Star Wars: Episode VII: Revenge Of The Septuagenarian

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I watched my Blu-ray after buying it the week it came out, third viewing of the movie overall. The whole stretch of Rey's introduction, the quiet, mostly dialogue-free scenes, is up there with anything in the entire saga.

I still don't care for the opening much, however. The photography is ugly, boring direction aside from the opening shot of the ship's silhouette against the wide shot of Jakku. Also, the friendship of Finn and Poe is way too forced. Cheering each other on, Poe giving Finn his new name, etc. it's a far cry from Luke and Han, and if Lucas didn't shade the friendship of Obi-Wan and Anakin enough, this went way too far in the other direction.

For all of Solo's funny lines and Ford's good delivery, I could have done with the modification jokes where Rey does something to the ship to improve it or whatever and Solo seems to be surprised. Yes, it was always being repaired and having issue, but after owning it for decades I'm not buying her outsmarting him so easily. Also, I'm still rankled by the jokes about Han using Chewie's weapon. These guys are together for like 40 years and he acts like he's never picked it up before or knows what it does. This is as bad as anything with Jar Jar, IMO, but people will brush it off because they love the characters.

Destroying five planets with one shot is overkill, no emotional investment in the victims, and the characters fail to sell the atrocity. And this viewing continues to reinforce my thought that the heroes break into the fortress way too easily at the end, with almost no stormtroopers in sight the whole time they're shutting down the shields and placing the bombs. In A New Hope, I didn't feel this was the case, considerably more obstacles in getting from place to place (rescuing the princess and escaping).

Other stuff I still enjoyed wasnthe whole sequence at Maz's compound, primarily because of the mythology element, but also the character work with Rey and Finn (there also seems to be some foreshadowing re: Rey's parentage by the way Han looks at her. Good, subtle work from Ford). And I think the final forest duel looks great, and understand that Kylo was too injured and caught off-guard to beat Rey. Having said that, she scored one blow too many, and it seemed just a bit too one-sided.

Lastly, I dislike the cliffhanger, teasing ending, stuffing way too much into one episode. The film should have ended with Rey, Chewie, and R2 taking off as the other heroes wave farewell. Because beginning the next film right where this one left off weakens the Episode structure, and an in media res start will be anticlimactic and rob us of their first exchange.
 
I was taken aback by the amount of humorous dialogue in this film. You're right about the forced nature of Finn and Poe's friendship.


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I will never have reason to watch this again. It lacks anything truly clever or memorable and I truthfully get more out of reading a new canonical Star Wars book as some of those are taking much bigger risks in terms of storytelling and characterization.

I did enjoy the film though and felt it wasn't a total rehash like I feared. Its biggest failing is that they feel not giving you information makes for a better film, but it will just make this one even worse once a lot of the backstory of what's going on is filled in via the future installments. It's like Abrams thought the entirety of Star Wars relied around the Vader is Daddy reveal and just tried to do it again ten-fold.
 
lazarus said:
Lastly, I dislike the cliffhanger, teasing ending, stuffing way too much into one episode. The film should have ended with Rey, Chewie, and R2 taking off as the other heroes wave farewell. Because beginning the next film right where this one left off weakens the Episode structure, and an in media res start will be anticlimactic and rob us of their first exchange.
Click to expand...
Boom.
 
It's really not rocket science either. They get in the ship to go find Luke and as it enters light speed the credits start rolling. It works perfectly and keeps everyone jonesin' for the next installment.

To include her meeting Luke is dumb enough, but then they came nowhere close to even respectably doing that.
 
I don't agree. First of all, John Williams' piece as Rey is climbing the steps is easily one of the most beautiful pieces in the movie. Love it.

And the shot of Luke with his back turned...and that evil humming in the score...and the slow turn...what a moment in the theater on opening night. You could feel everyone on the edge of their seats. That shot is frightening and mesmerising because we know what we will see but we don't know EXACTLY what we will see. And there he is! Our old friend, and Hamill looks fantastic! He still looks like Luke! The stare! And the saber!

