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The correct order is 4, 5, 6, 7, 4, 5, 6, 7.
Pres man
re the light: spaceships emit light when they go to hyperspace, so its not unreasonable for a giant beam of light being passed through a hyperspace tunnel does the same thing. It looked cool, just go with it.
I loved it! Took in the IMAX experience last night and can't wait to go back for another screening.
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My current order is (basically machete order with a prologue):
Phantom Menace (I)
A New Hope (IV)
Empire Strikes Back (V)
Attack of the Clones (II)
Revenge of the Sith (III)
Return of the Jedi (VI)
Force Awakens (VII)Though I have been debating with:
Phantom Menace (I)
A New Hope (IV)
Attack of the Clones (II)
Empire Strikes Back (V)
Revenge of the Sith (III)
Return of the Jedi (VI)
Force Awakens (VII)
But you're missing the Christmas special.
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@Ajaxis: Well I didn't put the Ewok Adventurers in the lists either.
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It's happening guys. Waiting to see it now.
Baron arem heshvaun, I will see you tomorrow to gush with you in person, and will call you later on tonight.
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%fresh has to do with positive vs negative reviews, not rating. All positive = 100% fresh.
My spoiler free thoughts... It was a good movie, but not the best one I've seen this year, maybe third or fourth. Casting was pretty great, though Carrie Fisher has lost her acting chops. General Hux brought buckets of intensity, and it was interesting seeing both Isaac and Gleeson in another great movie (the other is the superb Ex machina). A mishmash of ANH and Jedi tropes led for quite a predictable movie. My wife, who has not even read one spoiler not being a star wars fan, even commented about how rote the story was.
Verdict: better than the prequels so it's a win no matter what. Strong cast sets a nice direction for the franchise, even without the spoiler. Some of the best blended cgi and real peeps ever. 7/10
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Not sure why the back-handed shot on JJ Abrams was necessary. He's an extremely talented director and writer. I wouldn't have expected anything less from him
I belong to Abrams now.
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ONE OF THE GREATEST MOVIES OF ALL TIME
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My only complaint:
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It was a good Star wars movie. I would rank them:
The Empire Strikes Back
The Force Awakens
A New Hope
Return of the Jedi
Attack of the Clones
Revenge of the Sith
A Phantom Menace
My only complaint:
** spoiler omitted **
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Alright, just returned an hour ago from my first viewing of the movie.
- The physics of this movie are more screwed than usual for Star Wars. How exactly could the people on the planet where Rey, Finn, Han and Chewie were staying even see the five planets exploding from the Megadeathstars death rays of doom? Are they in the same system? Shouldn't that have meant that they'd be dead in a few minutes, too, given how the Hyperdeathstar should have sucked up the sun of that system? Does JJ Abrams understand anything at all about physics and the speed of light or did he just want a cool looking scene for the Ultradeathstar?
- Darth Douchy McWhiny was really, really annoying to me and felt sorely undermotivated. Also, inconsistent powerlevels. Stops blaster bolts in mid-air, can't lightsaber fight for shit. Guess he's a Jedi Consular. ^^
- Captain Phasma was underutilized.
- The politics of the setting seem screwed up or completely underdeveloped. Why is there a Resistance movement when the Republic still exists? How did the First Order rise? What systems do they control. Did we really have to make the Nazi analogy so obvious this time around?
- Han! Noooooo!
- Contrary to many others, I liked the highly mobile and stylish lightsaber battles. So the return of hacky-slash fighting was kinda a downer for me. I hope, as the characters gain more experience, their fighting will improve.
Now, for the positives:
- Great character work from the new and old actors.
- Excellent action.
- I really liked the new characters and the old ones. Except Kylo Ren, because he seems like a spoiled brat who listens to Linking Park all the time and feels sorry about himself. But the rest of them, excellent.
- Great chemistry between the new main three, especially Rey and Finn and Finn and Poe. Doesn't seem like they'll be going for a love triangle, which is good.
All in all, a positive experience, but the mentioned negatives kinda spoil it. Although I went in expecting a typical JJ Abrams script and that is what I got.
** spoiler omitted **My only complaint:
** spoiler omitted **
Also, it was damn good to see Parkman as a rebel pilot. I met him!!!!!!
