Solo4114
Master Member
Ah, but see, you have to ask yourself something: how much of that information is you filling in the blanks, and how much of it is the film showing you this stuff? How much is your own ex post facto creation (i.e., how did we get to here from there? It must have been these following things), and how much is really on screen?
For example, you say the film shows Solo as a father figure to Rey. But does it? I'm not sure it builds that relationship as clearly as we are led to think it does. And we're mostly led to think that because (A) we have our own relationship with Solo as the audience, (B) Rey's reaction at his death is what you'd expect of someone who has a surrogate parental relationship with this person, and (C) they occupy the positions where we expect them to have that kind of relationship. But that's not the same as actually showing the relationship. I may not be remembering it, but I don't recall, for example, Han acting as a real mentor to her, trying to teach her, bring her along, etc. Other than the blaster sequence, which is really, really brief. Everything else is mostly matter-of-fact dealing with her. He's friendly, but he doesn't act parental or as a mentor to her for the most part.
I think we see what we expect to see, but what isn't necessarily there.
Waaaaaaaay upthread, I laid out how, like, 3 more lines in the crawl could've done it. But you could also have shown a single scene of Leia or her adjutant begging the Senate to rearm to fight, and them being reluctant. That's all you need. That establishes why there's a "Resistance" and why the Republic isn't doing anything. I think people got the sense that politics = boring because politics in TPM were boring. But that was because they were talking about boring stuff. It wasn't effectively contextualized. People make it seem like TPM involved a lengthy sequence with Robert's Rules of Order and a ton of dialogue, but the real problem is that the plot itself and reason for being in the senate are boring and overly complicated.
In TFA, you could have a sequence where Leia tells her adjutant "You have to get them to break the Treaty of Jakku. The First Order already has. The Republic needs to rearm too, before it's too late." Then, while the adjutant is trying to convince the Republic, and while the Republic dithers, GIANT SPACE CANNON DESTROYS IT. Now your politicking isn't boring!
Two things.
First, I'm not saying that the film ONLY does action. There's more to it than just that. But I'm saying trimming the action would have allowed more of the non-action stuff to breathe and would've provided room to do things like shore up characters so that their behavior is clearly based on established motivation, rather than "Here's what we need them to do in the moment."
Second, as for Luke's ability in the X-wing, it's true that that's never really explained in the film. Later films and external materials imply that it's because he's awesome with the Force, but it's never clearly explained. I suppose you could say how he used to bullseye womprats in his T-16 back home is a very loose hint at his ability to fly (and there's the deleted-then-restored scene about Biggs saying he's a good pilot), but that's it.
The thing with Rey, though, is that so much of what she does is remarkable. Luke, in the first film, is kind of a doof for the most part. He's good in the Falcon's turrets, and with a blaster on the Death Star. But much of the time he's just kind of bumbling. He gets his ass kicked at the bar, he's easily irritated by Han at the bar, and he's still just kinda learning how to use the lightsabre. At home, he's a whiny farmboy who wants to go hang with his friends. He's hardly all powerful. Really, his blaster skills and his piloting are the only unexplained skills.
Rey, by contrast, is able to mind-trick someone AND use a lightsabre to take on a trained opponent, AND fly the Falcon, AND knows about all the different weird parts and quirks of the ship, AND gets out of the Rathtar thing, AND can speak BB-8's language. And it's never really explained. It's left to the audience to make the leap that "Of course! She must be really strong with the Force!" but the film itself never connects the dots. Again, that's relying on the audience's meta-knowledge of the universe itself. If you didn't know what the Force was, if you just watched this film on its own, having NEVER EVER seen a Star Wars film before (and, I guess, living in a cave since 1977?), you'd be well within your rights to wonder why the hell Rey can do all this stuff. I think the film could've at least spoken to this fact a bit more than it did.
Again, not a critical flaw that kills enjoyment for me, but one that I think is still a valid criticism of the film itself.
