The Force should go back to sleep permanently

[Leoreth]

Force Awakens didn’t have to be scene for scene remake of the first one. The filmmakers could have tried to push the envelope, or at least not made it the same trite story of a poor orphan on a desert planet who blows up a round space station. But they didn’t. They opted to ape the first film, and they deserved every bit of criticism for that choice.

It's a legitimate criticism, but it's hardly a damning one.

The Star Wars fandom is the worst fandom I have experienced, by which I mean that I don't know where there are so many fans that take the work so seriously and are so entitled about what they're getting. Navigating and satisfying expectations is a minefield, with people being bound to complain either way. Focusing on reproducing the "feeling" of a Star Wars movie (in which they were mostly successful imo) was the right decision here. They played it safe and introduced as few moving parts as possible, hence the unoriginal story. Considering the possible fan backlash for getting it wrong, playing it safe is a smart decision.

Actually some of the ideas in the OP, such as focusing even more on the OT characters, would have been terrible choices. You just can't build a movie on the wooden performance of Ford these days, and visiting these characters again after their arcs have been completed long ago would have been uninteresting and trite. I think the main cast of TFA was great both character and actor wise, and the movie would have been better of with less OT personnel, but I get why they handled things this way.

Now if subsequent movies and spin offs continue to be rehashes of existing stories, you'd have reasons to complain. Give them one safe play to get this rolling.

 

[BvBPL]

On the one hand, there is absolutely nothing wrong with formulaic movies per se. I certainly enjoy plenty of them.


On the other, Force Awakens is a rehash of Star Wars to a remarkable degree. Both movies start with an orphan in the desert with untapped potential who has to rescue a robot wandering around. After some local color, both end up in a retched hive of scum and villainy where they each meet a mystic mentor. The men in white suits attack and there’s some flying around before we get to the prison break. Then they blow up a round space station.


Force Awakens isn’t just formulaic, but nearly a remake. This is the fourth time we’ve seen the same damn plot in the same damn sequence right down to the big round space station.

 

[warpus]

The main purpose of the movie, IMO, was to pass on the torch from the older characters to the new ones. That was accomplished exceedingly well, I thought.

The second purpose of the movie was to get people to say: "Yep, this definitely feels like Star Wars in many ways that the prequels didn't". So I'm not surprised at all they rehashed what has worked and felt like Star Wars in the past.

Now that their main 2 objectives are met, I expect upcoming releases to go do more of their own thing. I very much doubt Star Wars Episode 9 is going to be a rehash of Return of the Jedi, with a new super death whatever weapon, etc.

 

[tetley]

It needs to be the never-ending battle of Good & Evil takes on a new battleground. Evil takes on new, ingenious ways to corrupt the minds of men, and Good faces a new threat. Luke is more powerful than ever by far, but we see how he handles a threat he has never faced before.

Combat needs to be updated. Everybody standing out in the open shooting each other with lasers is just stupid. In this day and age, spaceships don't miss. And you don't need the Force to communicate with one another hands-free, wirelessly.

But all that would require competent screenplay writers with greater depth than a water puddle. That's not going to happen.

Hunger Games provided a good example of a thoroughly corrupt character who ticked you off. In Star Wars it's just, "I'm EVIL!!! I'm a Sith, I chose the Dark side, and I wear this plastic mask!"

 

[luiz]

On the one hand, there is absolutely nothing wrong with formulaic movies per se. I certainly enjoy plenty of them.


On the other, Force Awakens is a rehash of Star Wars to a remarkable degree. Both movies start with an orphan in the desert with untapped potential who has to rescue a robot wandering around. After some local color, both end up in a retched hive of scum and villainy where they each meet a mystic mentor. The men in white suits attack and there’s some flying around before we get to the prison break. Then they blow up a round space station.


Force Awakens isn’t just formulaic, but nearly a remake. This is the fourth time we’ve seen the same damn plot in the same damn sequence right down to the big round space station.

At the end of the day Star Wars were never good movies, just mindless fun. People make a big deal out of it because it's in space and has a mystical component, but they're essentially movies for kids. Imagine a Star Wars book, with those dialogues, those clichés, those thoroughly one-dimensional characters... it would be a complete disaster. But seeing stuff exploding in space makes up for it.

TFA is more of the same.

 

[timtofly]

The 3 prequels did not have twins. Star Wars is only Star Wars, when there are twins.

