Star Wars Appreciation **Spoilers Ahead**

Haha nice!

Saw it, hated it.

Lot's of people are quite happy about it. Maybe it gets better with time.

Saw it tonight. Came stumbling out of the cinema rather underwhelmed. Ok in parts, lots of the usual questions that need answering, either by watching again (probably not), or by Googling (probably).

I thought it was well good.
What's not to love?

Flogging a dead horse doesn't even cover it.

Dunno, can't put my finger on it.

It might just be because The Force Awakens was absolutely amazing, and I came out of the cinema with a right buzz. Last night I walked out of the same cinema a bit meh.

Not totally dismissing it tho, might need another watch or two. I'll wait until it is on Sky.

Just come out of it. Too many fucking in jokes. Were we meant to laugh?

Rehash of almost every scene

Those Marvel type lol's where cringeworthy, totaly ruined it for me. The story arc was ok, but character wise a total let down. Finn was put on some pointless side-story, Chewie demoted to Falcon taxi service for Rey and the "Yeah!!! Rebels!!!" Bullshit at the end.

TLJ was such a let down after the mystery that TFA left behind, doesn't even compare to the original trilogy, would even dare to say that TLJ is the worse Star Wars to date.

The internet should crowdfund a remake and forget the pile of shit Rian Johnson left behind.

Also, flying Leia.

Also, flying Leia.

This. Summarises the whole ball of utter crap. Apart from the Rey actress, think she did a good job. OTOH I watched tfa again before going to see tlj, remember hating it but it was much better the second time. Maybe tlj will be too...?

I thought Daisy Ridley was awful :/

Can't imagine TLJ getting any better a second time, TFA left us with a nice character build-up. Mysteries around Rey, Snoke, the introduction of Finn and Poe.

Adam Driver was actually pretty good as tormented Ben Solo, even with the thin dialogue.

The jokes were a bit slapstick but overall the thing was great IMO.

Saw it over the weekend and had high hopes – left pretty let down. There were some good moments but overall it was pretty boring.

TFA was criticised for re-hashing ANH and ESB (which is fair enough), but it still totally felt like a Star Wars film, the camerawork and effects, while obviously CGd, still had some sort of charm to them. Remember how good that sequence was where the hi-jack the Falcon on Jakku and take out the Tie fighters while flying through that burnt out Star Destroyer?

I didn't find anything in this film reached this. There weren't enough lightsabers and what there was seemed somehow boring.

Overall far too many WTF moments:

• Flying Leia. Already pointed out but still!
  
• Snoke. Not enough back-story, finished off far too easily. Left us nothing there.
  
• Kylo Ren. Bad. Good. Bad again. Bit quick to flip-flop.
  
• Where were/Who are the Knights of Ren? Were they the guys dressed in red who all let each other get chopped down one after the other when Ren was a good guy for a few minutes?
  
• Rey's parents. Dragged out for another film or are we satisfied they were just nobodies (in terms of the story)?
  
• Use of the force in general, it's all over the place. Example that spring to mind: Yoda's ghost able to hit Luke with his stick
  
• What was that whole casino planet bit about?! I'm sure everyone is a fan of Benicio del Toro but still.... was this the "Trump is evil" part?
  
• Luke dusting off his shoulder (IMO most annoying of all the shit jokes)
  
• Last scene, Harry Potter?
  
  

I'm sure there's more but that'll do. I've probably come across a bit more negative there than I mean to. I just really wanted it to be better as I felt TFA set the scene quite brilliantly.

Will give it another watch with family over Xmas, maybe it'll seem better on 2nd viewing.

I'm just waiting for the remastered version without the horrible, whiny space puffins.

My thoughts on Star Wars:

http://kidrated.com/blog/dad-daughter-rate-star-wars/

Am supposed to see this later in the week but might give it a miss based on this thread.

I found TFA a bit "community theatre" with way too many winks and elbow nudges to superfans. At least it looked great and was generally fun to watch. This new one just sounds tedious.

Saw last night, really liked it - it's a space action movie ffs, what do you want, realism? Even welled up a bit when Luke met R2 again, but that may have been the bottle of wine (yay for Everyman).

Saw it last night. Pretty underwhelmed. Bit too slapstick at first and a few too many ideas that seemed half done. Luke off on Jedi island but just being a dick about things, the casino thing was a bit random. They had a couple of good points to write Leia out as a hero but seem to be keeping the character in without someone to play her (or unconvincing CGI)
And everyone seems to be completely amateur. Both sides making repeatedly poor choices and only surviving because their incompetence is matched by the other side's.

