Really can't believe the positive reaction to this movie. I am flabbergasted. It astounds me how overly obvious fan service (like the holochess game being turned on just to show "hey, remember this thing") can be seen as entertaining, and how simply repeating the plot of the previous films amounts to nostalgia. I think I'm more disappointed in Star Wars fans now than I am the movie

Give it time. When the prequel movies came out most people were like 'they weren't THAT bad!'.

Then they had time to rewatch/analyze them at their leisure and take off the rose tinted glasses

are you saying the prequels got worse during further analyzation? because if so then i'd would completely disagree. The politics involved in episodes 1-3 were an amazing way to show how the empire came to be and how Anakin chose his path

but then again not everyone likes a film with heavy politics invloved

OK, finally saw the movie.

I liked the main characters, the acting for them, and their personal arcs. The action itself was probably the best of all the movies (more polished than the original trilogy, but less "choreographed"-feeling than the prequels). John Williams still nails it. Kylo Ren's temper tantrums actually fit what I would expect from someone taught to embrace anger, hate, etc.

I didn't like the overall plot (another superweapon!). I didn't like so completely glossing over the galacto-political situation (How powerful are the Republic and First Order? Were they in open warfare before the movie started?). The cinematography isn't as good as they think it is. We needed more out of Luke at the end of the film.

Ultimately, though, the movie's biggest success and biggest sin are closely tied together. Success: I really want to know more -- about what has happened in the galaxy since Endor, who Snoke is and where he came from, how the disaster with Luke's budding Jedi order went down, etc. Sin: They failed to give us some of those things that we really needed.

On an entirely different note, at least Chewbacca can go home to his family now, instead of being dragged around the universe.

Probably not. I think he's going to hang out with Rey now. I kinda hope so because Chewy is great.

On an entirely different note, at least Chewbacca can go home to his family now, instead of being dragged around the universe.

he did that, but came back out when Han went back on the "road"

I didn't like the overall plot (another superweapon!). I didn't like so completely glossing over the galacto-political situation (How powerful are the Republic and First Order? Were they in open warfare before the movie started?). The cinematography isn't as good as they think it is. We needed more out of Luke at the end of the film.

The firing of Star Killer turned the cold war that had existed between them very, very hot. This is what the Resistance was about, they wanted to act, the Republic refused to act openly against the First Order. They say this during the opening crawl.

Plus this might help you: http://imgur.com/a/SVKWi

I have it. I have the word that bothers me about this movie. CHEAP. I felt like the thrills were cheap. I felt like the cinematography was cut-rate. I felt like the characters were archetypes (especially Poe). I felt like the plot was just completely ripped off. I felt like the people who made this movie cut and pasted everything everyone ever liked about anything and cobbled it together with one sight-gag and bad joke after another, then slapped a Star Wars sticker on it. "How do we make this guy evil?" "Have him kill his father, whom everyone loves." ..... "How do we make this weapon powerful?" "Have it blow up MORE stuff than the Death Stars" It is all just cheap.

I've never pitied anyone before today.

I pity you.

I have it. I have the word that bothers me about this movie. CHEAP. I felt like the thrills were cheap. I felt like the cinematography was cut-rate. I felt like the characters were archetypes (especially Poe). I felt like the plot was just completely ripped off. I felt like the people who made this movie cut and pasted everything everyone ever liked about anything and cobbled it together with one sight-gag and bad joke after another, then slapped a Star Wars sticker on it. "How do we make this guy evil?" "Have him kill his father, whom everyone loves." ..... "How do we make this weapon powerful?" "Have it blow up MORE stuff than the Death Stars" It is all just cheap.

I've never pitied anyone before today.

I pity you.

Pity him if you like, he's right on all points.

Ive seen it and Im very underwhelmed by it. I dont have a problem with a new superweapon (its a logical step - USA and URSS during cold war did that on a smaller scale of course - so why not a galactic evil "empire" - it suits Star Wars story in my opinion), dont have any problem with most charaters (although some things should be different) BUT the story is rushed and assumes viewers are going to keep the pace reading every crap they come out (comics/books/whatever) to know whats going on (and what happened - the Marvel formula) and that is very bad in my opinion here.

Let the viewers know about Kylo past was too early and the most of the movie was just a big pile of coincidences (Im sure some of those can - will they? - be explained in the next movie) were bad... and Starkiller base deserved a better fight in the end.

Oh well... theres always Rogue One to see next.

I didn't like the overall plot (another superweapon!). I didn't like so completely glossing over the galacto-political situation (How powerful are the Republic and First Order? Were they in open warfare before the movie started?). The cinematography isn't as good as they think it is. We needed more out of Luke at the end of the film.

The firing of Star Killer turned the cold war that had existed between them very, very hot. This is what the Resistance was about, they wanted to act, the Republic refused to act openly against the First Order. They say this during the opening crawl.

