Well in theory he also had to defeat Vader, but regardless, the events of ROTJ make it seem like very little time passed between the end of ESB and the start of ROTJ. At the end of Empire Luke says to Lando and Chewie that he'll meet them on Tatooine and then in the next movie they start right there, so can't figure that anything more than at most a month elapsed between the two movies.

Of course again, this should be something no one cares about, it was only because Lucas painted the Jedi into a corner with the prequel movies by apparently not even watching IV, V, and VI that led to this even being debated. Just another reason why in order for Star Wars to have any good parts left the prequels have to be ignored.

Saw it today with pretty low expectations.

There was a lot of new stuff I liked. I thought some of the retreads were a bit much but mostly feel indifferent to that.

What didn't work for me was it didn't feel like they had any real plan for the overall plot. Like they had this vague idea that the movie would be the quest to find Luke, but oh yeah let's cram in some beat by beat bits from the original.

The biggest sin to me was the way the Rey Ren fight resolved. Like she kicks his ass and appears to have some rage on her face and is walking towards him laying beaten on the snow. She has an interesting moral decision to make. And then they take the easy way out and avoid it with a ridiculously convenient earthquake.

Hans death has no emotional impact though I did really like the sliver of light going dark (after Leia had said she knows there's still some bit of light in their son) as Kylo kills Han.

On the while I guess I'm pretty satisfied and would rate 6.5/10

She is basically the kim kardashian of the movie.

I was okay with super-Rey. It's not exactly consistent with previous movies and felt rushed, but they were destined to break some of the old molds in this movie. If anything they didn't do it enough.

Plus maybe the Force itself isn't completely consistent or there are elements we don't really understand yet.

or it's going to be explained later.

They deliberately left a lot of things open and unexplained so they could take in fan opinion into consideration when tweaking the script for VIII.

So I doubt they have finalised whether Rey is a Skywalker, a Kenobi or just some random girl at this point. Ditto with how she became a self-taught Jedi, although in that case I would rather they just glossed over it as any attempt to provide post-hoc rationalisation is going to sound very contrived.

That particular criticism has been fairly common, so even if they weren't, they surely will now.

Agreed, but I think they're going to do it anyway.

Overall enjoyed the movie. Yes there are a few things to nitpick about but I can ignore those.

After a few days there are still a couple things that have been bothering me. Capt Phasma and Finn

They are completely unnecessary. Capt P is just pointless besides the "I can disable the shields thing." The character does not move the plot or provide anything to the story. Completely pointless character unless you just want to sell toys.

Finn is an enigma to me. Why is his character in this movie? You could easily replace him with Poe early in the movie and then re-write some scenes later and the movie is basically the same movie. Besides the rescue, which could have been done differently he really serves no purpose. He doesn't drive the story, the other characters do. He just takes screen time away from more interesting characters. He comes off at times like the damsel in distress that doesn't know anything or how to do anything but is just there for the lead to play off of.

I don't have a complaint with the actor or how he played the role. I think he was fine the way he was written. I just don't understand why this character is in this movie.

Except she's good looking.

Saw it for the 2nd time tonight and I liked it a lot more. The big thing for me is expectations - and I think the movie works a whole lot better if you have no expectation that Kylo Ren is actually a powerful force user. He's not much ahead of Luke pre-Yoda.

This way, Rey seemingly becoming an insta-Jedi is a lot loss problematic BC she's not fighting a fearsome foe. Also they do set up that she's skilled with the staff already.

This also explains how Kylo does not insta kill Finn. Finn, who minutes earlier loses a light saber battle to a completely random storm trooper.

It also jives with Kylo only having the skill to make a budget light saber.

Now this does make Kylo a different sort of antagonist but that's OK. The biggest problem is that he has seemingly been an apprentice of Smoke for a while and it's gotten him not very far at all. So wtf has Snoke been doing with him this whole time? So maybe that gets addressed later. Knowing that Kylo is fairly weak ahead of time just makes a lot more make sense.

Also, I don't think there is any chance Rey is the daughter of Leia and Han. The same scene where they all meet up and Han and Leia have a heartfelt talk about their son... And they don't even mention a daughter. And Leia has absolutely no reaction to her.

Also Leia has a horrible voice it sounds like she is missing her dentures.

Chewie remains awesome and Bb8 is awesome. There is indeed no point to Phasma. Poe is a weird one BC he just disappears for so long and is one note.

On second viewing Rey carries a lot of the movie, she is easily the best character.

And likable.

This is not the case, and it's shown explicitly. Luke struggled to shift his sabre from the snow in Hoth, while Ren was able to freeze blaster shots. It's also stated that he's been aware of and using the force since a child under Luke's tutelage.

The way the first half of the movie plays out suggests he is ~Jabba's Palace Luke - vulnerable, but a very strong user of the force.

Debatable.

I realize we're kind of beating a dead horse here and everyone is free to interpret the movie as they wish. Kylo not being "much ahead of Luke pre-Yoda" makes no sense to me. He was force trained since youth. Luke pre-yoda only had a tiny bit of Obi-Wan (and was much older when he started, which according to the movies is a significant impediment).

