So... one criticism I usually see for The Force Awakens is that Han Solo going back to being a smuggler apparently undoes his arc from the original trilogy, which I find really baffling, as, in fact, in The Force Awakens, Han Solo is still grown from the person he was in the original trilogy, especially in A New Hope.
In A New Hope, he starts out as someone who is selfish, he deeply cares for money, and himself, the latter of which is reinforced through the "Greedo shoots first" alteration in the post-1997 releases; at first he refuses to rescue Leia upon learning of her upcoming execution, but changes his mind after Luke convinces him she is rich and would reward him with money if he were to rescue her. Over time, he begins to care for another, Luke; although he leaves after the heroes arrive at the Rebel base on Yavin IV, he changes his mind and comes back to assist Luke during the Battle of Yavin, showing how he is no longer selfish, but instead... selfless.
Again, in The Force Awakens, Han Solo is still grown from the person he was in the original trilogy; Han from A New Hope would have required some sort of compensation for returning BB-8 to the Resistance, whereas the older and more selfless Han Solo was perfectly willing to do so merely because it was the right thing to do, without any consideration for compensation in exchange for doing so.
J.J. Abrams and Lawrence Kasdan only used his previous characteristics as a way of showing a realistic response to his guilt and grief related to the fall of his son, before having him overcome that guilt and grief as he chooses to stop running away and decides to face Ben on that bridge.
Imagine we are now In The Force Awakens but instead of Starkiller Base we have Pappa Palps showing up with his Uber fleet, how much does this change the story, is now demilitarized New Republic better off or worse.
The first thing that comes to mind for me is that The Final/First Order no longer have the range advantage that comes with a weapon that can no scope from across the galaxy,however in turn it becomes a much harder battle for the resistance, as we no longer talking about One massive target you can Infiltrate and blow up but thousands of weapon killers that are not only far more mobile but are likely far harder to Infiltrate and a single star destroyer has the ability to annihilate any fleet that might want to engage in a Skirmish. So my Knee Jerk reaction would be that Both the Resistance and the New Republic would kinda be screwed but there are some wild cards with the Big Three still being around.
So id like to hear your guys opinion on this.
I've heard too many arguments that The Force Awakens did x and because The Last Jedi did Y or doesn't follow that was a good idea.
Many people weren't excited about Snoke for example, the franchise already had Palpatine and as great as he was introducing Snoke was a bit uncreative and lazy and made worse that we have no idea who he is and where he came from.
However people think that because he was nothing makes the story richer, the idea that he only existed for Kylo to rise to power is an amazing move, but it just doesn't work. Yes nobody saw Kylo killing Snoke coming in the 2nd movie, because that was an awful idea.
Killing off Snoke without any explanation of who or where he came from undermines the narrative. Return of the Jedi defeated the Empire and killed Palpatine. So then who is Snoke, where did he came from, how did he achieve power, how did the First Order kidnap millions of children for 20-30 years and the New Republic or Luke's Jedi order did nothing about it.
There's huge gaps in the story that are completely jarring and a background of Snoke is what could have saved it if done correctly.
Imagine if the only Star Wars movies made where The Phantom Menace and Return of the Jedi. Imagine audiences watching The Phantom menace for the first time, thinking what's going to happen next and we skip massive amounts of the story and go to the pay off of Vader killing The Emperor. You'd think, wait what happen? Who's Vader, who's this Emperor, where did this Empire come from, what's happening?
Kylo killing Snoke was a thin payoff because the sequel trilogy hardly built anything up. I can't take it seriously cause we needed so much explained
and that's just one example of people thinking that because The Last Jedi did something that undermines The Force Awakens it was good. No, both films suck for different reasons.
Oh boy, oh man, I'm gonna' die for saying that, aren't I? Well, so be it, let's get this over with...Star Wars: The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi are my favorite Star Wars movies. Their stories feel the most interesting, the filmmaking feels very refined, and of all the Star Wars movies, these two just feel the most fun. Now, The Rise Of Skywalker is a completely different story, I hate that movie...but these first two, I really like. And I'll die on this very hill for that.
The Force Awakens: Granted, this movie is basically a retread of A New Hope, but all things considered, I'll give this one instance a pass. The last Star Wars movie was a prequel that released over a decade ago, and, well...that movie fucking sucked. So I can give The Force Awakens a pass for retreating old ground, since the movie needed to successfully introduce Star Wars to a new generation. And besides, there are enough creative ideas within this movie that differentiate it, and set up interesting ideas for The Last Jedi.
Kylo Ren starts off as a very interesting villain, his presence is both intimidating and confusing. His inner conflict feels like a perfection of a trope that so many other action movies fail to execute. Everyone calling him "Emo Vader" seem to be so blatantly missing the point of his character.
The scene where Kylo murders Han was incredible in my opinion. Kylo thought killing his father would put his mind at ease, because he thought it would prove that he was capable of doing anything without remorse...but instead, all that happened was farther conflict. He became more troubled, and more conflicted on his stance.
Fin's betrayal of the First Order was an interesting set-up for a character arc that would be completed in The Last Jedi...(Then bastardized in Rise Of Skywalker, but I already stated I hate that movie...)
Rey, while a somewhat basic character, is still interesting to see on screen. Her denial about her parents leaving her, and her infatuation with the legends of old Jedi lead into interesting development that'll also be concluded in The Last Jedi. And before anyone gives me the "Mary Sue" bullshit, just shut up already. You don't need to literally see a character train for hours on end in order to see their advancement. Rey lives on a planet of smugglers and outlaws, her fighting abilities are implied right from the start.
