>What did they get right?
>What could they have done better?
I'm watching this again and right off the bat I noticed one thing that makes A New Hope so much better than The Force Awakens. In the first Star Wars they had a great opening scene that introduced the villain and then we immediately settled in with the main character and hero Luke. The Force Awakens tries to introduce too many characters too quickly, Poe, Rylo, Finn, and then finally we settle in and get to know Rey.
The Force Awakens tries to tell us too many stories at once. When Han shows up he gets a mini-movie to escape from the kanjiclub that no one really cares about and has no impact on the story. We already know he's a rogue, he does fun stuff later on the battlefield, we don't need the stupid short movie crammed in the middle of our real main character's journey. But is it our main character? I feel like it's legitimately Han vs Rey competing for story time instead of the great cooperative relationship between Obi-wan and Luke, where Ben mentors Luke and only for the scene where he dies does he steal the spotlight. And there it's perfectly acceptable because Luke is giving his full attention to the fight and Luke is the character who's eyes we see the whole story through.
Anyway, I know that's not super insightful but I'd like to hear what you think TFA did right, because I really want to love this movie but I don't know if I'll get there. I do think it has great jokes, it pulls on nostalgia well, and it has some great visuals. That's all the praise I can give it though, am I missing something?
they got making a feature length flick with star wars in the title and marketing right.
what could they have done better? more CGI, no mary sue, no nigger in leading role etc.
>>67382104
Marketing a SW movie seems easy enough but when I look at TPM previews they all look god awful. TFA did a good job with the trailers.
>>67382104
what do you have against black people anyways?
and no memes here either, I mean generally speaking, as in unrelated to how poor people act
Is it just me or is Rey such an underdeveloped mary-sue character? It's like they need to make her perfect in every way cause muh equality
>>67382069
>What did they get right?
The final trailer.
>What could they have done better?
The movie.
As a pretty huge SW fan i wasnt interested until the last trailer which really gave me that Star Wars feel and the hype.
I enjoyed the movie but it being a ANH copy&paste was a disappointment.
>>67382069
I don't love the movie, I just like it.
I think it got a lot of things right just as a general blockbuster movie. As worthless of a comparison as it is, I think it would have been heaped with endless praise were it divorced from the Star Wars brand, but Star Wars draws a more critical eye towards it. Most of the new characters are likable (Maz and Snoke are total wastes, and I hope Johnson does them more justice in 8) and I have no problems accepting the 3 new kids as my new main characters.
I'm a little skeptical of Kylo Ren as the new villain. Despite being the most interesting new character, they completely fail to build him up as anything intimidating. This wouldn't inherently be a problem, but they fail to build up the other villain figures (Hux, Snoke) as intimidating as well. I don't agree with the common belief that Rey is a Mary Sue, but I do think that having her defeat Ren in the first movie was a giant misstep. Hopefully, 8 sees the First Order gaining some ground in a believable way.
I've read that the original cut of the film was around a half hour longer, but it was cut down to get more showings in in a single day. I think additional length actually would have helped this movie a lot, as the pacing is insanely fast (I actually found it jarring on the first viewing, subsequent viewings were more enjoyable since I knew what to expect).
Overall, they did better than I expected with JJ at the helm. I have high hopes for 8 with Johnson leading it. I think it's going to be one of the best in the franchise.
Just finished this piece of shit.
What a fucking nightmare, god this was just awful
>>67382069
They got Anakin right
>what did they get right?
The effects. I honestly thought they were pretty good. Seemingly a nice mix of practical stuff and standard CGI. Only stuff that didn't work was the sandworms or whatever they were on Han's cargo ship.
>What could they have done better?
Better script, better performances, better score, Rey's accent, locations, take out all the Marvel quips and gags, fewer plot contrivances, less Maz Katana, less girlpower, no Power Rangers shit, less Finn spouting urban catchphrases.
>What could they have done better?
Make Leia a politician, not the General of the Resistance, Han would be the General.
Leia still meets them in the Resistance base.
Remove Starkiller Base, FOHQ on a snowy forest planet, First Order troops suicide bomb Hosnian Prime to oblivion instead.
