Can this trilogy be salvaged?

Let us for a moment apply the same kind of arguments used by haters of the Force Awakens on an other Oscar-worthy movie

The Revenant stinks and this is why!

The Revenant is a shameless rehash of Empire Strikes Back:
1. Opening attack by a powerful enemy on four legged beasts. The goodguys make a narrow escape from their frozen and icy environment.

2. The main protagonist is attacked by an indigenous creature which results in severe physical trauma. The protagonist defeats the creature by pulling a melee weapon towards him. He enters the hostile environment only to be saved at the last moment by a scout.

3. The main protagonists are pursued by an invincible force throughout the movie

4. The father-son relationship is a central element in the movie.

5. The main protagonists make a narrow escape from a place in the clouds.

6. The main protagonists are betrayed by someone they trust who happens to be a minority (white Texan)

7. The main protagonist, severly damaged, stays warm inside a dead creature: his ride.

8. There is a duel at the end of the movie which leaves the protagonist severly injured.

9. The main protagonist has a vision.

10. The main protagonist sees an object from space crashing into a snowy environment.

11. The main protagonist is nurtured and trained by a person with mysterious powers who also happens to talk funny.

 

Actually, KK has only said the actors are returning.
There's plenty of ways an actor can return without the character still being alive...

QFT.

I'm not so sure about that...
It's still got about $200 million to go to overtake... and with the Blu-Ray release coming in April, I'm not expecting the theatrical run to continue much longer. In fact, I'm struggling to find session times around where I live.

So TFA should have copied TESB a bit more... maybe it would have got more Oscar nominations.

 

No at the end of the Revenant's credits, they displayed how many jobs were created in the United States of America because of the Revenant. So the Academy thought this to be self-acclamatory enough to give it 12 nominations. A movie which continuously sees people exiting the cinema befor the movie is over simply because it is unbearable.

 

After all, Plinkett can't read.

 

All of the prequels lifted shots directly from the original trilogy... and the Original Trilogy pulled things from movies before it.
There's a video on youtube where someone has compared them. They've basically taken the motion exactly, and swapped the "characters."
For example, there's a shot during the asteroid chase in AOTC with identical framing and motion from the chase in TESB.
The ending of TPM and ANH are basically mirrored. R2 turns one way in one film, but turns the other way in the other.
It's full of this stuff.


Yes, TFA borrows a lot of story beats from ANH. It's the same way that the Hobbit mirrors Lord of the Rings. There's nothing bad about this

You see that in the bottom left? That's what Snoke looks like when fully lit, and not half obscured in shadow. Barely anything like Gollum.
The only resemblance stems from the fact that they are both Andy Serkis facial expressions.

That entire scene was there to help establish the fact that Han Solo had returned to his old ways. That's character right there.

And I could say that 90% of Return of the Jedi was about selling toys: Jabba's Palace and all it's patrons, Boushh disguise Leia, Slave Leia, Lando in disguise, most of the new Rebels (Nien Nunb, Admiral Ackbar, Mon Mothma, A-wings, B-wings), TIE Interceptors, forest gear heroes (Han, Luke, and Leia), Scout Troopers, Speeder bikes, Ewoks, the Red Imperial Guard.... the list goes on.

He picked it up on scanners after they powered it up... how much more explanation do you need?

Yeah, kind of dumb and could have been better... but is also has no real impact on the story.
Had R2-D2 been operational when BB-8 first arrived, would they have just taken off to find Luke instead of stopping Starkiller?

It's likely not as important as you think. How does Maz finding the lightsaber have any impact on Rey becoming a Jedi?
Unless it's discovery has an important connection to Rey's past, I doubt they'll ever reveal that in the subsequent episodes, and simply keep it for other material.

That's not a hole. It's not even an issue.

Nearby planet? What constitutes a nearby planet?
One doesn't systematically travel from one planet to the next searching for one person.
In a world as big as Star Wars, I'm surprised people find things at all.

I don't know how many times I've had to explain all this: J.J. was not the sole creative mind making all the decisions on this film.
You can blame J.J. if you don't like the camerawork, dialogue, editing and other things like that... but if you don't like the story (particularly involving the events preceeding the film) blame Michael Arndt, Lawrence Kasdan, Simon Kinberg, Kiri Hart, Dave Filoni, Pablo Hidalgo, and George Lucas (because he didn't really make it easy to start off 30 years later).

 

@ArynCrinn

 

I agree with you. I didnt like Snoke's design nor his stupid name. When Leia said ,,No, it was Snoke" or something like that, I cringed. The way she said the word ,,Snoke" was like a parody. However, those are the things that can easely be salvaged in the next episodes. He was a hologram, so the actual design can look a lot different. Maybe it isnt even his real form, but something like in the wizard in Oz.

If TFA was 40% about selling toys, than how much were the prequels if I might ask? At least 80-85%. There are whole sequences which were in the movie just to sell toys, videogames etc. Like the podrace, its only filler.