Besides, by the logic of the people calling Rey a Mary Sue, Luke Skywalker is the ultimate Mary Sue, because
... keep reading on reddit ➡
I will give you a little insight into the films.
In the new trilogy, Rey has no parentage, and a clone of Han Solo, called Ben, also dies during the Resistance-Resistance battle. He is the first Skywalker to be born from the Skywalker line.
In the new trilogy, Kylo Ren, once a humble Stormtrooper, becomes the leader of the First Order and begins the First Order.
In the new trilogy, Han Solo is a ghost, and Rey has a twin sister, K-2SO, who is a clone of Han Solo, and who is also a stormtrooper.
In the original trilogy, Han Solo is killed by an Imperial stormtrooper, and Ben Solo, Rey's twin sister, is a stormtrooper.
In the original trilogy, Luke Skywalker and Leia Organa Solo have a son named Han Solo, and his wife is a clone of Han Solo.
In the original trilogy, Darth Vader, the Emperor, is a Jedi Master who is betrayed by his apprentice, and is killed.
In the original trilogy, Luke Skywalker, once an apprentice of Vader, is killed by the Emperor.
I would propose that the new trilogy is not entirely unrelated to the old trilogy.
WHAT THE FUXK IS THIS MOVIE?! Did Rey seriously just use a Jedi mind trick WITH NO TRAINING when literally days later she didn't even know that Jesus' were real!! WTF IS THIS?!
This is literally star wars ep 4,5 n 6 stuffed into one movie n remastered...I hate it.
We know Maz is not only friends with Han Solo but is also familiar with the history of the lightsaber (she had to have received this information from Luke, he is the only other person to know about this), and the fact alone that she found the lightsaber implies she is familiar with Bespin — one can infer that Maz went out to find it, desperately searching all over Cloud City until she came across it at the bottom floor of Cloud City.
In hindsight with Kylo flipping back and forth in both the light and dark, whether or not he loves the past or wants to kill it, that kiss and worse of all hearing everything thought was coming from his grandfather was just Palpatine messing with him and him not having a moment to reflect on it because Rise of Skywalker has to be like 3.5 movies in one to wrap up the trilogy. Would it have just been better for Rey to kill him in Force Awakens in their duel?
It could feed into the will she turn question which they never were willing to commit to and it could be a parallel to Anakin's slaughter of the Raiders and Luke cutting off Vader's hand.
My apologies if this has been posted about before. I thought Star Wars fans might enjoy this. It's streaming on Disney+. I just hope it's better than the last several years of the show has been...
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt14573402/
https://preview.redd.it/eemfx8m2wyx61.jpg?width=1280&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=02c107299459601c438610e6bfa76c838ef07912
All 4K MA:
Star Wars The Force Awakens SOLD
Solo SOLD
Rogue One SOLD
Edit: All Sold
The number one thing I respect in any kind of media is effort. Effort in telling a good story, with interesting characters and new ideas, or new takes on old ideas.
This is why I didn't have a problem with the Prequels. I agree with the criticisms; the dialogue is stilted at times, certain parts of Menace and Clones drag on for too long, characters make somewhat jarring decisions at times, but I still enjoyed watching them to some extent because you could tell Lucas put a tremendous amount of effort into it. The world building and design was brilliant, the fact that he told a completely different story from the OT (the OT was about Luke's journey, but the PT was about Anakin's and the Republic's Fall) and the fact that he tried to give each character some degree of nuance was really commendable.
When I saw TFA, the whole thing felt wrong to me, like nails on a chalkboard. This is because the whole thing felt sickeningly uninspired. There's the fact that they were simply ripping off the aethetics and structure of A New Hope, of course, but there was also the fact that it didn't actually introduce any new ideas. It speaks VOLUMES that the only thing that people were discussing about this movie is what ideas they MIGHT have in store for future installments; who is Snoke, Rey's parents, Luke's motives etc. Because there were ZERO new ideas present in the film.
I hated Force Awakens when I saw it, due to the absolute nullification of the victory at the end of ROTJ, but most people seemed hyped about the “possibilities” (aka things in the story that made no sense and weren’t explained but theoretically could be in the future). Now that we’ve gotten all the explanation we’ll get, it’s interesting to look back on the assurance TFA fans gave when you said the massive story holes were a problem.
If you type in “force awakens” into the main sub search bar and scroll through some of the older posts, you really get a sense of the hype people had for these “mystery boxes.” Most interesting is the confidence that they’d be explained eventually. Included in these gems is “the New Republic isn’t destroyed, that was one planet, the next movies are gonna show the New Republic,” “Luke is figuring out how to beat Snoke, that’s why he’s in hiding, he would never abandon his friends,” “Rey was clearly trained and just had amnesia, that’s obviously what the awakening was, they wouldn’t just give her power without explanation.” And just for good measure, a pre-TFA response saying “the only way they could mess up the trilogy is if they did something stupid like being Sidious back.”
Well all those worst case scenarios happened. And it’s TFA’s fault. Could TLJ have built off the movie better? Obviously, but JJ didn’t know what he was doing and just kept throwing crap around. TLJ is as plausible a sequel to it as anything else. If you don’t move the plot in your movie, then it’s bad. It’s not good because someone else might make it good later. Plus TFA started the precedent of ignoring the direct prequel by pretending ROTJ didn’t happen.
The Force Awakens was an awful movie. It’s wrong to say it was good, or even ok, and TLJ botched it. It was terrible, and TLJ was exactly the type of movie I expected after TFA. I do wonder what TFA fans feel like now though, after seeing that at least some of their love of the movie was built off confidence that things wouldn’t turn out exactly how they did.
