Help answer my friend's questions

1. Possibly because Kylo was injured, or not taking the fight as seriously as he should. He'd just killed his father and been shot by the family pet, I think it would have been better if he'd been more impressive in his fight with FInn/Rey, but I'll cut him some slack.

2. See #1, plus it would seem she's pretty strong in the Force. Once again I feel Kylo should have come off a little better, but oh well.

3. I agree. Just what I wanted out of my fun/nostalgic trip to the theater to see Star Wars, my favorite character and boyhood idol murdered. I found it pretty cheap.

4. Yeah, pretty much, they basically said so in the movie. There's a lot of same-ness in TFA.

5. Yeah, maybe, but I thought he was OK. Maybe #1 wouldn't be so much of a head-scratcher if they'd made him a little more competent in the rest of the film leading up to his fight with Kylo. I don't mind some comic relief in Star Wars, maybe not Jar Jar style comedy but these movies are supposed to be fun. But maybe one of the two leads shouldn't have been the bumbling comic relief. But like I said I still liked him.

 

I agree with everything Nunb said.

 

1. Emotionally Kylo wasn't in the best way (I'll get back to that in a minute). Secondly, Kylo just took a crossbow shot to the chest like a champ. He was nowhere near full fitness. One thing I'd like to point out is that once Kylo murdered his father; he didn't get the classic 'Sith Eyes'. I don't think the dark side overcame him... in fact I still think he was confused and this reflected in his battle(s).

2. ^ see above. I'd also like to add that both Finn and Rey and militarily capable people. It's not like they are both average Joe's who've never shot a gun before.

3. I disagree. The death of Han Solo was necessary for the story. Because of this Kylo Ren is someone to fear. Why? Because mentally he really is all over the place. We have no idea how he'll act in the next 2 films. He is the making of a psychotic villain - the only way to properly prove this was for him to murder his own father.

4. Can't argue with this one - I wasn't a fan of Death Star 3.0 ... but hey, it wasn't like they were trying to hide that.. I mean they said it in the film; "its another Death Star!"

5. Finn was comic relief but he was good comic relief. He made the audience laugh because he's incredibly relatable. The only time I would've turned down his comic relief was during the 'nodding' gag whilst on Starkiller Base. Everything else was perfect.

 

1. Is he? Kylo was toying with Finn when they were fighting. Throughtout the fight Kylo was on the offence and Finn was on the defence. It was only a matter of time until Finn got hit and was defetead by Kylo.
2. Deus Ex Machina. Before Kylo and Rey got to the cliff, Kylo was clearly winning. Rey was parrying his blows, not making her own attacks. However, he didn't want to damage her too badly - he wanted her to join him. At the cliff's edge she felt "the call of the Force," similarly to Luke during his attack on Death Star and was able to overpower him.
3. It was necessary. Without Han dying, there would be no reason for Rey and Finn to fight with Kylo. They would have tried to escape him instead. Also, Kylo killed his father - there are surely going to be consequences of this act for him in The Last Jedi.
4. Can't argue with that.
5. Well, humour is subjective. Not all people are going to find the same things funny.

 

I agree with all you said except that one, it's only really necessary because they wrote it that way. You couldn't just edit that bit out of TFA obviously because so much of the story was written around Han's death, but from day one they could have written a story without it. Kylo Ren could have been someone to fear without killing his father, Vader didn't kill his father and was still an effective villain. I think the beginning of the film on Jakku establishes him as a pretty bad dude, and like Vader he has a past of murdering Jedi students. His bad guy cred is good with me and it had been long before that scene.

 

Ready for the negative quotes but here goes:

1-Because TFA had sloppy writting and JJ didn't pay attention to details so what can you expect? Finn loses it after seeing a close comrade die before his very eyes and seconds later he's killing them himself like if they meant nothing.

2-Because she was a Mary Sue. She learned on the fly what it took Luke three whole movies to learn.

3-Your friend is correct. Unnecessary and done in such a lame and bad way that Leia didn't even care to talk to Chewie about it and prefered to hug a girl she had never seen before.

4-TFA is completly a sad rehash of ANH.

5-Many fans think Finn is the Jar Jar of TFA so your friend is right again.

