The Force Awakens Reviews

[CMJ]

Sorry, I just saw "Reviews" and dove right in yesterday without really looking for another review thread. I guess that happens when you don't visit much anymore

[Lilaena De'Ville]

It's really ok, I'm not sure if I should consolidate or not, really. :P

[Jedieb]

There's a difference between hitting on some of the same notes and hitting them all like TFA does. And as you can tell, I was picking it apart and frustrated throughout. I remember about an hour in I thought to myself "where would this rank in the series?" - which is kind of troubling if I was that distant from it at the time on a first viewing. When I am really into a movie, I never really start doing rankings in my head as it is still playing.

The only prequel I have become in anyway bitter in regard to is TPM. Hell, in some ways I am more bitter about ROTJ than it, because I really feel like so little works other than the Luke/Vader/Emperor stuff (which may be the best in the series). Other than that, I find large sections almost dreadful to sit through...and it's even worse because so many people hold it up as some paragon of SW. I like TPM less, but at least most people don't regard it as that great (I find it probably better than most, but that's not saying a lot) either. It's easier to defend (for me) a movie everyone else dislikes like say AOTC than it is to bag on something beloved like ROTJ.

I'd rather watch AOTC and ROTS anyday than ROTJ.

ROTJ has too much nostalgia for me to ever be bitter towards it. But I do regard it as the weakest of the OT, by far. I think the film's problems began the second Kirsh couldn't come back to direct. Marquand was serviceable, but this is where Lucas started to grab more and more control. Even as a 12 year old, I knew the Ewoks were a problem. The second they showed an alarm went off deep inside me. WTF? Teddy bears? Really? And when you hear Lucas talk about them as a comparison to the Vietnamese you have to wonder, 'You're comparing a race of people to cannibalistic teddy bears and you think that's a compliment? Stormtroopers were always bad shots, but they were buffoons in that final battle.

But the Jabba's Palace/Sail Barge sequences and the Luke/Vader/Emperor showdown knock the movie out of the park for me. That showdown ended something that had dominated my imagination from ages 6-12. I still remember being the last person to leave the theater because I wouldn't leave until the last credits rolled and the music ended.

[Jaden Luka]

Something that occurred to me earlier is that with almost everything in the movie - technology, character motivations, and the story itself - there is this really consistent theme of aspiring to be the original, and (where possible) overcoming it's shortcomings.

[The First Order is an Empire that is even more Nazi than ever, and they've stripped off a lot of the pageantry and bureaucracy that weighed the Empire down. Instead of a Grand Moff, the First Order gives us General Hux, who is far more keen and competent than most of the Imperials we saw in the OT. Instead of intimidation and propaganda as tools to recruit soldiers, the First Order just snatches kids and brainwashes them to minimise the risk of defection and disloyalty - ruthless, but very efficient. The TIE Fighters have been redesigned to compensate for some of their weaknesses. The Stormtroopers are shown to be as effective as the OT claimed they were. Everything about the First Order is sleek, and clean, and black-and-white (with the odd splash of red). Even the Star Destroyer: it's still the iconic design, but it's ever so slightly more practical.]

Then there's Starkiller Base itself. In aspiring to be the Empire, in aspiring to inform the galaxy that the Imperials have returned, the First Order seeks to emulate it's most terrifying power. Destroying planets is a big deal, and Starkiller Base not only takes out several at once - it consumes your sun in order to kill you. That is even more of a technological marvel than the Death Star was. They aren't stupid with it, though - they didn't build it from scratch at ridiculous "look at how impressive we are" cost, they built it into an existing planet, with an existing atmosphere (free life support systems). There's no vulnerable generator that can be disabled, because the weapon's power source is external. And to destroy it, it wasn't a simple plan: when the Resistance took down the shield (which they barely managed), the weapon was still ridiculously well defended, and it took some not-part-of-the-plan explosives to luckily punch open a hole that allowed a single hot shot pilot to get in there and do damage. The First Order was smart: they compensated for so many of the arrogant oversights that the Empire made... and when the Resistance won, there was no blame, no force choking, no sycophantic excuse-making. Snoke recalled his assets, not to punish them for failing, but because he realised he needed to rethink his strategy and train them to be better.

There's the rest, too. Kylo Ren is an aspiring Vader who wants to drive out the last glimmer of light in him (Vader's ultimate Achilles heel), who takes out his anger on inanimate objects rather than force-choking his subordinates, and who is used by his master not as a tool for intimidation and pageantry, but because he's brutally efficient at what he does. Kylo Ren on screen is everything that Darth Vader is off screen. The New Republic has it's whole moving capital, so that no part of the galaxy feels ignored. The Resistance isn't hung up on trying to "restore the Republic", they're stripped down to the efficient singular goal of kicking the First Order's ass.

It definitely revisits a lot of familiar ground and a lot of familiar ideas, but that in itself serves a narrative purpose. It'll be interesting to see if the characters and factions learn from the "mistake" of using the same tactics. Will the First Order realise that giant superweapons aren't the way to go? Will the Resistance realise that using the exact same tactics as the Rebellion - which barely worked for them this time - is a bad idea? How much will Finn's input change the way that the Resistance fights back? How will Snoke reconsider his tactics, and redeploy Kylo Ren and his other assets in new/different ways?