-
Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.
Can't bring myself to watch The Force Awakens more than a couple of times
- Thread starter Gunslinger
- Start date
- Status
Hmm. I never really thought of it that way before. Maybe the title is referring to Rey AND Ren creating their own entities.
Like "all the old shit is getting thrown out".
And in that sense, they're on parallel paths.
ryutaro's mama
Member
Yeah. It lets them honor what came before but frees Disney up to do whatever they want moving forward, lore wise without being tethered to the old structure of things, I.e. Sith vs. Jedi.
Rey will likely represent what balance in the Force looks like.
Ren will be what unbridled Dark Side looks like and as Ghal said, it will likely be scary af.
ryutaro's mama
Member
Wait, what? Are you pre-emptively getting upset over arguments that haven't happened yet?!?
Besides, none of what I said might happen. It's just speculation on my part.
Nonsense
Your prior predictions were true
It's pretty much fact, at this juncture.
And that argument has no beginning, and no end. It's always current
ryutaro's mama
Member
😂
Freeza Under The Shower
Member
That was my experience of it as well. I was bored out of my damn mind by TFA, so I can't imagine rewatching it many times.
Gunslinger
Member
If luke is the TLJ then what is Rey?
It would be pretty interesting if Snoke, Luke and Kylo all get knocked off in the Last Jedi and Rey is the last one standing. The rebellion against the last Force user. It would be different.
Anyone else wonder what the Galaxy is like now, have people fallen in line with the New Order it are they still small fry? Just a guess but the rich looking establishment and characters, maybe they are seeking an alliance with the New Order which makes it even harder for the rebellion?
Anyone else wonder what the Galaxy is like now, have people fallen in line with the New Order it are they still small fry? Just a guess but the rich looking establishment and characters, maybe they are seeking an alliance with the New Order which makes it even harder for the rebellion?
I hope they start something new for her. The Jedi are flawed and cannot last.
elrechazado
Banned
The knights of Sue
My guess (and I haven't read any spoilers) is that Luke will die, making Rey the last Jedi.
I hope to be surprised, but it seems like this trilogy is playing things conservatively.
Wolfe
Member
Yeah this was my take away from the scenes with Snoke discussing Luke.
Personally, I think you're unfairly inflating her character based on too little info. As has been said many times in this thread alone, she's clearly strong with the force and has likely been utilizing it while unaware most of her life while surviving alone on Jakku. Unlike Anakin in TPM though (which she is clearly less powerful than, even if he didn't get to use any "jedi" tricks in that movie, I mean dude built two fucking amazing droids with scraps when he was still likely shitting his pants) she is older and more mature, she has at least base knowledge of Jedi and the Force so it's not out of the question to assume she may even know about specific "tricks", not necessarily how to use them but simply that they exist. It makes sense to me that she was able to quickly pick up on how to utilize the force after being subjected to it in multiple ways in a short period of time.
Also my opinions above are built off of the OT/PT and what they've already done. Luke did rad things with barely any training/explanation and unlike Rey likely didn't have much knowledge of the Jedi/Empire situation as he lived out in the sticks with his uncle that didn't want to talk about his father. He even mentioned wanting to or not being able to join the academy or whatever to join the empires ranks (which made sense given he was uninformed and naive about the empire).
Granted I also could be totally wrong and they are making her out to be another Force Jesus, who knows
Hero_of_the_Day
Member
I can't imagine Luke dying in the next one. Episode 9? Maybe. But, Han's death in 7 probably protects all the main players in the next movie.
Yeah this was my take away from the scenes with Snoke discussing Luke.
Personally, I think you're unfairly inflating her character based on too little info. As has been said many times in this thread alone, she's clearly strong with the force and has likely been utilizing it while unaware most of her life while surviving alone on Jakku. Unlike Anakin in TPM though (which she is clearly less powerful than, even if he didn't get to use any "jedi" tricks in that movie, I mean dude built two fucking amazing droids with scraps when he was still likely shitting his pants) she is older and more mature, she has at least base knowledge of Jedi and the Force so it's not out of the question to assume she may even know about specific "tricks", not necessarily how to use them but simply that they exist. It makes sense to me that she was able to quickly pick up on how to utilize the force after being subjected to it in multiple ways in a short period of time.