 

I see your points. However, Kylo needed to be different to Vader. Vader was evil for a long time but Kylo is more twisted, & confused; a loose canon. To coincide with Harrison Ford's request for Star Wars to kill off Han Solo; they chose Kylo to kill of his own father to strongly display his characters twisted emotions.

We have no idea of Rey's past... there's a good chance she has already been trained. Of course this is all speculation but I expect we'll learn more in the next 2 films.

 

I'm pretty much just expanding or adding my take on things everyone else already pointed out, but...

1. He is not. Finn is a trained soldier, Ren is wounded (and, also, pretty much out of his mind at that point) and - despite basically toying with Finn, to the point where his self-confidence leads him to get ulteriorly injured - he overcomes him the second he decides to.

2. Once again, because Kylo is wounded (twice, now), tired, emotionally out of balance and too self-confident, whereas Rey finds her balance (when she closes her eyes and feels the Force: pretty much what Luke did in ANH, she just get there more progressively and with more of a build up to it) and that's what allows her to defeat him;

3. Han Solo's death was very necessary: not just to establish Kylo as a different kind of bad guy than Vader (D.V. was a ruthless enforcer, K.R. is a deranged accolyte) but also in term of character's arc - after ESB, Han's character had nowhere else to go. The extreme sacrifice to save his son it's the meaningful way to bring his arc to a close.

4. It was. TFA is made in equal parts of ANH (mostly the first act), TESB (mostly the second act) and ROTJ (mostly the third act), with a few of its own, "unique"[1] ideas, here and there. Now, the DS was central to both ANH and ROTJ. However, I don't really see the problem, since the Death Star, or the Starkiller Base, were never the point - those are just devices, the "thing our heroes have to destroy". The point, in all three movies, are the characters' (emotional and personal) conflicts and what changes, for them, before, during and after "the destruction of the thing" - and, from this point of view, what we got in ANH is different from what we got in ROTJ and they're both different from what we got in TFA, so it's fine.
([1]: I said "unique" in the context of a SW movie, not in general.)

5. "Appropriate" and "too much" are both subjective, but - since someone tried to draw the comparison - just off the top of my head I'd say that - throughout the whole movie - Finn has less jokes/funny moments than Jar Jar did in half of the first act of TPM (and it should be considered that a running joke, with Jar Jar, was his speech-patterns, meaning it was constantly there).

 

I agree with you 100%

 

Sad to say this but I agree with your friend on all 5.

 

I don't necessarily want Kylo to be just like Vader I was just using him as a comparison, and it's a pretty easy comparison given their similarities. Harrison has been requesting Han Solo be killed off since the OT, and the OT was better for them having ignored him, I think TFA would have been as well.

 

Yes, like a cat with a mouse. A little saddistic pleasure meant to only show who is the winner.

The parricide, as described by Freud, forms with the oedipian complex a pair that is called the regicide. Such regicide embodies the death of an ancient reference frame and form of governance, and the swap to a new one. We are at the very core of the whole SW tale, from 25.000 BBY to +33, aren't we?
The parricide is the first aspect of this philosophical concept. Beyond the simple murder, the parricide truly means one is about to swap from law (law is legitimate, has been established by the fathers, and is commonly accepted: this is The Old Republic) to barbarism (barbarism is savage, out of control and unlawful: this is the Galactic Empire). The man who kills his father, not only murders another human: he truly breaks the law. He braves and denies the authority. He makes a putsch, a coup d'etat, a revolution. He reverses the current management. In one word: he affirms himself, he claims his existence. He awakens.... hey: is that not the title of the movie we are speaking about? Furthermore: in ANH we got the same thing - differently expressed, but basically a parricide : in order to fully become a Jedi, Luke needed his "father" to be dead. That was metaphoric, but Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru actually died and were murdered, and their death forced Luke to accept his fate and join Kenobi, pass from farmboy to Jedi Knight, from Tatooine to space vessels, swap from anonymous to Saviour of the Galaxy.
The second part of the regicide lays in the oedipian complex. A common shortcut turns that into a love affair, stating the little boy falls in love with his mum -- actually, it is slightly different. The oedipian complex is an embodiment of the parricide, but it takes it further : more than a simple love affair with his mother, the oedipian complex pushes the young boy directly to his father's place ; it allows him to become as adult as his father, he can take over and rule the family, he is even able to continue the offspring in place of the former referent. The parricide means "I defy and reverse the law because I'm old enough to do that", the oedipian complex goes further and states "I become myself the new legislator". The resulting problem is this action leads to a wound (and this is why it is called a "complex"): killing your father makes you an adult, for sure, but you have to deny the one who is your genitor, without whom you could not have existed, the one who made you become who you are (and this is exactly the wound Anakin was hurted with, when he was 9 and had to quit his mother and his homeworld in order to reveal himself and follow his destiny - everybody knows Palpatine will lately successfully exploit this wound). And this is a serious problem, because this wound is letal : as you killed your father and made him die, and as you then took his place, so will you, like him... die : "the apprentice will kill his master and take his place" here is the very embodiment of the oedipian complex in the SW tale.
In the philosophical way, Kylo had to murder his father. He had to do that in order to exist as the very Kylo Ren, and cease to be identified as Han Solo's son. He had to do that in order to reveal himself and establish a new law, his own law.

