Thoughts on new Star Wars (No Spoilers, I Promise)

[I_am_not_mafia]

We watched the prequels and original trilogy before watching The Force Awakens. One thing that I really noticed was the terrible gender balance in the death star and imperial cruisers. Not a single woman to be seen anywhere. It's like working in a German engineering company. I was really pleased that the glass ceiling has been raised in the First Order.

They may destroy whole civilisations but I bet that they're signed up to the ECU’s Athena SWAN Charter.

[Redbeard The Pink]

I really enjoyed it. There were a few plot points I didn't care for, and over all I found myself uncompelled to care about most of the plot from this movie because I realized early on that the plot points I actually care about were either being saved for the next movie or murdered dead in this one.


Oh yeah, no spoilers, but uh...some people die, and some of them will probably be people you like.


Over all, though, I thought it was pretty well done. The second and third ones will probably be a little better, and hopefully the saber-work will be a little less regressive. I liked that sabers weren't spinning like ninja swords in this one since the "Jedi Arts" are supposed to be mostly lost, but by the end of the trilogy I'd like to see some flashier saber work from everyone.

[brewer]

What about all those civilians on Alderann who that space-weapon murdered?

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It happens sometimes. People just explode. Natural causes!

[God of Mr. Hanky]

There's killer comets and rogue asteroids, but their charisma didn't do much to help movies like Armageddon.

Even these dudes have faces..sort of:

What about an alien race of mysterious beings with power far in advance of the jedis or the siths?
Or a rogue AI.

On attacks by alien species (race...huh?), you  need to first conjure up an alien culture with motivation to attack humans, which is hard to do without anthropomorphism to the point of distraction. This was enough of a problem already with the many sideshow alien species in these movies.

On malicious, rogue AI attackers, I really loved Battlestar Galactica, especially the reboot series. Interestingly, the reboot series did a lot more to anthropomorphize the cybernetic enemy of humanity. They went a lot further with that enemy this time around by depicting it as a group of minds with human faces, in scenes depicting the sort of malice, indifference, and even a religiously-driven ideology, all of which was coldly human as the humans which they despised. This would have been hopelessly too complex for the 1977 audience to digest, and that's when Star Wars started.

[Whateverist]

I thoroughly enjoyed it, will definitely see it again, (just not in 3D again, costs to much) thought BB8 was a great new droid, very cute and expressive in a way R2D2 couldn't be. Didn't think there was too much gratuitous CGI.

For a big blockbuster type Hollywood machine movie I'd give it 4.75/5 stars

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the -0.25 for predictability but which didn't hinder my enjoyment

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Finally!  Someone who is willing to tell me what I want to hear.

[Clueless Morgan]

Finally!  Someone who is willing to tell me what I want to hear.

Glad to be of service I was kind of surprised at there not being other actual no-spoiler reviews, and at least one semi-spoiler in the thread that claims no spoilers.

I thought the callbacks to earlier movies were well done and there were a couple pretty good laughs that didn't come at the expense of storytelling like they do in episodes I-III.

I thought the 3D was cool in some areas of the movie. It would have been even cooler if you could see it in the Omnimax dome at OMSI so you could really feel inside the movie but whatever. . I don't know that I would say the 3D is necessary. Just a cool optional extra in some respects.

I'm going to try and do a longer review in the spoiler thread later today.

[Iroscato]

By the gods old and new, I fucking loved this movie.

That is all.

[Anomalocaris]

I thoroughly enjoyed it, will definitely see it again, (just not in 3D again, costs to much) thought BB8 was a great new droid, very cute and expressive in a way R2D2 couldn't be. Didn't think there was too much gratuitous CGI.

For a big blockbuster type Hollywood machine movie I'd give it 4.75/5 stars

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the -0.25 for predictability but which didn't hinder my enjoyment

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Finally!  Someone who is willing to tell me what I want to hear.

Pity you couldn't just say it yourself to get it over with.

[Whateverist]

Hey, it's STAR WARS. Of course it'll be awesome! Whew hhoooo.


(You were right that wasn't so hard.)

[Aractus]

I'll be reviewing all 6 of the previous movies on my blog. I can tell you right off-the bat that I consider Star Wars and Empire Strikes Back to be 5-star movies. I need to critically re-evaluate Jedi, but suffice to say it's still a great movie just not a 5-star one.

And I don't think even Attack of the Clones - the weak point of the prequels - is worse than Force Awakens.

After I've done that I will then do another article on sequels and remakes/reboots.