Rey doesn't learn how to use the Force so quickly, gets released from the chair by something Han and Finn do on the base, defeats the Stormtrooper, has a mental block against Force users put in place by Luke.
Kylo completely outclasses Rey and Finn in the end, Chewie has to bail them out.
More screentime for Poe. Rey, Finn and Poe escape Jakku together onboard the Millenium Falcon, that Poe pilots.
Freight ship is flown by Kanjiklub, they think Han is inside the Falcon, Finn manages to free the rathtars and they escape.
Poe knows Maz, meet her in her cantina.
>>67382719
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JRbFKuEY5jk
>>67382069
tell that to kanjiclub
Get rid of the entire rathtar scene completely, its useless and looks bad
Make Rey not a Mary Sue
Make Kylo win the lightsaber fight
Shoot the movie like star wars not like a TV show
Don't reuse every location from the OT
Get rid of the stupid Marvel jokes like "who talks first?"
Less uninteresting side characters
More Luke
No Kaz
Less minorities
It would have been improved with:
More focus on the Solo family and why Leia/Han were in the situations we find them in.
More on Finn, his characterization was weak and he just ended up being a sidekick which didn't quite match the beginning of the movie.
Less Rey, they sped up her development too much and she ended up the protagonist too fast; the opposite problem Finn had.
No orange alien thing.
Basically the pacing was terrible.
One thing the movie did right was Driver as Kylo Ren. He did a good job and the character was interesting enough.
>>67383093
"who talks first" was the best quip in the movie and actually fit the character, though.
shit like finn's "droid, please!" and 3po's "psh, princesses..." is what needs to go, imo
Completely remove the ending scene with Rey going to Luke.
Just show Rey leaving and then zoom in on Rakata Prime and show us Luke standing in front of the grave.
This was Star Wars: Interracial Breeding Grounds
Most high school romances are more mannered, fucking hell...
>>67383148
It all needs to go, it especially was weird hearing someone say boyfriend in it, even though you could say that there are people in star wars who are in relationships and could be considered boyfriend and girlfriend, it still sounds weird. And I disagree about it being fine, felt very out of place for star wars, and was wrong considering the context
>Oh all these innocent people died and the guy who helped me just got his head chopped off
>well here's an epic funny quip
You can definitely see the Marvel/Disney influence on that as the same thing happens in those movies where a character should be upset or sad but the writer is a retard and thinks everyone should be a quirky smart mouth
>>67383204
black man got cucked in the movie
>>67382069
its ok that they introduced a lot of characters. the problem was, that only one character was significant. Or rather, there was not enough character interaction to feel concern or weight in the character's journey.
>>67383148
desu I disliked all of those lines, but almost everything Han said was gold and the other jokes Finn said were alright by me too.
>>67382841
>>67383101
>pacing
This is the big problem for me that I tried to point out in the OP. ANH is fucking perfect in terms of pacing. TFA starts too chaotically and then it really fucks up when they force a cantina scene out of nowhere. One of the moments they really messed up on pulling from the originals.
That's part of why I don't really agree with the ANH clone suggestions, the pacing and character introductions don't match up at all imo. The overall story does I guess but there are so many hitches in the step that I think it's wrong to say it's just like Star Wars IV.
>>67383307
The dialogue in general seemed very out of place for Star Wars. It seemed like it was written as if it was taking place in the real world, not the Star Wars universe.
I watched an hour and then decided to stop. It was just dull. The point of wanting to see more is the wonder of where Luke Skywalker is; but Im not emotionally invested in him, I couldn't care less about the previous star wars films
this is a poorly made film for fanboys with avengers style quips
>>67382069
Less jokes. Who talks first, droid please (nigga please) 3PO joking (out of character). Keep shit like BB8 being silly like R2D2 was. The best humor in the OT and this movie was the playful banter from the little droid. Hope they get classic c3po and r2d2 in 8.
More character development. Where were the true downfalls? Poe lost his friend, nothing? Solo dies and barely anything? Ben's death was so more impactful than Han's.
Needs a real villain. Kylo isn't it.
Hint of romance needs to go. This isn't a love story.