Harrison Ford requested that in 80's (so it's 37 years old, now...) and for totally other reasons: Ford was about to develop his career and didn't want to be in SW any more. This is the reason of the carbonite affair by the end of 5 : in that way, Han could come back in the story for episode 6, or totally disappear.

 

@Bligh and @NunbNuts > I know. It allways does that the first two or three times, but after, it is often better.
Mhhhh.
Be careful. I didn't mean "the sequels are greater than the original first three times".

 

4. The Death Stars were moon-sized artificial space stations which fired high energy pew pew beams from their Primary Weapon dish array.
However, Starkiller base is not an artificial moon sized space station, its a planet (believed to be either Ilum or Jedda) that had a partial equatorial trench dug out of it and had a massive plasma beam weapon buried in that trench. The planet was chosen because its interior was rich with Kyber crystal deposits, which were used to absorb the high energy plasma from its parent star, a bit like a battery, and release that energy as a weapon of mass destruction.

 

Questions 1&2:
Is anyone aware that Finn was a Stormtrooper in an elite regiment/squadron? Trained in a unit by Captain Phasma. I wonder why this goes over everyone's head? I was in the Army we are trained to kill. Finn was sort of in the Army Rangers an elite branch of the Army. They jump out of planes. They blind fold them and put pitbulls in their faces to eliminate fear.I know this because I signed up for the Rangers and my drill sergeant told me that stupid story about the pit bulls. My drill sergeant was a Ranger. I continue to train in the martial arts because I am now a law enforcement officer. Rey is not a marysue she is force-sensitive...oy vey. Oh yeah, my friend is a navy seal. He doesn't look LIKE someone that would make the seals because he is shorter then me. Yet he can scale my home and enter my bedroom and kill everyone in my family. Navy Seals are trained to kill. Navy seals, soldiers, police officers die everyday we are not supermen or Jedi. sorry for venting... i have a stressful job...heheh The most annoying thing is when your partner doesn't train at all and you have to protect him/her during a skirmish. Maybe Finn is that person... It must've went over my head.

#5 Boyega is a fine actor. Blame it on Jar Jar Abrams and Kasdan's script.

 

First. Great post.
Second. Let's be positive. JJ awakened the SW machinery to start a new life. The circumstances were difficult. The pressure was extraordinary. It was a financial success.
Now RJ had a much better situation from beginning. More time to work on script details. TLJ will be the "real" first "new" part of the Saga.

 

I've already thought about that, and the more I think, the more it makes me uncomfortable. What bothers me is: why was he not detected before his first operation on the ground?
You say Finn belongs to an "elite branche". I assume. But the first time he is kicked onto a battlefield, he loses all his means, as his emotions take over him, although he is supposed to be one of "the best", and he immediatly desert the the Stormtroopers Corp. Furthermore: less than two days later, he will even turn against his former "collegues" and cold-bloodly kill some of them!
Hem.... is that what one call an "elite member" ? I expect no! I'm not versed into army, but I strongly hope the Navy Seals, or the French Legion, or whatever "special corp" you want, are not formed with guys that might suddenly refuse the orders, and even turn against and kill their own collegues.
How couldn't his superiors have been able to detect his emotional weakness before using him on a battlefield? How can Finn claim to be part of an elite squadron, and totally mess up his baptism of fire?
Do we have to assume the headquarters failure in training "elite corp" was even more important than Finn's one ?
Something doesn't work for me.