Star Wars Force Awakens Spoiler Filled discussion thread (no spoiler tags, you've been warned)
- Thread starter Zontar
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After he gets slashed like he did in the movie you could always have THAT be the point where the planet collapsing separate them. The fight would be a little anti-climactic and one sided, sure, but then again that's exactly how it should be for the first encounter.TheRightToArmBears said:
I saw the movie. It felt like a true sequel which was really what we wanted. I think he did a perfect job giving it that old star wars universe feel. If there's any complaint I have, it's the way he managed time in the movie. It felt like the events from when Finn ran into Rey to the destruction of the death planet was all within the span of 1 day.
Let me express the timeline as I saw it and you guys can help me out if I missed a period where there would actually have been a lapse in time:
Finn and Rey meet up and immediately jump in the Millenium Falcon and the moment they get into space are captured by Han Solo who magically found them right away and was in place to do it despite not having had the falcon for a decade or more. They then immediately got attacked by Han's business partners and had to flee in the falcon during which they had a single conversation which ended in them landing on that lush planet with the cantina (should have been a five day journey according to fans). They dicked around the cantina for a bit before they were attacked and Rey was ferreted away to the death star while Finn met up with the rebel base right away. Finn just told them about the base and offered to go while Rey woke up for what appears to be the first time during which Fin and Solo went straight to the death planet since it was starting to charge and would be done in a few hours (two?) which constrains the length of time Rey would have been hiding or Finn and Solo would have been on the rebel base prepping for flight.
Anyone else get that ridiculous vibe? We didn't get any kind of real travel dialog. No playing chess or training or anything. Absolutely no breaths.
I know it's a movie and he likes to keep it all action. But that was a bit extreme. The only points we don't know about are how long it was from the initial attack on the village to Finn and the pilot crashing on the planet to how long Finn wandered before finding Rey. Beyond that it's hard to see any breathers. That's what broke immersion for me the most. The old films had a real sense of time where one side or the other was licking wounds and getting more powerful.
Beyond that we just have a handful of silly coincidences but eh, same with the original.
Let me express the timeline as I saw it and you guys can help me out if I missed a period where there would actually have been a lapse in time:
Finn and Rey meet up and immediately jump in the Millenium Falcon and the moment they get into space are captured by Han Solo who magically found them right away and was in place to do it despite not having had the falcon for a decade or more. They then immediately got attacked by Han's business partners and had to flee in the falcon during which they had a single conversation which ended in them landing on that lush planet with the cantina (should have been a five day journey according to fans). They dicked around the cantina for a bit before they were attacked and Rey was ferreted away to the death star while Finn met up with the rebel base right away. Finn just told them about the base and offered to go while Rey woke up for what appears to be the first time during which Fin and Solo went straight to the death planet since it was starting to charge and would be done in a few hours (two?) which constrains the length of time Rey would have been hiding or Finn and Solo would have been on the rebel base prepping for flight.
Anyone else get that ridiculous vibe? We didn't get any kind of real travel dialog. No playing chess or training or anything. Absolutely no breaths.
I know it's a movie and he likes to keep it all action. But that was a bit extreme. The only points we don't know about are how long it was from the initial attack on the village to Finn and the pilot crashing on the planet to how long Finn wandered before finding Rey. Beyond that it's hard to see any breathers. That's what broke immersion for me the most. The old films had a real sense of time where one side or the other was licking wounds and getting more powerful.
Beyond that we just have a handful of silly coincidences but eh, same with the original.