If you want to nitpick about the plotholes, than I suggest you to watch Redlettermedia's prequel reviews (if you've been living under a rocks in the past years and didnt see it).
The Star Wars movies were never trying to tell a Mulholland Drive-, or Inception like story. It was always about the characters (before the prequels ofc, those movies have no characters at all) and a bit about morals. Some games managed to deliver a lot better story than any of the films (like Kotor).
Still, I have way higher hopes towards epsiode VIII, than after TPM, because now we have screenwriters and directors who can write a coherent script and can give the actors some direction, not to act like Hayden C. in aotc.

 

i'd be completely okay with that.

doubt it will happen though, unfortunately.

while i disagree with the whole =gollum thing, i think Snoke is wretchedly conceived. better to fix the mistake than to pretend it's just fine. Snoke is the one thing about TFA that just strikes me as mind-bendingly bad (not the idea, just the design and execution).

 

J.J. rarely get's on opportunity to "create" because he keep getting hired to direct, not write.
Star Trek and Star Trek: Into Darkness were written by Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman (and Damon Lindelof on the latter). J.J. was never a part of the writing team.
Even with TFA, he wasn't brought in to write until about 6 months before they had to start filming. At that point, location shoots were already scouted (and scheduled), sets and costumes were designed (and in construction). How creative can one get at that stage?

Gollum has long strands of hair, lacks prominent scarring, and his jaw isn't sunken at all.
Snoke has no hair, deep scaring, and the entire left side of his face is collapsed and exposed (although we still don't know the condition of his teeth). Snoke also wears clothes.


Snoke looks a lot more like these 3 merged together:

I must be one of the few people who actually likes Snoke's design.

 

I like Snokes design..... also

 

i just think he's boring and sorta moustache-twirly evil. and i was maybe hoping for a bad guy who was a bit more subtle and doesn't sit on a giant toilet-looking throne in a robe...just to distinguish him more from Palpatine. if Kylo Ren believes this guy, utterly, it makes him look like a dimwit.

maybe if i think about Snoke resembling Harvey Dent, i'll hate him less ~ hahaha.

 

How?

 

1. Language warning. (I swear when I talk, think and type. If you don't like it, sorry, put a potty-mouth blindfold on before you proceed)
2. These are 100% my take-aways from the film and it's impact on future films and EU material. Don't want you to dislike the film if you love it. Glad you enjoyed it!




I'm not so much concerned for whether the trilogy can be salvaged. I think as a movie, TFA was pretty good.

It wasn't amazing, but it did to Star Wars ok.... For kids. ...Not adults.

For adults it left too many questions for a good film. Too much of the interaction was "Disney" and not enough "Human".

I thought that Finn was way too much of a psychological balm for everyone around him. Zero indication of the significant combat stress that caused him to leave the First Order, and way too good at distracting everyone from the crazy going on around them with witty one-liners. It also meant that the majority of viewers were too busy finding Finn "likeable" to really look at the story and go : "Wait...

Rey was way too eager to jump into everything dangerous after a ten minute mope around a really pretty rainforest.

Poe was lethal to everything...except missiles being shot at him.

Too much was conveniently telling us what was going on and not enough was showing us what is happening.

If I put myself in that story as Rey or Finn, nothing I do makes sense.

Cracking jokes about being a sanitation officer on a critical mission to destroy a base called "Starkiller"... sigh.



My major concern is with the effect of this film on the EXTENDED UNIVERSE creation.

Major problems crop up when you consider the new force powers Kylo Ren displays.

Freezing time around an object is an Insta-win in any fight.... hell, even the ability to freeze something in place kinda nullifies the lightsaber duels we saw in the prequel trilogy. Similarly, the idea that he can extract thoughts from people's mind because "MAGIC" is kinda a waste of the PT and OT stories.

Can't remember any situation where an "interrogation" was resolved by plucking thoughts out of people's heads with the force.

Also:

The Church of the Force???? NOOOOOOOOOOOO. This is Star Wars, not some BS mirror of Earth. STOOOOOPPPPP MAKING blast UP THAT MAKES ME THINK ABOUT HOW STUPID MY OWN PLANET IS!!!

The next thing we'll hear about is how wookies are suing the remnant for re-patriation following slavery, and how a bunch of kids in tight pants are waving banners on Chandrila about Clone Rights.


I want STAR WARS. Not STAR SOCIAL COMMENTARY.

Again:

Rey:

So now objects call to people through the force? What? The? Blast? Yeah, because the lightsaber got all emotional and blast because Rey was around... so it gave her a vision of the Seven Samurai.... I mean, the Akutski from Naruto... I mean, the Knights of Ren... meh... mediocre plot development.

