Official Star Wars Thread

[Ben]

Well I guess you know the *other* Solo rumor...hence all the talk of Indy 5...

[EricJ]

First reviews from the premiere came in (currently 97% on RT, with both good and bad reviews picking on "too much classic recycling"), and "Spoiler alert: It's good."
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/18/movie ... eview.html?
(And no other spoilers, but yep, from vague hints, I seem to have called it on the Luke rumors...)

It’s no surprise that paternal problems have made a comeback in “The Force Awakens,” which folds in a father-and son-schism that evokes the one between Luke and Darth Vader.

There does seem to be a distinct emphasis that getting "old school fans" to write and direct it, and keeping Lucas far away from being a major artistic influence, has improved the tone considerably, and other early premiere reviews do seem to be agreeing, "Ding-dong, the blob is dead".

[Ben]

Not technically spoilers as I'm making assumptions here, so I haven't hidden this:

My current guess is that Han is the Original Trilogy "face" of this episode, and that he will sacrifice himself nobly toward the end, leading Luke - who will be in hiding for most of the film - to come out and restart the Jedi for the next one...he being the face for that episode, hence the awakening of the Force that the title alludes to.

Guess I'll find out in just four hours time...!

[EricJ]

(Well, I DID ask whether Ford agreed to come back for more than one film, and you got all coy about it...
So okay, IMDB is your friend.)

[Ben]

Less than an hour to go!

Just grabbed some shut-eye to make it through the next three or so hours. If I'm not too shattered on my return I'll post some spoiler-free comments...

[Dan]

While waiting for The Force Awakens to... awaken... here's a classic Star Wars parody for all to enjoy.

[Ben]

So...

While it's not quite as "Star Warsome" as I was hoping, The Force Awakens is much, much, much more Star Wars than the prequels combined, which is also what perhaps prohibits it from truly surprising us or taking any risks.

Yes...what you have mostly heard or guessed is true, and Luke is absent from the poster for good reason. The plusses are many: Han and Chewie back again, the humor is back, and the two new leads are really great, even if Daisy can once or twice come over all Kiera Knightley in Pirates Of The Caribbean, but is much better than her in the long run.

BB-8 is a new droid star and has real character, the kind that R2 had in the first three. The villains are less successful...the Vader wannabe turns out to be just that, while Domnhall Gleason (spelling?) is awful and overplays every scene. He's not in many, but I just wanted him off the screen and the role should have gone to an older Peter Cushing type. He's the weakest link in the film.

Not far behind, sadly, is John Williams' score. I'm a HUGE fan, but maybe it's time to hand over the notes to someone else. He brings the usual themes to the usual scenes, and hits home at least three or four times, but a lot of the score is wishy-washy and the biggest moment doesn't hit a fraction of how hard it should do.

That's also a fault of the film: there isn't any real heavy emotion. A couple of big moments don't quite hit hard enough, especially the Big One, which is done too quick and then almost forgotten about as everyone races off to rehash the end of A New Hope, before the reveal that I guessed above that sets up the next one.

The word I would use to describe it is "safe": this is everthing you have missed from a Star Wars movie in quite a while. Harrison Ford is Solo perfect, as one would expect from Lawrence Kasdan writing for him, and Chewie steals the show. But it doesn't break the rules, it doesn't go outside the lines and it dose not really do anyone that you haven't seen before in a Star Wars film.

It is everything you want it to be, but not much more. I was right with it up until The Big Moment That Doesn't Feel Big Enough, and then it kind of lost me toward the end, all the pieces falling into place too easily and any further secrets and reveals for upcoming episodes all signposted out if one can be bothered to work out the obvious logic.

Most disappointing is the lack of the dialogue from the trailers we have seen: Solo's "it was all real" stuff is in there, but none of the "force is strong in my family" or "let it in" lines are in the film and I thought it could have really needed them. If there's anything the film really lacks, it's these emotional beats.

