Riddle me this... would you sit through it again? I can't get 2 sequential seats this week. Guess I'll hold off until New Year when I can claim the theater to myself.
Yes. I'd watch it again. I mean it is Star Wars. I'd actually like to see it in 3D because J. J. Abrams said this.
lol he also said IMAX was the most pure experience... as he released 18 such prints across the entire country. I have a hard time with long 3D movies. The 2D portions are dark and I feel like I'm missing out on them for a small segment of cool 3D shots. Although, it's been awhile maybe things have changed.
I thought it was a good mix of old and new. It felt like a legit sequel to the original trilogy and nothing like the godawful prequels. Still not as good as Empire Strikes Back, but few movies are that good. Seriously, shame on you people for even comparing this to the prequel trilogy. There's a whole order of magnitude difference in quality between this movie and those godawful trainwrecks. I'd put this about on par with A New Hope or Return of the Jedi. 8.5/10
Finally saw this. Obviously miles better than the prequels; I've been re-watching the Plinkett reviews of those and it's amazing how bad they are. I thought TFA was well paced with a decent storyline that was well told and acted. Much preferred the move towards more real life special effects over CGI. The only bad effects were on Snoke and those aliens on Han's ship. My main criticism was that it almost felt a little too much like a greatest hits Star Wars movie and retraced A New Hope too much. Would have been good if perhaps it took a bit of a different path and was more unique. Looking forward to more though and I've actually got some faith in the series again.
I felt it was pretty good too, Ren is the first character who's anger has felt real in the series, everyone else just claimed to be on the dark side. This guy was obviously torn and tormented by it and he vented it a few times. Good pacing, decent story and even the duels were not too over the top.
***Spoilers**** That's why it was weak. It was way too much like A New Hope and barely had any originality. I think the giant laser beam thing has been done to death. Captain Phasma was the lamest Character ever for giving them access. Also the complete lack of security was dumb. Ren is an emo wimp of a Sith. Rey has no training at all and kicks his ass. Oh and I think we all know there is like a 90% chance Ren will flip by the third movie because that's the way things go.
Still a thousand times better than those awful prequels. And I think they needed something familiar to get people on board again. They lost a lot of fans with the prequels. I think there were a lot of older and more casual Star Wars fans who just didn't get what the prequels were supposed to be at all, and it didn't help that on top of that they were really bad. They were probably hoping to see like Luke, Han Solo, and Chewbacca, and instead got lame unknown characters like Jar Jar and the annoying Anakin kid. I think Ren is different from Vader. He's an evil character who is tempted by the light side, rather than a good character tempted by the dark side. I don't feel like we know enough about Rey to say that she has no training. It's heavily implied that she's Lukes daughter, and that he was training her along with other Jedi. And that she has a gap in her memory. I think we'll find out later how she ended up on Jakku, and who her mother was.
To be fair KR had a gutshot injury during his fights. But the casting could have been better in my opinion. Dude is not menacing at all. When the mask came off, I LOL'd thinking about Dark Helmet/Rick Moranis. Also, DV had a respiratory mask. This emo idiot wears an obstructive mask to be hipster chic.
The guy's big role before this was playing Lena Dunham's boyfriend on Girls. It was rather lol-worthy when he took off the mask. They should have cast Ryan Gosling or some other actual good actor. Dude is supposed to be Harrison Ford/Han Solo's son, but doesn't really look like him.
I liked it quite a lot even if it was A New Hope 2. I can see why they had to do what they did, I just hope that they take some bold moves for the sequels and don't continue playing it super safe. I actually liked all of the characters. I was a little conflicted about Ren, but it's refreshing the more I think about it. He's Anakin done right. They could have made him a Vader clone by keeping his identity mysterious, having his tantrums be far more adult and measured while making him seem all-powerful and in control. I'm glad that he will continue to develop as a character. I'm glad they didn't go down the route of just having his background slowly uncovered but remaining a fairly static two dimensional character, or worse, not explored at all and be effectively pointless (darth maul). The movie was at least twice as good as any of the prequels, for now, that's all that matters.
So whats the deal with the Republic and the Resistance? Is the Resistance the military wing of the Republic? If not what happened to the military of the Republic? There is a huge gap in the story there. I was also disappointed that there were only X-Wings and no other new ships. They didn't even have Y-Wings which would have been the ship of choice for bombing a land base.
I was under the impression that the Republic didn't consider the imperial remnant to be much of a threat, and that the resistance was a splinter group that was continuing to fight the remnants of the empire, with only token support from the Republic. I don't know how much the New Republic will matter to these movies seeing as how their capital gets wiped out in Force Awakens. Y-wings were slow and outdated even in A New Hope. X-wings are more versatile fighter-bombers, and B-wings are better heavy bombers. I doubt they would still be in use 30 years later. You hardly see any of them still in use by ROTJ. By that point the rebels are mostly using B-wings, which are faster and more heavily armed.
Geek time. The Y-wing was definitely made for bombing ground targets. I couldn't find any mention of that for the B-Wing. http://www.starwars.com/databank/b-wing-fighter http://www.starwars.com/databank/y-wing-starfighter http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/A/SF-01_B-wing_starfighter
The Republic see the Resistance as necessary but after being manipulated into becoming an evil empire they are hesitant to throw their public support behind them. It's all about public image and avoiding potential backlash from the people. You could also assume that much like western and northern Europe since WWII that they are now much more left leaning in their politics and would avoid appearing to be at all pro-war. It's natural that it wouldn't be popular to support further outright wars after being manipulated into becoming a fascist regime guilty of many atrocities.