How does she learn the force so rapidly? This has didn't happen in the new or old canon (Exception for Revan in KOTOR2 and Kyle Katarn who re-learned their skills). Did she re-learn those skills? If so, why was there no indication that she was - at the very least - adept at force use, or even slightly force sensitive earlier in the film? Maybe she calms herself, closes her eyes and then stalls the falcon to give Finn a clear shot at the Tie Fighter in the Escape from Jakku sequence?

If that happened, Ok... she has a bit of training.

All we know so far is that she never believed in the force being real, then three day's later she's ganking an injured leader of the Knights of Ren in a lightsaber duel.

Does this mean that anyone with force sensitivity gets superpowers quick now?

JJ said in interviews that he viewed the force as a reflection of your strength of emotion... thus the Jedi Code (Totally developed for EU) has been scrapped and now either your strength of zen state or strength of emotion dictates how well you can use the force... regardless of something as obviously canon as Midichlorians.

Effectively this means that everyone has the force. You just gotta get training or super mad.

Kinda like Goku right?

Beh!

So... the sith are done with. Cool. But now the Senate got vaped in a hot second, and somehow planets on the other side of the sector saw it like it was RIGHT THERE.

So.. what happens with the senate?

Should we care? The resistance are the guys we care about. The senate are obviously do-nothings... so RIP...

But what about the EU?

How are the Resistance... with a total of 7 X-Wings and the Falcon... going to do anything significant in the galaxy?

Yeah... kinda dumb plot development.

What about the First Order... surely the majority of their resources were expended converting a planet into a Starkiller machine? Right?

Or are we going to find out that the Starkiller is one of 100,000 that are just.... kinda sitting around?

Story is way too silly, and right now the characters are WAY too Overpowered and underdeveloped for any "Good" EU material to come out BECAUSE of the film.

I feel REALLY sorry for Rian. He has to take this hatchet-job of plot development and not-only resolve the questions we all want answered, but do so in a way that leads the story forwards in a suspenseful way.

I don't think that episode 8 is going to be an action packed blockbuster.

It's more likely to NEED to be a plot drive Q&A for all the new stuff that's been introduced in TFA.

MOD EDIT: Language

 

I think he's interesting, because he has a past which we don't know much about... his scars allude to things. That's what make's his design work.
We don't really know much about Snoke yet, though we certainly no more than we did about Palpatine at this point.
And we don't really know what Kylo Ren believes... Maybe Snoke convinced him that the Jedi are unable to save the galaxy from itself?

No one is freezing time... just using an ability that Jedi have had since TESB: telekinesis.
Why didn't anyone else use it to freeze blaster fire in prior movies? The closest we got was Vader blocking Han's blaster shots with his bare hand.

Vader was able to extract thoughts from Luke during ROTJ, without having to use any real effort.

I can't remember seeing any situation where someone obtained any information from anyone.
Leia's interrogation was off-screen (in the script/draft, it was stated that she was trained in the art of mind-control, which allowed her to resist the interrogation).

And speaking of interrogation... what was the purpose of Vader's interrogation of Han in TESB?

Nothing wrong with the church of the Force (except the mediocre name... but it's not even mentioned in the movie).
"May the Force be with you" strongly suggests that there are people who have a belief in the Force, even if they aren't strong enough to use it like the Jedi could.

Star Wars has always been a social commentary.

It's more the Force calling to Rey through the lightsaber...
I thought it was great.

It's in the film title: the Force awakens.
Snoke and Kylo both felt the awakening in the Force.
Besides, how did Luke learn to block the shots from the training remote? Or feel when to fire the torpedo? He learned to use the Force pretty quick without much training.

I'm not familiar with those interviews...

That's how the Force always has been... from a certain point of view, i.e. one doesn't need to master the Force in order to benefit from it.
Lucas just added midi-chlorians to come up with a reason why most people couldn't learn to use it in the way that Jedi do.

As Snap Wexley states, it's a "hyper lightspeed weapon." It doesn't really have a real-world physics counterpart.
I haven't seen anything travel faster than light.... have you?

The Rebels didn't do much in TESB. They fled to Hoth, and when the Empire found them, they fled again.
Such a dumb plot development.

I believe that in a few different sources (Visual Dictionary, Cross Sections), it's stated that the First Order had the 2nd largest fleet in the galaxy after the Republic...
After what happened to the Republic Fleet in TFA, I imagine the First Order now have the largest fleet in the galaxy.

And yet, it's better than the legends material which was set around the same time (New Jedi Order).
Old EU material just didn't want to move on from Han, Luke, and Leia.

 

yeah, i'm really curious what Kylo Ren thinks he's getting out of this one-way-street. a place of belonging, certainly. an opportunity to make grandpa proud perhaps (whatever that means to him)?

and you're right ~ maybe Snoke didn't always look like that. just like Palpatine.

i think i just really wanted something different. someone more virile, maybe more charming. it's the only place where my expectations hit a wall with what we got served. i can see all manner of reasons why they changed Snoke from a woman (could even be the same reasons not to make him more manly), but the guy on the chair with the crumpled face just doesn't do it for me. hahaha