I guess you don't travel to big cities much lol.

The cantina scene in Awakens is directly lifted from Hope and its sole purpose is to promote the Alien Cantina Restaurant in the new Disney Star Wars Land.

As time passes (well, three days lol) I find myself warming up more to the good parts of this and caring less about the bad parts. The criticisms are valid and I agree with many of them, but for me the ultimate barometer of whether a movie is any good is if the viewer cares about the characters. Despite the problems with the movie, I do care about the characters. I want to see what happens to Rey and I want her to win. I want to see how Kylo Ren develops. I am happy to see another movie about Finn's story. If BB-8 gets blown up I will be pissed because he's awesome. If the movie really, truly sucked then I wouldn't give a **** about any of them.

Yep, I'm psyched for SW8 to be honest, but Rogue One is a must watch for me at this point too

I went away from the movie thinking it felt very similar to New Hope and I also felt uneasy about the light saber battle with Kylo, Finn and Rey. The similarities to New Hope I can get over and look past as for some reason it doesn't irritate me too much. But the battle between kylo/finn and Rey I'm not able to look past.

However I did enjoy the movie overall, liked it more than any of the prequels and would give it a 7.5 out of 10. Agree with earlier posts that it didn't have the polished CGI feel of the prequels (which I hated).


Regarding the lightsaber battle with Kylo and Finn and Rey, I don't get why they made Kylo look so weak there. I get he was hurt, but he should of just forced thrown finn against a tree right away and knocked him the F out or something. When fighting Rey, he could/should of went "easy" on her cause he doesn't want to kill her he wants to train her. Then she slightly fights back and they part. Someone mentioned it earlier in this thread and I agree. I don't understand why they made him look so weak. Also thought they could of made him killing Han different and make him look stronger. I didn't really buy into his conviction here either. I just thought they had been building this guy up the whole movie to make him look so strong/crazy to have him nearly beaten and weakened at the end.

I can suspend a lot of my belief, but I can't get over those 2 being able to last more than 3 seconds against some as trained and seasoned as they made him out to be. Look at Luke vs Vader if TESB. At this point Luke had been pursuing the Force for some time, had some hands on training from 2 of the best Jedi's and still was beaten handedly (pun).

I'm going into the next movie wanting an explanation here and I'm doubting I get one. But if I'm proven wrong and we get one that makes sense, could make for an epic next movie, I'm just not seeing it happening. Even the best possible explanations here ITT are huge stretches and I still haven't heard any good reasonings as to how this could happen. The one good thing here is its not setup like TESB and ROTJ where Rey gets beat then is scared and is trained and must face Kylo again to complete her training. I'm not sure where what direction they go with Rey and Kylo and I like that feeling of not knowing.


If they had done that fight better, I would of given the movie 8.5 or so as I did enjoy it overall.

If you ignore Luke's brief training by Yoda, its takes years/decades of training to master the Force and a light saber. If you take the prequels, animated series and the book information about Jedi training, Luke could have never defeated Vader in a one on one fight.

With limited training, Kylo should be very bad with a light saber. Kylo casually stopping a blaster bolt in mid-air was comical that's Vader level strength.

Kylo can also read peoples minds, something Vadar couldn't do against Leia. What is to suggest Kylo has limited training? The opposite is basically said/suggested. What isn't suggested is Rey has almost no, if any training. If she was trained, she was trained between the ages of 1-4.

The Anthology movies are also an opportunity for Disney to stretch the series into varied directions. The criticisms that Episode VII were formulaic and derivative are valid, but did anyone really predict they would make avant garde art house cinema? I thought JJ executed well within the boundaries any company that laid out 4 billion dollars for a movie franchise would put on a tentpole like this. Check all the boxes, make the audience happy, tell familiar stories, sell them BB-8 toys and Disney Infinity, and whet the appetite for Episode VIII and beyond. There was no chance they were going to do something radical. It was a fun take on the formula we all know and love, they did nostalgia, and they're building the next generation of Star Wars characters beyond Luke and Han and Leia and Vader and moving onto the next things.

The Anthology movies offer the opportunity for something new but set in the universe. Of course I'm sure with the Anthology movies, there will be toy/merch/licensing/theme park pressure to have some by-the-book elements they can sell. But I think you can reasonably expect something more with those than "3 mix and match good guys take on bad guy, droids do comic relief, light saber battles + X-wings make super weapon go boom." You could definitely see them going in a different direction with art style, score, plotting, editing, etc. but keeping familiar elements and settings.

So, yes, co-sign about looking forward to Rogue One.

Am fine with movie being formulaic but there's no fuxking reason to use the exact same formula as 2 previous movies.


Sure, have some shout outs to the fans (Falcon, Cantina) but come up with a different ****ing plot.

Lots of nits in this thread!

Just saw it and liked it a lot. Passed every test for me. Kept me interested and intrigued the entire movie and makes me want to see the next one for what happens next. I left the theater very satisfied.

Definitely had that old time Star Wars feel to it. Sad to see Han go but it makes sense for the long term. The one nit that I semi-agree with was that the end battle/plan seemed a bit rushed. Was expecting more Luke as well but I'm guessing that comes in the next one. Seems to me Rey is Lukes daughter. The one thing that confused me was when they returned triumphantly was that Leia hugged Rey like she had known her forever but they had never met before? Reys heritage is the hook that will fuel the next one, for me anyway.

Anyone claiming the movie sucks because everyone's related to each other is just lol. It can suck, but find decent reasons at least.