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My only complaint:
** spoiler omitted **
Actually ...
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Alright, just returned an hour ago from my first viewing of the movie.
- Darth Douchy McWhiny was really, really annoying to me and felt sorely undermotivated. Also, inconsistent powerlevels. Stops blaster bolts in mid-air, can't lightsaber fight for s#$+. Guess he's a Jedi Consular. ^^
Agree on the whiny part. 2 things saved it for me. A) you're tapping into forces fueled by anger and rage. Emotional instability is a perk. B) The scene where the smartest storm troopers ever walked down the hall, heard the tantrum... and went the other way.
-He took a wookie boltcaster slug to the chest right before the fight and had to pound the blood out of his lungs, repeatedly. Unlike your standard pistol blasts, that thing was shown to be tossing storm troopers down hallways. So yes, he's fighting TWO untrained people, but he's doing so with a hole in his chest you can put your fist through and 90% of his dark mojo was going towards "keep myself up" and he had to fight with the rest. He burned a lot his reserves fighting Fin (a trained soldier remember, and whoever trained them seemed genre savey enough to have storm troopers trained NOT to use blaster fire on anyone holding a light saber) and to top it off...
She's also way. Way stronger than him. Or luke. 3 movies and training with yoda barely got him doing jedi mind tricks. She had that down pat faster than a dominos pizza delivery. Probably why she got dumped on the planet. No way were they risking her going all evil, thats game over people.
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Kylo Ren took a direct hit and kept walking. That means he's a badass too, but that (which is reinforced multiple times with his limping) explains why he has difficulty fighting.
The part I don't understand is why he didn't just lock Finn in place and kill him. Or, they should have had him try to do that to Rey, and then have her will her way out of it, then continue the fight.
It's kind of a common oversight in movies with people who have special powers; the writer's don't think of other ways to use the powers, or just forget about powers altogether, later in the movie.
So, just curious, what day do we not have to use spoiler tags?
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I saw it and enjoyed it. Now to convince the wife to see it in the big screen.
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Alright, just returned an hour ago from my first viewing of the movie.** spoiler omitted **
Good explanations, thank you. I still got my annoyances with
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Saw it, loved it. The new characters really clicked, for the most part. John Boyega has brilliant chemistry with both Daisy Ridley and Oscar Isaac, and those bonds really help carry the film. Now we need to get those two to share the screen so we can have a proper Star Wars trio. I am so very glad that we got the original trio back, and Chewie, and the droids. We're just missing Lando (though I hope he comes back). The film's only weakness is in the villain department. I wish we had seen more of Phasma, but apparently her role will be beefed up in the next films and I'm looking forward to that. I think that Hux was meant to be another Tarkin, but that never quite materialized to my liking. Snoke was too much of a cypher to have an impact, Andy Serkis notwithstanding. And Kylo Ren... okay. I honestly think I see what they were going for, but in my opinion it was a misstep.
Oh yeah, and Harrison Ford steals the show, but I don't think that should surprise anyone.
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I think that Hux got the Hitler vibe down well. (I certainly got flashbacks to seeing black/white clips from Nazi rallies when the camera focused in on his face.) It was also interesting to see how the two enemy bosses (Hux and Ren) got along - or not.
I hope that we'll get more backstory in the next two films. And see more of Phasma, Snoke, etc.
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About Rey's origin
Han and Rey get along like gangbusters. It's almost over the top trying to convince you how similar they are and that he's her long lost father. They spend like 40 minutes dropping ham-fisted clues about this relationship.
Then Rey finds the lightsaber and has an instant connection with it. This points to Luke, but I think this is the actual red herring. For her to be Luke's daughter, several additional plot elements need to be introduced and in the end it'll be less satisfying.
Here's how I think her backstory will play out:
Luke was training the new jedi when Kylo Ren turned on him, destroying his work. Fearing the potential damage his family line could do, he took Han and Leia's other child, wiped their memories of her, and hid her on Jakku. This will also echo back to how he was hidden on Tatooine.
This fits the first movie's central theme: choice
At the beginning, Finn shows us that destiny is not something we follow, but rather we make choices. He chooses to leave the First Order and his choices have impacts throughout the galaxy. Kylo Ren is faced with the choice to kill his father or join him. His choice will impact the next movie. Pushing this into the past, we will see the effects of Luke's choice, to hide Rey, as he tries to train her.
