SPOILER - Star Wars: The Force Awakens SPOILER Discussion Thread

It's meh imo. It's not as bad as the first two dreaded prequels, but it isn't really that good, mainly because it relies on old tricks and plot devices. It really felt like watching first movie, but only with much better visuals, so yeah, it's kinda remake of the first movie (with the inclusion of destroying deathstar from return of the jedi) . I'd argue its as good as The Revenge of the Sith.

My main complaint is how Rey used the force like a jedi master and the sound was kind of weak, it needed more impact

One minor complaint I have against the movie is I don't like how Finn shouts "Whooo!" during life-threatening action scenes. Like he's having fun, but he clearly wasn't previously.
For example escaping from the star destroyer and during the stormtrooper raid on the castle.

there is one moment during the combat between rey and kylo where the camera stands almost still on rey's face, she is kind of focusing the force towards kylo and i had an incredible internal desire that she just blew him away from the planet with some telekinesis demonstrating in a few frames her rookie grrrl brute force and kylo's inadecuate level of power (since we already know his inadecuate level of self control and resistance to frustration).
but she just kicks his ass and lets him go, so that we will enjoy kylo psychological development in the next chapters.
nice characters, i like them.
finn, i have no clue, but i like the theory that appeared in previous posts.
about han, i have no problem about his death. i'm surprised about how some portrait him as a national rogue hero. i think they are not in the correct saga.
what i really like is the homage to vader, with difference the best character overall of the saga, who has his short cameo in an unexpected way (even if some stupid spoiled that in some trailer, if i don't mistake).
i long for the next chapters, together with my kids!!

There's books out there that help the movie make more sense but even though I enjoyed it I thought some stuff in it was just plain stupid.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/seth-abramson/40-unforgivable-plot-holes-in-star-wars-the-force-awakens_b_8850324.html

I'll reserve judgment on a lot of the movie, since certain "problems" I have can be solved/alleviated by future plot points, but I did have a few issues, the biggest of which is that it just didn't have a "Star Warsy" feel to it in a way. Like it was obviously a Star Wars movie, you see a lot of similar imagery that you saw in the Originals, but I don't know what exactly it was about it....cinematography, settings, lighting, casting (I am convinced of this which I talk about below). It's hard to qualify but even the Prequels at least did a good job of making me feel like I was in the Star Wars universe. It's possible that I just need to warm up to it in this regard and watch it a few more times, but something felt off the entire time I watched it.

As I mentioned, I wasn't entirely happy with the casting. I doubt anyone really cares or agrees, but I just felt like too many of the actors were made to look younger than they really are. I also thought some of the scriptwriting and acting was bad, and it is hard to tell which is to blame with many characters. I thought Adam Driver just couldn't deliver his lines at all, the scene with Han Solo at the end was one of the worse, it didn't seem sincere and it felt like he was rushing through his lines. Domnhall Gleeson was a similar case, but I know he's a pretty good actor from some of the other movies he's been in so I'll write his performance off as a poor script/directions. Daisey Ridley is hard to tell, I can't tell if it's the script or if it's her but there are definitely parts where I was less than thrilled with the performance. John Boyega I felt like was a pretty good actor, that just had some poor script to work with in quite a few scenes.

I also felt like there were some unneeded humor in the movie a la prequels. The first one that I can recall on the top of my head was Rey pulling a circuit board out of the Millennium Falcon, holding it up to show Han and smiling this ridiculously big smile like she's a puppy. Things like that may seem small but they seem unrealistic and done intentionally for the effect of a cheap laugh, there were certainly funny moments in the originals but it never felt forced.

And finally, I really didn't like the way they rehashed a lot of scenes pretty much straight out of the earlier movies, it's almost like I was rewatching many previous Star Wars movies that had just been snipped and cut together. I get that there is good reason to stick with the theme of the series, but when it felt like certain scenes were complete rehashes...eh, this seemed like the most unoriginal Star Wars movie I have seen to date.

FINAL VERDICT. Despite my grumblings I am cautiously optimistic that this will be a good trilogy, most of my biggest gripes (that I haven't even mentioned) I am hopeful will be assuaged when the next movie comes out, as for many of the others, I'm sure they will dull with time and I'll start to like this movie more and more. Would definitely see again, but I certainly don't think it rivals the originals as some people misled me to believe.

Like a lot of folks have mentioned, the movie felt like a rehash of the original trilogy. But I'm sure they'll take the rest of the trilogy a different direction. This movie was basically saying "heeeeeey, sorry about the prequels, here's something familiar to everyone, plz dont kill us."

I thought that Kylo Ren was sufficiently intimidating until he took off his mask and revealed himself to be a young Benedict Cumberbatch. I swear, the actor looked way too similar to the guy for me to take him seriously. That, coupled with his temper tantrums AND the fact that its the first movie and he already got his ass handed to him, made me roll my eyes and say," wow, this guy is no Darth Vader." Except....that's kind of the point. He's NOT Darth Vader. He's trying to be someone else instead of himself. So it all works out in the end.

The new cast and characters meshed well with the old ones. Finn and Rey could play off of each other really well, and BB-8 could emote better than some of the human characters. They were fun, I liked them. Could they replace Mark Hamil and the gang? Probably not. But they can definitely stand next to them.

The rantha alien things were basically "HP Lovecraft presents Pac-Man." I didn't know if I was scared of them or amused by them.

Also, my mom (she got to see the original Star Wars in theaters, so she's pretty stoked about these new movies) had a fun theory. She says Kylo Ren and Rey are cousins. Why? Because Rey beat the crap out of him, and Mom used to beat the crap out of her cousins. So it all links together. Also, that Snoke is, in actuality, an Ewok. I think I like that theory better than the "Snoke = Jar Jar" one thats floating around.

Film is boring and long