Also my opinions above are built off of the OT/PT and what they've already done. Luke did rad things with barely any training/explanation and unlike Rey likely didn't have much knowledge of the Jedi/Empire situation as he lived out in the sticks with his uncle that didn't want to talk about his father. He even mentioned wanting to or not being able to join the academy or whatever to join the empires ranks (which made sense given he was uninformed and naive about the empire).
Granted I also could be totally wrong and they are making her out to be another Force Jesus, who knows
What made her figure out how to do a Jedi mind trick at just the right time she was in trouble when they could have established her knowing about it when she was haggling with the salvager over the scrap prices.
The problem with Rey is she always figures out exactly what to do at just the right time. Hell Finn was her foil for pretty much the entire film.
Bobby Roberts
Banned
Kylo Ren forcing himself into her head while she was strapped into a torture chair.
That's how she figured it out.
There were sound effects and everything. Then right after the sound effects she tells him a thing he had in his mind.
It's pretty blatant.
(We've gone over this in this specific thread at least twice, I believe)
It's crazy how many of these complaints carry with them this notion that Rey is somehow cheating. Or that Abrams has turned on a cheat code. Or that the streamer on the Force Awakens Twitch Stream we all paid to watch had enabled some hack that has cheapened the entire experience.
People talk about her like a fighting game boss that they could just beat if the programmers hadn't made her read your inputs.
A New Hope did it better tbh. I watched TFA before ANH and felt like ANH taught me that trick better than TFA did as a Star Wars newbie.
TFA doesn't exist in a vacuum though. Movie studios expect audiences to have seen past films. And going by the success of the MCU, Harry Potter, Star Wars, The Fast and The Furious, etc. The audience doesn't have a problem with that.
Jedi is plural.
So you like ANH better sand handwave the fact that it is literally a film where Luke picks up tricks out of nowhere?
Awesome. But TFA actually shows you how and why Rey accesses the force.
uncelestial
Member
Dang, catching up, this turned into Bobby Roberts Has a Meltdown: The Thread.
That's true and I'm not disputing that, but I think TFA was the first Star Wars film for a lot of young people today as well so if one of them told me they too were confused about the mind trick in TFA then I'd completely understand why. It's not that obvious for the reason you stated, JJ Abrams and whoever else involved didn't think audiences would need their hands held for that which is fine, but again, it's not that obvious for some newbies like myself.
uncelestial
Member
Dang, catching up, this turned into Bobby Roberts Has a Meltdown: The Thread.
Er, no, the discussion around it is played out. My argument is fine. It's fine and true to say that TFA heavily borrowed story beats, aesthetics, settings, and ideas from ANH. JJ Abrams admits to it to the degree that it's acceptable to admit to such a thing. You're the only person I've ever seen in the world pretending it isn't happening. It's so established it's basically table stakes for talking about TFA. That's why I'm not really interested in defending it. Everybody knows it, and it was probably intentionally done. Let's move on.
Er, no, the discussion around it is played out. My argument is fine. It's fine and true to say that TFA heavily borrowed story beats, aesthetics, settings, and ideas from ANH. JJ Abrams admits to it to the degree that it's acceptable to admit to such a thing. You're the only person I've ever seen in the world pretending it isn't happening. It's so established it's basically table stakes for talking about TFA. That's why I'm not really interested in defending it. Everybody knows it, and it was probably intentionally done. Let's move on.
