic stakes for the final battle, forced Team Luke to change plans since Alderaan was their destination, and, since Tarkin blew it 1 minute after promising not to, established that the Empire could not be trusted taking away the possibility of diplomatic resolution and explaining why military victory is the only option for the good guys. The Starkiller base has none of the plot relevance of the Death Star and only exists so that JJ can tell George "My balls are bigger". Finally, Luke Skywalker. After the Emperor and Anakin died, he was the last known Force user in the galaxy. He was the hero of the previous story. So where has he gone now? In the first line of the opening, we find out that he disappeared. Disappeared from where? We didn't know his situation after the war. There are unexplained 30 years of events after the previous Star War, which means we have no way of knowing the significance of Luke's disappearance. The end result is that we know what the heroes are trying to accomplish but we have no idea why.
This is the result of JJ making part one of the series at the point where part one has no business existing.