It's one of the signature moments of the movie. I left the theater buzzing after it. And my friends did, too.
 
Yeah, you don't get it. This isn't about how cool it looks, it's about adhering to a form established and carried out over 6 previous films.

This saga is broken up into episodes that follow certain plot and character arcs to mini resolutions. None of them end on such a note as TFA, and none begin right where the previous one left off. It gives the individual stories a chance to breathe, with time passing to re-establish all the players at the beginning of the next installment. Imagine The Empire Strikes Back ending with Luke quickly recovering from his hand replacement surgery, hopping in his X-Wing, landing on Tatooine, arriving at Jabba's Palace, and right when he walks up to Han's carbon block, the giant crime lord appears from behind the curtain, and the credits roll. That's fucking idiotic.

Now, had Luke said something to Rey along of the lines of "I've been waiting for you. It's time to begin your training", that would have at least put some kind of punctuation on it. The way we have it now, it's a cheap tease that feels like the end of an episode of Lost. And you have a poor grasp of storytelling if you don't see how having Rey follow the map and reach Luke's hideout in what seems like 30 seconds of screen time is an anticlimactic resolution considering how long everyone's been looking for him. There's no sense of a journey at all. They may as well have teleported her there Star Trek-style.

But we're living in a J.J. Abrams world now. Cheap thrills instead of classicism. It's not the Star Wars way.
 
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We disagree. Doesn't mean I "don't get it."

I understand your point about the episode thing. Do you think Episode VIII is going to begin right where Awakens left off? I guess it could. I doubt it, though.
 
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lazarus said:
This saga is broken up into episodes that follow certain plot and character arcs to mini resolutions.
Click to expand...

Also, this movie begins with the line "Luke Skywalker has vanished."

And it ends with the hero of the movie finding him.

How is that not an episode that follows a plot to a mini resolution?
 
GirlsAloudFan said:
I understand your point about the episode thing. Do you think Episode VIII is going to begin right where Awakens left off? I guess it could. I doubt it, though.
Click to expand...

I mean, this is what I was trying to parse in my earlier post from yesterday. If they pick up right where they left off, it's very un-Star Wars. If they don't, we're missing an extremely important moment, namely the first thing these two characters say to each other. And considering Rey's parentage was left as a huge mystery, I imagine that's going to come up pretty quick (especially if she turns out to be his daughter). Also, are we not going to see Luke and Chewie's reunion? I would be very surprised if any time passes between the end of VII and the beginning of VIII.

At any rate, if I personally was writing these scripts, I wouldn't have had Rey find Luke so easily at the end of TFA. Give her the key to the map in this film, but it shouldn't be just a Point A to Point B thing. The next episode would start with Rey and Chewie maybe meeting some intermediary, who gives her another clue to follow. When she finally reaches the planet, maybe she doesn't just happen to land on the one island where Luke is waiting? Maybe has some scary encounter with some local creature or the elements? Maybe Luke gets the drop on her and plays dumb as Yoda did during their first meeting?

Keep in mind, this could all be done within the first 20 minutes, as SW tends to move pretty fast. You introduce Luke around the same time as Han and Chewie showed up in TFA. Makes more sense to me.


GirlsAloudFan said:
Also, this movie begins with the line "Luke Skywalker has vanished."

And it ends with the hero of the movie finding him.

How is that not an episode that follows a plot to a mini resolution?
Click to expand...

Don't get me started on that opening crawl. Beginning with the personal instead of the larger galactic picture is eye-rolling, and cheap fan service. And, not surprisingly, sounds very close to ROTJ's lame crawl:

Luke Skywalker has returned to
his home planet of Tatooine in
an attempt to rescue his
friend Han Solo from the
clutches of the vile gangster
Jabba the Hutt.

