My wife Kristina, who is a huge Harrison Ford fan, didn't feel like seeing it, so we didn't see it during the holiday period, and I finally got around to seeing it this week, because I was feeling left out, didn't want to get spoilered, and again, I was optimistic that it might actually be good.
After watching the movie, I think my main feelings were disappointment, incredulity, and confusion. I wanted to sleep on it, and see if I thought any differently about it, before I said something more, and I did think more about it, and I still feel the same way.
It's in my nature to write things down, so I'm going to try to elaborate on this here, and if you're still reading this, be aware that there are spoilers for the movie's plot coming up here...
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I'm really not sure where to begin, because I have so much to say here, let's see if I can put my concerns into categories, so there is at least some organization here.
Category A: Returning Characters.
There were a fair number of situations in this movie where there were nostalgia moments to past movies, that seemed to serve basically no purpose other than that nostalgia. I can kind of understand why they would do this, since one of the reasons people probably went to see this movie (and it's breaking all kinds of records left and right) is that people have seen the other movies. We also have the "advantage" here that most of the charachters from episodes 1-3 are dead, so if we want to bring characters back, they have to be from the movies we fondly remember as "better" (original three episodes). However, we probably remember them fondly, like we remember episodes of other shows we watched as a child, which we may shudder at a bit more watching them with adult eyes. In any event, characters like Han Solo, Leia, Boba Fett, Chewie and the like were cool, so it is nice to see them.
However....
C3PO - Back now, with a red arm for some reason, does anyone know or care why? likely not. But he has a red arm, and he's willing to tell you about it, so that's something.
R2D2 - Likely one of the more popular characters from episodes 1-3 that is still alive, he is apparently in storage (why? because he's so sad that Luke left! Does that make any sense? Probably not. Does it explain why he has a tarp over him? Probably not. Does it allay our disappointment after seeing him, to be told that we won't be seeing him because
Han Solo - Han's cool, Harrison's great, etc. I like that he's making promises to people he can't keep, doing interesting/dangerous stuff, etc.
Is this really the first time he's fired Chewie's bowcaster though? In 50 years or whatever of knowing him, seeing him fire the bowcaster, seeing the effects of the bowcaster being fired, etc, etc. Does he really need to say how cool firing the bowcaster is not just once, but twice during the movie?
Chewie - Relatively unchanged, which probably makes sense if you know the Star Wars lore. He seems like (to my childlike brain) a tough guy that can take a hit and keep going, and he feels like he's treated like an invalid when he gets hurt. Because we need the girl to fix the ship, so Han can appreciate her. We already appreciate her, because she's competent, and talking over Han left and right, do we need Chewie to be injured and have the almost comedy of trying to put irrelevant bandages on him to enable that scene further?
Chewie (and the Droids in general) create an interesting problem for the dialog, because no one understands what the heck they are saying, which makes conveying information either take twice as long, or you feel like you're missing stuff. Why does Han say good idea when they split up to put bombs on two levels near the end of the movie? Is
Luke - I expected something to happen in that last scene, but it just keeps going on and nothing happens.
Representative Binks: Good that they got the original voice actor here.
Leia - Has not aged well, but I have seen her in some other things, so I didn't expect much. I did expect her character to have the smarts to not be on the planet that is
Category 2: Technology. Hey, that's a cool... but why is it <>?
I just kept getting confused about what was happening, because the things the characters were doing or saying don't make any sense.Super Weapon:
Han sums this up quite well in the movie, when he basically says: "So what, it's bigger? How can that possibly matter?"
The "weapon" that it fires, appears to be traveling no faster than a speed that a ship would take in orbit. I feel like pretty much any ship would be faster than this weapon. When I saw it fire the first time, I assumed that it basically had to be adjacent to whatever the heck we were firing at (not clear at all), because it was moving slower than any missile would move. But apparently it was a long ways away, and
What's better than a moon-sized ship that you have to drive around to the planet you want destroyed? A planet that doesn't have to drive into melee range I suppose.