 

[BvBPL]

There’s nothing wrong with being entertained. However, there’s nothing about simple entertainment that keeps it from being creative. Many people would say the Fast and the Furious franchise is simple entertainment, but it has proven to be much more creative than Star Wars. Heck, Fast and the Furious deals with the generational, familial themes that permeate Star Wars in a much better manner.

 

[luiz]

I agree that Star Wars and Fast and Furious are basically the same genre of movie. And both franchises are hugely successful. But for some reason that has always eluded me, a portion of Star Wars fans treat it either as a timeless masterpiece or, which is much worse, a borderline cult. Fast and Furious fans (I'm not one) probably understand that it is just mindless fun, full of clichés and bad dialogues. So they don't really care if Fast and Furious XVII completely butchers the story arc of the previous 16 movies.

 

[warpus]

A New Hope just on its own is great movie. It's a classic "hero saves the princess and the universe" story, perfectly executed, with IMO near perfect characters, an interesting setting, and iconic visuals and music.

So yeah, I completely disagree that Star Wars movies "are not good movies". Some are great, some are good, some are average, some are cringeworthy.

 

[luiz]

I don't agree at all. It's a fun "hero saves princess" movie for kids, like so many Disney used to make with mastery back in the day. I completely disagree it's nearly perfectly executed. The main actor is horrible, the dialogues seem written by a 8 year old, half of the stuff going on makes absolutely no sense (even inside the SW universe) if you think about it for two minutes... so it's better not to think, and enjoy the ride. As you would with Fast and Furious.

 

[BvBPL]

Are you suggesting that the Fast and the Furious franchise is not internally consistent with its own world building? 'Cause thems fighting words.

 

[warpus]

I have never seen any of those movies so I can't compare. I guess we'll have to agree to disagree. In pure filmmaking terms the original Star Wars stands up very well either as a standalone movie or the first part of a trilogy. It doesn't pretend to be anything it's not, but sure, it's not for everyone. That storyline has been done to death after all.

 

[civvver]

Well the entire star wars saga is essentially about vader. He's introduced in a new hope as the face of evil, the big reveal about his origins happens in empire, then he is brought to the brink of destruction and finds redemption in his final moments. In the prequels again it's all anakin centric and how he turned into vader.

Force awakens continues on that. They keep saying kylo just has too much vader in him. Kylo keeps trying to live up to his grandfather's legacy.

Lucas has even said as much that star wars is essentially the story of anakin's downfall and eventual redemption. As big a character as luke is in the originals, vader is more essential to the plot.

So if you look at the force awakens in that vein I don't see why you would dislike it. It continues the vader saga appropriately.

As far as technical stuff like firefights with lasers while our own modern tech can shoot a missile with pinpoint accuracy across the globe, it's a different universe. It's a long time ago in a galaxy far far away, you have to suspend some logic and just go with it.

 

[tetley]

The most telling perspective I see is the ship's computer on the X-wing fighter. It's laughable if you watch it now: "Use the Force, Luke. Let go of that Atari 2600 running your multimillion dollar spacecraft."

Star Wars is almost 40 years old! Man landed on the Moon just 10 years before. Their ability to create an entire parallel universe, complete with parallel universe problems, using the cinematics that they had is what made it great. We look back on it and view it as trite now--because it has since been copycatted to death--but we can't blame the movie that inspired all the copycats for that.

OTOH, the new Star Wars: nothing more than copycat of the old. And not a very good one.

 

[Bugfatty300]

Nitpickery: Finn's character doesn't make a lot of sense.

Finn was impressed into the First Order when he was a small child. Janitor or not, he's spent almost his whole life in service to a strict Fascist-like military. But once he defects he acts like any casual dude you'd meet, albeit paranoid for being wanted for desertion.

Shouldn't Finn's personality be a little like Kurt Russell's character in Soldier? He should be speak more formally, be socially awkward and ignorant of anything that isn't related to trash compactors or blasters.

Neither Poe nor Solo seem to actually care about what Finn is really up to. They just take it for granted that he's now on their side or at least neutral. Is he really defecting? Is he a double agent? Does he have tracking chip in his head? Also Rey doesn't seem to mind that he's lied to her and is actually a stormtrooper.

Leia, one of the most important persons in the galaxy, just walks up to Finn. I guess she can use the force to read people but still. He should be detained by the Resistance or at the very least interrogated and debriefed, especially before the trusting him to partake in a vital mission.

 

[GoodEnoughForMe]

All Star Wars movies are perfect.

 

[warpus]

Nitpickery: Finn's character doesn't make a lot of sense.

Finn was impressed into the First Order when he was a small child. Janitor or not, he's spent almost his whole life in service to a strict Fascist-like military. But once he defects he acts like any casual dude you'd meet, albeit paranoid for being wanted for desertion.

