1) Despite Dameron being a high-value prisoner, after being shot down, nobody checks to make sure they're dead. Literally nothing was stopping a pilot from flying over and checking the wreckage.
2) While I DO buy the Force granting a certain level of reflexive ability in piloting ships, I do not buy that having the force allows Rey to fly a ship when she has no idea what any of the buttons actually do. I don't care if she played in broken ships all her life. Luke and Anakin had some experience with flying SOMETHING. The force simply granted them better reflexes.
3) The first thing they run into after leaving the planet's atmosphere is Han and Chewie's barge (that DOES make sense, since the Falcon's beacon let him know it was flying again). Soooo....where is the First Order? They just lost fighters to the Falcon. They knew the droid was on the ship that just took off from Jakku, but instead of the Order meeting them with their whacking giant ships, it's Han and Chewie who find them. Then gangsters. The first order conveniently fade from the story.
4) The lightsaber is on the same planet that Han goes to for information. Which allows Rey to find it. Please. MAYBE Luke foresaw that Rey would find it because Force, but that's iffy.
5) The bad guys make the same damn mistake the empire made before. I've said this before, it makes for IDIOTIC, WEAK, LAME villains who build a bigger death star with a nearly identical weakness. Convenient. This, ultimately, is what broke the movie for me. I was willing to shut my brain off for the other conveniences, but this was too much. It's why the 3rd act is weak, because we've seen all this, but more importantly, because the villains are no longer a threat. It's even the perfect setup for a "gotcha" false-resolution, but nope.
6) Phasma could have single-handedly prevented the entire mission from succeeding by pressing an alarm while she was in the computer. But she was afraid to die, I guess? Despite the years of conditioning (which failed on Finn, I know, but there was absolutely NOTHING to foreshadow Phasma being a pushover). Her complacency is a glaringly bad Deus ex Machina that allows the good guys to win.
7) The section of the map that bb-8 has is relatively a GIGANTIC CHUNK of the galaxy. There's no way the resistance couldn't have pinpointed exactly where luke was based solely on that section alone. That's like if the only info I had to find someone was an address on a map of New York state, but I couldn't find it because the rest of the USA wasn't on the map. Oh, and I can't use another map of the States because reasons.
Those are the main contrivances I saw. I know there are deleted scenes and a novelization that explains some of the stuff, but screw that. A good movie is responsible for being coherent on its own. Supplemental material can enrich the experience, but it shouldn't be necessary.
Maybe you don't think these are bad, but, in my opinion, they make for a bad movie.
Pure subjectivity.
Last edited by Writhyn (2016-03-15 19:50:36)
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