Oh god, that would be horrible...

At least in terms of my enjoyment of the franchise.

 

Having spent a while dwelling on it...yeah, no, as much as I like Rey as a character, especially because the actress was the best in the movie, I can't get over the level of special snowflake she was. It just feels wrong. The previous two protagonists were both candidates for "The Chosen One," The Son of The Suns, the subject of a millennia-old prophecy whose actions would change everything forever. Anakin was the most force sensitive person to ever live as of The Phantom Menace, and odds are Luke was up there too just by being his kid. What could they do with this unrivaled raw power, while untrained? Race with superhuman reaction time and have above-average accuracy, respectively. Rey, on the other hand, has historically significant relics choosing her in a very overt way, hypercompetence at everything she tries her hand at (actually kind of justifiable), instant mastery of fairly complex force powers like telepathy and the mind trick, and precognition on a scale that normally only shows up in dreams - as well as actual precognitive/clairvoyant dreams.

Unless she's another Virgin Birth or Luke has been actively reaching out to her this whole time, up to and including throwing the lightsaber to her in her fight with Ren, all this kind of just messes with my suspension of disbelief. Star Wars has had chosen ones before. Rey is just The Most Chosen by such a huge amount that it's hard to take seriously. You can justify literally all of her specialness with "The Force," but well, that kind of just raises the question 'when exactly did the force lose its subtlety?' because at this point, it's pretty much impossible for anyone in-setting to look at her and say anything other than 'well, Space Jesus is here. Guess the Force is pissed. Pack it in, folks, looks like the resistance is going to win.'

 

So, thoughts on Knights of Ren? They didn't show up except in a vision (maybe of the future?).

My feeling at the moment is that Luke had a small group of force sensitives he was training, of whom Ben Solo was the most promising. Ben fell to the dark side but it didn't end there - he brought all of Luke's other apprentices over with him. The entire cohort fell to the dark side with Kylo Ren as their leader, himself a follower of Snoke. That group are the Knights of Ren.

 

Kylo seems to be the only one with a lightsaber, at least, from what we saw.

 

Even if Ren/Snoke passed the knowledge of saber creation to them, maybe they didn't find or couldn't create crystals that matched their power.

 

Until I read this thread, I thought Ren's name was Ben.

Good movie, though.

 

Kylo rens name was Ben. Was being the key word.

 

Recently saw it and loved it. It did what it set out to do -- be a transitory movie, an introduction back into the SW world. The new cast was great IMO, even if the plot is nothing special (so far, at least). Hopefully moving forward, we'll get into the more interesting stuff. What I want:

-the Dark Side to resonate more. I know Kylo Ren blew up a planet and all, but , meh? It's been done a few times in the universe, and I really hope they come up with more interesting ways for the bad guys to be an actual threat.
-for kylo ren's Snape vibes to go away (the erraticism they've established is cool though and makes me think he's eventually going to go Light Side. If so, they need an eviller henchman-bad guy for Snoke)
-the whole Luke disappearing thing to make sense. I really can't buy it right now.
-the Resistance-Republic politics to make sense.
-More Poe Dameron. I want to see the Poe-Finn-Rey trio in action.
- at some point, a metaphysical exploration of the lightside/darkside (something like what happens in KOTOR 2)

 

If Kylo Ren doesn't go Light Side by the end of this trilogy, I'll be the most surprised I've ever been at anything in my entire life. More surprised than I'd be if Trump became Prime Minister of England. He literally monologues to himself about resisting the urge to be good. At that point, it's about as subtle as putting a header at the top of the screen reading "Kylo Ren will be a light-side Jedi again in a movie or two!"

To be honest, that's one of the choices in the movie I thought made the most sense. I mean, look at it from a Watsonian angle for a second: since he was a teenager, everything Luke touched has died. The series starts with him losing his family and everything he owns. Then he gets a mentor who gives his life meaning and purpose after that, and loses him about a week later. Then, he finds out his father is both still alive and the person who killed said mentor. He also gets a new mentor along the way. Then his father dies in front of him, as does the new mentor. Then he decides to do something good with his life, to finally Build something rather than just tearing things down - woops, lost that too, to his best / only friends' kid and his top apprentice, in a massacre.

Stuff like that breaks a person down, over time, and well, after all that, him deciding to fuck off and wash his hands with the rest of the galaxy isn't too surprising. I mean, obviously he still has some sort of hope, a belief that out there there's Something meaningful worth living for out there, and is actively looking for it, but if he weren't a Space Wizard who literally knows that Fate/Meaning and an afterlife exist, he'd have probably killed himself. Luke being a wreck who decided to run away from his problems after years of being beaten down by bloody tragedy after tragedy is a fairly realistic decision on the part of the writers.

 

So, I saw it about 4 days ago and it's taken me a while to consider how I feel about the movie. Overall, all I can really say is ambivalent. Yes, it was a technically decent movie. It ticked all the right boxes; passable dialogue, decent characters, no prequel nonsense etc. However, it simply failed to truly excite me in any way. It was such a detailed rehash of Episode IV that any real suspense was entirely absent from the film.