Shouldn't Finn's personality be a little like Kurt Russell's character in Soldier? He should be speak more formally, be socially awkward and ignorant of anything that isn't related to trash compactors or blasters.

My take on this at the time (because I identified the same problem) was that this was meant to highlight the .. imperfect/flawed methods the first order has been using to recruit/create their stormtroopers or whatever we are calling them now. So instead of it being a perfect process I got the sense that we are supposed to now think that they were scrambling to find enough competent soldiers to fill their armies and cut corners along the way in order to meet their quotas. This seems to go hand in hand with the idea that the first order is trying to emulate the empire, without necessarily having the same amount of infrastructure or resources available. IMO it might be a bit of foreshadowing that the first order sort of kinda looks like the empire on the outside, but has a lot of interesting differences on the inside.

 

[Gucumatz]

I have always hated JJ Abrams in how he has managed to take classics and reboot them into something basically just "passable" as entertainment but nothing memorable at all:
Star Trek, Super 8/Wannabe ET, and now Star Wars. Sigh - here's hoping the next Star Wars doesn't have his fingerprints too heavily on it

 

[Bkeela]

Nitpickery: Finn's character doesn't make a lot of sense.

Finn was impressed into the First Order when he was a small child. Janitor or not, he's spent almost his whole life in service to a strict Fascist-like military. But once he defects he acts like any casual dude you'd meet, albeit paranoid for being wanted for desertion.

Shouldn't Finn's personality be a little like Kurt Russell's character in Soldier? He should be speak more formally, be socially awkward and ignorant of anything that isn't related to trash compactors or blasters.

Neither Poe nor Solo seem to actually care about what Finn is really up to. They just take it for granted that he's now on their side or at least neutral. Is he really defecting? Is he a double agent? Does he have tracking chip in his head? Also Rey doesn't seem to mind that he's lied to her and is actually a stormtrooper.

Leia, one of the most important persons in the galaxy, just walks up to Finn. I guess she can use the force to read people but still. He should be detained by the Resistance or at the very least interrogated and debriefed, especially before the trusting him to partake in a vital mission.

Spot on. Finn makes no sense as a character. The death of his fellow soldier and the massacre upset him enough to throw off a lifetime of brainwashing to give him a conscience. Yet moments later he is massacring his fellow soldiers, officers and deck crew with nary a care. He shouts in euphoria 'did you see that - DID YOU SEE THAT' like an Earthling watching a football game, rather than someone trained from childhood to be obedient to a fascist regime.

We are not nitpicking. Not at all. The entire point of fiction is to make us believe a fantasy. Of the utmost importance are characters that are believable, and behave in a logically consistent manner. Once the bubble of believablility has been burst, the entire story collapses. As much as I disliked the film adaption of Lord of the Rings, at least the characters and setting remain authentic. Imagine if Frodo and Sam had used jokes and pop culture idioms for cheap laughs for the audience, instead of maintaining their own culture? Star Wars should do no less. Dreadful pop culture jokes should be left for the Pixar films.

I just can't understand the audience the laps this horsehocky up - and worse, the fanboys who justify it. I did think it was a cultural thing - that Americans just lap this horsehocky up. But I've since watched many critical videos by Americans concerning TFA, so I'm sorry for that. I now think it is a generational thing - nobody of my generation who grew up with the original films likes TFA. In fact, many of us now have a new appreciation of the less than satisfactory prequels.

I have always hated JJ Abrams in how he has managed to take classics and reboot them into something basically just "passable" as entertainment but nothing memorable at all:
Star Trek, Super 8/Wannabe ET, and now Star Wars. Sigh - here's hoping the next Star Wars doesn't have his fingerprints too heavily on it

Oh yes. Jar Jar Abrams is the worst. He actually reminds me of the character in Lynch's Mullholland Drive. The cocky director who is controlled by higher ups. I have long avoided anything he touched, that's why I'm so pissed at myself for watching TFA. Never again.

 

[Kozmos]

I think people forget this is an industry. It's an industry where a few select players own everything in boxes-within-boxes scheme so of course everything is designed by committee, focus-grouped, tested for maximum broad appeal and so the whole thing feels sort of hollow and rigidly formulaic with nonsensical anachronistic humour thrown in during serious parts of the movie. As bad and obviously commercially driven (toy characters) the prequels were at least they represented what Lucas believed was a good movie. Same thing happens with every avenue of creative expression that grows big enough to be industrialized.