Poe Dameron

 

Just saw it again. If Rey was 5ish when left on Jakku (definitely with alien junker guy), she would know her dad. At the beginning of the movie she says she thought Luke was a myth.

 

So, if she's a Skywalker, she possibly would have to have been with her mom or other family. She never says her parents left her, only that her family was coming back for her.

Not if someone wiped her memory.

 

If only we knew of a character who were adept at messing with people's minds...

 

Superman from Superman II?

Actually, I don't recall Jedi ever doing that. Either way, I don't believe that's where they're going. If there's mind manipulation it might be more along the lines of Rey feeling compelled to stay on Jakku.

Not to get all sciency but photons do have mass

How does that work with the Theory of Relativity? Doesn't mass approach infinite as you approach the speed of light?

Yes, at first Ren was shown as being super powerful. Then as the movie went on we learned more about him and saw that it wasn't the case. In fact I'd say that Snoke explicitly saying he has to finish his training shows pretty clearly the JJ and Kasdan meant for it to be obvious that Ren isn't all that powerful yet.

I can somewhat accept that with the caveat that the series is in trouble as none of the villains are living up to the billing.

However, do you think the average movie-goer walked out of the theater believing Kylo Ren was supposed to be a relative weakling? If not, I'm still looking askance at those that are giving him a pass. Or even calling him awesome.

Ren STOPPED A BLASTER BOLT IN MIDAIR and held that **** there for like 3 minutes. That's pretty dammed powerful.

Someone still needs to explain to me the whole notion of stopping light from moving. Also, anyone want to take a stab at how Newton's first law works here? What force caused the bolt to start moving again once he let it go?

Any physicists around care to explain what would happen if light stopped moving?

Rey is supposed to be 19. Pablo Hidalgo (who is on the Story Group) said that Kylo is 29-30, born pretty soon after Endor. Rey is around 5 when she's left on Jakku, and Han calls Luke's apprentice a "boy," so him being 15-16 for that turn would work.

They must have gotten busy while the Ewoks were still yup yupping. That's a very tight timeline.

One character was supposed to be a super strong Jedi and a hero. The other is a childish wannabe Sith. They may behave similarly, but one of them fits the description given by the film, the other didn't.

When Anakin was in action, I had no problem believing that he was very powerful. As far as pure physicality goes, he easily outclassed Ewan McGregor.

Yes. Thank you. I had that exact argument with a "victim" last night. She just didn't get how this "all powerful" bad guy could be all whiny like Anakin, while displaying very few of his actual "chosen one" powers. I was taken aback, since the movie made it very clear he wasn't all-powerful, and asked where she heard he was the chosen one. Not every whiny dark-sider is Anakin, people!

Well, we'll see. In the first part of the movie, that is indeed how he was presented. I'm hoping you're right. However, it's not yet clear that this is the direction the film makers are going. It may well be that they just dropped the ball.

But even if he is just a whiny brat with no power, I'm not sure that really makes me feel better. So far Snoke isn't impressing me at all, so that would be two villains that are underperforming. Three if you count Hux, whose most direct comparison is Tarkin. And Hux ain't no Tarkin.

One thing I am finding really interesting about Kylo Ren:

 

Friends who I'd describe as SW Fans, (the type of people who have seen every film in the OT more than 5 times who were salivating for TFA) universally love Kylo Ren. Basically echoing a lot of the comments we've seen in this thread about how Driver does a great job in the role and this is the "Anakin we've been waiting for."

 

Friends who I'd describe as SW Victims, (the type of people who don't dislike SW, but only went to TFA because their SW Fan-friends dragged them) universally despise Kylo Ren, saying Driver did a crap acting job, that Ren is an even worse, whinier bitch than Anakin. It's essentially, "Anakin sucked, why did they have to go double down on him?!?"

Think the "Victims" are closer to the mark. It's hard to see how Kylo Ren is not an echo of his grandfather. Han even deliberately says as much at one point. Itself a recycled line from Aunt Beru.