In addition, the movie has set up the primary conflict for the trilogy, it's Rey vs Ren. Their struggle will be the metaphor for the struggle between Light and Dark and it's impact on the galaxy. Now, if we accept that this struggle is central to the whole trilogy, which sounds more epic:
Brother vs Sister
Cousin vs Cousin
It's the sibling conflict that naturally sounds more evocative. Mind you, this relies on a lot of assumption, and it certainly has some holes in it, but it's my currently preferred theory. I think it closes the loop on the central conflict nicely and pushes the story naturally towards a lot of conflict. It will also get mirrored in a Luke vs Leia conflict (brother vs sister) once the truth is revealed that Luke took her daughter away.
The real truth is that they left it completely open for Rey to be Han/Leia's kid, or Luke's kid. I suspect that they will continue pushing evidence for both in the next movie, maybe even adding a third option, until it's revealed near the climax in EP 8.
Something I really liked near the end
I also enjoyed the Starkiller sucking the star to death. Poe says a line about how they still have hope as long as there's still light. It's a little obvious, but I like the attempt at having a visual metaphor for their struggle, and as a countdown clock, telling the audience how long the conflict has left. Not especially subtle, but I liked it anyways.
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My two theories on Rey:
2) Rey was a padawan when the knights of ren attacked Luke's training center, and she somehow managed survived. Luke force suppressed her memories, but her Jedi training still laid there, just below the surface. Mind trick was easy because she was indeed trained in it, just when she was a tot. When she thought of the force, she used her latent Jedi training to purge her mind of fear and doubt, letting the light side guide her hands.
Though theory 2 can still accommodate a Luke is my father.
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So, I'm going to be the voice of dissent. There were several things that I thought were good, several things I thought were bad, but my opinion tips toward bad overall.
Aside from that I liked
Stuff I didn't like included
So, that brings up the next thing I didn't like. The film was over edited. I couldn't get into several scenes because everything was cut-action all over the place. Compare to the super-long continuous shot at the beginning of Revenge of the Sith which was awesome and I feel like this film had far too much "work" done.
The dialog, particularly every single one of Kylo Ren's lines and about half of Han's lines were complete garbage. Also, neither actor sold their lines particularly well so it was double apparent they were written so badly. Every time Kylo gave an order I just thought that it seemed so forced, so unnatural, so much like JJ Abrams playing with his action figures. Han's bad lines were 100% ham-fisted nostalgia jokes that didn't land well. Unfortunately that was like half of his lines. Speaking of bad lines, Poe Dameron in the first act, "Who talks first," didn't work for me either. The actor didn't pull it off and so it fell flat. It was meant to make us see him as the new Solo character but it just didn't work. And it wasn't entirely his fault, imagine if Han had told Leia, "I Know," in the first 20 minutes of A New Hope, it wouldn't have worked there either.
Music. I was really sad that there were no new themes. Everything was a rehash of the same themes I've been hearing for 38 years. I know JW is getting old but there really should have been something to set this series apart.
Plot. Wow, holes holes everywhere. Standard JJ Abrams fare. I won't get into it even under spoilers for at least a week or two to let everyone see it first.
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Well, you're clearly not a JJ Abrams fan, you made that pretty clear. Is it possible that clouded your opinion?
The dialogue (and script), written by Abrams and Lawrence Kasdan himself, is pretty much across the board being praised - strange you found the dialog so bad.
The Kylo Ren character, as well as the actor playing him, has been repeatedly singled out as one of the bright spots in an already highly regarded movie.
Even if one is not a JJ Abrams fan for some reason, I find it pretty hard to fathom how anyone could not acknowledge that the movie is, at the very least, extremely good, if not in fact excellent
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Well, you're clearly not a JJ Abrams fan, you made that pretty clear. Is it possible that clouded your opinion?
The dialogue (and script), written by Abrams and Lawrence Kasdan himself, is pretty much across the board being praised - strange you found the dialog so bad.
The Kylo Ren character, as well as the actor playing him, has been repeatedly singled out as one of the bright spots in an already highly regarded movie.
