Vandalus;842618980 said:
I absolutely loved it. If you can't enjoy that movie (as a fan of the franchise) then I don't know what to say. There were some minor things that I quibbled with but overall, simply awesome.
SPOLIERS AHEAD!!!!!!!!!!
I think it's great that so many fans are happy. I thought it was meh. I thought they forsake good story for trying to string together cameos by the old guard and introducing the new crew. I get why they thought they had to do this, but I think that all could have been integrated into something with a much more driving story.
Really, we have to destroy ANOTHER Death Star? I thought at the very least we would be facing another mechanism of destruction. There was so much re-iteration structurally of other Star Wars movies it was like a re-make. I wanted to see the same characters, seem visual elements, but with a JJ twist. There was no "mystery box" like LOST and Super 8 and other Abrams projects that create drama and tension. The big "spoilers" in this film were pretty tame and I saw them coming a mile away.
The story just sort of preceded A to B to C in s thing of coincidence, characters meeting each other conveniently. In an entire Universe the missing thing you need is always right next door. No, mystery or investigation. Just too much coincidence and easy story-telling.
More than anything, I wasn't buying the back story. We are within the lifetimes of Luke et al and yet from the time of their last destruction of the Empire they have become myths and evil has risen this far. That just makes no sense. Han, Luke, and Leah would all hold huge political power and be mega celebrities, there fading into lore (Solo even becoming a scalawag again) just doesn't compute. His son going to the dark side when he would have been surrounded by good people and good work? I'm not buying that either. It's a forced Oedipal story line to recapitulate Luke/Darth--but it is inorganic.
Almost everyone has the issue with Rey's immediate Jedi powers vs Luke having to train with Yoda for a long time just to move a rock. Kylo Ren just wasn't that scary, nor was his conflict believable. We didn't know enough about him to really care about his inner demons (theses stakes felt flat) And his ass almost getting kicked by a stormtrooper reject (Finn--and I hated seeing a non Jedi wielding a lightsaber) didn't make sense. Why did they install Voldemort as the new bad guy? And why does domination of the galaxy always come down to a few people just playing out their interpersonal Freudian dysfunction...I mean really there is massive battle where civilization is at stake, but for some reason the most important thing is whether Ren or some random desert girl when in a sword fight in the woods. That just relies too much on us "knowing" how Star Wars works rather than any story-driven reason.
I agree that the next two will be better, but this was only a degree better than the 1-3 episodes, not close to 4-6.