Sure if you make that assumption, the movie makes a lot more sense. That assumption just seems difficult to make for the myriad reasons already hashed out in this thread.

Despite that one issue, I still enjoyed the movie quite a bit.

You guys act like everyone learns the force at the same pace from the same people all the time.

We have a staggeringly small amount of actual screen time/dialogue dedicated to telling us how Jedi's learn in general, none the less Kylo specifically.

Maybe he just sucks ass at using his light saber. Maybe the reason he went to the dark side is because he wasn't doing very well with Luke.

The biggest piece of evidence in the whole movie showing me that Kylo is no total badass(yet) is Snoke commenting that he must finish his training now. It seems like he's been delaying his training because there were no Jedi's around to battle before now.

As someone who has seen all the star wars movies, but never been a big enough fan to rewatch them a ton of times, I really, really liked the movie.

I thought Rey was an awesome character, I wish movie focused even more on her. Although based on the ending have to assume the next movie is going to have a lot to do with her.

The controversy about Kylo not slaying rey/finn with lightsaber doesn't bother me too much

1) The movie made a huge point of having a couple scenes showing how bad ass chewies cross bow is and Kylo got shot in the nuts with it so would be absolutely no surprise that he would not be anywhere near 100% during the later lightsaber battles

2) It seemed in general he was supposed to be pretty novice/weak compared to where the dark side nemesis usually is. For example the military commander said something sort of paternalistic or demeaning to him at one point and I feel like any of the prior movie dark side characters would have immediately killed him for it. Also he seemed to make a bunch of judgement errors like letting the droid escape, not calling out Finn when he was a trooper, not supervising rey better, etc. Also was obvious that even his master had concerns about how he would react when seeing his dad,etc. One thing that seemed kind of out of place was early in the movie he said something like "There has been an awakening" to his master, I would have expected the master would have been the when to need to point that out to him. Maybe he is meant to be extremely in tune to the force, but not learned how to best use it yet?

Overall really loved the movie and super excited for the next one

Also something interesting to me, not sure if it was meant to be there or if it was just my own internal psychological bias/expectation about female movie characters.

Seems obvious that Rey did not want to leave her home planet because she was hoping to find her parents, and her parents are her lost prize if you will. However, there were several things that seemed to paint her in a very maternal way, for example her initial interaction with BB-8 of fixing his antenna. And then the scene of her following the cries to find the lightsaber seemed to have an emotional feel more like a parent seeking out a child than a child seeking her parents. I know she is meant to be young, but makes me wonder if its possible if she also has a baby floating around in the universe somewhere.

If nothing else makes it seem like she is going to have a kid at some point in the series

Well, Luke probably hasn't seen a woman in a pretty long time.

FYP

All of your points have been addressed and debated already in this thread. There's never going to be a resolution. Some will be fine with Ren being beaten down by Rey and some won't be. What happens in the next movie may or may not help resolve it.

This is such an absurd exaggeration that it seems like you are purposefully trying to not actually address the issue.

As Melkerson suggests, you're either OK with the Ray/Ren fight and how powerful their are/should be, or you are not. No amount of attempts at rationalisation by the apologists is going to appease the sceptics if they didn't like that aspect in the theatre.

I don't understand all the complaints about Kylo Ren.

He's a kid that wants to be a badass and isn't. That's why he wears the mask, etc so he sounds like a badass. He just isn't really a badass and is kinda pussy and is constantly trying to convince himself that he isn't a pussy.

As far as the lightsaber skills go I can only remember Luke getting like 30 mins of training from Obi-wan on how to use a lightsaber. Rei did have her stick too which is used like a fencing weapon and Kylo was pretty injured. It's not that hard to believe.

And here I thought I was going to be the one to nitpick this movie too much.

No that it matters, but I though the biggest problem was that it tried to cram too much plot into one movie. It resulted in moments where I was just shaking my head. Such as when Finn (as well as the opening crawl) had to inform us that Poe was a great pilot. Because, for the most part, he was basically the John McCain of pilots, remarkable only for his ability to get captured and to get shot down.

And the whole "we need to destroy the new death star thingy before it kills all of us" was just somewhat stupid to me. It was almost like the empire was Wile E. Coyote and the rebels were the roadrunner. The empire gets a new package from Acme that blows up planets, and the rebels flip it around so that it blows itself up instead.

I guess, at this point, the only two surprises left in the franchise are finding out which random cast member is the father of Rey and how they figure out how to make her relationship with Finn work considering that they have less than zero chemistry together. I mean, Luke and Leia had more chemistry, and they were brother and sister. Maybe Billy Dee Williams will make an appearance in the next movie to teach Finn the ways of actually making it believable that a woman as hot as Rey could possibly like him.

I thought they had plenty of chemistry - on-screen as well as off screen.

But fwiw my feeling is that Finn will get friendzoned nonetheless and that she ends up with someone else, maybe Poe.