Star Wars: The Force Awakens (Post-release)

I don't know why you're bring this up, cuz I didn't even mention Rey's piloting abilities. Buuuuuuut, now that you do bring it up, it was absurd that she would know more about the Falcon than Han. Absurd, and insulting. They could've conveyed her impressive mechanical knowledge to the other characters in the film, and to us sitting in the theater, by having her know a lot about a stock Corellian YT1300 Freighter. But to know more than Han about the Falcon is just not credible. What did Han tell Luke and Obi Wan in ANH? He said, "I've made a lot of special modifications myself". This was Han's ship, that he customized. The scene should've had him correct the little know-it-all. But as it was, with Rey being all-knowing, Han was minimized and emasculated, just like he was in ROTJ when he allowed Ewoks to roast him over a flame. (See? I reserve some scorn for George. lol)

The Wook

He he he he - it's a fantasy children's popcorn flick. Get a grip. :)
 
You guys just wanna censor anyone who hates the film and chooses to vent about it. And you call that trolling.

Whatever. I tried to stick to this thread, since you guys said you wanted all comments, complimentary or critical, to be in one place.

It's obvious to me now you don't really want that. This thread is the TFA lovefest I thought it was from the jump, intolerant to opposing points of view.

The Wook
 
My oh my, this has gotten nasty...

@The Wook, I'll add my voice to those saying it's fine you detest this film, but quit trying to convince us. I know you probably can't believe it from your viewpoint, but it is possible to like this film -- a lot -- with full awareness of its provenance, flaws, factual errors... and none of the nonexistent faults you've gone on about repeatedly.

I still rank ANH and ESB as my favorite films ever!

And yet you can't even quote them correctly...

I'll tell ya "say's who?"! Yoda! He told us that only a fully trained Jedi can resist being seduced by the dark side.

Nyup. He said "Only a fully trained Jedi Knight, with the Force as his ally, will conquer Vader and his Emperor." Nothing about being able to resist the Dark Side. He then said, obliquely, that choosing the quick and easy path would lead to the Dark Side. One can parse a connection between those two statements, but it isn't what you explicitly state.

Regarding Rey...

I'm all for girl power [No you're not. -- I.P.], but the feminist movement is ill-served by studios creating heroines who know everything, who never struggle with their gifts, who never work at honing their gifts, and never make sacrifices along the way. Perhaps Rey will do that in Episode VIII, but it'll be too late. It should've happened in TFA. I love Daisy Ridley, and I posted on this thread previously that I think she did a fantastic job in the role--I just didn't like how her role was written to be so instantly all-powerful. I posted that I fell in love with Rey when she quipped to Finn, "That was lucky!". But my love for her was stunted time after time after time in the movie, by her absurd facility with the Force, just hours after learning of its existence.
It was absurd that she would know more about the Falcon than Han. Absurd, and insulting. They could've conveyed her impressive mechanical knowledge to the other characters in the film, and to us sitting in the theater, by having her know a lot about a stock Corellian YT1300 Freighter. But to know more than Han about the Falcon is just not credible. What did Han tell Luke and Obi Wan in ANH? He said, "I've made a lot of special modifications myself". This was Han's ship, that he customized. The scene should've had him correct the little know-it-all.

Let's see... When we meet her, she's barely scraping by as a junk scavenger. As the film unfolds, we get that she has (or at least had) a close association with Unkar Plutt, that seems to have soured at some point, and maybe gotten worse recently; and we also get the sense that were she not so tough and clever, she probably wouldn't have lasted. Ex post facto knowledge lets us infer her strength with the Force contributed to her survival. She's determined and resilient, but definitely has had a hard time of it.

Her familiarity with that particular ship (without knowing its name) undoubtedly also comes from her time with Unkar Plutt. She was present for at least some of the modifications he made, as she disagreed with them. As @kristenhenry70 said, Han was running into problems with the modifications made by at least one of the three individuals who had had the Falcon since he lost it, specifically a mod that she had been on hand for and knew how it was installed, so she was best placed to fix it.

As for sacrifices... Did you go to the bathroom or something -- both viewings -- when she had to consciously accept that her family was gone, never coming back for her, most likely dead or they would have found a way in all that time? We watched her let go of all hope of ever seeing them again. Luke at least had the relatively quick closure of seeing the remains of his home and aunt and uncle. Rey had been waiting some fifteen years in vain. In my book, that counts as sacrifice. Plus, by the end of the film, she'd lost the new father-figure in her life, quite brutally, and in front of her eyes. Double whammy, coming pretty close on the heels of the first hit.