It's also hard to see how people who didn't like Anakin in the Prequels give this new character a pass. Romantic plot aside, you could almost swap out the two actors and characters into each movie and they'd both be basically on the same. If anything, I give a bit of credit to Christensen for being a stronger presence and menacing figure. Yeah he whined too, but when he got pissed you knew it. And you knew someone, probably several someones, would soon be dead.

I'm not sure if it was intentional or not, but Kylo Ren really shrank as the movie went on. To the point where I could swear he looked skinnier in his costume. Taking his mask off, as well, diminished him. Where he originally seemed above General Hux, he then fell to parity, and by the end he was most definitely subordinate to him. Even his breakthrough moment, killing Han, where we can assume that he intentionally stepped over a line that he can't re-cross, not long later he's shouting about a traitor and losing lightsaber duels.

It's already difficult to take him seriously as a villain. I can only hope that it's intentional and that a greater, less conflicted villain will emerge in the next movie who will push Kylo Ren closer to re-embracing the light. It wouldn't greatly shock me if the conclusion fo the next movie is Kylo Ren's return and the third movie has him making amends.

1. The Empire Strikes Back

2. A New Hope

3. Revenge of the Sith

4. Return of the Jedi

5. The Phantom Menace

6. The Force Awakens

7. Attack of the Clones

The Force Awakens might move up once I've had time to digest, but right now I'm comfortable where it is.

Return of the Jedi and The Phantom Menace flip places depending on my mood. Both are flawed, but have a lot going for them that make them enjoyable.

Attack of the Clones has suffered the most over the years. Mostly on the back of the romance scenes on Naboo not working. The rest I'm generally okay with.

Well, whoever she is, her natural abilities apparently dwarf a Force-trained member of the Skywalker line. Maybe she's Palpatine's granddaughter or something. That would be a reasonably cool and unexpected twist.

She's clearly meant to be seen as the Luke of the story. Plus there's a lot of Jake Lloyd's Anakin in there was well. Kylo Ren is obviously based off of Christensen's Anakin. So the two are already in conflict from the same angles.

However, it's just too obvious and simple. They already played their hidden family member card once with Han and Kylo Ren. Apparently an entire group of Jedi got wiped out before the movies started. The easiest conclusion is that Rey was left behind by one of them before they were murdered.

The Characters:

Rey: Very good hero to build the new series around. She’s a nice blending of Luke Skywalker and Jake Lloyd’s Anakin Skywalker (good with machines, jumps into a spaceship she can’t fly and somehow takes out pursuing fighters). If she’s going to be the cornerstone of this series, then it’s got promise. Only issue I have with her is how easily she’s learning the Force. She’s had zero training. Has she even seen anyone’s use Force Manipulation before she successfully does it herself?

Still, I can say I’m looking forward to her stepping into the role of hero. Which is everything you want in a main character in the first steps of her hero’s journey.

Finn: Boy I wish he’d died at the end there. I’m sorry, but this character was a big mistake and I’m not sure why they went in the direction of a comedic young stormtrooper. This guy’s a soldier trained since he can remember?

It’s not a bad idea to have turncoat stormtrooper be one of the leads, but I would have much preferred a competent one. The basic storyline could have been the same, a hard-edged stormtrooper gets Poe to aid his escape after a crisis of conscience following the massacre. He meets Rey the same way, and convinces her to steal the Falcon under the premise that he’s going to the Resistance, but really he’s just looking for escape. He’s slowly entangled by caring for Rey and pulls a Han Solo by coming back for her despite his better judgment.

Poe: Finishing out the trio is the guy I wish was in the movie a lot more. Of all the characters in the film, he seems to have been born instantly recognizable for who he was. He’d be the Han Solo breakthrough character of this film, again if he’d just been in it more. Too bad Finn couldn’t have been the one to disappear after the TIE fighter crash.

