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

[Aractus]

Deleted, moved it to the Spoiler thread.

[Anomalocaris]

The score didn't have any rhythm to it Benny in this latest flick - and yes it was bland.

I actually think the score was good.  John Williams seems to know much better than JJ Abrams what TFA really has going for it.  It's Rey, not the recapitualting of the pomp of the previous Star Wars film.

It's main hero needn't be Luke Skywalker with a sex change, luke is flaky, irresponsible, not intent on doing real bread and butter work, but dream about flying away.

As yoda said, Luke looks away, looks into the future.  He looks everywhere but where he is.   The grandiloquent themes of the new hope suits the temperament of Luke.  It suits the fantasy that if one daydreams big, one would become great.

This new arc is about Rey.  Rey appears at the beginning to be totally different.  She had a much harder life, she works very hard just to survive. She doesn't have the leisure to bullseye wamprats in a T-16.  Maybe she has an x-wing helmet, but there aren't many other indications that she is excessively prone to day dreaming like Luke on Dantooine.  Unlike Luke who hardly appreciates his foster family and just wants to get off Dantooine, she is an orphane and she is lonely, and all she wants is her family.  She would wait out her life on jakku if she thought her family would one day come back.   Luke abhors responsibility that didn't agree with his impulse.  Rey had to take responsibility for herself since the age of 6-8.  So the music is not grandiloquent, it's intimate, about little successes that carries a hard life along, not about stars and galaxies and binary sunsets.

Luke daydreams about flying away to be the hero.  Rey is reluctant to leave a hell hole to be the hero.

The Rey of the first 15 minutes of the film had many more of the personal qualities which yoda thought were desirable in a Jedi than Luke of the new hope, or empire.

If the movie had extended this theme rather than shoehorn it into old Star Wars mold, it may have a few less pews and booms, but it would have been a much more worthwhile film.

[Minimalist]

I had no plans to see it but when my son was visiting my wife got 3 tickets to an afternoon showing which had about 50 people in the theater.

I was not impressed.  It seemed like a re-make of the original right down to the bar scene and those interminable light-saber duels.  I'm glad the tickets were only $6 (senior citizen discounts!) because it wasn't worth more.