Even if one is not a JJ Abrams fan for some reason, I find it pretty hard to fathom how anyone could not acknowledge that the movie is, at the very least, extremely good, if not in fact excellent
I went in expecting some rough edges but actually thought JJ would do a good job with it because SW is his nerd-bag. So I was actually surprised to find the dialog so clunky. I don't think the movie approached anything near extremely good let alone excellent. I really think that nostalgia goggles are clouding people's vision right now and that in a few months the cracks will start to show a bit more clearly.
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I just want to see Wedge and Lando in the next one. Even if they have to cast a third actor for Wedge since Lawson thought it would be boring.
Not sure about Wedge--since binge-reading Darths and Droids my opinion of Wedge has been completely warped, and I'd probably mistakenly assume he's a shapeshifter if I saw him in a movie again.
Then again, maybe that would be good, since I'd be totally surprised by the outcome of him not being a shapeshifter in the movie.| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Just bought a ticket for my second viewing in about an hour. The theater has assign seating, and so far my ticket is the only one sold.
CST, it's a very late showing. 2 tickets sold, so I won't quite have it to myself. Oh well.
I enjoy the buzz in a theater on opening night sometimes, but typically I prefer dead quiet. This theater also has a number of restrictions on kids after 7pm, which makes it my favorite theater in the Minneapolis area.
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CST, it's a very late showing. 2 tickets sold, so I won't quite have it to myself. Oh well.
I enjoy the buzz in a theater on opening night sometimes, but typically I prefer dead quiet. This theater also has a number of restrictions on kids after 7pm, which makes it my favorite theater in the Minneapolis area.
I saw it last night over in Maple Grove in a packed house. I'd much rather have been in a slightly less filled theater. Particularly one where the woman behind me didn't put her feet up on my chair and kick it the entire time.
Also, I wouldnt normally pick a 3D show but I fell into some tickets which is why I went last night as opposed to later this week. I did not think the 3D enhancement was that impressive. My advice save a few bucks and go normal.
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It's a 7.5/10 for me: Big nostalgia hit, nice casting overall, spectacular effects.
The story is plain and unimaginative, mostly a New Hope rehash with a fresh face. Dialogs are quite standard, with a LOT of puns and only few of them gave me a real laugh.
I kinda liked Kylo Ren...until he started to give tantrums and whinnings, plus the removal of his helmet killed the "big bad boss" mood for me (making him "Darth Puber"). In any case, i would have prefered that his helmet removal was at the scene with Han Solo, for a more dramatic effect.
The transition from "Return of a Jedi" to this is quite strange and forcefull: Why has the Empire reformed around the First Order...WHY is it called the First Order? Why the Resistance still exists, if the Republic has been behind them all the time? Why the Republic does not simple actively fight against the Empire remenants with the Emperor, Darth Vader and the Death Star Destroyed? Who the hell is Lord Snoke (horrible name by the way), where did he come from?
WHY THE REPUBLIC IS CLUSTERED IN A SINGLE SYSTEM AND GETS ONE-SHOTED WITH A GIGANTIC PLOT CANON? Why Kylo Ren venerates Darth Vader as the ultimate evil figure when he was REDEEMED at the end of "The Return of the Jedi", making him the worst traitor to the Empire ever?
Shouldn't Leia have learned SOMETHING tangible about the force right now? I would have loved to see her as some kind of mentor to Rey, or even the guardian of Luke's Lightsaber. Instead, she plays the role of a "nice grandma", when she could have done so more.
Finally: If Luke needs around 3 movies to be trained as a decent Jedi Knight (with both force powers and lightsaber skills), Rey suddenly is able to defeat Kilo Ren because "she listened to the force?".
With a little more depth, this could have been the movie of the year for me. As it is, its a nice foundation for another trilogy, but nothing too memorable.
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This might be old news to some. Also I didn't want to dig through 19 pages. If someone already said something, sorry.
The base name is called Starkiller. The writers of the original movie had Luke Skywalker as Luke Starkiller but found people didn't like the name so they renamed the character to Skywalker. So Starkiller is showing up in this movie.
I just wonder if this is typical JJ Abrams or part of future movies.
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It's a 7.5/10 for me: Big nostalgia hit, nice casting overall, spectacular effects.
*SPOILERS*
Spoiler tags look like this (remove the periods)
[.spoiler] Text you want to keep spoilered [./spoiler]