I think for a young person interested in Star Wars they'd kind of just go with it. Popular fiction with kids has people manifest powers all the time. And, on top of that the Star Wars property has been super popular with kids forever with a couple of long-running cartoons that were airing when TFA came out.
that's literally what the force does
it makes you do shit you can't normally do because you're drawing on the energy of all living things
"beating" (or actually having a draw because the ground literally splits to keep the fighters apart) a force user who was shot in the gut is less impressive than the bullshit Luke was able to do in A New Hope
in literally 30 seconds as we watched, Luke went from getting hit with a blaster bolt from a thing he can see, to blocking three bolts in a row blindfolded, with the only instruction being to "stretch out with his feelings"
In TFA, Rey can already fight. This is well established by the fact that we see her fight in the movie. Then she reaches out to the force and that augments her power so she can take on Kylo Ren. In ANH, in the trench run, Luke can already shoot. This is established in a throwaway line of dialogue. Then he reaches out to the force and that improves his aim so he can shoot a missile into a tiny hole.
It's literally the same kind of shit, but everybody loses their minds for some reason with Rey.
uncelestial
Member
To be fair, this was all done quite a bit slower and with more exposition with Luke.
Luke met a Jedi and at least heard the gist of what The Force was and "reached out with his feelings" and trained a tiny bit before doing *anything* with the Force. And at the critical moment where he makes the shot, he literally has a Jedi communing with him, telling him to use the Force. Rey spontaneously figures out mind-reading and telekinesis without even knowing what the hell the force can be used for, or how it would apply to combat, and there damn sure wasn't any dead Jedi whispering in her ear.
My Hope is that we get Rey's intentionally obfuscated backstory filled in because it really didn't follow the slow burn that Luke did. His first telekinesis was the sunken X-Wing and his first mind trick was in RotJ.
I don't think her winning the fight against Kylo was unrealistic though.
ryutaro's mama
Member
Nope.
It was his lightsaber in the Wampa cave.
EDIT: And before the X-Wing, he was moving stones while handstanding.
uncelestial
Member
Oh snap. But still, nothing in the first movie.
ryutaro's mama
Member
And technically speaking, Luke tried moving the X-Wing but couldn't get out of his own head.
Adoy is the one that finally moves it out of the swamp and onto dry land.
Adoy is the one that finally moves it out of the swamp and onto dry land.
Again, a stormtrooper joining the rebellion is a new concept for the films. And Finn is co lead. Yelling it's a rehash doesn't work when you literally have a brand new character archetype.
uncelestial
Member
It actually works so good.
- Deflecting lasers with a light saber that he had only turned on once before in Obi Wan's crib, while basically blind folded..
- Manually shooting a torpedo into the Death Star's asshole while guys with targeting computer aim-assist couldn't hit it...
Why is Rey's stuff so unbelievable compared to Luke's?
lol Rey beat a hostile trained lightsaber sith (whatever) having never turned it on before. And no, staff fighting and sword (lightsaber) fighting are very different, all without having a Jedi master whispering in your ear.
Mind trick only having seen it once. Reading a hostile trained force user's mind - should not have been possible, they are trained to protect their mind.
Telekinesis against a trained force user.
She's obvious some sort of force savant, well beyond Luke and Anakin in munchkinness. All without any training.
To be fair, depending on how you view the past lore you won't see it as much of a jump, but myself, and other fans, it was a jump too far. It broke the rules.
The force abilities hadn't been well defined at that point. Putside of super natural senses/feeling and choking people what the force did was pretty vague. Then in ESB pushing and pulling small objects was some of the most basic stuff anyone could do and that continued in every Star Wars film after.
uncelestial
Member
- Laser: He was in the middle of training and receiving instructions from a Jedi at that precise moment and wasn't able to do it without having what was going on explained.
- Torpedo: Again, receiving instructions from a Jedi in real-time.
I didn't say Rey was "so unbelievable," I said she jumped ahead in abilities faster and with less exposition. Could be that the backstory we'll get in Eps 8 and 9 fill in some mysteries about her. Could be that they think everyone already knows about the force so let's just yadda yadda and get on with it. I don't really know or particularly feel upset about it or anything, but given that she wasn't getting any training and skipping ahead to mind-reading and telekinesis it felt comparatively... Rushed or something. I think Ep 8 will feel more natural, with her training up with Luke in isolation.