Plus this might help you: http://imgur.com/a/SVKWi

So correct me if I'm wrong, but Korr Sella's role in the movie was to look up in horror for 0.75 seconds on a planet we know nothing about in front of a building we've never seen before just as the super-weapon destroys the world? I'm starting to think the version I saw must have been missing some scenes, as people talk about the Hosnian system as though this was common known to be the capital of the Republic. I know Hux said something about destroying their capital and their fleet, but was any of this background mentioned anywhere in the movie otherwise? Was the Resistance ever explained? Was the 'cold war' ever discussed or even mentioned?

I didn't like the overall plot (another superweapon!). I didn't like so completely glossing over the galacto-political situation (How powerful are the Republic and First Order? Were they in open warfare before the movie started?). The cinematography isn't as good as they think it is. We needed more out of Luke at the end of the film.

The firing of Star Killer turned the cold war that had existed between them very, very hot. This is what the Resistance was about, they wanted to act, the Republic refused to act openly against the First Order. They say this during the opening crawl.

Plus this might help you: http://imgur.com/a/SVKWi

So correct me if I'm wrong, but Korr Sella's role in the movie was to look up in horror for 0.75 seconds on a planet we know nothing about in front of a building we've never seen before just as the super-weapon destroys the world? I'm starting to think the version I saw must have been missing some scenes, as people talk about the Hosnian system as though this was common known to be the capital of the Republic. I know Hux said something about destroying their capital and their fleet, but was any of this background mentioned anywhere in the movie otherwise? Was the Resistance ever explained? Was the 'cold war' ever discussed or even mentioned?

Short answer: NOPE

I didn't like the overall plot (another superweapon!). I didn't like so completely glossing over the galacto-political situation (How powerful are the Republic and First Order? Were they in open warfare before the movie started?). The cinematography isn't as good as they think it is. We needed more out of Luke at the end of the film.

The firing of Star Killer turned the cold war that had existed between them very, very hot. This is what the Resistance was about, they wanted to act, the Republic refused to act openly against the First Order. They say this during the opening crawl.

Plus this might help you: http://imgur.com/a/SVKWi

So correct me if I'm wrong, but Korr Sella's role in the movie was to look up in horror for 0.75 seconds on a planet we know nothing about in front of a building we've never seen before just as the super-weapon destroys the world? I'm starting to think the version I saw must have been missing some scenes, as people talk about the Hosnian system as though this was common known to be the capital of the Republic. I know Hux said something about destroying their capital and their fleet, but was any of this background mentioned anywhere in the movie otherwise? Was the Resistance ever explained? Was the 'cold war' ever discussed or even mentioned?

Short answer: NOPE

My biggest beef with the movie was the gross lack of explanation. I've told my friends that HAVEN'T seen it to talk to me first, and I'll lay the groundwork for them.

I'm just blown away at all the negativity in this thread. TFA was one of the best movie experiences of my life. I have a hard time seeing how anyone could think it was anything less than awesome. Sure there were a few plot holes, which can easily be explained if you care to theorize... or if not it doesn't matter anyway.

It doesn't matter that Rey figured out how to do a mind trick. To me anyway. I can come up with 3 explanations off the top of my head and they all work, but I don't need any of them. The movie was well done and I loved it. Love love love loved it!

Plus this might help you: http://imgur.com/a/SVKWi

Thank you for sharing this.

I didn't like the overall plot (another superweapon!). I didn't like so completely glossing over the galacto-political situation (How powerful are the Republic and First Order? Were they in open warfare before the movie started?). The cinematography isn't as good as they think it is. We needed more out of Luke at the end of the film.

The firing of Star Killer turned the cold war that had existed between them very, very hot. This is what the Resistance was about, they wanted to act, the Republic refused to act openly against the First Order. They say this during the opening crawl.

Plus this might help you: http://imgur.com/a/SVKWi

So correct me if I'm wrong, but Korr Sella's role in the movie was to look up in horror for 0.75 seconds on a planet we know nothing about in front of a building we've never seen before just as the super-weapon destroys the world? I'm starting to think the version I saw must have been missing some scenes, as people talk about the Hosnian system as though this was common known to be the capital of the Republic. I know Hux said something about destroying their capital and their fleet, but was any of this background mentioned anywhere in the movie otherwise? Was the Resistance ever explained? Was the 'cold war' ever discussed or even mentioned?

Short answer: NOPE

My biggest beef with the movie was the gross lack of explanation. I've told my friends that HAVEN'T seen it to talk to me first, and I'll lay the groundwork for them.