Secondly, we find out near the end of the movie, that this planet-weapon has to basically eat a sun to power it up to shoot some planet. COOL! Except, this planet is kind of a planet, so how the hell are you supposed to fire this gun more than once? Once you completely consume the sun, what is that planet supposed to do? Fly itself to some other solar system? And it apparently already did this, because this is the second time we fired this weapon. My wife figured out this problem in about 3 seconds when I told her "the planet has to eat a sun to fire it's weapon and kill another planet".
Thirdly, wouldn't eating a system's sun basically do about as good of a job of destroying a planet as destroying the planet?
Hyperspace:
People apparently go from basically anywhere in the universe, to anywhere else, in 5 minutes or so. I know it took my RPG group days or weeks to go from one place to another, but I guess this doesn't jive with "we figured out (somehow) that some superweapon a million light years away is starting to charge up their weapon, so we need to fuel up our fighters, and take off, and go attack them before it finishes beginning to fire"
Catching blaster bolts:
Cool! It looks awesome, it's super effective, it does what you want it to do, and it makes you feel like the semi-sith are invulnerable/powerful... So why does he only do it the once, and never again the whole movie, especially when people are shooting blaster bolts at him? Why! He gets hit by something like 30% of all blaster bolts fired anywhere close to him, so the feeling you have of ultra-invulerability just doesn't pay off.
A similar thing happens with the auto-win freeze technique he uses early (feel like he can't be beat), and then he just decides to not use that any more when it matters.
Disabling their turbo lasers:
Star destroyers (or whatever that initial ship is, it's implied that it's even bigger than that to me) have about a million guns on them, because that just makes sense in ship design. You don't have a ship with a 40,000 person crew because you're in the business of shuttling people around, or providing employment to the indigent masses, you have such a ship because you want to freaking blow stuff up, and you need guns to do that.
So "before they can get away" (in their fighter) they have to fly closer to the ship firing at them, so they can shoot the one gun emplacement, to allow them to then fly away.
Except the people in the star destroyer figure out (partway through the fight) that they actually have some other guns they might fire, and then they go ahead and power those up (good mechanic) so they can then fire those guns at the fleeing ship. So what was the point of that whole previous scene we just got out of?
Poisoning the stormtroopers:
Convenient, that the helmets filter out "smoke" but not anything else. (and another way to show that this guy is an expert in all things "First Order"). I think I'd spend the extra $100 to make my guys immune to everything, as long as they are wearing the full head helmet, rather than just the million credits or so it must take to feed, train, etc, each storm trooper. Maybe this is canon, but if so, it's bad canon.
Maps.
You don't need a map to get to some planet in space. You just need coordinates. You don't really need a map to get somewhere on earth either nowadays, but it helps if you're driving your car on roads and stuff, which doesn't seem to be the case for alot of what a typical moviegoer would understand about space travel (have the computer figure it out, just like we do today...).
On top of this, we are led to believe that if I have a local map showing 20 or so star systems, that somehow the various astromechs we have on hand would not be able to identify where that area is. I'm fairly certain that we could do that with today's technology, and we don't even travel in space as a matter of course. This is similar to asserting that we couldn't get to a town in nebraska with a map of nebraska, but we would instead need a map of all the interveining states in order to make any progress finding said town. And this is in the real world, where there are things like mountains that can get in the way. What the heck is in the way when we're travelling in space? I'm sure there are things, but they wouldn't be enough to prevent me from making any progress whatsoever, given the stakes, desire of participants, etc.
The final scene with the maps is "cool" but makes no sense whatsoever. Are we to believe that the map BB8 has been carrying around this whole time exactly fits into the map that R2D2 has of not-quite-the-whole-galaxy? I'm reminded of that start trek episode where the Federation, Romulans, and Klingons are all trying to get the DNA fragments from the various worlds, and by the time we get to the end and we share, there are overlapping pieces. This is the way real things work!
Are we to believe that R2D2 has been in standby mode for 20 years or something, and he had a map to almost-the-right-place, but only found it once we got to the point in the movie where he finds it? Again, if Luke Skywalker was in Nebraska, but we didn't know where, wouldn't that be more useful information than what the key players knew about him in the first place "he's somewhere we don't know where". It's not like the trail to the planet luke is on comes out of the missing area, so we might start our search somewhere inside.