But then again, since this is essentially Star Wars, we can look forward to the next film being The Empire Strikes Back. What The Force Awakens does is bring back the series in the right way, even if it does kind of feel like a run of the mill Star Wars sequel instead of something truly new and amazing.

The old callback touches are all cool, and fans will see even the smallest Easter eggs, and thankfully the film isn't as bogged down in them as Superman Returns or the last Indy film was, but it does all also feel a *little* slavish to them at times.

Nonetheless, I was completely entertained and felt back in the universe in a way the prequels never did. Even if this did feel like "more of the same" (Lucas is right when he said it's a film made for the fans) and that one Big Moment will split fans down the middle (I was angry it had happened, while sad it hadn't happened with enough merit or with enough impact), the film will please those that enjoyed the prequels for what they were even while knowing they weren't as good as the originals.

The Force has awakened, and though this isn't a pale imitation, it's not a rebirth for Star Wars either, being just about what everyone is exactly expecting.

[Randall]

So, yes, pretty much what I expected. And that's good enough, really. I only need it to be good. Just so long as it's not hate-able. Actually, I'm getting pretty pumped to watch it with my boy on Saturday.

[Dan]

Going to be tough to talk about The Force Awakens without spoiling the film so I'll just say this for now. A wonderful film that I'm very happy to have seen. While I can see Ben's points of what he had faults with the film, they never really bothered me at all.

I look forward to repeat viewings over the next few days.

[Ben]

Yeah...I will definitely be seeing it again over the holidays too. Can't wait to speak more on the film when the story is more well known: just to clarify...nothing really "bothered" me in the film, I just wished a couple of big moments had been played more strongly. I look forward to seeing it again knowing how they play out and being more prepared to see if I react differently or still feel the same.

Bottom line: no, this is most certainly not "hate-able". It craps all over the prequels and has more Force in it than those three combined!

[droosan]

The first hour, or so, is amazing. I was lovin' it.

The second half grew somewhat tiresome with its unceasing callbacks, references and corollaries to the OT.

I still enjoyed it, overall .. but here's hoping for a more 'original' plotline, next time out.


SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS hidden here

Rey's introduction is very 'Nausicäa-esque' .. but still extremely well-realized. The atmosphere of her hardscrabble existence on Jakku (conveyed with a minimum of dialogue) was, by far, my favorite thing about the movie. I was less enamored of her 'magic' ability to instantly assess and/or repair anything remotely technical .. but that does seem to have 'earned' her the inheritance of the Millennium Falcon. There's still a lot we don't know about her, of course .. but it seems the next movie is poised to answer those questions.

Finn was equally fascinating. I especially liked his interactions with Han Solo and BB-8 concerning his misleading of Rey (Finn & BB-8's shared 'thumbs-up' moment was hilarious!) I'm definitely interested to see where his story leads over the next couple of movies, too.

Kylo Ren was a mixed bag .. but still rather more interesting as a conflicted 'dark-side' convert than Anakin (as presented in the prequels). I wish they'd resisted the temptation to show him without the mask, at least until the next movie; that mystique was a huge part of Darth Vader's appeal as a villain.

If they had to go 'full-CGI' with Maz, why not give her some sort of exotic alien anatomy..? As it is, she came across as a blend of Edna Mode and Yoda. And just how the heck did she get that lightsaber, anyway?! Her 'hand-waving' away Han's direct question about that was pretty frustrating.

It's unlikely, but I think it would be really cool if Max Von Sydow's character (the guy in the opening scenes who gives the map to Po) eventually turns out to be an aged Kanan from Star Wars: Rebels.

It was good to see the classic OT characters, again. Though .. with them, too, there's a significant amount of 'back-story' left wanting for explanation.

Thank goodness there'll only be two years between episodes, instead of three, this time around..!

[EricJ]

So, yes, pretty much what I expected. And that's good enough, really. I only need it to be good. Just so long as it's not hate-able. Actually, I'm getting pretty pumped to watch it with my boy on Saturday.

