Seen the new Star Wars movie? Full of Spoilers

Mr. White wrote:
This is dead right. No one had to be 'won back'. Otherwise, how could you explain the success of the Clone Wars or Rebels cartoons?

Besides one or two nostalgic specific moments, this film won't be remembered long term.

wrong on both counts Jeff. Sure people dont need to be "won back" to spend their money but in giving their seal of approval to the franchise (as the animated series have managed to do), they very much had to be "won back" since the vast majority of us wanted more Star Wars and felt like the prequels took a giant shit all over it. This film has certainly won me back in that regard. I dont think I am alone in that.
and you are just kidding yourself if you think this film wont be remembered long term, if he finishes the rest of the films in the same tone and style, they will become part of the Star Wars canon thats still living on from the originals. Whereas the more the new films tighten their grip, the more those utterly wank prequels will hopefully slip from our memories.

lala wrote: if he finishes the rest of the films in the same tone and style, they will become part of the Star Wars canon thats still living on from the originals. Whereas the more the new films tighten their grip, the more those utterly wank prequels will hopefully slip from our memories.

The next Star Wars movie is being written and directed by Rian Johnson, who is best known for Looper and Brick.
The two directors have collaborated on the movies, with Abrams showing Johnson early The Force Awakens footage to help Johnson craft next installment in the blockbuster franchise, due out on May 26, 2017.
Jurassic World director Colin Trevorrow is set to direct Episode IX, which will be released in 2019.
Abrams praised Johnson as 'an incredibly accomplished filmmaker and an incredibly strong writer,' in a Wired interview.
'So the story he told took what we were doing and went in the direction that he felt was best but that is very much in line with what we were thinking as well,' he said of Episode VIII.
'That will be his movie - he’s going to do it in the way he sees fit. He’s neither asking for nor does he need me to oversee the process.'

Meanwhile, longtime Star Wars screenwriter Lawrence Kasdan told The LA Times that Episode VIII will be 'weird.'
'These movies will all be so different,' said The Force Awakens writer, who is also penning a spin-off about Han Solo, due out in 2018. That film is set to be helmed by The Lego Movie co-directors Phil Lord and Chris Miller.
'Rian Johnson is a friend of mine - he's going to make some weird thing,' Kasdan said.
'If you've seen Rian's work, you know it's not going be like anything that's ever been in Star Wars.'

Who are you referring to when you say "if he finishes"?????
From what I have read each one has a different writer and or director.

I hope that someday somebody with as much feel for the Star Wars universe as Abrams' showed will retell the prequels and make them the new canon.

Mr. White wrote: No one had to be 'won back'.

I had to be won back. I was a huge fan of the first two movies, but I was very disappointed by Return of the Jedi. Even as a teenager, I could see the blatant greed behind the introduction of the Ewoks, and there were other elements that were blatantly recycled from the first movie. And because I kept hearing worse crap about the prequels, I skipped them completely. Just because I love a movie doesn't mean that I have signed a contract to obediently watch every sequel and spin-off.

That said, I did enjoy The Force Awakens. Sure, there were plot elements that were obviously copied from previous movies. But this was still a very good action movie with more depth in characterization than I was expecting. Rey, Finn, and Kylo Ren are all great new characters, though Rey veered dangerously near to Mary Sue territory at times. The pacing was great throughout the movie, except near the end. Carrie Fisher looked great for her age, and Harrison Ford stole every scene that he was in. It did bother me that there would still be a Resistance even though the Rebels won and re-established the Republic, but maybe the Resistance is only active in sectors of space where the First Order has taken control. Anyway, for the first time since 1983, I am looking forward to the next Star Wars movie. I wouldn't even mind seeing The Force Awakens again.

....and I'm destroyed.

Letting him play with that crossbow led to a life of violence.

#nicejobChewie

Shellhead wrote: It did bother me that there would still be a Resistance even though the Rebels won and re-established the Republic, but maybe the Resistance is only active in sectors of space where the First Order has taken control.

It's sort of explained in the novel (I linked to an article some pages ago).

According to Leia’s thoughts, the Resistance won the overall battle against the Empire and formed a new Republic. However, there was a rebellion within, and many members of the public wanted to follow orders rather than be under a democracy.

The First Order came out of this, offering to return stability to the universe. In one part, Kylo Ren explains to an underling just what this new legion aims to do: “It is the task of the First Order to remove the disorder from our own existence, so that civilisation may be returned to the stability that promotes progress.

“A stability that existed under the Empire, was reduced to anarchy by the Rebellion, was inherited in turn by the so-called Republic, and will be restored by us. Future historians will look upon this as the time when a strong hand brought the rule of law back to civilisation.”

Those who had led the rebellion had under-estimated the deeply buried desire of far too large a proportion of the population who simply preferred to be told what to do. Much easier it was to follow orders than to think for oneself. So everyone had argued and debated and discussed. Until it was too late.

www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment...nd-how-a6800951.html

mashable.com/2015/12/29/force-awakens-novel/#ovR4t9W8_PqK

It's sort of pointless for me to write this since I'm coming on so late and you've all shared your feelings, which I read and enjoyed. But I saw this tonight.