These people obviously know nothing about original star wars canon (which is now retconed since the disney acquisition). If this story went by Original canon, the 3 or 4 main characters would ALL be sons/daughters of Han/Leia and Luke/that alien babe

Also Sidious would have been back, and you guys would have been like "groan....originality....groan"

It seems pretty clear Kylo got some training from Luke (possibly a lot of training) and that he has been trained by Snoke, so he can't be that weak. Maybe he isn't as good at lightsaber battles as he is at reading minds or stopping bullets. Different Jedi (Sith) have different strengths.
Also, it could be that reading minds can only be done (easily) on weaker minds, so Vader not being able to read Leia's is not so bad. Also, maybe Vader didn't even know he could try reading minds. It could be this is a technique Kylo learned from Snoke.

There are many hints that Snoke is Darth Plagueis (Palpatine's master). He looks huge has similar features as the Muun alien race (which is Palegueis' race). Plagueis is mentioned in Episode 3 as a Sith that learned a technique to be able to elude death. It could be that he fooled Palpatine into thinking he was killed. Anyways, with a wiser Sith teaching him, Kylo could have learned how to manipulate the Force in ways Vader didn't learn.

diebitter: do you think it is a cinema movie or can I wait to see it on the small screen?
Put another way: do you think it will lose a lot if I wait?

Theories:
- Han Solo not dead. Crawled under the dumpster.

- Chewbacca's shot really did a job on Kylo and he has to draw more than we realize on the force to stabilize his injuries, which is why he wasn't able to more easily swat Fin away.

- Rey may have had some early force training which was then wiped from her mind for her own protection when she was hidden on Jakku. This plus Kylo's injury was what allowed her to beat him.

- Fin is not related to anybody. Him being related to only other nearly age appropriate black guy in the Star Wars mythology would be ridiculous. Rey being related to Luke somehow is not as ridiculous if we believe that the Empire spent a couple of decades wiping out all the force sensitives they could find, meaning there are not very many of them left.

Luke just abandoning his child to that type of life though would be disheartening and it probably also means Ben turned a long time ago, at least 10 years, and that he is about a decade older than Rey because of her young age when she was left.

On the positive side, I hope Luke's daughter means we get some form of Mara Jade (who was human, not an alien as mentioned above) and not just a mention that she existed at some point and is now dead (possibly killed by Kylo because she was the one Jacen killed to complete his turn to the dark side in the EH - similar to Ben killing Han).

Another interesting thought on Rey's possible parentage that I've not heard yet is this (which would be another EU nod):
http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Lumiya

@enrique I too think Supreme Leader may be Plagueis

@Oneout lol at the dumpster reference. also, yea I forgot Mara Jade is Human but iirc she's basically not canon anymore. So she doesn't have to exist

No, she doesn't have to, but if you're going to give Luke a baby mama would it kill them to give something back to the people that invested so much in the Star Wars product?

And they did kinda nod to the EU indirectly with the Ben thing.

I think the other thing could be just as interesting too because what if Rey came from a dark sider and was hidden?

The primary factor in mastery of the Force is not training, but how many midiclorians (sp?) are in your blood, as was lamely revealed in EP 1. So Rey just has a lot more than Kylo. Big improvement in the lightsaber battles this film, not overly flashy and impractical like the prequels, and yet not lazy and slow like the originals.

I believe that test reveals how powerful you can be but all force beings needs extensive training to master the power.

Every single piece of exposition in the prequels was complete ****.

I agree with that midiclorients crap but that in no way means she should be able to dominate Ren in a LS duel on her first try

that being said I'm still okay with the lightsaber scenes because to me it seemed that Ren was just toying with Finn, and then by the time the dual with Rey came around he was injured, arrogant and still somewhat toying which I think was his downfall.

Also, a lot of people are missing a very important point. Ben Solo is still meant to be a very young Jedi. Yes, the actor is 32, but I think I read somewhere that Kylo is meant to be in his late teens. I think it's technically not defined in current canon what his age is but he is definitely <30. He has presumably only had a handful of years training under Luke and only a few training with the Supreme Leader. Certainly that's more training than Luke had in RotJ, but it's clear that Kylo is nowhere near Sith Lord power level. In fact, it seems pretty obvious that many mid-level Jedi from the Clone Wars could have taken him on quite easily. Finally, it's reasonable to observe that Kylo Ren has not actually had any 'lightsaber dual practice' in his 15-20 years of training. All that being said, it's at least plausible that Rey would put up a decent fight given what I said above about Ren being arrogant, toying and injured.

He certainly has the emotional maturity of a teenager.

He's a basket case with incomplete training, but I'm not sure how young he is. He has fewer years and less formal training than Darth Vader when we first see him in a New Hope, but if they're going to go the route of hiding Rey as a young girl because Ben has turned to the dark side, then he has to be near 30, no?

I'd go see it at the cinema. It was pretty cinematic. It deserves it.

I will be getting it on blu for sure though, however, I have a large OLED TV that will do it justice...

I was thinking about Kylo and Ray... if Kylo had been maybe ten years older, it would have set up a distinctly interesting possibility for Ray's parentage...

I thought it was okay, not great. "Good" is a slight stretch I think, but it's close.

Complaints about it being "the same" as IV are quite dumb. Just because there's a death star that has to be destroyed and a few other similar elements? How it gets there is not the same at all. If you think the movie was bad or mediocre that's fine, but it isn't "because it's the same as A New Hope", that's just ****ing lazy and stupid of you.

Loved Daisy Ridley, wanting less screen time for her is nuts. At least we get one feminist-ish (need more than 3 women with speaking roles though) Star Wars before Colin Trevorrow takes over. Looking forward to him bringing Chris Pratt in as a lovable misogynist ready to put Ridley in her place.

Ren seems poorly cast.

Oh and gtfo of here with that "refusal of the call" ****. "Hero's Journey" is pointing out a thing, it's not a ****ing guidebook for how you have to structure every ****ing story for the rest of history. I don't ever want to see another "refusal of the call".

(Referring to Daisy running off.)