Finally, when they "followed the map to Luke", do you think they went to the beginning of the trail, and followed the path to the destination, or just went to the destination directly? Is there something about the path that is useful? We don't know, and presumably, nobody thought about why that might matter. (or to look along the path we had for people who might have seen Luke, etc, etc)
Storm troopers equipped with weapons that can parry lightsabers:
Boy, that sure looked cool! But why would he ever have it? It's not like the empire was set up to fight Jedi, there weren't any for the last 100 years or whatever, for anyone to develop technology to fight it.
J random storm trooper beats up lightsaber-wielding scardey-pants pretty easily. Finn then, with basically no time passing, holds his own against Darth Vader Jr. What the heck has Darth Vader Jr been doing if he can't instantly destroy these untrained farmers/sanitation workers? Probably hacking wildly at machinery.
Category III: Bad guys that are not all that bad:
I don't get the helmet. It doesn't appear to be necessary, like Vader (breathing is important), or to be doing anything functional. It appears to be a plot device to make the audience feel like this is the bad guy, and give the bad guy something to take off, to make himself more/less menacing.The helmet seems less substantial than the Vader helmet as well, less imposing. I like the stripes on it, but I don't like the shape for some reason. It flares out, then goes back in, which makes me question why it exists at all.
Can you imagine Darth Vader addressing anyone as the "best" anything? But he happens to know that guy-we-just-met is the best pilot in the resistance, and he is willing to give him credit for that? This is just a way for _us_ to know that he's the best pilot in the resistance, or to know he is a pilot at all (since we haven't seen him in a ship yet at this point).
Can you imagine someone disappointing Darth Vader, or any sith-ish lord of note, and having them continue to survive? What has this guy done that he's worth keeping alive at this point? Apparently he has a speech to give, so he can't die. So be it I guess.
First Order is about the worst name I could have picked for these guys. First of all, they aren't the first anything. If anything they're the Second Order, because they're the remnants of the empire. Third of all, they don't seem particularly orderly. Clone Wars had Death Watch, you knew what those guys wanted to do. Do we not want people to think of the ultra-cool Darth Maul, Count Dooku, etc, are we afraid to say sith for some reason?
Darth Vader raging out, and cutting random objects with his lightsaber, often not cutting through them. Storm troopers treating this like it's a joke, or otherwise know that it happens all the time.
Tentacle monster grabs guy, and takes him for a ride, rather than eating him like he did the last n people. Made for a "cool" scene where we get to see Ray time things correctly I suppose (evidence of the force)
Commander
Dark Lord
Dark Lord
Darth Vader Jr is seen at times doubting his own course of action, whether he made the right decision to go dark, etc. This seems fairly non-sith-like, non-dark-lord-like, etc. I understand that we don't get our final scene vs Han Solo if we think he's 100% a dark lord, but I can't imagine what we would have done for any more movies in this series had he not been a character on the dark side (since there isn't anyone else that we could care about). In past iterations of dark lords, they've been pretty much on board with being on the dark side, because by default they were on the light side, so they had to do something/make a choice/do bad stuff in order to make that happen. Apparently these bad things have already happened in the past, so he's made his choice and created consequences that any court of law would lock him up for, so I'm not sure why he'd still be doubtful, other than to allow us to have our final semi-confrontation with Han.
Category Delta: Plot
So, Finn and Po escape the star destroyer, land on the planet, muck around there, get on the millenium falcon, and get back out into space, where they immediately break down/lose power. Think to yourself, who is most likely to be right freaking there? They say it themselves, the storm troopers, about 10,000 of them, that are on the star destroyer that is in orbit, and specifically looking for them. I mean, sure, they lost one of their guns, but they have their sensors, and it's not like they're leaving from the other side of the planet, Tie Fighters from that very ship are chasing them as they leave. They know they're there, they're broken down in space, dead in the water. And it's Han Solo, AND two other groups of his investors, that run into them, before the First Order? Why? Because we need a tentacle monster scene, not a storm trooper scene, and/or we need to get Han Solo into this movie.So, Finn is basically a janitor right? Right. And they just decided to make him a "real" storm trooper, and send him out on a mission with the Darth Vader Jr himself, to kill some civilians, for a lark I suppose. And he happens to also be an expert marksman (who hasn't fired at anyone), semi-expert sword fighter, ship weapons specialist, have intimate knowledge of design weaknesses of a planet-sized weapon, etc, etc. The only thing he can't do is fly a ship, because, you know, that's why he needs to break the rebel prisoner out to get off the ship. And coincidentally, it's also the reason he needs to encounter ray, since she can fly. Sure would have been inconvenient for the movie if he'd had a slightly broader, or in any way less broad, skill set. Would it have killed them if the weakness they exploited had anything at all to do with what Finn was actually doing?