Kylo Ren: Not sure what they thought they were doing here. This is essentially a carbon copy of Hayden Christensen’s Anakin Skywalker, only less attractive, less menacing, and with less explained. He starts off fairly menacing (though stopping the laser was an odd new Force power).

Then he begins throwing multiple tantrums. Okay still, angry crazy villain, we can work with that.

Then Rey reads his feelings while his helmet is off. Okay, maybe he was caught unprepared.

Then it becomes apparent that he’s subordinate to that Nazi guy (still not wearing his helmet for some reason). Well, I guess Vader deferred to Tarkin.

Then he has trouble defeating the comic relief stormtrooper who lost a sword(ish) fight with another stormtrooper like 30 minutes earlier. Oh c’mon!

And finally he gets his butt whooped by the untrained Force neophyte. Dude, weak. I know he was injured by Chewie, but still. Weak.

At least Christensen’s Anakin kept getting progressively more powerful and scarier as the Prequels continued. By the time Obi-Wan defeated him, Anakin legit seemed like a terror that could hold his own against the best of the Jedi. Even growing between movies so that he could defeat Dooku after loosing an arm to him the previous film. By the end of The Force Awakens, Kylo Ren has been exposed as rather pathetic.

Maybe that’s what they were going for and it’s a plan for the next couple of movies. But as a villain and epic threat to the heroes, the guy is already neutered.

Han Solo: Was it just me, or was Ford channeling Indiana Jones more than Han Solo here? Anyway, he was good and got the death scene he wanted which was a pretty good job from Ford. Following in the footsteps of Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan of serving as severing the main character from the aged wisdom.

Oddly, I wish he wouldn’t have been quite as prominent as he was. Han Solo has a lot of gravity, and it took away some from the new cast. Oh, and what was with the bowcaster gag? Han’s been hanging around Chewie for like 50 years and never tried Chewbacca’s weapon in all that time?

BB-8: Oh my God! I thought this droid would be a disaster when I saw the Teaser, but he proved me wrong. The ball gimmick is shockingly expressive. And, while I thought he would be an R2-D2 clone, there is a definite childishness in that little droid’s acting that differentiates him from his predecessor. Probably the most Star Warsish addition to the entire movie.

Maz: Not much to say about this character except she was a key to keeping the second act respectable. A solid character, who we’ll probably see again. If for no other reason than we need to figure out how she managed to get a hold of Anakin/Luke’s lightsaber.

Supreme Leader Snoke: So far I’m not much impressed with this guy. Hope the CGI improves too.

Story:

The first third of the movie was better than I’d hoped. Rey’s got a vibe that’s a cross between WALL-E and Miyazaki which I can appreciate. The pace and tone (minus Finn!) are reasonably close to in line with A New Hope. Perhaps the storyline is a bit too recycled. Droid with critical info lands on a desert planet, is caught by a scavenger (minus awesome sandcrawler), meets with orphan Force adept. Huh. Oh, and the Millennium Falcon just so happening to be there sitting around is right up there with Anakin creating C-3P0 and Luke coming to own R2-D2 in terms of super-sized coincidences that can only be explained via The Force. I hope that somehow gets explained as Luke having stolen it or something when Rey was dropped off.

Anyway, I’ve got few complaints here. The mythos is solid. The characterizations work. The net closing in on our unsuspecting hero serving to build up some nice tension. It’s a solid start to a movie and left me optimistic.

The second third wasn’t quite as strong. This is where a lot of the humor comes in. And it’s a bit out of place. Some of it works, like BB-8’s lighter thumb’s up and C-3P0 interrupting Han and Leia’s reunion, and being self-conscious of his red arm. But some of it doesn’t. Finn’s sitcom plot trying to hide he’s been lying for example. Overall though, there was too much modern writing style with the humor. Avengers style clever interaction humor that felt off. Even if I’d appreciate it in other series, here it felt wrong. I recall when this movie was first announced and the director hadn’t been chosen yet, Joss Whedon was mentioned for the job, and, even though I’m a big fan, I didn’t think he’d be right for exactly this reason. The scene in Han’s ship (or whatever) was a bit weird and a detour. Bad effects on the monsters. Would have been a better idea to treat it as a horror section and never shown the creature outright.