It's more important to get a sense of where the Empire/Rebels are at instead of focusing initially on single individuals, no matter how important. We have no clue what's going on with the Empire, instead getting pretty narrow information about some crime lord on a remote planet. Now, 30 years have passed between ROTJ and TFA, and of primary interest should be where the power struggle sits after that time period, not about where Luke is. Look at Empire's crawl:

It is a dark time for the
Rebellion. Although the Death
Star has been destroyed,
Imperial troops have driven the
Rebel forces from their hidden
base and pursued them across
the galaxy.

Luke and Vader aren't mentioned until the second and third paragraphs, respectively. Or look at The Phantom Menace, another trilogy opener:

Turmoil has engulfed the
Galactic Republic. The taxation
of trade routes to outlying star
systems is in dispute.

Now people have made fun of this for being too dry and boring, but we know the stage that the story is taking place on, and this dispute will affect events going all the way through the Separatists and to Revenge of the Sith. Here's the crawl for Clones:

There is unrest in the Galactic
Senate. Several thousand solar
systems have declared their
intentions to leave the Republic.


Dooku and Amidala aren't mentioned until the second and third paragraphs. No mention of Anakin or Obi-Wan. And finally, Sith:

War! The Republic is crumbling
under attacks by the ruthless
Sith Lord, Count Dooku.
There are heroes on both sides.
Evil is everywhere.

Now here Dooku is mentioned, but the focus is on how this is affecting the Republic, instead of simply saying "Luke Skywalker has vanished", as if that tells us anywhere near enough. Not to mention that TFA's crawl mentions the First Order and the Resistance, and yet the actual screenplay fails to tell the viewer how these factions relate to the Empire and the Rebellion, leaving fans to look through supplemental materials like authorized novels and comics to get a grasp of what's actually happening.
 
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GirlsAloudFan said:
That shot is frightening and mesmerising because we know what we will see but we don't know EXACTLY what we will see. And there he is! Our old friend, and Hamill looks fantastic! He still looks like Luke! The stare! And the saber!

It's one of the signature moments of the movie. I left the theater buzzing after it. And my friends did, too.
Click to expand...

The GF de jour had never seen Star Wars before, and even she knew how big that moment was. I agree is was a magnificent finish.
 
Rogue One is supposedly garbage. Disney requesting extensive re-shoots and the reins from its sub-par director.

Sources are now trying to claim that these are just inevitable re-shoots meant to lighten tone and chuck in a young Han Solo (in order to tie in with the other upcoming spin-off). However, people working on the film have admitted that they're going to be redoing 40% of it, so, yeah, it's likely a garbage pile at the moment.

I imagine there will be next to no actual effects shot changes as there isn't much time...seems to be mostly dialogue related stuff due to a shoddy script. They basically shot the film while knowing that a better version of the script was available/on-the-way...ugh.

http://screenrant.com/star-wars-rogue-one-reshoots-details-mcquarrie/
 
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Everybody supposedly like to blow news out of proportion and no one does any real reporting any more.
 
Loving the idea that because some Disney suits think it's problematic that equates to there actually being a problem with its quality

Williams probably made too good of a movie and they want to dumb it down like The Force Awakens.
 
Brian Williams, the NBC newsman, is going around talk shows saying that he's the director of the film. Laz must have believed him.
 
I made a bad joke but if it had been left on its own it probably would have worked. Now you've ruined it.
 
lazarus said:
Loving the idea that because some Disney suits think it's problematic that equates to there actually being a problem with its quality

Williams probably made too good of a movie and they want to dumb it down like The Force Awakens.
Click to expand...

The similarities between remarks like this, which I've seen made by other SW fans online, to certain bands we like is uncanny.
 
lazarus said:
Sorry, was thinking Garth Williams instead of Garth Edwards.
Click to expand...

29131547_528.jpg
 
trevgreg said:
The similarities between remarks like this, which I've seen made by other SW fans online, to certain bands we like is uncanny.
Click to expand...


Ryan Tedder didn't give a thumbs up at the rest screening, so they had to throw the whole thing out.
 
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