So you’ve seen the movie, heard Zach on Film break it down, read the reviews, and now you’ve formed your own opinion of Star Wars: The Force Awakens.
Thirty years after defeating the Galactic Empire, Han Solo (Harrison Ford) and his allies face a new threat from the evil Kylo Ren (Adam Driver) and his army of Stormtroopers.
Use the comment section below to share your thoughts on the movie. Feel free to throw out spoilers, as this is a site called Major Spoilers, and anyone looking at the comment section and not expecting spoilers at this point, gets what’s coming to them.
GO!
16 Comments
I thought the movie by itself was good. It didn’t mess around and told the story it wanted to tell.
The people I went to see the movie with were griping and moaning about this being a rehash of Episode 4. I acknowledge this, but retort that JJ Abrams Star Trek movies included a rather large helping of fan service and nostalgia so I am ok with it here… for now.
Episode 8 has a lot of pressure on it now to get away from the nostalgia factors and tell a good original star wars story.
If the further movies go the same way of episodes 2-3, then this movie could be tainted in retrospect.
This is a movie that I will see again. Hopefully, my wife will come too.
I think this is a movie you should see.
I posted this on the Zach on Film page, but thought it deserved to go here as well.
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MOSTLY SPOILER FREE RESPONSE
I saw it last night!!! Was wonderful overall. I completely agree that it is a beautiful film. Mostly well written and mostly well acted. Action scenes were pretty awesome.
Stephan, i agree with your comment about there being a bit too many parallels with the original movies. There’s a fine line between homage and copying, and at times it felt soooo homage-like that it was almost a reskin of the original, and so was kind of distracting. Had the side effect being kind of predictable. Other than that — Boyega chewed the scenery a bit, and I thought some of the Han/Leia stuff was a bit awkward. I couldn’t tell if the awkwardness was script or acting or both. Might have even been intentional awkwardness given the situation.
I disagree on the hologram thing. There’s a long history of the big bad talking to the bigger bad via hologram in Star Wars, so I think most people would have assumed, as soon as they saw it (I did). I do agree on the helmet thing though.
Overall I really liked it. I’d put it just after the original 3, but far far ahead of the prequels. I’m actually more excited for the movies to come, because maybe then they won’t lean so heavily on the original Star Wars tropes and we’ll get to see what Abrams can really do with this universe.
I had a lot of fun, but I did cringe every time a plot element that was clearly lifted from “New Hope” came about. So I did plenty of cringing.
The best thing about the movie are the elements that are NOT directly paralleled in previous films, so mostly Finn.
I thought the characters were good, well acted and seemed properly motivated.
Having Lupita Nyong’o and Gwendoline Christie play the characters they did was a huge waste of their talent.
Not bad all around, though.
Were you sitting in the car five minutes ago when my wife and I had this exact conversation?
I just got back from the movie and came to post, well, these thoughts. I’d also add that Poe Dameron was pretty great. I think I liked him because he was established as an Ace Pilot, so his piloting skills made sense. Every time Rey or Finn was able to do something despite never having done it before, I cringed the same way I did when the New Hope plot points were raised.
This movie was a beautiful, nostalgic reboot for a franchise that was hurting for it to be reaccepted by the audience that had made it what it was. Everyone was terrified that we were going to get another disappointing film, and regardless of what might have been said the prequels were terrible disappointments to a great many people. In the circle of people whose opinions I care about, that is the consensus. Yes, Lucas did give us the original trilogy, but since then he has seemingly rejoiced in his consistent tinkering with a wonderful story and the frustration of fans of this world he created.
Yes, there were many “A New Hope” feels in there, but there was plenty of wonderful Star Wars going on in this movie to make me not care for a moment that I was watching several familiar beats. I can certainly pick out several points that could have used a little more script treatment, or a couple more minutes of screen time, but I loved it. It brought out feelings I have missed since the original trilogy, and have wanted as the originals have been re-released with Lucas’ consistent “tinkering” and “refining.”
That’s it for me. I loved the movie, I’m going to see it again. And probably one more time after that to continue catching things I might have missed before.
An extremely well made film, fun, exciting and scary in a way that will appeal to adults and kids equally. I was particularly pleased with the performances of the young cast and by the lack of lens flare and shaky cam.
There were certainly flaws, it leans a little too heavily on the story structure of a New Hope and Kylo Ren is kind of a sulky brat. But none of that really matters in the face of such a glorious epic adventure.
I had a lot of the same feelings as the comments so far. It was an amazing ride with great characters, new and old, but I’m wondering if the multiple parallels will continue to hold up going forward. That being said, I can’t wait to see it again because the characters were so wonderful, the action was intense, and despite over-many parallels, I loved the story. I’m so happy right now. I can’t wait until Episode 8!
SPOILERS AHEAD honestly why did you come to a discussion section about the film not expecting some?