As far as you connecting lack of struggle or sacrifice to her Force training, her instincts were enough to resist Kylo's mind probe, and her lack of training is what saw her push back so hard she pushed the connection the other way. I highly doubt she saw a mental file folder labelled "Jedi Mind Trick" so much as subconsciously gleaning something from when she was in there. Possibly more that will come out in the next film. She heard the radio chatter from the Stormtrooper standing guard and realized she wasn't alone in the room (she'd been testing her restraints). If you've never had your mind subconsciously connect two disparate data points, you can't relate, but I can see the "I want out of here" and "oh, there's someone in here" click on some level with her brain (or the Force) saying "you can tell him to let you out". I'm also fine with the multiple tries. It is repeated through the film that she's very strong with the Force (or vice versa, however it's supposed to be considered). I have always gotten that a stronger Force-user can overpower a stronger mind.

And facing Kylo at the end... Well, @Riceball does, in fact, know what the hell he's talking about. Finn's been trained his whole life for combat (if his squadmate is any indication, including melee weapons), and Rey's been honing her self-defense skills for a decade plus, emphasizing staff. Most of her lightsaber fighting uses modified staff forms, which made perfect sense to me. And you seem to utterly discount the condition Kylo's in at that point of the story, and dismiss those who point it out. I hate to put these facts in the way of your narrative, but...

Oh, and speaking of not letting facts interfere with the narrative:

If you don't think Rey is a vessel for advancing Hollywood's liberal agenda, then you've got blinders on.

Funnily enough, Hollywood is quite the opposite. Small-c conservative. Look at all the sequels and remakes they've been doing, rather than take risks. Yeah, there are some filmmakers who want to push the envelope, but it's hard to convince the studios to take the risk.

Here's the thing with strong female characters, and what Paul Feig doesn't get. The folks who made TFA did better than Feig, but still put too much emphasis on it. Yes movies and TV need more leading characters of cultural subsets other than caucasian males, but doing so isn't a liberal agenda. It is simply correcting an inaccuracy in the medium -- a blind spot where they lag behind the rest of society. @Axlotl touches on what I'm getting at:

Why can't a franchise or property be inclusive for the sake of being inclusive?
I suppose "Sesame Street" was some kind of conspiracy, too?
How dare they have blacks and whites and latinos all living together on the same street!
And girls! Blech!.

The part of FInn was not written specifically for someone with dark skin. The part of Poe was not written specifically for a Latino actor. They're actually getting better about this. Personally, I look forward to the day that even character names might not be set until the roles are cast, so that anyone -- male or female or black or white or brown or gay or missing a leg or whatever -- can try out for a part, and the casting people pick who truly fits the role best, and who clicks with the actors they'll be interacting with on camera. Sure, some characters can be written a specific way where it's germane to the plot or character growth, but I want to see more of what we got here -- women being cast in traditionally male roles, and it working (Phasma and the female Stormtrooper, etc.).

Now, moving on to other, less fraught, posts...

[regarding Avatar]The story is simple and weak - which seems to make it culturally palatable for foreign markets.

Okay, that makes zero sense to me. It's Pocahontas in space. It's the White Messiah story trope. How the hell is the "white man helping out the poor backwards natives who wouldn't have been able to defeat his people on their own" culturally palatable for foreign markets? :wacko

The film treatment could have been written by a well motivated 15 year old student.

Well, to be fair, the "treatment", as such, has been around for centuries. Take your pick of any pre-WWII colonial lit.

But you know what? The prequels still felt ambitious. Perhaps that's why you overlooked it. It felt like a new story. They may not have been entertaining but they were at least out of step with everything else going on in hollywood. TFA, does not.

The Prequels did not feel ambitious to me, except technically. What aspects felt like a new story to you? Not argumentative. Genuinely curious.

The trauma of watching a film that isn't 100% exactly what you wanted it to be is simply too much for some people.

This film wasn't 100% exactly what I wanted. I have quibbles that I'm turning my rewrite reflex to. But I still enjoyed the hell out of it the first four times I've seen it, and plan to keep going back as long as I can find a theater running it.

[amusing macro that never shows up in post quotes]

To be fair, Finn isn't her boyfriend. They're close, sure, but not in that way. Plus, we've been hearing for most of the year that she's going to be interested in Poe in Episode VIII.

--Jonah
 
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You guys just wanna censor anyone who hates the film and chooses to vent about it. And you call that trolling.

Whatever. I tried to stick to this thread, since you guys said you wanted all comments, complimentary or critical, to be in one place.