They spent 6 movies kind of building up this whole master/apprentice lore before this one came out, so it's pretty fair to recoil when people just start busting out with force moves. She just heard the force wasn't a straight up myth from Han like 10 seconds before she started reading people minds.
Atraveller
Banned
Goddamn people had to repeat "Kylo was severely injured, emotionally distressed, and half trained" for literally several hundred pages in spoiler thread and we still got this argument?
It's crazy how often I see this argument. JJ Abrams should've gave him a health bar and some debuffs so people would've finally got what was happening there.
WadiumArcadium
Member
The First Order are still nowhere near the size of the Empire. I expect they'll have a few more systems under their control in The Last Jedi but they'll mainly be focused on hunting down the Resistance. As for the wealthy looking characters at Canto Bight, I suspect many of them are already backing the First Order. I wouldn't be surprised if some of the senators that seceded from the Republic to join the First Order live there.
Their links to the First Order are probably one of the reasons Finn and Rose end up at Canto Bight. That and nabbing Benicio Del Toro's character, DJ.
Criticism, above all else, must be enthralling and repeated as little as possible.
Repeated too many times, it then becomes invalid.
uncelestial
Member
This baseless, unsubstantiated, absolutist bon mot is neither enthralling nor valid, so whatever. Where'd you pluck this gem from, alt.atheism?
https://vimeo.com/160263943
^ I assume Bobby has seen this. This is as much labor as I'm willing to enact in pointing out how "samey" TFA was. This, along with the fact that we're all older and get our fixes for fantasy and space and sci-fi from multiple places now, probably explains a lot about why TFA is not as "rewatchable" to oldschool Star Wars fans. We're not kids anymore; I don't think there's any movie made since I was 20 that I really want to rewatch multiple times, but sometimes the comfort food of a movie from my childhood really hits the spot.
I have nothing but love for ya Bobby, I'm sorry we disagree on the whole rehash thing but it's so played out as an argument.
It's not just the shot-by-shots either, major story beats are also the same:
Yeah this is pretty much it.
The sad part is TFA does nothing to earn its thrills. It borrows so much from ANH but is simultaneously such a weaker movie.
If TLJ doesn't pick up, I'll probably prefer prequels to the newest trilogy. AOTC has some terrible dialogue but at least it filled in the mythology. Midiclorians and the chosen one are bad, but at least they try to explain why Anakin was so powerful! Rey is just a perfect angel -- she'll probably be the one to unlock all powers of the force and break all the rules. Grey jedi or maybe rainbow jedi, where she can use all sides of the force without any penalties, just cause.
Lord Panda
The Sea is Always Right
Raziel, love your namesake and avatar but your post doesn't really make much sense. How does repeating something invalidate it?
As for TFA and Rogue One. I find both movies don't really hold up on repeated viewings.
😴💤
Yeah I feel the same way everytime I try to watch TFA.
Chuckie
Member
It's not just the shot-by-shots either, major story beats are also the same:
While TFA did lack originality and was too much of the same, this image is a bit disingenuous.
Rey is not orphaned but abandoned.
Rey & BB-8 do not come across Lars San Tekka, Poe does.
I'm not sure that was Rey's hometown that got burned down.
Rey does escape with the Falcon, but hasn't met Han and Chewy at that time yet. So they don't help.
Kylo kills Han, but I wouldn't call him Rey's mentor. Also how is now Han the Obi Wan figure, while earlier in this analogy Lars San Tekka was.
Rey takes it pretty hard. So? Also Luke already knew Kenobi for a while, so the 'few hours' doesn't make sense.
We don't know if Rey is Kylo's cousin yet. Also the Vader/Luke info was from Empire, not ANH.
They should have never done the whole Death Star 3 thing though.
- Status