At the end of the day, it's about what I've come to expect from Abrams. An honest if uninspired imitation of an established franchise, with no real innovation. I can see how the nostalgia of seeing such familiar elements would be so thrilling, but the more I've thought over the film, the less satisfied I am with it.

Having said all the above, I'm well aware that this movie will have to be judged as the 1st film of the new trilogy. It's left a huge amount to be explained by the following films, so I'm tentatively hopefully re those.

 

He shouldn't have picked something so close to his real name. It can only serve to confuse.

 

I think the Knights of Ren might've existed before he joined, for an in-universe explanation. Out of universe, maybe they should've gone with something other than "Ben." I mean, neither Han nor Leia had a close relationship with Obi-Wan. Hell, Leia never even actually met him, unless you count five minutes as a newborn (but hey, she remembered Padme somehow...).

Picture unrelated, but amusing.

 

Loved the movie. Really had the atmosphere of the original trilogy. Some stuff was weak like everything with death star 2.0. Kylo has alot of potential, I like what they've done with him. Id rather go Anakin to Vader than Vader to Anakin. Some stuff needs to be fleshed out in the next movies (most specifically what the fuck the political situation actually is.)

The thing I probably liked the most about the movie was the "humanizing" of the Stormtroopers. You finally get to see them being people and not faceless goons. All you even really needed to do that was a couple of them peacing the fuck out when a sith throws a temper tantrum.

edit: Also I'm hoping to get more Star Wars fanfiction out of this.

 

Interesting fan theory about why Kylo Ren was a bastard and a half in TFA.

Thoughts? I kind of like it.

 

Even then though, Luke got shit on at almost every single step he took, he fucked up so many things and had to be constantly saved until he finally won and became a hero.

But here Rey doesn't have to struggle, any challenge put in front of her is immediately overcome and everything is ok because the girl is winning. Cheapens everything about the character for me, she's not a character, she's just a list of feats, which is even worse because the actress was actually pretty good.

And that's what was really missing from the movie that a few people were mentioning they felt was missing, there is no Hero's Journey, the hero just got to walk over everyone because, just because.

 

Someone needs to send this to Rian Johnson.

 

I watched it with my brother. We kinda liked it but tought it was really unfocused with several things coming from left field.

Actions scenes was good and humor worked well. Acting was really good.

I think Rey's intoduction was not good enough. I tought it was Finn the main char untill halfway to movie and then realised it was the girl whose name I couldn't remember because I kinda missed when she intraduced herself. And there was no repeat. Finn got far better introduction. Hell Han solo got the best introduction out of the entire cast and I fucking know him already.

Too much action and not enough exploring the characters. Many of the original trigology SW awesome moments are not action scenes but character exploring pieces. We got none of hem in this one.

Kylo Ren while speaking to Rey said something about her seeing Han as a father. WTF. If they wanted that kind of dynamic between her and Han they should have give her the opputunaty to do so. Have a training montage where Han is around encouring him and have a time skip or maybe change her backstory so instead of being lone traveler she is actually part of Han's crew with hints of a backstory.

Or you know just don't bring it up in the first place.

Also most glaring mistake. Trivalazing the main bad guy by first giving him whining monolog and than having complete noob to steamroll him. Wounded or not it would have been awesome if he won and forced her to flee giving her something to fear and some motivation.

I mean why did she even sought out Luke she can already use the force to do everything that a jedi spends years to learning. she should just walk up to Snoke and kill him already. Not dilly dallying like this.

Really these are glaring mistakes in my mind.

 

There was actually, she gave her name to Finn as they were escaping Jakku and then again to Han Solo.

"You're offering me a job" moment was probably my favourite part of the whole movie, and is exactly what you're looking for here.

Re: Force, I think people are missing two things:

1. Luke could also summon objects with the Force with no training. He summoned his lightsaber at the beginning of Empire Strikes Back, and at that point in time all he knows about the Force is what Obi-Wan told him on the Millennium Falcon... which (perhaps not coincidentally) is exactly the same stuff Maz Kanata told Rey.

2. Everyone's overlooking the TITLE of the film, which is directly stated by Snoke: "there has been an awakening".

Basically, as I said above: the problem isn't Rey's ability to use the Force, it's Kylo Ren's inability to stomp her with his greater experience.

 

Watched it and I agree with a lot complains that people have about this film. Disney played it very, very safe and in a lot of ways they just made A New Hope 2.0. And they did it very, very well too, making a film that can be enjoyed by old fans and will bring many new ones. There was probably no better director than J. J. Abrams for this kind of task. Now that they have people's trust, it's time to add something original to the mix because remix of old concepts with a big dose of nostalgia will only work that well once.

If there was just one thing that annoyed me, it was not revealing who Rey is. Maybe I'm old school, but any major mystery presented to the viewers before the film, should be answered in it, even if it's part of the series, and new question should be asked to make people curious about the sequels. Beside, no matter what the revelation will be, it's not going to beat Vader's confession. What made it one of the most memorable twists ever was that nobody expected that there is any big deal about who is Luke's father.