It's obvious to me now you don't really want that. This thread is the TFA lovefest I thought it was from the jump, intolerant to opposing points of view.

The Wook

For the record, I don't believe you're trolling.
I think you were deeply upset by TFA, and you're expressing your anger.
That's cool. I feel the same way about the prequels.
Your "liberal Hollywood agenda" remark got me hot under the collar, but whatever.
You're entitled to believe in whatever you want, however stupid it is. :D
 
Just wanted to throw this in for s$&ts and giggles. :)

image.jpg


Ben
 
For the record, I don't believe you're trolling.
I think you were deeply upset by TFA, and you're expressing your anger.
That's cool. I feel the same way about the prequels.

Thank you, Axlotl. You are right. My wish was merely to vent about my disgust with the film. Not to troll those who like it. Heck, I wasn't even trying to convince people to see it my way. But my expressed opinions drew some nasty responses, asking me to leave the thread, calling me a misogynist, a sexist, etc. So I engaged my attackers. But then I got piled onto, because I'm clearly outnumbered in this thread. I thought Bryancd and everyone strongly wanted ALL comments, positive or negative, in this master thread. But that isn't true. No dissenters allowed, here.

The Wook
 
Thank you, Axlotl. You are right. My wish was merely to vent about my disgust with the film. Not to troll those who like it. Heck, I wasn't even trying to convince people to see it my way. But my expressed opinions drew some nasty responses, asking me to leave the thread, calling me a misogynist, a sexist, etc. So I engaged my attackers. But then I got piled onto, because I'm clearly outnumbered in this thread. I thought Bryancd and everyone strongly wanted ALL comments, positive or negative, in this master thread. But that isn't true. No dissenters allowed, here.

The Wook


I think its its a little more than that. You come in out of nowhere quoteing articles incorrectly looking for argument. I know you hate the movie but it's like everyone else has to as well. ?
"JJ ADMITS HE RIPPED OFF ANH" is the perfect example.


Ben
 
Thank you, Axlotl. You are right. My wish was merely to vent about my disgust with the film. Not to troll those who like it. Heck, I wasn't even trying to convince people to see it my way. But my expressed opinions drew some nasty responses, asking me to leave the thread, calling me a misogynist, a sexist, etc. So I engaged my attackers. But then I got piled onto, because I'm clearly outnumbered in this thread. I thought Bryancd and everyone strongly wanted ALL comments, positive or negative, in this master thread. But that isn't true. No dissenters allowed, here.

The Wook

I'm with you debating the merits of the film and I have known you on here a long time, but your comments the last few pages have put you solidly off the reservation.
 
I think its its a little more than that. You come in out of nowhere quoteing articles incorrectly looking for argument. I know you hate the movie but it's like everyone else has to as well. ?
"JJ ADMITS HE RIPPED OFF ANH" is the perfect example.


Ben

First of all, I didn't write it in all caps like that, so you're mischaracterizing my post right off the bat. CAPS suggest screaming, and by writing it that way in an attempt to quote me, you're sending the wrong signals to others, that I was trying to shove it in all your faces with such EMPHASIS. But regardless, read this quote by JJ and tell me he's not conceding that he ripped of ANH (which I think is newsworthy, and that's why I posted it here in this thread):

I respect every reaction. I completely see that that is a problem for some people.
It was obviously a wildly intentional thing that we go backwards, in some ways, to go forwards in the important ways, given that this is a genre — that Star Wars is a kind of specific gorgeous concoction of George [Lucas]’s — that combines all sorts of things. Ultimately the structure of Star Wars itself is as classic and tried and true as you can get. It was itself derivative of all of these things that George loved so much, from the most obvious, Flash Gordon and Joseph Campbell, to the [Akira] Kurosawa references, to Westerns — I mean, all of these elements were part of what made Star Wars.
I can understand that someone might say, ‘Oh, it’s a complete rip-off!’ We inherited Star Wars. The story of history repeating itself was, I believe, an obvious and intentional thing, and the structure of meeting a character who comes from a nowhere desert and discovers that she has a power within her, where the bad guys have a weapon that is destructive but that ends up being destroyed — those simple tenets are by far the least important aspects of this movie, and they provide bones that were well-proven long before they were used in Star Wars.
 
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Okay, that makes zero sense to me. It's Pocahontas in space. It's the White Messiah story trope. How the hell is the "white man helping out the poor backwards natives who wouldn't have been able to defeat his people on their own" culturally palatable for foreign markets? :wacko
LOL. It's absolutely the white savior trope which makes it a tired formula for a literate western viewer's eyes but that's not how a foreign viewer might see it.