I don't know that I'd classify it as "ridiculous" but the film definitely had pacing issues, yes. Too many characters, not enough running time. Badly in need of some slow/character building moments. New Hope profited by being a much leaner film in terms of narrative ambition (only one real primary character, little time given over to the bad guys, no set up to do as it was made as a stand alone).Lightknight said:
Yeah, a major component of those breathers is the characterization. He tried to show us who they were through their actions but it just didn't come across this. From my perception, Finn had known Rey for 30 minutes before they were best friends and he was all googli-eyes at her to the point of being willing to die for her. I mean, 30 minutes and you're telling someone that no one has ever looked at you like them before?BloatedGuppy said:
While Star Wars has always featured extraordinarily accelerated bonding (Luke freaking out over the Death of Obi-Wan, a guy he met for the first time literally THE DAY PRIOR, Han and Luke and Leia all bonding over the course of a single high-stress adventure, etc, etc) Rey and Finn do seem to get along extremely rapidly. This was a conscious choice by Abrams that he discussed in an interview. Apparently they had tremendous off-screen chemistry as friends, and he wanted to translate that into the film. He actually re-shot all of their early scenes together for that reason.Lightknight said:
It makes SOME sense given their respective characterizations. Rey is lonely, starved for affection/family, and clearly yearns for adventure. Finn is a NEW FRIEND. Han is a FATHER FIGURE. She's like a puppy with both of them, eager to show off and get approval. Finn has spent his entire life in a repressive, dehumanizing regime. His first interaction with the effusive Poe Dameron delights him, and Rey treats him like a mysterious and exciting Resistance Fighter, and not like Stormtrooper 7,551 or whatever. He seems to imprint on everyone he meets. Like Rey, everyone is an exciting NEW FRIEND. Both Finn and Rey are like "kid" inserts without actually being kids (thank god).
Which is not to say the characterization isn't rushed...it clearly is...just that there's room inside their existing characterization to rationalize how impressionable and quick with affection they are. Conversely, you could also have made both of them bitter, reclusive and suspicious for the same reasons, but that would've made for a very different (and not very Star-Wars-y) film.
Obi-Wan was Luke's only connection to his father and was the only offering Luke had of a new life he craved. With the death of Kenobi Luke saw not only the death of a connection to his past but also the withering promise of a future of adventure and even power. He has no idea if he's going to survive the fight at hand and even if he does what will happen. I don't think he even knows about Yoda yet.BloatedGuppy said:
They also had a few minor adventures together and there was a sense of time having passed, but everything else should warrant that kind of response.
Someone kicking your ass next to a bot that is shocking you comes across as being treated as a mysterious and exciting resistance fighter? Aside from that, she didn't have time to treat him as anything so much as run to a ship with him and try to fly away. I'd say this is a pretty big stretch. He was basically getting his face all rod punched one moment then in space telling her he'd never had anyone look at him that way before in a matter of minutes. If Abrams did reshoot the scenes then he made a mistake.
? Being suspicious at first is VERY star-wars-y. I mean, Han Solo for one as a major source of distrust.
Sure, that's a fair defense of Luke's reaction. I'm buying it. All I'm saying is a cynical view would be "It's an old man he knew for a day and some change".Lightknight said:
After the shocking and face hitting ceases, she pulls him up, he poses as a resistance fighter, and she looks charmed off her toes (also probably the moment in the film she MOST resembles Keira Knightley). Do keep in mind this is also potentially literally the first time Finn has ever seen a woman out of uniform.Lightknight said:
I think you're misunderstanding me. Rey spent 10-12 years living a hardscrabble life under an unkind caretaker on a miserable barren planet. Finn has been kept in a repressive, regimented, despotic regime his entire life. Both characters could easily have been written with extensive psychological scarring. It just wouldn't have been very "fun".Lightknight said:
Sure, that's interesting. We could view Finn as a high-schooler equivalent where it comes to girls and Rey just hasn't ever seen a really nice person before (which Finn is). It's still just ultra-quick which you seem to agree with even with this caveat.BloatedGuppy said:
Oh yeah, if they were both hard asses that would have killed it. I mean, viewers find hard asses cool but not relatable.
But it's hard to think of someone who had to be hardened or be punished and a person who had to be distrusting or be taken advantage of and accept that both of them are just waiting to meet one person who isn't a dick.
