I am absolutely %100 ready for Snoke to be a Wizard of Oz situation. For the briefest of moments during the movie (After he says, bring her to me) we were going to find out it was Luke pulling the strings or something behind the scenes. That was quickly dashed as insane and idiotic, but for the briefest of moments, it was there.

Maybe it's just a testament to my twisted sensibilities, but I kinda liked Snoke more when I thought he was a disfigured ancient giant. But hey, that's a different sort of movie I suppose.

Yeah, I mean, that was just when he was first introduced obviously, they get the hologram thing out there pretty quick. But I was thinking it would be more like a "This is one of the old ones that has been in slumber for a thousand years, but a new something something has awoken him..." But that's getting into some straight up Lovecraft shit there. Which that's a movie I'd totally watch the hell out of, but it's not really the mainstream Star Wars everyone's looking for right now.

Snoke being...oh my god....Snoke being like, a con man, would be amazing.

Although, going back to the actual movie for a second. I'm really in love with what they did with Kylo. For the first half of the movie he's this insanely badass presence that is intensely intimidating. But then as soon as he takes off the helmet we realize that he's realize this disturbingly perverse little psychopath with daddy issues and WAY too much power. He goes from being Vader 2.0 to a Criminal Minds killer with force powers in 3 seconds flat. The only thing I really wish they'd done, is save that reveal for 8, but obviously things got rushed along a bit by Harrison basically begging to be killed off, so they couldn't really save that for the 3rd act twist in 8.

I realize this post is so Squirrel it's not even funny, but stay with me here...

Having had a bit to process things that's where a lot of my issues with TFA comes from. Don't get me wrong, I loved the shit out of it, and it FELT absolutely like Star Wars again which is amazing. But everything felt just a bit too rushed. Everything is sort of mentioned in passing before we have to get the next thing out of the way. Which I can't tell is a symptom of this being the thing that needed to prove Star Wars to the world again, or if they're just trying to set EVERYTHING up for the next 2 movies and it just becomes too much.

When we were walking out of the theater I mentioned to the friend I went with, that this feels like it's going to be a LOTR thing, where these 3 movies are going to be one giant movie. Which I mean, obviously. Luke doesn't even say a single word in this movie. But there are so many little things that get set-up that just never get touched again, and obviously they're setting them up to get paid off in 8 and 9. But it just leaves this one feeling the slightest bit...empty. If that makes sense.

...yeah. That was kinda forming as I was typing, but I think that kinda sums up my issues with it, such as they are.

Last edited by BigDamnArtist (2015-12-20 02:19:31)

I love how Carrie Fisher can just speak her mind and take the piss out the movie/franchise on the PR junket circuit. Everybody else has to stay on message.
If Shia LeBouf soils his own nest, he's ostracized by Hollywood, but Fisher gets a free pass.

Great - looking forward to it

Red Letter Media should be having their review out shortly too

Snoke really is an odd name choice, but I can live with that. For me it was the character design that seemed kind of... unremarkable--an almost-Yoda without the charms or distinctive features. You've got Serkis. Go nuts.

The fact that his projection was so big was odd too (they just use that huge room for teleconferencing with the Snokester, I guess?).

Hey man. Encryption can be a bitch sometimes. They tried transmitting the map and all that happened was this shittily animated hologram of this fat dude saying "ah ah ah you didnt say the magic word" popped up. It was weird.

Really? With everything you know about the Sith and the First Order, the fact their leader uses excessive grandiose design and giant holograms to intimidate his underlings surprises you?

Last edited by BigDamnArtist (2015-12-20 16:03:17)

Fixed.

Saw it last night.

Impressions:

Poe Dameron is the man! (he's like the new Wedge, but better)
BB-8 is my new favorite robot!
Who was Max Von Syndow's character supposed to be? I want to know more about him. 
Kylo Ren is a little bitch. 

Okay so those are my impressions, here's a bit about what I thought analytically:
So here's the thing....despite somehow losing the ability to write good scripts or stories anymore, George Lucas showed us in the prequels that he can still churn out some great cinematography and editing (well, for a lot of it).  J. J., for all his merits, doesn't really hold a candle to George in these most technical terms.  So, by this metric, the movie didn't really feel synergistic with the rest of the series.   

Narratively, the first third of the movie had me giddy like a kid again.  It FELT LIKE STAR WARS.  HOLY CRAP.  I was 100% with it like really on board for that whole section.  Really daring, intense, kinetic, frenetic, and fun as hell!  I was really with it up until the point where Rey was like "I guess we'll have to take that old thing"  Boom Millennium Falcon.  The reason for this was that they just "happened" to end up in the millenium falcon.  I think that was a very poor narrative decision to make it coincidental that they found it.  And they when they just "happened" to get found by Chewie and Han, I was like "really?" Two dumb fanwankey coincidences within ten minutes.  wow.  Really, it would have made far more sense to have han and chewie still involved in the resistance, and they end up teaming up with our main characters back at resistance base 1 or whatever it's called. Everything about Finn and Rey, though, I was 100% with.  They were compelling and intense and believable.       

Basically, this film left me with some massive amounts of cognitive dissonance.  Like, there was some really, really great, and fantastic thematic and narrative stuff going on in there, but there was also a lot of unnecessarily dumb fanwankey nonsense.  This surprised me, seeing as J. J. is such a fan of Star Wars, and I would have thought he would be too concerned about getting the spirit of Star Wars right, to insert copious amounts of callouts to the previous films. 

So, did I like it?  Hell yes!  Way too much good in there compared with the bad.  Was I disappointed that the film felt a little disjointed and almost...like TV-showey in the middle.  Definitely.    So overall, there's some great and unique stuff in there, and it's certainly worth a rematch, but it still doesn't live up to the OT.

I agreed with you on the score the first view, but the second time I found myself liking it quite a bit more. It's not as melodic as Williams' previous stuff, but Rey's Theme and The Jedi Steps are both lovely pieces of music.

As for the duel--that complaint has been popping up a lot and I utterly disagree with it. They spend a lot of time building up how powerful Chewie's bowcaster is so when Ren gets gutshot with it you understand just how much it probably fucked him up. Finn would have had some sort of melee combat training as a stormtrooper, and even then there are moments where you can see Ren is toying with him. And not only has Rey been established as being able to handle herself in melee combat, Ren doesn't want to kill her--he wants to take her back to Snoke. So overall I completely buy the final duel.

Last edited by Abbie (2015-12-21 18:22:02)

Oh wow. If that were just a stand alone piece of dialogue that would be a solid fuck you from Kylo. I think I would love it.

Saw it this afternoon and really liked it. The only real disappointment was the rehash of "the baddies have a giant death ray, so protect the droid with the diagram". The characters were great; the humor was on target; the melodrama was pretty solid.

Minor disappointments:

• The story rambled (rewatched ANH afterwards and it is TIGHT by comparison; characters state a goal, make a plan, then execute the plan)

• There's zero motivation for A LOT of what the characters do, good and bad (your fan theories notwithstanding)

Also, does JJ Abrams not know how maps work? To find the Statue of Liberty, you don't need the part that shows how to get from my house to Pittsburgh.

I like this movie. I have some quibbles here and there (hyperspacing into a planet's atmosphere? Really?) and think the pacing could have been better (The ending goes on forever, it starts sucking the impact out of the climax. I'm of the option that Luke should not have been in this movie.) but overall I'm a fan. Hell, my MOM liked this movie. They nailed the thing that really mattered, the characters and the feel. As long as they have that, they can take a few movies to get the rest dialed in.