It's formulaic and has a predictable story arc. On that we agree.
Simple stories translate better to a foreign market. Why is that confusing?
The success of Avatar overseas has nothing to do with the fact that it's another Pocahontas/Dances with Wolves movie.

Are you arguing that Avatar shouldn't be accessible across culture?
Maybe you misunderstood what I meant by "culturally palatable"?

Maybe you just want to take the opportunity to point out the history of "white savior" stories in film and print. If you've read some of my earlier posts about Avatar you'll see that I've pointed this out repeatedly. But the existence as a tired trope has nothing to do to do with it's success overseas.
 
I'm with you debating the merits of the film and I have known you on here a long time, but your comments the last few pages have put you solidly off the reservation.

Bryan, your dog thinks you are the kind of person who would not call someone a misogynist. Be that person.

The Wook
 
First of all, I didn't write it in all caps like that, so you're mischaracterizing my post right off the bat. CAPS suggest screaming, and by writing it that way in an attempt to quote me, you're sending the wrong signals to others, that I was trying to shove it in all your faces with such EMPHASIS. But regardless, read this quote by JJ and tell me he's not conceding that he ripped of ANH (which I think is newsworthy, and that's why I posted it here in this thread):

I respect every reaction. I completely see that that is a problem for some people.
It was obviously a wildly intentional thing that we go backwards, in some ways, to go forwards in the important ways, given that this is a genre — that Star Wars is a kind of specific gorgeous concoction of George [Lucas]’s — that combines all sorts of things. Ultimately the structure of Star Wars itself is as classic and tried and true as you can get. It was itself derivative of all of these things that George loved so much, from the most obvious, Flash Gordon and Joseph Campbell, to the [Akira] Kurosawa references, to Westerns — I mean, all of these elements were part of what made Star Wars.
I can understand that someone might say, ‘Oh, it’s a complete rip-off!’ We inherited Star Wars. The story of history repeating itself was, I believe, an obvious and intentional thing, and the structure of meeting a character who comes from a nowhere desert and discovers that she has a power within her, where the bad guys have a weapon that is destructive but that ends up being destroyed — those simple tenets are by far the least important aspects of this movie, and they provide bones that were well-proven long before they were used in Star Wars.

i think you are failing to see the meaning and context of what he is saying. I and others have posted why Disney felt they needed to ground this film in the OT era by creating familiar elements. As someone who analysis business decisions for a living, I can't stress enough how important that call was. This film HAD to succeed, financially, critically, and for the fan base. It has, and those are facts despite your efforts to frame that reality differently. If this film had not resonated so well with people, as Dan also said, this whole franchise would have been in jeaporday. If you are really a fan and want to see a future filled with new SW stories, this film and outcome is exactly what you want.

And your "girl power" rant was WAY out of line. As well as making this an anti- liberal Hollyowood conversation.
 
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And your "girl power" rant was WAY out of line. As well as making this an anti- liberal Hollyowood conversation.

Heaven forbid in a free speech society someone gets "out of line".March on political correctness. Let's not really have a real discussions in the fear I get branded. I should just zip it.

Someone once pointed out political correctness is just a way to say I don't agree with you so you better shut the f~$k up.

[emoji12][emoji12][emoji12]
 
Heaven forbid in a free speech society someone gets "out of line".March on political correctness. Let's not really have a real discussions in the fear I get branded. I should just zip it.

Someone once pointed out political correctness is just a way to say I don't agree with you so you better shut the f~$k up.

[emoji12][emoji12][emoji12]

On a privately owned and moderated forum your comment is meaningless. Your Constitutional rights not withstanding.
 
Heaven forbid in a free speech society someone gets "out of line".March on political correctness. Let's not really have a real discussions in the fear I get branded. I should just zip it.

Someone once pointed out political correctness is just a way to say I don't agree with you so you better shut the f~$k up.

[emoji12][emoji12][emoji12]



Point of Information: Freedom of Speech technically applies only to public venues. This site, by virtue of being owned by a private individual and by virtue of requiring that you join to post, is by definition a private venue and technically doesn't fall under that purview. This is why Montagar and Art can ban people for doing or saying the wrong thing. Granted, there is a lot of leeway here, and disagreeing with someone over a movie isn't something that they care about enough to get involved (unless it spirals out of control), but my point still stands.

- - - Updated - - -

On a privately owned and moderated forum your comment is meaningless. Your Constitutional rights not withstanding.



Damn... Beat me to it.
 
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