Let's be fair. When A New Hope first played back in the 70's (I was there...I'm old) they didn't explain a **** thing. We knew there was this thing called the Empire with big scary ships, big scary guys dressed in black, a big BIG space station that could blow up planets, a galactic senate that had just got the axe, an Emperor, something called the Jedi who used laser swords and wielded some sort of psychic power called the Force, and an apparently well-armed rebellion fighting the Empire.

That was about it.

The meaning behind any of this, the politics of the galaxy, the significance of the Jedi and Sith, etc. etc. wouldn't come until much later, mostly by way of EU fiction through gazillions of venues at least until the prequels.

I think sometimes we expect too much because we're nerds, and we eat all this stuff up and end up knowing way more about it than the average Joe.

Don't get me wrong, most folks who've seen the movies know or assume the Empire collapsed at Endor, so a quick montage about what happened to the galaxy in the past 30 years of story would probably have been appropriate. I'm just saying that maybe we get ahead of ourselves and that more explanation is likely to come, probably by way of a Luke monologue.

So was the Senat with all the representatives destroyed by the first order when they blew up those planets?

Was the Kantina reloaded this first Jedi temple they were talking about, or is Luke still looking for it?

Imo those were the only important and interesting story-points this movie failed to deliver. Everything else was imo done well enough.

My biggest gripe with the movie was the plot, as it seems to be a carbon copy of the Episode IV plot and imo was very detatched from the theme, but it worked well to introduce the characters, so I'm not that upset about it. To me this Episode felt a lot like "So what happened to Han Solo" and imo this was the theme the plot served best.

The only thing that really upset me during the movie was the "homage to Space Balls" where they suck the Sun's energy, effectivly sucking out the whole sun (that's why it got dark) which would have altered the orbit of the planets making the aiming process extremely difficult.

Heres a question. How the heck did the New Repulbic/Resistance not know the First Order were making the Starkiller base and try to stop it being made?

How did the Resistance know so much about the Starkiller base after it blew up that planet? In their 2 minute briefing they knew perfectly how to disable/destroy it.

If the First Order already knows where the Resistance base is, why didn't they just blow it up first/send their fleet there in the first place?

This movie tries to 'pay homage' to Episode 4 in so many ways, but completely fails to make them logical. Atleast in Episode 4 it was explained how the rebels knew how to destroy the Death Star, why their base wasn't destroyed before. and why they couldn't stop the Death Star from being fully completed.

Heres a question. How the heck did the New Repulbic/Resistance not know the First Order were making the Starkiller base and try to stop it being made?

How did the Resistance know so much about the Starkiller base after it blew up that planet? In their 2 minute briefing they knew perfectly how to disable/destroy it.

If the First Order already knows where the Resistance base is, why didn't they just blow it up first/send their fleet there in the first place?

This movie tries to 'pay homage' to Episode 4 in so many ways, but completely fails to make them logical. Atleast in Episode 4 it was explained how the rebels knew how to destroy the Death Star, why their base wasn't destroyed before. and why they couldn't stop the Death Star from being fully completed.

I do have one answer for you. The Resistance knew so much about the base because they got detailed schematics from the cowardly janitor they picked up... because cowardly janitors have access to that high level technical information and this one specifically had an eidetic memory.

When A New Hope first played back in the 70's (I was there...I'm old) they didn't explain a **** thing. We knew there was this thing called the Empire with big scary ships, big scary guys dressed in black, a big BIG space station that could blow up planets, a galactic senate that had just got the axe, an Emperor, something called the Jedi who used laser swords and wielded some sort of psychic power called the Force, and an apparently well-armed rebellion fighting the Empire.

That was about it.

The meaning behind any of this, the politics of the galaxy, the significance of the Jedi and Sith, etc. etc. wouldn't come until much later, mostly by way of EU fiction through gazillions of venues at least until the prequels.

I think sometimes we expect too much because we're nerds, and we eat all this stuff up and end up knowing way more about it than the average Joe.

Don't get me wrong, most folks who've seen the movies know or assume the Empire collapsed at Endor, so a quick montage about what happened to the galaxy in the past 30 years of story would probably have been appropriate. I'm just saying that maybe we get ahead of ourselves and that more explanation is likely to come, probably by way of a Luke monologue.

I mean, at the end of the scroll in ANH we know there is n Empire, there is a rebellion against that Empire, the Empire has a secret superweapon, Leia had the plans to the weapon, and the plot is to destroy the super weapon.

In contrast, the scroll for TFA tells us that the plot is to find Luke. That's it, and it ends up being almost none of the actual plot, and has a lame 10 second payoff. There is no explanation of the Resistance (like why the army of the controlling power of the galaxy is called a Resistance, rather than, like, the military.). There is no explanation of the First Order or their goals. WHY IS THE FIRST ORDER TRYING TO FIND LUKE???? THEY SHOULD BE TRYING TO DESTROY THE RESISTANCE! Or is the it Republic they want to destroy? Well, luckily they stumble across both DUE TO THE HEROES TRYING TO FIND LUKE!