Still, things picked up pretty well once they got to Maz. As I said, pretty good character. We start getting back into the mythos. Rey following Joseph Campbell’s script and refusing the call when Anakin/Luke’s lightsaber calls to her. The action sequence that followed was fun.

But then the Starkiller comes into play. Another Death Star? It was already objectionable when they did that in Return of the Jedi guys. I’ll go into the various reasons why this is silly in the next section. Several planets full of people we don’t care about get destroyed. Maybe one of them is Coruscant. At least when Alderaan exploded we had Leia there letting us know this was a terrible thing to her personally.

The third act is where things fall apart. This is easily the worst climax of any of the seven movies. And it starts with making the Starkiller even worse. Oh, it’s bigger than the original. Thanks guys. And then Han turns it into a joke by saying that there’s always a way to blow it up.

See what I mean by the Avengers humor being out of place here? The menacing planet killer is made diminutive.

Of course Han’s right. There’s this little part of the planet that will cause the [/i]planet[/i] to explode. My head hurts. So off they go to destroy it.

There is a bit of saving grace with Rey here. Thought her scene with Kylo Ren where she reads him and exposes him as the little boy that he is was rather cool. She escapes, though the Force Manipulation bit wasn’t credible in my opinion.

Turns out Finn is only out for Rey. Fair enough, but hey, they can quickly accomplish their actual mission by kidnapping Brienne of Tarth for a couple minutes. Disappointing use of a pretty cool actress. Oh, and hey, look over there. They find Rey in plain view by literally looking out the window. This is the character that the entire station is looking for.

That’s just lazy guys. These are two insurmountable objectives for the heroes, and they manage them both in a couple of minutes without effort. It’d be like in Return of the Jedi if the Rebels managed to blow up the shield generator on their first try.

So Poe comes in and it turns out that a couple of X-Wings can’t do the job. Wasting the most awesome character again. But that’s okay, because the planet’s self-destruct is apparently barely guarded, so Han and gang can set charges. Well, I’d already guessed awhile ago that Han’s gonna die. The telegraphing of this could have been a bit less obvious. Funny, Jason Solo had to make his own sacrifice. So we have a scene where he says goodbye to the series. Good stuff. Really, Ford’s acting here is spot on.

Thing is, while this is going on, the small force of X-Wings are still buzzing around and there’s a countdown supposedly going on (which is even less accurate than they usually are). The action tension has been stepped on. The X-Wings are barely a factor until the very end when they see an opening and rather easily take the shot that initiates self-destruct.

And we have the lightsaber duel. For the life of me, I can’t figure out why Kylo Ren has any difficulty in dispatching Finn. And the match-up between Rey and Ren is just too early. Especially for the hero to already overcome the villain. The duel was nothing special. The stakes were low since the planet was already self-destructing. It’s confusing why they did this.

Then the movie keeps going for awhile. This is new for Star Wars. All the rest had the good sense to start wrapping things up immediately after the climax. This one had some work left to do, which stepped on an already suspect climax even more.

But at least we finally get to see Luke. With a Peter Jackson crane shot to finish the movie.

The Universe:

This was a major disappointment. BB-8 and Maz were the only good non-human additions and the derelict Star Destroyer was the only good new setting. I suppose there was also the too obvious Nazi rally as well. Other than that it pretty much followed A New Hope. Tatooine -> Bar -> Yavin for the climax. The only thing they changed is that the heroes were on the Death Star during the climax. I think they went overboard in trying to make it like the Original Trilogy because it relied way too heavily on concepts from 40 years ago.

Say what you will about the Prequels, Lucas went out of his way to keep finding cool new things to show us (and started marrying the designs to the Original Trilogy as he progressed). I rather wish they’d gotten him involved a bit just so that he could add some imagination (and as mentioned earlier, helped with the climax). You don’t have to put him in charge of anything, but the man’s an idea factory and no one involved seems able to match him.