>>67383620
>Who talks first,
That was a fantastic introduction to Poe's character though
>>67383800
like tears in rain
>>67383790
No it wasn't, that has already been refuted by another post in here
I was strangely impressed by Finns acting. Having actors lie in a way that the audience can tell they are lying, but not other characters is very rare. This movie pulled it off.
I agree with the too many stories part from op. This came as a result of JJ trying to hit all the New Hope checkpoints and also trying to tell a new story.
On top of that. Rey was the worst Mary Sue character I have probably ever seen. Like holy shit. The moment when she knew hot to fly the Milenium Flacon better than Han Solo was so forced and out of place i nearly stopped watching right there.
One joke they overused a lot was "characters reacting casually in a panic situation". It wasnt on the level of Avengers qips, but it was getting there.
And what was the point of that ending? I actually laughed when it switched to the helicopter shot of Rey just standing there like an idiot.
I don't know what kind of point JJ was trying to prove by casting unknown, ugly, uncharismatic, zero screen presence actors for the two main roles but the effect of it on rewatching is more and more glaring.
Daisy is passable even though she's distractedly odd looking and completely blew a few scenes but Boyega is so out of his league and flat in every single second of screentime it becomes tiring by the end.
also the story was lost in the production, everything is left as a question to be answered by the following movies. None of the new roles have clear motivations or anything close to solid characterization. It's so deep into hitting the right notes and leaving mystery that it forgets to tell a coherent story.
>>67384210
>le nigger ape monkey no place acting /pol/ meme
>>67384249
I didn't mention race at all, I was talking only about his actual performance which was flat and amateurish with no palpable charisma. There are plenty of black actors who could have pulled off that role but boyega just isn't one of them.
>>67384210
ridley's acting was cringe-tier. boyega was passable.
>>67383307
disagree with the "droid, please" quote only because it fit with the situation. Seemed panicked that fit well with the situation they were in. all the other quips really did not make sense with the tone of the situation.
How do those armpits smell /tv/?
>>67384046
I liked Boyega too, I didn't like that they made him adopt an American accent and a few lines were cringe but he was good. Really all the problems come down to story telling I think, JJ's just not very good at it. I still want to see Super 8 though since it's a more original story.
Wht did he mean by this?
>>67384432
He was going to read her mind.
Also, terrible passing out acting. She's so bad once you actually pay attention.
TFA has plenty of flaws but you can't really change what's already been written in stone. However the next two films can avoid some pitfalls:
Since Rey is already over her issue of waiting forever on Jakku, what's left for her character? Just revealing her past and training to be an OP as fuck Jedi? She needs to fall to the dark side or something to make her character interesting (but sadly all the girl power jedi princess dollars probably wont make Disney risk it).
Same for Finn, not much left for him since he manned up at the end of TFA. His Stormtrooper coding should come back and serve as a catalyst to bring Rey over to the Dark Side.
Poe just needs characterization in general, he was just a cardboard cutout space jockey pilot.
Kylo Ren made it out the best from TFA, so a lot can be done with him, be it redeeming himself or having him become a crazy Sith.
And please no more parallels to the old movies, no Death Star IV or Empire Strikes Back cloning, and don't waste Luke Skywalker..
>>67384488
Rey has a lot of growth to do as a Jedi. The conflict between her not wanting to become what Kylo became is good enough.
Finn is still finding his way. He can just slowly become more selfless and proficient at fighting.
Poe is best left alone.
Kylo either needs to join the light and be killed or seriously become a real villain.
Couldn't watch it again. Got bored on the 6th time. I can't ever say that about the OT, I've seen those more than 100 times.
Rey is too forced (no pun intended)
Solo is too old
Finn is cringey
Snoke CGI looks fake
Leia is terrible
I loved Kylo Ren and Poe's characters a lot tho. Kylo for being relatable to me, having an insane amount of power and being unstable at all times.
Poe for classic star wars character, in that he's an awesome fearless pilot who's probably been on many adventures before the events of the film, giving him that mystery aura.
>>67384564
>Kylo for being relatable to me, having an insane amount of power and being unstable at all times.
>>67384564
>Kylo for being relatable to me, having an insane amount of power and being unstable at all times.
>>67382069
I thought Han Solos death scene was a very well acted, well written scene, the lighting also made for impressive symbolism of Rens turn to the dark side