I liked it. On some level, I actually admired it more than I really emotionally committed to it/loved it. I think the entire plot they've organized and written is a great shot at cutting the gordian knot of the series lore. They needed to do something with the old characters/movies that honors them while trying to get the plot moving again with new stuff. It was a tall task and to get something even halfway good out of it gets kudos. For me, it still labored at times to just get out of the way and get going with the younger characters. If anything, I think the new characters and plotlines were by some distance the strongest elements. At times the older characters had some fan service and "we've got to wrap some of this up" and overall I was ready to move on from them much sooner than the film did. That said, the Leia and Han's son thing still mostly worked as the central plot device but I hope the next films have more of the new characters. I think the 2nd film will be better than this one because a lot of the old business is wrapped up, so I'm optimistic.

Couple of random things---
Pluses
-Like you guys, I thought Adam Driver was awesome as Kylo Ren, the best part of the film by a longshot. Carved him out as different than a Vader-ish presence and that's an achievement.
-lightsaber battles, especially the forest at the end, were DYNAMITE. If you put these intense battles side by side with the shitty prequel takes I would laugh out loud at the prequel's incompetence with respect to generating tension.
-I thought the movie did a nice job of capturing the aliens in the background/lived in stuff that the series is known for, the fun stuff in the corners was done just right (compare to the prequels on this, ugh!)
-the decision to make the younger characters story fairly straightforward was a good one. It kept the film on a lighter note
Minuses
-By contrast to the lightsaber battles, I was pretty bored by the space battles. They felt very perfunctory to me, especially the trench run at the end
-Rey and to a lesser extent Poe had almost nothing to work with story or dialoguewise. I thought they did well with what they were given, but I'm much more excited for the next films to see them stretch out.
-Abrams tried, like Lucas did, to again get CGI characters to work (alien in bar) but it still just doesn't work right for me. They did an ok job in this film compared to the prequels and I had no problem running with it. But relative to the other characters the CGI acting still all falls pretty flat. Instead they functioned as a method to advance plot with a weird visual. Acting felt forced.

Anyway. Pretty good!

Saw it for the fourth time today... probably the last time I'll see it in a theater... and went for 3D this time. I'd heard the 3D was good for this, but I thought it was kind of a waste (like most 3D). Gave some decent depth perspective for a few scenes, but didn't really add much, and then some things ended up being a little blurry.

Loved the movie again, though.

3D was a total waste.

vimeo.com/151728142

Visual Effects reel for THE FORCE AWAKENS.

Late to the party, but I finally got a chance to see it last weekend. Overall I thought it was a triumph, although I was irked by how much old ground it covered, thematically. It wasn't just a repeat of ANH, it seemed to be trying to cover ANH, Empire, and Jedi in one fell swoop. It looks to me that was a conscious plan by Abrams/Kasdan/Disney suits: let's cover all the bases and clear the floor for the next story, which has an opportunity to be totally fresh. Not that they'll follow through on the freshness, but they have laid the groundwork to go in new directions.

I'm in the Rey is Luke's daughter camp. So Kylo Ren's cousin. I think she was left on Jakku in the care of Max von Sydow, who then lost her somehow. I think the hash marks are her just marking time, didn't get the sense that she has any idea of her own greater purpose or an end to her isolation and loneliness. The vibe is that her parents left and may never be coming back. If she's his daughter, the last scene is so much more poignant, because there is an open question -- will he take up the sabre, or decline and tell her that it's hers now? A great metaphor and a near-literal passing of the torch to the next generation.

I love love love Rey. She is super charismatic and compelling. I really hope they avoid a romance with Finn -- I want her to be totally he own woman. The only truly affecting moment for me in the film was when she force-pulled the sabre -- it was a huge surge of emotion, and I teared up, in part because of the character's journey, but in a larger sense because it instantly set a high-water mark for empowered woman characters in mainstream culture. I think about how awesome it will be when my daughter sees this movie for the first time. There was no compromise on her heroic identity, and so many moments where they could have gone the route of her needing help, saving, etc., and went the other way.

Also loved Adam Driver. I already loved Adam Driver thanks to watching the whole run of Girls, but man can that guy deliver the goods. I wouldn't have thought you could make a good, interesting, complex villain in what is essentially a pulp serial, but they did it, and only someone with his chops could pull it off.

Michael, I agree about your Lucas rant, and I would encourage you to look into the career of Marcia Lucas. I'm convinced the reason why ANH, Empire, and half of Jedi are good from a story perspective has little to do with George and everything to do with her. She advised him through his early drafts of the story, including giving him feedback on the novel that became the screenplay, and won an Oscar (along with Paul Hirsch and Richard Chew) for editing ANH. She urged him to retain all of the more human/humorous moments that he wanted to cut after people laughed in test screenings. She edited the trench sequence, FFS! And then she had an affair (with a guy I know, weirdly), George divorced her, and she never worked in film again. She was considered one of the best film editors of the era -- a go-to consultant for all of those USC guys when they needed help with a sequence. I'm pretty sure she was one of the major reasons why those earlier films worked as well as they did.

I'm really hoping they don't strap Rey to the Skywalker family. Would be nice to let a character just be who they are instead of related to everyone else in the cast. As it stands right now they have room to maneuver with her storyline, the minute she becomes somebody's daughter she's painted into a corner.

Maybe she's another Midochlorian miracle!!!

It sure would be nice if she could be a leading character instead of a following one, but I don't think they're going to let that happen. It would be very refreshing if she is empowered in the next film instead of a victim of her circumstance.