^ all sounds pretty negative. It was perfectly fine tbh. Just if it was a new franchise then it'd be getting 3/5 from all the critics instead of 4.5/5.

Thought the Luke/Jedi Island stuff were by far the weakest point(s) of film........just.....boring.....

I'm conflicted about it. To be positive, aspects of it were really good. My two favourite parts: Snoke, his chamber and his guards (wasn’t expecting to like Snoke so much, even though his sudden demise was bizarre), and Yoda (who was perfectly puppet-like and such a relief). The casino scene was good but didn’t go anywhere.

For me it started off great and steadily fell into an overly drawn out mess. I hated the final act on that wanky red mineral planet with those ludicrous Swarovski foxes. The suped-up AT-ATs that didn’t anything were annoying. It was essentially a boring and depressing redo of Hoth. Also Luke Skywalker as a telekinetic vision was RIDICULOUS. How then was his lightsabre resistant? The Rey/Ren exchanges were dreadful too, since when was that a thing? The story was total crap, let’s be honest, and the psychodrama was not interesting. Rey is just not a compelling character to my mind, she has absolutely no gravitas. When I watch her I’m constantly aware of someone acting. Luke was surprisingly good but I didn’t like his finale one bit. Lastly there were some really funny bits but it felt offbeat and almost like a spoof? The iron for instance, LOL but FFS. Oh and Kylo seeming to ‘come to the light’ against Snoke but then remaining a baddie. He seemed more indecisive than conflicted! What a lame villain. None of the cold, ruthless mystery of Vader. And, like TFA, no sense of what the First Order is about or their presence in the galaxy. And nothing to differentiate them from the Empire because, ultimately, this is more a reboot than a continuation of the saga. And I hoped Phasma would have an actual role. And SURELY Rey was Luke’s daughter???! WTF. Lastly, Finn was great but underused and Rosie was irritating.

On balance I think I do know how I feel, I just don’t want to feel this way!

Rey is just not a compelling character to my mind, she has absolutely no gravitas. When I watch her I’m constantly aware of someone acting

totally this

Luke Skywalker as a telekinetic vision was RIDICULOUS. How then was his lightsabre resistant?

Didn't Luke dodge, duck, dip, dive and dodge everything?

And yeah, Daisy Ridley is a bit meh

It was pretty awful. Far too much happened too quickly , but nothing really added to the overarching story. Flying Lia and shit jokes aside, I was really astounded by how white it all was.

I read a really interesting interview with someone from the Disney team (can't find it right now) where it was explained that one of their great intentions for the continued saga was for it to be diverse in every aspect. There was a great explanation about how they wanted a female director for at least one of the films but were in a bit of a rock and hard place as the industry doesn't provide enough opportunity for women directors to reach the level of experience needed. As such I was quite looking forward to see how Fin would develop in this film and future films. Turns out he was the token black guy who's character had become redundant and they were desperately trying to write something in (anything!) to justify him still being in the film. And hey, he's hanging out with a tom-boyish east Asian woman. Who in fact turns out to be a weak and emotional women who needs saving by a (now redundant) man, who of course she falls for. Because she's a woman after all and needs a man to cope.

Then looking at it more, every character of interest is white. It kinda makes sense for the Skywalker family line to be so. But even the super cool stoic lady who takes command of the resistance fleet whilst (Super) Lia recovers from her swim in space and ultimately sacrifices herself is white.

Star Wars is such a perfect vehicle to portray people of any old skin colour or gender orientation as inspiring beings among a universe of non-human beings (aliens, droids, monsters, humanoids). It all just felt like the weak tokenism of casting Lando in Empire as a black man due to public pressure. And Lando was actually a cool character.

I didn't expect the film to make grand statements about diversity and unity in the world of Trumpism and Brexit, but fucking hell, if Paddington can be rehashed into a message of acceptance for those who are different to us, this film could have at least been diverse enough to let non-white kids come out of the cinema feeling like the way they look doesn't leave them on the outside of society. The black, yellow, green, blue and furry faces shouldn't be filler in these films. they should be fundamentally important characters.

You could take literally anything apart like that.

Sure, but it Star Wars and it's space and there's aliens all over the place and stuff. It's for kids to come out of excited about their heroes going on great adventures. It's just a shame that they had said they were going for diversity and yet, the only strong non-white character has become worthless...