Current Events > C/D: The Force Awakens was fairly good at release

(+) Yeah! (+)

It was a setup movie.

So ofc it was good before the setup went nowhere.

It is not a film that can stand on its own. You watch it to be hyped that more movies are coming.
And they were dogshit.

Fuck yeah dude. It was one of the best nights of my life marathoning the entire PT and OT in the span of one day, plus that.

The latter two films just fell flat for me, even if I do find TLJ more enjoyable than most people seem to.

C. TFA by itself wasn't bad. It's sequels are what brings it down.

I was thoroughly dissapointed, and the main villain got painted as a straight bitch

Ehh. Even from the first time I saw it my thoughts were basically
Rey = boring Mary Sue
Kylo = immature manchild
Way less intriguing characters than the ones they were clearly based off of.

I think pretty much the only thing I felt this film did better than ep.4 was provide a sequel hook, but that really only matters in the last 30 seconds of the film.

Spiritlittle posted...

One of the best films out of all 3 trilogies, tbh.

This. I feel like it's pretty solidly Top 5 Star Wars movies all time for me.

It's overall pretty good with some notable low points. Rey is an incredibly likeable character, but her weird Jesus powers, er, I guess force sensitivity to just know everything quickly get annoying. Like, her just being able to fly the Falcon and know how to repair it is dumb. The rathtar sequence is the only point in the film I was reminded of the prequels. It's so stupid and it looks so bad. The Takodana sequence before the attack, and Maz herself, is really stupid. Obviously them doing a death star again is meh, but the scenes set on it are great so whatever. Though honestly I find the faster than light but visible as if they are right next to each other planet killing space lasers to be much more annoying to my sensibilities than the "Holdo maneuver". The whole plot with a "map to Luke Skywalker" is one of the dumbest things ever and R2 being in stasis only to for some fucking reason having the remaining piece when he wakes up at the end is... not great.

In general the plot things are pretty bad, but the characters, their interactions, the action sequences, the set pieces, etc. are all able to make up for it for the most part. I still think the lightsaber duel on Starkiller Base at the end is a top 2 laser sword fight in the franchise.

It's still good. And so is TLJ. The only one that falls apart is RoS because it somehow managed to have both too much exposition and not enough exposition.

DeadBankerDream posted...

Like, her just being able to fly the Falcon and know how to repair it is dumb.

This makes absolutely perfect sense because she literally says she's been helping unkar plutt work on it for years, and has flown it before but never off-planet. She's also a scavenger who knows what ship parts do, how much they're worth, where to find them, and how to properly remove them.

There's nothing unreasonable about her being able to fix and fly the Falcon given her history.

Gobstoppers12 posted...

This makes absolutely perfect sense because she literally says she's been helping unkar plutt work on it for years, and has flown it before but never off-planet. She's also a scavenger who knows what ship parts do, how much they're worth, where to find them, and how to properly remove them.

There's nothing unreasonable about her being able to fix and fly the Falcon given her history.

I mean, other than the falcon being a two-person job to pilot, but scavenger girl who was let inside a few times is so gosh-darn Jiminy wilikers special that she can do it all by herself, AND do crazy maneuvers to make up for a broken, locked gun.

There's a blink-and-you-miss-it throwaway line right after the Falcon segment where Rey herself is astounded because she's never done anything like that before. And IIRC this is either shortly after or shortly before Smoke does that "there's been an awakening" line.

At the time I sort of took it as foreshadowing for some sort of weird force shenanigans that would've explained Rey's sudden hyper competency. But it's been years since I've sat through the movie so idk >_>

Gobstoppers12 posted...

This makes absolutely perfect sense because she literally says she's been helping unkar plutt work on it for years, and has flown it before but never off-planet. She's also a scavenger who knows what ship parts do, how much they're worth, where to find them, and how to properly remove them.

There's nothing unreasonable about her being able to fix and fly the Falcon given her history.

The scene where Rey and Finn first entered the Falcon to escape the TIE Fighters:

Finn: "You ever fly this thing?"
Rey: "No. This ship hasn't flown in years."

I don't remember any dialogue indicating that she herself has worked on it, only that she knew it's been stolen from people to people.

But being a pilot and able to fly it, and a scavenger able to fix it, are believable enough.