What planet did they blow up? It had to be Coruscant right? ("The center of their power") Would it have killed them to say the planet's name, or give us a space-shot of it that showed the city, etc? If it is coruscant, it's a big freaking deal. If it's not... Also, were there any consequences whatsoever for that action? You know, destroying a planet, that was theoretically important?
It's a bit confusing to understand the politics of First Order/Empire/Resistance. Who's in charge? Who lives where? What happened after Episode 6? It's not like there weren't several dozen (hundreds? Thousands?) star destroyers, other imperial beurocracy, etc, that wouldn't go away with the removal of Palpatine. Is it First Order, with the stormtroopers? Is it someone else? Chaos? Etc?
Editing quibble: Ray exits the back of a star destroyer. Then slides down a hill, then gets on a speeder, then drives away, with the money shot of... the front of the star destroyer.
Ray got left on that planet by someone, and expects them to come back, I was expecting this to be resolved, who it was, etc, by the end of the movie, but no. I figured it was Han Solo, but I guess I'm doubting myself now, because I think she'd have to know he was her father before he died, for maximum pain. (I did like the cut scenes when she touches the saber, that's probably the best minute of the movie). I don't mind that there's a secret, with something to figure out, so that's fine, but...
I feel like they just casually reveal that Darth Vader Jr is Han Solo Jr way early, and then keep revealing it, and so on. Can you imagine if the audience knew that DVSr was Luke's Father in a similar way, that that scene would have had the same impact? Probably not. It could easily be a secret that Han and Leia are trying to keep from everyone until that final scene, and the audience could suspect, etc. The dark lord could say that this will be your most challenging challenge without saying what the challenge is, etc, etc.... I feel like we knew too much about some things, and not enough about others, throughout the movie, but maybe that's just me being contrary.
We didn't have a single good fight scene. The forest had my hopes up.... (in the original trilogy, you see them slicing through handrails, etc, but it takes them a couple minutes to kill a tree in several forest scenes). RIP Christopher Lee. =(
Am I the only one that thought Po gave up the goods as a result of straight-up torture? By the end of the movie, it's clear that he was being mind-read, which is nifty, but it's not clear that he's reading Po's mind (which made him a bit less of a bada$$ in my mind) until an hour later.
I wonder how long that 15 minutes to charge up the gun actually took, in movie time. No claims here until I see it on DVD =)
The space scenes are likely the best action, but seemed more obviously CGI/physicsDefying than I'd have expected (especially the xwing flying inside the planet-weapon-whatever to kill it, where it basically floats wherever it wants to).
Did they change the back of the Millennium Falcon? I remember it being a solid mass of fiery engine awesomeness...
Compare:
https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=millenium+falcon+star+wars+back+side&view=detail&&mid=B88B968E95206D4B2155B88B968E95206D4B2155
http://variety.com/2014/film/news/millennium-falcon-photo-star-wars-force-awakens-1201388906/
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Finally, so we're not all negative, some things I liked:
The tentacle monsters looked cool.
The mystery of Ray's backstory.
The space scenes were a highlight for sure, and/or any Millennium Falcon-exterior scene.
The flashback scene when Ray touches the lightsaber for the first time.
But all of these have "but"s on them. I couldn't just relax and enjoy the movie. Some of that's on me, because I can't turn my brain off, but I really feel there were quite a few things that just didn't make any sense.
Anyway, feels better to have written this, now I can move on with thinking about other things! Thanks for reading, feel free to comment if you agree or disagree, say what you liked, or what bothered you =)