Well said.

The first order is trying to find Luke because Snoke is the bad guy and Luke is the good guy. I mean they do kinda spell this out. Snoke wants to either intercept the plans, or destroy them. In other words, even more important than finding Luke, is to ensure that the Resistance DOES NOT find him. Snoke doesn't want Luke training new Jedi, and if there are young padawan-level Jedi that Luke HAS trained, he doesn't want them rallying behind their master should Luke surface. Snoke is happy being the only master-level force wielder on the scene right now and his goal is to keep it that way. The movie tells us all of this. And it tells us this fairly quickly, in few words, so those in the audience who simply don't care, aren't stuck in a bogged-down dialogue-ridden montage of explanations and politics.

I think TFA's opening crawl told us everything of importance as well. Luke is missing - and there is some mystery there. In his absence the First Order rose to power, and GENERAL Leia (She's a general now, so you can infer that she's been busy) has sent Poe to recover a secret map to find Luke.

The only thing that is almost missing, is the details of the New Republic, the resistance, and how exactly the balance of power feels in the galaxy right now, and why there is both a new republic and a resistance. They DO explain it, but they do it quickly and don't cover every possible question I might have had... but if they did it would have taken the pace of the film off track. That is a GOOD topic for books and external narrative to fill-in.

Nobody NEEDS to know what the Knights of Ren are anymore than we needed to know what a "Dark Lord of the Sith" meant in A New Hope - it's just a title and makes no difference either way, other than to show that Kylo Ren is in a position of power in multiple organizations. He's not just an enforcer for the First Order, yet he's also leading another group - so he's kind of a big deal.

It's also pretty clear that the first order wants to destroy anyone who oppose them, and at the moment that is the Resistance. The New Republic seems to NOT be at war with the First Order, yet they support the Resistance, which DOES attacks on the First Order, so naturally this would mean the First Order is unhappy with the New Republic. They only mention this briefly, but it's not terribly important to the plot, and a lengthy discussion of politics would slow down the pace of the movie. The general audience needs to simply understand that Resistance/New Republic = Good Guys, First Order = Bad Guys, and Bad Guys always fight against Good Guys. Pretty simple that way. Was the same with A New Hope. They didn't explain what the rebels' goals where, why they rebelled in the first place, Why Leia sympathized with their cause to such an extent to betray the Empire and the Senate.... There's a ton of things wrong with Episode 4 if I wanted to nitpick, (Chewie gets no medal, Obi-Wan calls Vader "Darth", Why the Death Star doesn't simply blow up Yavin if it's in the way of the 4th moon, or better yet shoot through it.... or just blow it up and let the explosion eviscerate the moon... because dude... if you are on the moon, and Earth explodes.... well you are going to die. )

Any of the plot holes that I saw can be easily explained by other things that were going on in the movie. Rey already had a limited knowledge of the force and Luke Skywalker, but thought it was myth, so between the force "awakening", her touching Anakin's Lightsaber, and her MindMeld with Kylo Ren, she picked up enough of the force to be able to use it. This isn't hard to figure out, since Luke was able to deflect blaster bolts with a lightsaber after spending 2 minutes with Obi-Wan. The force manifests itself in powerful people from time to time. Finn is obviously not a Skywalker, so you don't see him force-pushing anyone.... but Rey is special.

The more I think about these things the more I love it. Great great movie! Maybe almost perfect.

There was no "Dark lord of the Sith" in Star Wars original. Sith is a prequel word. Ben called Darth, Darth because that was his first name. It only became a title muuuch later. The only things wrong with "Episode 4" as you call it, were added in later through bad context changes.

Anyone with the benefit of an education can tell you how an empire replaces a republic. That's basic history. This new stuff needs explaining because of its lack of obvious historical analog.

There was no "Dark lord of the Sith" in Star Wars original.

Naw dude it was Darth Vader's title originally. It was this big mystery "Who" or "What" were the Sith? I know they don't say the words in the film, but they also didn't say Boba Fett in episode 5, or Ewoks in Episode 6 either. It was on the marketing where it listed Vader's title.

Like this 1977 card:

There was no "Dark lord of the Sith" in Star Wars original.

Naw dude it was Darth Vader's title originally. It was this big mystery "Who" or "What" were the Sith? I know they don't say the words in the film, but they also didn't say Boba Fett in episode 5, or Ewoks in Episode 6 either. It was on the marketing where it listed Vader's title.

Like this 1977 card:

I still maintain that Darth was his first name.

Yeah that's probably how it was envisioned at the time, and then by the time Empire hit he was referred to as "Vader" or "Lord Vader" pretty much exclusively. My whole point is that the original films also left questions unanswered. I think it's a good thing to have mystery. Heck it's something that is going to drive our conversations for the next two years!