And what the heck are the politics of this world. Again, think they were trying to not be the Prequels, but I have absolutely no idea who is in charge of what in this galaxy. What’s the Resistance’s connection to the Republic? Are they the military arm for the whole Republic? Is there an Amidala complaining that there shouldn’t be an army or something even though the First Order is running around? Or is the First Order in charge of most of the galaxy and the Republic just a small group? Why does the whole Resistance seem to have even fewer resources than the Rebellion had in Return of the Jedi?

I really don’t have any clue here and I need some exposition. In both the Original Trilogy and the Prequels I always knew who was in charge. Here, I’m left to guess. Apparently even more now that several planets got blown up, which I assume were critical to the Republic. And yet close enough to everybody that they could see the explosion and the lasers traveling towards them.

Someone needs to explain the whole speed of light thing to these guys. Bad enough Kylo Ren stopped light in the first few minutes. But now you’ve got a weapon that shoots at the speed of light from one star system to another. That would take, at minimum, years to happen. More likely millennia. The closest star to our system is over 4 lightyears away. More than enough time to evacuate. Which, why didn’t they do? At least in A New Hope they stayed because they needed the Death Star to come to them. Starkiller base would have been worthless if they just let it blow up this one more planet. The star and its power source are gone. It doesn’t seem to be a mobile planet. So, problem solved if they just pack their bags and leave.

And apparently people in other star systems can clearly see planets exploding instantly. Again, not only would they not be able to see it for years, but the explosions would need to be at a level of a supernova just to be barely visible. These lit up the sky fireworks.

I know it’s science fiction and laser swords and all. But that’s just scientifically dumb.

Visuals:

Again, I think they went a bit overboard in distinguishing themselves from the Prequels. There really wasn’t much of interest in the effects work. C’mon guys, it’s Star Wars. There’s a happy medium between not letting CGI ruin things and not having enough. The only thing I remember as something really good was the shot of Finn watching Poe shoot down several TIE fighters. That was legit cool.

The effects with the Millennium Falcon was also surprisingly poor. I’m not sure what happened there since CGI can usually handled ships pretty well. But the way that it was banging around on the ground and such made it feel a bit fake. Also, why didn’t Finn just go up to the other canon when his broke?

Even the lightsaber battle was rather bland. Outside of Obi-Wan/Vader in ANH, I don’t recall a lightsaber duel less thrilling. I get that Rey wasn’t that experienced yet. But maybe that’s a reason why you either don’t have the duel, or maybe have her lose. Y’know, having her prone body saved by the same insta-pit that saved Kylo Ren.

BTW, that was a LOT of hits from a lightsaber without anyone losing a limb.

Direction:

Star Wars has a pretty distinct feel to it. It’s been shot pretty basically since the beginning. The director tricks were pretty minimal. Though Lucas opened things up a bit in Attack of the Clones and particularly in Revenge of the Sith. For the most part, Abrams doesn’t stray too far from Lucas. There are a few shots I object to. The crane shot to finish the film being the biggest offense, but he restrained himself more than I thought he would.

Music:

Oddly, I don't remember anything interesting from the new stuff. Maybe I'll have to listen to the soundtrack or something.

Overall:

Awesome while on Jakku. Okay up through the Starkiller’s debut. Disappointing ending. In the end, it was pretty good. I’ve been a bit overcritical, but overall, I can live with it as an addition to the series and it actually exceeded my expectations since I was NOT a fan of what Abrams did to Star Trek. Here’s hoping that the goodwill it’s got for being the anti-Prequels won’t keep them from improving on the project.

Going forward, I hope they rediscover the joy and exploration that comes with Star Wars. That we don’t focus so hard on looking back and recapturing the old, but instead try and discover new places in this universe.

There was also a bit too much setting up for the sequel. That’s an Abrams thing.

Hello.