After a day to reflect, I wish they had kept Han Solo around at least another movie. One of the reviews I saw last night called it an unnecessary servicing of an actor who never embraced the role and probably wouldn't have come back if they didn't promise to kill him off.

Maybe it's because for nearly 40 years, this has been my favorite character in my favorite movies/franchise of all time, but I'm still a bit bummed about it and think they could have done something equally if not more effective by adding some more backstory and depth to it and having him go in the next film.

The one thing it did accomplish that would have probably needed a major character death to accomplish was bringing Luke back into the fight. Although, you'd think that destroying 5 planets in one shot could have done that too.

I'm not really all too bothered by the other stuff even if JJ did get a little too cute in basically finding a way to reboot the original without actually saying so because a lot of it did fit fine. I think the blowing up the death star bit has run it's course though. .

They needed better chemistry between Han and Kylo to really lend it more punch. They didn't have it.


Frankly, they needed better chemistry between Finn & Rey and Han & Leia too.

Exactly and I think that could have been built in an Episode VII that better served as backstory on Ben's turn to the dark side and then this movie acting more as the middle act with Luke disappearing and coming back for the last act.

Idk, there's lots of comic relief in the OT as well.


The only shot I would agree on was the helicopter shot of Rey and Luke at the end. Totally out of place, took me out of it and made me too aware of how they filmed it, and how Ridley had to stand there with her arm out forever. It was like something out a Fast and the Furious movie. Curious for you to expand on the editing. The only thing that stuck out to me there was that they included the wipe transitions, which I thought was great.

Yeah this movie was awesome. I'm really excited for the next ones. For people saying that the power of Kylo Ren was inconsistent, my take away was that he has incredible power when he is calm and in control like his arrival on Jakku but it dissipates when he is emotional.

I feel like a lot of the convenient plot devices will be in time revealed as some sort of elaborate design by Luke.

I loved it.... Just suspend disbelief and enjoy.

I think the death star thing makes sense. I mean if you've spent a lot of R&D to make the first death star, that's the kind of thing you know how to build. With more time, you learn how to make it bigger and better, but people don't just go after new designs all of a sudden.

With respect to the final battle, it was strange that Rey beat Kylo but I have two reasons I think this happened:
1) Kylo was more injured than let on. There are hints that he feels injured.
2) Rey was trained as a child to be a jedi and she doesn't remember. I think she was trained by Luke. They play Luke's theme almost any time she's on screen so I suspect she's Luke's daughter, but even if not, it could be that Luke hid her in Jakku after the event with Kylo Ren going to the dark side.

I also think they could have established this world order a little better as a lot of people seem to be confused, perhaps even myself. I'm under the inclination that the following things have happened since Jedi:

- Empire went down and the new Republic rose.
- Republic was the main galactic government in power for the next 20-25 years.
- New First Order has risen and is not yet in power or as powerful as the Empire, but are about on equal footing or have slightly pulled ahead of the Resistance/Republic which currently still has a bit more firepower than the Rebellion did in the original trilogy.

I mean, the Resistance fairly easily wiped the First Order out when they arrived, but the Rebellion were always supposed to be considered under-dogs in hiding in the original trilogy, where the Empire was actively hunting them down. Unless I mis-understood, these factions are at war, but it's not clear that one is obviously dominant over the other. I don't think the Resistance/Republic is in hiding here, are they?

That's what I hated the most. How ****ing hard is it to write a more original plot, ffs? Just copy the original. Good effort. That was inexplicably terrible decision making by the writers. I loved all of the new cast, and didn't have any other complaints. But the mission being a rerun was very tilting.

Good movie. 7.5/10

Few points:

• BB-8 lighter thumbs-up needs to be the new face of Star Wars marketing gimmicks.
  
• It was a nice touch having Jakku as a war-torn collaterally-damaged planet by simply showing the poverish nature along with the AT-AT and star destroyer remnants.
  
• Extremely obvious as soon as Han and Chewie split up that Han wasn't making it back, but the confrontation on the bridge was still emotional.
  
• Apparently Simon Pegg was the junker alien on Jakku. Wow.

I can buy the 'if we have the designs for it, let's keep building and improving it' meta for the deathstar -> starkiller thing, but it bugs me that the entire plot of the movie goes through the same **** as A New Hope and RotJ for destroying it: attack it head-on, land a ground crew, disable shields, skim a trench, fire missiles. Watching that sequence felt like I was already watching the Family Guy Force Awakens episode.

