The Force Awakens is a superior movie!

Nope. I don't agree. I don't regard "The Force Awakens", which is basically a remake of "A New Hope" to me, as the superior film. In fact, I regard the 2015 as the most inferior movie in the Star Wars saga.

The worst I can say about "Rogue One" was that the movies first fifteen minutes or so was rushed. I'm not saying that was the movie's only flaw. But it was its worst flaw.

By the way, it's obvious that this film clip is about the glorification of "The Force Awakens", which is more or less a remake of "A New Hope" filled with a lot of plot holes. But the author of that video clip refuses to accept this.

Worse, this clip conveys one of the worst aspects of STAR WARS fandom . . . the latter has no tolerance for ambiguous WOMEN characters. The fandom tolerates - somewhat - ambiguous men characters. But women characters have to be one-dimensional. They either have to be damsels, the "romantic interest" or heroic Mary Sues. Rey is a heroic Mary Sue. A lot of fans tend to view Leia Organa as a heroic Mary Sue, while ignoring her character flaws at the same time. These same fans have literally demanded that Padme Amidala be a heroic Mary Sue, while expressing outrage over her flaws. They're the same with Jyn Erso. This is one of many reasons why I have a problem with the STAR WARS fandom.

 

I loved both movies. But if I had to pick one, I'd probably pick TFA. To me, TFA is more fun and enjoyable to watch. Rogue One only gets good at the second half.

 

I liked R1 but loved TFA. The simple reason is the characters.

SW movies have always been about the characters and that's why arguing over TFA being a remake of ANH is missing the point. Every SW fills steals themes, plot points, etc from the other because there is only so much you can do in terms of originality when you make so many movies.

But the characters and their arc is where TFA and each SW movie separate themselves and where I find the most interesting. Rey, Finn, Poe, Ren and BB8 are memorable characters that I'm looking forward to exploring for 2 more movies. The cast of R1 was ok, but nothing that pulled me in like TFA so that's why it's not as great a movie.

Real Estate is all about location, location, location whereas movies are all about characters, characters, characters.

 

TFA is a 10 movie and RO a 9.5 movie. I liked both but I have to admit that TFA has much strongers and charismatic characters.

P.S. TFA already has more memorable/beatiful scenes and cinematography than all the 3 prequels movie together.

 

I thought R1 was a better film, but I chalk that up to expectations. R1 had much lower expectations, so it was able to blow my mind by being as good as it was.

I LOVE TFA too though, but (and I tried to fight this feeling forever) it is a bit derivative and borrows a lot to pack its punch. But I get why it does. BOTH are really good films.

AND they were meant to do different things, so comparing them is somewhat pointless.

 

The "Mary Sue" argument is stupid by itself. Speaking about the narrative construction of a story, you can't simply reduce it to the logical sequence of facts that run in front of your eyes. The same with a character: a character is not only a "what it does at some point", or a "does it fail or does it succeed" issue. This is the very basic of story telling, but there's more: a character is what he says, how it performs, how it acts. This is how a character really communicates its nature. It's stupid to pretend to reduce a character to a sort of equation between strenght or weakness. I know, a weak character is always more sympathetic to identify with, but I think the "weakness" is more a matter of context. If we look at Ripley from Alien, we would probably notice the same Rey's "Mary Sue" elements. I didn't watch Alien for a while, but I don't remember such huge "weakness" in Ripley. In other words, she, like Rey, succeeds in what she does, as much as, at the end of the movie, she manages to defeat the alien while wearing nothing but her underwear. What makes Ripley so compelling is the narrative context, the fact that she's trapped in a ship with a bloody creature, the quality of the writing and of the dialogues, the general tension, the tridimensional Sigourney Weaver's acting, not some abstract ballance between "strenght" and "weakness".

What I mean is that the "Mary Sue" critic totally erases what stands around the character, reducing it to a simple function. In other words, "Mary Sue" is a label to use when some controversial thing disturbs us, so to avoid us from thinking. And yes, I'm pretty convinced that TFA is a far better movie than R1, and that Rey is far more compelling than Jyn. First, due to the same reasons that the essay explains so well; second, due to the simple fact that Daisy Ridley acts much better than Felicity Jones.