Episode VII (spoilers)

[ErGingerbreadMandude]

I am afraid if I turn off my brain so as to enjoy episold 7, then I wouldn't be able to turn it back on again.

Daaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaayyyyyyyyyyyyuuuuuuuuuuuum nigga you burn 'em so good satan's envious

[Aractus]

Nothing in TFA makes any goddamned sense when you stop to think about it. And the trailer promised things we never got to see.

Just as a comparison, take Terminator 1 with the car chase. It ends with the Terminator crashing his stolen police car, and Reece crashing their stolen car as well. The police surround them. Sarah and Kyle are now boxed in with no way to escape, but instead of killing them right there and then, the Terminator runs away, abandoning his chase, to perform some home surgery and prepare to directly assault the police station!

Another example, in Terminator, that makes no goddamned sense is when the Terminator kills the first two Sarah Connor's in alphabetical order because of their order in the phone book, because the Terminator was being "systematic". That's not how to be systematic, the correct way to do it is find your three Sarah Connors, look at a map, and then find the most efficient route to kill all three. You're not going to zig-zag across the city to kill them in alphabetical order!

But for those couple of flaws, it gets many things right. Reece using the phrase "HK" to refer to hunter-killers, and talking about things that have happened in the future in the past tense. So the attention to detail was there, and most of it makes perfect sense to create the illusion of a lived-in world.

THINGS THAT MAKE NO GODDAMNED SENSE IN TFA:

1. BB8. In the original movie the Empire is looking for a droid containing their stolen Death Star plans - they don't know exactly which one - but they slaughter Jawas and search people's homes anyway in an effort to find it. At the start of the second act of the movie, Ben and Luke go to Mos Eisley with the two droids sent on the escape pod. They get questioned by Stormtroopers who ask "how long have you had these droids" - see clearly they don't know exactly what they're looking for. Ben then uses a Jedi mind-trick on them to expedite the process.

In the remake, one of the resistance fighters tells Kylo Ren the stolen Death Star plans (yeah yeah the map to Luke) are on "a BB unit". He doesn't say which one. Yet every time a stormtrooper, or anyone else halfway across the galaxy as it happens, sees BB8 they immediately know that's the droid that the First Order is looking for! HOW?? And it's clear in the film that BB8 is a ship mechanic like R2D2 - his job is to repair and perform maintenance on spaceships. Yet instead of leaving BB8 on their spaceship (the Falcon) to get on with his job, they keep taking him with them which just causes problems every time anyone sees him. All could have been avoided had he been left on the ship to get on with performing his function! And there would obviously be lots for him to do on the Falcon since it hadn't flown in years. "NO BB8! BAD BB8. STAY AND WORK ON THE FALCON SO WE CAN TAKE OFF AGAIN WITHOUT ANY PROBLEMS."

2. Stormtroopers are slaves. Lucas Revealed in Attack of the Clones - Episode II that the stormtroopers are identical both inside and outside the armour, and that they come off an assembly-line and are built by the Star-Wars version of arms dealers who supply ready-made armies. Because of accelerated growth it only takes them 10 years to develop an army from scratch.

The assembly-line production model has never been beaten. The method used by Kaminoans is clearly efficient and cost-effective. Yet instead of getting a cost-effective army of clones, the First Order goes around stealing babies and children from their families so they can instead be raised as slaves!

3. Rey and Finn are able to use a lightsaber with no training.

4. Rey is able to use a Jedi mind trick with no training, even though Luke had no idea that such a thing would be possible in the original when Ben does it.

5. Chewy hasn't aged. Where's his grey hair? Chewy's dad (Itchy) was grey all over in the Holiday Special:



6. Why did Kylo Ren kill his dad? What possible reason did he have?

7. Where did this map to Skywalker come from - and why? Why would anyone need a map, when all they really need to know is the location itself. The only way a map could be created in the first place is if someone knew of his location, so who was it and why? And why and how did they put the other part of it into R2D2 who has been in "low power mode" ever since Luke abandoned him (why not just wipe his memory and reboot him? He's a mechanic and I'm sure the resistance could have used his proven skills to repair ships in battle).

8. Why did Poe abandon his mission? He knew exactly what his BB8 droid looks like, and could easily have tracked it down before it left Jakku with Rey and Finn - yet he doesn't bother to try to complete his mission at all, and instead he leaves Jakku without even attempting to complete his mission.

9. How does Rey understand BB8? In the original SW, Luke can't understand R2D2 without either C-3PO translating for him, or seeing a readout. It's not until Dagobah that we see Luke understand R2D2 without a translator or read-out, just after they land. However that doesn't necessarily mean he can understand everything that R2 is trying to communicate to him. Rey has no translator, and no readout, and the droid is worth much more financially to her than the other bits of scrap she scavenges, which clearly implies she wouldn't have the opportunity on Jakku to learn this language used by service droids, yet somehow she knows it??

10. In Return of the Jedi Luke clearly tells Leia she will be taught the ways of the Force, during one of the best bits of dialogue in the entire original trilogy.

"If I don't make it back you're the only hope for the Alliance."
"Luke don't talk that way. You have a power I don't understand, I could never have."
"You're wrong Leia. You have that power too. In time you'll learn to use it as I have. The force is strong in my family. My father has it. I have it. And my sister has it. Yes, it's you Leia."
"I know. Somehow I've always known."

In Empire Strikes Back she uses the force to feel Luke's presence in cloud city and turn back for him (when Luke uses the force to call to her for help). Return of the Jedi ends with Luke clearly tasked with rebuilding the Jedi. And what better start than to train Leia who is strong with the force? Yet instead, in JJ's movie Leia has abandoned plans to become a Jedi, and instead becomes a General. WHY???

Perhaps the worst part is where she sends Kylo Ren's father to go and talk to him, instead of going herself. She is strong with the force - she should be better trained with it, and stronger with it than her son, she should be the one to go down there and ring his neck. But noo - she sends his father who's never used the force in his life! It just makes NO sense whatsoever.

[thesummerqueen]

Did everyone miss the part where there will be other movies to expand on many of these questions?

[Anomalocaris]

JJ Abrams isn't directing the next one, so there is always hope. But since he is directing the last one, it still probably won't end well.

[thesummerqueen]

So do you just hate Abrams?

[Anomalocaris]

So do you just hate Abrams?

I despise his style, shown consistently in both Star Trek reboots he had a hand in, as well as Star Wars 7. They are consistent in their cheap and flippant plots, mindless action sequences, and unmatched exploitation of suspension of disbelief. He puts the trash in pulp trash.

[Easy Guns]

So. Many. Plot. Holes.

Otherwise I'm a blind fanboi so I loved it anyway. Kind of like religious people or people who use Apple products.

It *felt* like the original trilogy, so that made me happy.

[Anomalocaris]

Repeat delete..

[thesummerqueen]

I see. So there's no reason to actually discuss it with you, because you already are predisposed to hating it.

[Aractus]

I despise his style ...

I think that sums it up. I do need to watch some more JJ films to be sure, but looking at his TED talk where he says "if you're copying other movies - don't worry about it just make it epic" pretty much tells me he's just a hack with no sense of storytelling. Lucas was a great storyteller. For all his downfalls as a director (and do note he's only directed a total of 7 films, 4 of them Star Wars films) he's a damn good storyteller. For most of his great stories - like Raiders of the Lost Ark and Empire Strikes Back - he employed somebody else to write the screenplay. Just like what he apparently gave Disney - he had the stories for episodes 7 through 9, and had a screenplay writer make screenplays for them when he sold Lucasfilm to Disney.