That's pretty much what it is: Good, without being hateable.
I'm torn between thinking it was a "good" movie for not messing up, and it being a "good" movie in the sense that the original first one was a standalone classic I'd watch again, while Empire was just an unfulfilling Pt. 2 that was only meant to be a setup to Pt. 3. This is the latter case, in that there was little in it to really make you want to watch it again without the (presumably) other two chapters.

I'm Original Generation (stood in line all three times at the Boston Charles, which isn't there anymore, and nobody was in costume back then), who also hated Star Trek: Into Darkness with a fiery murderous passion, so I could judge whether or not they got the OT right. (I also thought I'd be watching it after Christmas and would have enough time to watch the OT on Blu-ray again, but a bit of emergency shopping and weather dictated otherwise...Oh, and shall we kill whoever thought of making us stand in line for a Star Wars movie in December?) Coincidentally, I'd also watched Kurosawa's Hidden Fortress on Blu again without realizing why, so I was fully prepared to take the original into context.
Basically, the first half felt like a metaphor for the movie: A generation later, Star Destroyers in ruins, new bosses for the Stormtroopers, and clueless new kids (including the villain) dressing up and pretending to step into the shoes of the OT characters, until the REAL OT arrives--including Kasdan, who always knew how to write for Han & Chewie--to show them how it was done in the old days.
I wasn't as bothered by the "callbacks" (although Adm. Ackbar and the holographic chess game were a bit forced), since even though the idea was similar to Superman Returns by trying to punish past offenses by going back to the original, they weren't as righteously or religiously forced as Returns. And certainly not the Fanboy Khan-vention of geek-ritual lines that Abrams' two Trek movies were.
All I kept thinking back on was The People vs. George Lucas, and that this was now the prosecution's smoking gun for "Are they Lucas's movies or 'our' movies?" Well, I don't know, George, why don't you watch "your" prequels you made all by yourself and then watch "our" fan-loyal SW movie, and tell us which one was made with more love and attention?

Other random observations:
- Okay, NOW do you understand why Mark Hamill wasn't on the poster? I spent a year trying to warn fanboys that, this being an Abrams movie, Hamill was going to do an Old Spock, and even that was too generous. Basically, for all the fan obsession that this was going to be the Luke Movie, it's the Han Solo Movie, and we won't get the Luke Movie until Ep. VIII. (In fact, the whole "Luke Lives!" premise felt a little too much like Flynn Lives from "Tron Legacy", and we saw more of Jeff Bridges in that movie than we see of Hamill here.)
- Yes, Rae is distinctly Nausicaa-esque rather than Princess Yuki-esque, but that worked for her. We'd already had to sit through the trailer for "Hunger Games: Falling Skies", and it's nice to see a teen heroine who's just a good capable teen heroine without being empowerment-fantasy Katniss.
- I had to read droosan's Edna Mode joke before seeing the new CGI character ...But Maz actually wasn't obnoxious as we've come to expect CGI characters to be in a SW movie (yes, Lucas has actually made us afraid of Star Wars films), and a pretty good character. Similarly, I'd cringed at the first shots of Wall-8 for being "too PT", but darnit, all the reports of his stealing the movie in classic OT R2-D2 style are absolutely true.
- And now, counting Avengers 2, that makes two overhyped movies this year that Andy Serkis has stolen just by showing up as the surprise B-villain. I forgot that Serkis was in it, and when I saw the new character, I kept wanting to joke that "Abraham Lincoln Gollum" was the new OT Emperor this series needed that Darth Pissypants wasn't. And when I saw the credits...how about that, the joke worked!
- As for the "Evil 70's John Travolta" villain we got, I first thought he was going to be like Darth Maul, the hotheaded overambitious teenager who's only a McGuffin to lead us to the "real" villain later, and loses his battle at the end of the standalone movie, but....nope, Abrams's in for the whole stretch. Please make him more interesting in the next movie, as I sort of expected he would turn out to be an OT character's Wayward Son, but certainly not the one I was guessing. And when we get the scene of

Old Leia and Old Han reuniting to talk about their son, it just had Mutt Williams & the Crystal Skull written all over it.