Why couldn’t they figure out where Luke was with that small piece of map? It contained whole star systems! Don’t tell me they couldn’t triangulate his position based known maps of the galaxy. It was revealed at the end of the film that the piece that BB8 carried had Luke’s destination on it. Were there no labeled planets or stars anywhere on that section of map? If Han, Fin and Rey figured out how star charts worked and just went to find Luke instead of going to Takodana this would have been a much different movie. Maybe a certain character wouldn’t have died? There was a line about the Millennium Falcon being incredibly easy to track, but that was to justify Han not taking BB8 to the Resistance himself.
Sorry little details like that bug me.
Holy crap, Coruscant was destroyed! That was Coruscant right? With the size of the population of that city planet every force sensitive sentient being in the galaxy should have felt that loss of life.
It wasn’t Coruscant? It was a different core world. http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Hosnian_Prime
So we have a Tatooine and a Coruscant analog in this movie. A Rebellion and an Empire Analog. I guess JJ was serious about trying to keep things analog and not digital!
There are problems with this script but not near enough to make me dis-like this film. I loved it. I can’t wait to see all the details get fleshed out over the next ten years or so with new books and movies.
They actually said that the systems on the map fragment weren’t any known system. How is that possible when they aren’t shown to be on the Fringe? I’m not sure, but they still said it.
Saw it opening night as well and enjoyed it throughly. Just hearing John Williams score throughout was an experience and I really liked the melding of new and old character to push this franchise forward. I will say this to Stephen and those who disliked the new hope parallels, which is very true but as was said by some others, if J.J. gave us fresh new story without parallels to a Heros journey we would have been griping just as heavily that this isn’t “my” Star Wars and the revolt could and would have been worse. So for me, I was over joyed that this was the way they went. Final note to Stephen and the zach on film crew who shut down Zachary feel for a Rey being Luke’s daughter thing, can anyone explain her British accent coming for Han or leia to me? Feels more like some lovely woman Luke fell in love with Good stuff everyone!
I loved the movie. Enough said..
My main comments are much the same as have been mentioned above, but I thought I’d add in one fun locale-specific moment I got to enjoy in the midnight show when I went.
I live in Scotland, and when that one gang leader stared down Han and bellowed “YER A DEID MAN, SOLO” in a proper thick local accent, it got cheers. :)
I was expecting a reimagining of “The New Hope”, and I got exactly that. It was distracting, but very well done if perhaps a bit too predictable. In a way the lack of any acknowledgement by the characters that they were pretty much retracing their own steps from thirty years ago furthered the distraction.
But it was intentional. It was a nostalgia celebration that still managed to have room for a few excellent action sequences and some engaging characters, both old and new and leave several exciting, open-ended possibilities. We learned next to nothing about how the balance of forces stands at this point in time, or of the reasons for the very few significant changes we know about.
Hopefully Episode 8 will be its own story now that the players are properly introduced, and we will learn more about the new characters, which were IMO the highlight of the movie. Rey and Finn were particularly compelling.
NOT ENOUGH CAPTAIN PHASMA
I loved every single minute of the movie.
I loved the new characters and what they did with the old ones. Rey. BB-8 and Poe Dameron were very likeable very quickly and I really liked the character development of Finn and Kylo Ren. All the returning characters were shown at their best and I can’t wait to see what’s going to happen with all of them in the next films.
Did the parallels to previous movies raise a flag? Yes, they did, but I was so entertained that any aprehension went away very quickly and the little tweaks they did to each of those plot points were very well done. I just hope that in the future, the dark side hires a different architect, because so far all of their mega structures can be blown up relatively easy :)
I loved the photography, the visual effects and the music. I was completely immersed in the movie the whole time.
The only thing I didn’t like about the movie? That it ended. I would have been perfectly happy with it lasting another hour.
Ok, I was thinking about how some people have been saying Rey is a Mary Sue. To me it has nothing to do with being overly powerful or beating everyone or any of that. It’s that Luke was a COMPLETE screw up for 2 movies and finally found success in Return of the Jedi. Luke did nothing right except shoot 2 proton torpedoes until he fought Darth Vader in Return. And that’s what made Return so satisfying for me because I got to see a character grow, develop, and get stronger. The Luke in Jabba’s Palace is cool, reserved, and so much wiser than the impetuous, stubborn, and naive Luke on the Death Star who almost gets crushed like yesterday’s garbage. In The Force Awakens, Rey is already so grown up and capable, I don’t know where the movie makers can go from here.
SO, what I want to see is:
Rey train under Luke, but that Skywalker stubborness (assuming she is Luke’s daughter) gets in the way. She flies off the handle having to deal with a father who abandoned her and now tries to control her after so many years. Then there’s Kylo Ren who wants to prove to himself and Snoke that he is a capable dark jedi after having lost to Rey. He chases her and Luke down for a rematch. Rey, in a fit of rage, kills Kylo Ren out of vengeance for his bad deeds and her frustration with Luke. That becomes the seed that Snoke/Darth Plagueis uses to turn Rey to the dark side. Finally, Luke must face his own daughter for the fate of the galaxy.
Now THAT would be a cool Empire Strikes Back twist for Episodes 8 and 9… Or at least, it would have been if that wasn’t more less the scene with Han and Kylo. Dangit, I can’t wait for EPISODE 8.