You're horrible in general.
So are you. I guess we both feel better now.
That was one misstep, I felt, solely to include the dramatic turn and appearance of Luke, and to justify all the announcements that Mark Hamill was in it. If they actually HAD to put Hamill in it, they could have had a flashback or something, and save the encounter with Rey for episode VIII.
I can't decide about this.
If they were whiny douchebags. I thought they were everything WoT fans hated the Forsaken being revealed to be. It seems like on the WoT boards, one of our main disagreements about the Forsaken was that you wanted them to be Vader, Palpatine or Maul, but they were actually Kylo Ren, and I was the only one who was fine with that. When he took off his mask, my first thought was "You know nothing about the Force, Jon Snow!"
You're upset that he's not as powerful as great Sith Lords who had perhaps mastered the dark side for 60-80 years. Ren killed a shitload of people, terrified his officers, tortured people and by the way... killed his father, one of the great protagonists of the whole series. What's the problem?
I don't get this at all. What did they do aside from holding back the blaster round? It seemed to me like they bucked previously established stuff. Luke's first conscious use of the Force was to make a difficult shot that was not far removed from what he is implied to have been subconsciously doing all the time.
Well we've never seen a blaster bolt frozen in it's path, so maybe I'm easily impressed. We've always been led to believe they must be evaded or deflected. We've seen several Jedi killed by blaster bolts, so this is someone who took the time to try something new. He's also shown raw power with the Force that I didn't see even in Vader.
Rey, on the other hand, does the Jedi mind-trick with absolutely no training or experience whatsoever.
I found this implausible, but as I said she may be a prodigy.
Both she and Finn are way more adept with a light saber than anyone who touched one for the first time in this film has any business being.
I completely agree with this, and it's insulting to the Jedi who came before them. The Jedi handbook says that it takes at least 10 years to master the lightsaber.
By contrast, Kylo Ren seems like the least competent Dark Side swordsman in the entire series.
I would agree with this, but I think he's less trained than you believe. Considering you're popping the WoT stuff, he's probably like EoTW Rand... untrained, whiney and generally useless but once in a while everyone dies and you temporarily think he's cool.
Even Obi-Wans' and Vader's first/last duel gave more of a sense of competence, as in two great masters who are so good that they only need to use economical feints and movements, and so far removed from the emotional conflict of their previous match-up that they feel no need for strenuous lunges and chops. Kylo Ren just flails around smashing inanimate objects, and killing non-resisting old men, while taking far too long to defeat a powerless stormtrooper and unable to overcome a total tyro.
Well those old men asked for it.
Also, the lightsaber from episodes 3, 4 & 5 is apparently Star Wars' benevolent equivalent of the One Ring. It WANTS to be found!
I've never seen this sort of thing before, unless Luke was perhaps calling to her. It's such a horrible cumbersome old thing. It's the worst hilt in the series and yet it lingers to torture us for eternity.
Are we supposed to know or care who Max von Sydow's character is? It seems like he should have been connected to the old characters somehow.
Well shit, I thought Max von Sydow would be a major character and two minutes later he was dead. From his exchange with Ren I suspect he was one of his teachers at the academy.
If you want to talk about useless, then what was the deal with Captain Phasma? What a waste of Gwendoline Christie. I was expecting a bounty hunter like Fett. She did nothing for the whole movie then was thrown in the trash. Let's hope that's not the end or she will remain a wasted character forever.
I also wonder if killing Han was the right move. Historically, the acceptance of a Star Wars film seems to hinge a great deal on his appearance in it. On the other hand, it fits the pattern establish by I & IV of killing the mentor in a confrontation with the villain, despite his being the best or otherwise most impressive character, and thus preventing his overshadowing the protagonists in the upcoming films. I also wonder how they're going to justify Luke running off to hide instead of dealing with the problems his failure created. Maybe they won't, which might be really good for characterization, if done right. On the other hand, I thought this film exhibited, if any flaw, a tendency to gloss over stuff or skip past developments that might slow things down. That could really ruin Luke's return in the next film. I think it might have been better for him to be the sacrificial mentor in this one, but that might have overcrowded it with OT characters, or necessitated the reduction of Han's role. I can't see trading some Han for more Luke being an improvement. Also, while killing Luke might have been something that could be moved past on Kylo Ren's redemption arc, killing Han is a whole other order of magnitude. If anything is going to put him beyond redemption, in the eyes of characters AND fans, that was it. That means either his redemption must be REALLY earned, if done right, or that there is no redemption for him. Either of those stories could be really good going forward. Forgetting it to have Luke and Leia redeem & embrace him...not so much.
I think Ford forced them into this. There are reports that he really doesn't like being in Star Wars all that much, and he begged Lucas to kill him off in RoTJ, which was refused. I suspect he would only commit to one Star Wars film now, so they had no choice.
I do suspect that Ren will eventually find redemption in teaming up with Rey to kill Snoke. However, I personally find this Sith Lord redemption theme to be irritating, as they annihilate whole sectors, say sorry eventually and die... and then all is well. I am hoping that it will not be so, but the fact that they made him the son of the two protagonists implies a theme of future redemption. I can even imagine the trilogy ending with him hugging Leia. As you say, it was what we needed to hate the character. That said, I think there is a deeper story as to why he fell to the dark side. I don't think Luke is as innocent as we suspect. In some way he failed Ren and this led to a fall. It will be good if they demonize Skywalker and let us almost support the dark side for a while and then switch it again.
*NM*
- 20/12/2015 02:30:59 PM
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