[Randall]

Funny how Eric thought only his final line was a spoiler. Anyhoo...

I LOVED it.

Now, by the usual critical measures, this was only a "good" movie. True. But it made me feel 7 years old again, and I loved it for that. It was pretty much what it needed to be. Given the decision to go forward with the original characters 30 years later, this is pretty much the tale we could expect--- sort of an alternate universe take on the past novels, the ones that followed the next generations of Skywalkers and Solos. True, no surprises really, but that's okay. This is just the set-up, but it felt totally like Star Wars again, a more organic world than the prequels (or Special Editions) were, and much more in keeping with what we all loved in the first place.

As an opening chapter, I think it was a great set-up for what will follow, and I expect the next two films to be large improvements on what is already a solid foundation. What a treat to share it with my 8-year old, who thought it was awesome. I am glad. The other (many) kids in the theatre were also wonderstruck, often remarking on what was happening on screen, and no one minded. In fact, their innocent, captivated remarks often got kind chuckles from the adult viewers, who were just pleased that the kids could enjoy it. Yes, this movie made a definite impression on the kids, which is as it should be. Thank goodness that director Abrams knows what young Lucas knew but old Lucas forgot--- you don't have to talk down to kids; just give them an imaginative adventure, and they will gladly come along, with no need for some of the stupidity that marked the prequels.

I thought the pacing was fine, and the Williams score was suitable. Yes, one big moment could have been "sold" better with a different choice in the score, but mostly the music was decent enough. And I loved it when Luke's Theme finally got played. Aaaahhhhh!!! That was a great moment.

Han's first appearance got a cheer, and applause came with the closing credits. This film is maybe not an award winner, but it is a crowd pleaser. It was what was needed--- a little "safe", sure, but few cared. Star Wars is BACK.

[Dacey]

AV review is up:

http://animatedviews.com/2015/star-wars ... e-awakens/

I may be in a minority (here, at least) in that I'm not sure if I think it's better than the prequels, of which I am an unapologetic fan (I think Palpatine's rise to power was done in an incredibly sophisticated way over the course of the trilogy, and heck, I'll take Jar Jar over the Ewoks any day). But I'm also still reeling from the "big" moment, which I really don't think needed to happen, and felt too "violent" for a Star Wars movie to me anyway. Then again, we probably won't get the full "impact" of it until the sequels come around (and I'm gonna go on the record here and say that Disney is going to push Episode 8 back to December 2017, given the numbers they saw this weekend).

Still, my ratings show that I was obviously very impressed overall, and knowing what happens will probably help me enjoy the final act more with a second viewing.

[EricJ]

AV review is up:But I'm also still reeling from the "big" moment, which I really don't think needed to happen, and felt too "violent" for a Star Wars movie to me anyway.

Oh, THAT "big moment"! Testament to the fact that it was so un-big, I literally didn't know which "big moment" everyone was complaining about, and thought it was the obvious one at the end.

(Where we'd already seen enough of grey-fox Mark Hamill at SDCC that seeing him with a beard wasn't as much of a shock as seeing Grandma Carrie...)

The only tension we had from the Big Moment was whether it would play out that Kylo was a wuss or a stubborn cult-headed coward, and either way, if that's what's generating the suspense, ya got serious problems with the villain--Even Anakin's angsty-emo slide into the Dark Side was more sympathetic than watching a teenager in Sith robes stomp things and listen to his dad say "We sent you to military school for this?".
Most of us expected the latter of the two options, but then, I'd sort of had the suspicion that Ford had only returned to do a Charlton Heston and get himself out of the entire series for good.)