My understanding is that they wanted to keep the film roughly equivalent in length to other entries in the series (over-long running time is kind of death to action-adventure serials). For a film that had so much to do (service the OT cast, set up the NT cast, re-ground and thematically bridge the film to the original trilogy, set up and establish the passage of time between the OT and NT, etc, etc) it really resulted in a brutal time crunch. I don't always think they used their time as effectively as they could have, but much like...say...the first season of Game of Thrones, I think they did the best that could reasonably be expected with a very difficult project.Lightknight said:
Well, I think they also wanted to play to the natural charisma of the two characters as well. Boyega has done great comedic work in the past, and Ridley has an effusive/child-like charm. Much like Hamill's 1977 voice was incurably whiny, I think the writers let the actors inform the characters to a certain degree.Lightknight said:
I do sort of get your point, but on the other hand, you can rewrite a couple of scenes in almost any film to make a character superfluous. Rey isn't particularly useless by Hollywood standards, and this is a trilogy; she's being set up for greater things.Zontar said:
Making a character superfluous usually isn't that hard, but when it's one of two protagonists that's usually a bad thing. The whole point of having two protagonists is that each one has an arc that is too intrinsic to the story to be removed.TheRightToArmBears said:
This was the director's failure. Either more time should have been given or other stuff should have been cut and/or reworked. The time crunch shouldn't be blatant the entire film. I am more forgiving if it is crunched in a couple segments but this looked like end-to-end crunching. A director is supposed to work within the constraints they are given or give themselves. Anything else is just an excuse and this is AAA territory where excuses are failures.BloatedGuppy said:
I do wonder if they may have implemented Lucas-esque deleted scenes for future monetization in their process here. Maybe there will be a two-hour longer special edition that will become the gold standard of the form of this movie. That would be horrible if it happens (you know, because they were willing to damage their theatrical release for the home release) but I'd be personally pleased if there did exist a version of the film that wasn't like this.
You can have natural chemistry after initial suspicion. The mental hoop I have to jump through is that maybe Rey had a natural ability to judge character thanks to her force sensitivity. That I have to fall back on fan-boy explanations to maintain suspension of disbelief is disappointing. I would loved to have seen them had actual human interaction that showed their chemistry rather than being all "let's run around". I mean, even after he said who he was she still screamed at him multiple times to stop grabbing her hand. That's not natural chemistry, that's being on different pages.
I think if you set about anticipating a 4.5 hour TFA special edition you're going to be sorely disappointed. If there are deleted scenes, they'll likely add up to less than 10 minutes of running time, and it will almost certainly be immediately apparent that most were deleted for a cogent reason.Lightknight said:
I applaud the sentiment of this post. I question whether or not George R.R. Martin is a good example of an individual who couldn't benefit from judicious pruning of his narrative.Slice said:
Fin wouldn't even need a pilot to get off Jakku, he crashed with Poe the best pilot in the resistance. They would have just needed to find a ship, and it would have made more sense then having him disappear from the crash site and then just show back up later in his X-wing like nothing happened.Zontar said:
Just a random side note, is anyone else hoping that when they meet Snoke face to face he's the size of Yoda?
I felt the lightsaber battles of the prequels were one of the things they got right. I even love the fight against Grievous, though Obi Wan just nipping a hit in here or there was a tremendously uninspired way of overcoming him.
The fights in the original trilogy... well, they look like clunky sword-fights, but even clunkier than contemporary film sword-fights (perhaps due to Vader's poor mobility in that suit).
TFA seemed to find a good balance. No absurd flipping, but faster and more visceral than the originals.
The fights in the original trilogy... well, they look like clunky sword-fights, but even clunkier than contemporary film sword-fights (perhaps due to Vader's poor mobility in that suit).
TFA seemed to find a good balance. No absurd flipping, but faster and more visceral than the originals.