Otherwise great cast, awesome opening/escape sequence, good ending - looking forward to the next one

In the context of a single movie yes, in the context of the $4billion investment it's understandable. This movie is just to set the table for the new extended universe they have planned. If this movie was Episode 1 bad, that whole thing gets scrapped from the fan rage. So they went with a lot of very safe choices. Including hiring JJ. JJ is the guy who is competent enough to not **** up the series but not competent enough to make a great movie. And overall he did a pretty good job. I enjoyed the movie and am looking forward to the next ones.

Another point is that Lucas had always stated that the separate trilogies mirror each other. This is an extension of that as well. I would expect this trilogy to very much mirror the structure of the others as well. It feels like we are building to the moment where Luke confronts Kylo Ren and says "Vader saved me. He threw the Emperor into the abyss and chose the light. You have it in you to make the same decision." That's what's being teased in this movie with Kylo talking about the light within him and trying to fight it off. Instead of father/son this time it's uncle(mentor)/son.

And everyone knows JJ isn't directing Episode VIII right? I'm looking forward to what Rian Johnson can do.

For everyone hating the unoriginality of the plot.....did you think that Disney would allow JJ to do anything that would be considered a risk here? There was no way he was going to be allowed to (whether he wanted to or not) take a big swing. They were always going for contact here.

No, even in this context it is bad. No one is not seeing Star Wars because the plotting of the final mission isn't an exact copy of the original. No one even knows that is what will happen from the trailers. It was lazy and indefensible.

I strongly disagree here. You can reduce almost every story to another story. They wanted to make a movie that felt like Star Wars and they used the template they had. The movie feels like a Star Wars movie and that's what many of us wanted. I am very happy with this movie even if the overall story is very similar to A New Hope. I think it is a strength rather than a weakness.

Obviously no one is seeing it for that reason alone. I'm saying it's not that they were being lazy but that they were being deliberately safe with the storyline.

They can be safe AND original*. Please stop pretending otherwise.

Here you go: the First Order has a bunch of ships bearing down on the Resistance base. They also captured Rey on the main ship. So, a team is sent to rescue her. Fighter pilots come in and fight a big space battle with the remainder of the fleet, and take out the main ship once the heroes escape.

SO RISKY.

* Defined as not the exact same plot here.

I saw Hope in the theater when I was a kid. It was a mind blowing experience and in the subsequent 5 movies there was some kind of wow factor. Nobody cared less about the "feel" of a Star Wars movie it was a thrilling movie experience. Awakens has none of that and I didn't even care that they killed off Han. For all the hate, Lucas had a plan and vision. This "reboot" could be shelved and nobody would be begging for more.

Once the hype dies down, Awakens will be remembered as Disney Star Wars 1 or the equivalent of Godfather 3.

Definitely wouldn't go that far.

I don't know if getting massively spoiled going in helped or hurt my opinion, but this was pretty bad.

All of the new actors were pretty much alright, no beef there, but the script and the direction were ****ing garbage. Where was the story? Where was the tension? Where was there anything remotely new or interesting that was explored? There was no there there, nothing happened, what happened? Who cares?

Snoke? Can't think of a better name than Supreme Leader Snoke?

****ty LS duel too, meh.

4/10

Revenge of the Sith (gasp) was better.

Oh, I'll say something nice, some of the vistas were nice.

Can't wait to see Daisy in a chain mail bikini.

This movie was Star Wars, and more Star Wars then I-III. For that fact it was OK.

There have been too many death stars now though. And am I the only one who doesn't wonder why they don't build them with redundancy?

Quick! Shoot that one thing! Everything else will fail if we hit that one spot!!

Saw it tonight - It's nothing more than a backdoor reboot.

I think a lot of people will want more, the reception speaks for itself. While the main outline of this movie is very similar to A New Hope, the story has differences that make it very interesting. There's tons of things I look forward to in the sequels. How did Ben Solo go bad? Is Rey Luke's daughter? If so, why did Luke leave her behind? What made Luke go away?
The ending scene in the movie was great.

Also, in defense of the new death star. It wasn't the same as the old one. I mean, the fact that this thing eats stars should count for something. It also destroyed several planets (or moons) in one shot.

Well of all the Star Wars movies, this was certainly one of them

The original Star Wars made me want to be Han Solo. This one, not so much.


This episode has essentially two Luke Skywalkers (young ones with a traumatic past and lots of potential) and a ****load of Obi Wans (old ****ers with wisdom to share). Where is Han? Where is the badass supremely competent adult with a past? Where is the person we can aspire to be?