The Ultimate Superheroines Forum

Perhaps the biggest red flag is the fact that Rey suddenly can understand chewbacca. There are no Wookies on Jakku.

Bad Writing.

My biggest problem with Rey is that when she was strapped to the interrogation device she was not tortured....make her feel the true power of the force!!!!!

LadySapphire wrote:Perhaps the biggest red flag is the fact that Rey suddenly can understand chewbacca. There are no Wookies on Jakku.

Bad Writing.

Anyone with force adeptness can basically understand any language given a very short amount of exposure. It's been pretty much a staple in Star Wars. It was sort of 'explained' outside the cannon at first, while not being spoken outright in the films, it became 'cannon' for a time in the old 'Legends' continuity, and I'd wager the same logic applies inasmuch as that it makes it easier for the moviemakers to have most characters understand one another without having to also have everyone speak in English(Common).

A good darn lot of Rey's abilities are explained simply because she's a force adept. Anakin and Luke did a lot of things very quickly with little training. We all can and have complained how ridiculous it may or may not have been for Anakin to win his first important pod race (after apparently crashing all the rest) or Luke being basically the best X-Wing pilot at the Death Star having never flown one in his entire life, but we've accepted all of these things as stuff that can and does happen in Star Wars by this point or else why are we even bothering to watch it anymore? We've got to suspend our disbelief a little to enjoy Si-fi/fantasy.

Even if one can't accept any of that, It's really not at all unlikely that several Wookies have been through Jakku. That little zone there was a Spaceport and a scrapyard. Wookies are a bit rare around the Galaxy, but not THAT rare. They are likely to come by every now and again.

Femina wrote:
A good darn lot of Rey's abilities are explained simply because she's a force adept. Anakin and Luke did a lot of things very quickly with little training. We all can and have complained how ridiculous it may or may not have been for Anakin to win his first important pod race (after apparently crashing all the rest) or Luke being basically the best X-Wing pilot at the Death Star having never flown one in his entire life, but we've accepted all of these things as stuff that can and does happen in Star Wars by this point or else why are we even bothering to watch it anymore? We've got to suspend our disbelief a little to enjoy Si-fi/fantasy.

No what happened with Luke and child Anikin is called bad writing. Like kid Anikin destroying the mothership and saving everyone. Anikin is supposedly one of the strongest force weilders in the genre and he STILL went through years and years of training and STILL got beat by Lord Doku with Obi Wan's help.

Your explanation throws out ALL the training. It makes training pointless. Bottom line is Rey should have lost and she deserved to have a limb cut off. In fact if you're going to use Luke and Anikin as templates and examples to go by then that is exactly what should have happened to her. Defeat and maiming JUST LIKE THE MEN CAUSE EQUALITIES.

Again the only people not making sense about this subject are the people blindly defending a girl. I don't care if Rey is a guy or a girl but its pretty apaprent some people are measuring with a different dipstick.

Child Anikin blowing up the mothership in episode one was STUPID and BAD writing and catering to little children. At least awrad women the respect of earning a character through the same hardships the males go through. Or are women also little children that require catering to?

I will add that Luke doing what he did was because that was the first movie over 3 decades old and it was simpleton and one shot movie.

Mr. X, you are absolutely right in your assessment. "Annie"'or Anikin (never understood why they decided to give him that Annie nickname, maybe because he was made an orphan?) in the first episode was just an annoying kid blithely going through what should have felt much more intense. He accidentally blows up the mothership and saves the day. Horrid writing and lame acting throughout.
Then the next two were just a special effects nightmare. There was too much going on with the special effects and too little going on in terms of acting and plot.
Way too much credit is given for accidentally falling in to a franchise based on a sci-fi remake of another movie. It's cool to watch, but the writing is hardly average. They somehow managed to butcher what is one of the BEST villains of the 20th century with one of the WORST backstories and acting. Not to be too harsh, but there's clearly a reason why the actor who played Anakin hasn't had any real acting roles since.

yes Darth Vadar apparently was originally a whining emo-bitch who probably should have been singing in a boy band. Sad. Now everytime I see Vadar think of some crying man child. Its horrible writing.

The very first movie (episode 4) was the first of its kind. And it was the 70s-80s where the little white male always was the hero which is bad writing. Luke was Goku, the golden child. The next two movies put that to rest pretty quick showing someone has to work at least to some level to get the force to work for them. The later two movies demanded more complexity.

Turning Rey into some golden child just make it the same nauseating mess as the 70s stuff. Great Wonder Woman beats the wimp... here's your empowered girl, ladies.

In fact I'm suspicious Rey is far more a male fantasy female than anything for women.

Mr. X wrote:

Femina wrote:
A good darn lot of Rey's abilities are explained simply because she's a force adept. Anakin and Luke did a lot of things very quickly with little training. We all can and have complained how ridiculous it may or may not have been for Anakin to win his first important pod race (after apparently crashing all the rest) or Luke being basically the best X-Wing pilot at the Death Star having never flown one in his entire life, but we've accepted all of these things as stuff that can and does happen in Star Wars by this point or else why are we even bothering to watch it anymore? We've got to suspend our disbelief a little to enjoy Si-fi/fantasy.

Anikin is supposedly one of the strongest force weilders in the genre and he STILL went through years and years of training and STILL got beat by Lord Doku with Obi Wan's help.

Spot fucking on! You cant justify to me anything that rey has done in the force if the literal chosen one needed years of training.

Case closed.

Mr. X wrote:

Femina wrote:
A good darn lot of Rey's abilities are explained simply because she's a force adept. Anakin and Luke did a lot of things very quickly with little training. We all can and have complained how ridiculous it may or may not have been for Anakin to win his first important pod race (after apparently crashing all the rest) or Luke being basically the best X-Wing pilot at the Death Star having never flown one in his entire life, but we've accepted all of these things as stuff that can and does happen in Star Wars by this point or else why are we even bothering to watch it anymore? We've got to suspend our disbelief a little to enjoy Si-fi/fantasy.

No what happened with Luke and child Anikin is called bad writing. Like kid Anikin destroying the mothership and saving everyone. Anikin is supposedly one of the strongest force weilders in the genre and he STILL went through years and years of training and STILL got beat by Lord Doku with Obi Wan's help.

Your explanation throws out ALL the training. It makes training pointless. Bottom line is Rey should have lost and she deserved to have a limb cut off. In fact if you're going to use Luke and Anikin as templates and examples to go by then that is exactly what should have happened to her. Defeat and maiming JUST LIKE THE MEN CAUSE EQUALITIES.

Again the only people not making sense about this subject are the people blindly defending a girl. I don't care if Rey is a guy or a girl but its pretty apaprent some people are measuring with a different dipstick.

Child Anikin blowing up the mothership in episode one was STUPID and BAD writing and catering to little children. At least awrad women the respect of earning a character through the same hardships the males go through. Or are women also little children that require catering to?

I will add that Luke doing what he did was because that was the first movie over 3 decades old and it was simpleton and one shot movie.

Series follow patterns. It's how it's always been, and how it always will. Luke and Anakin lost their hands in the sequels to their series, so don't be to surprised if Rey loses hers in 'the last Jedi' that's all I'm saying on that.

And frankly, that the original is 3 decades old simply doesn't alter its content or that it and its sequel are held up on a pedestal by which all other Star Wars films are done. Either they were crappy old movies and the ideas in them should be shied away from... or they are the beloved classics that Shepard what is to be expected in the series at least to a marginal extent. I'm mean if you want to talk about shoddy character work, take a look at Rogue One... at least Rey had a personality.

Femina wrote:
And frankly, that the original is 3 decades old simply doesn't alter its content or that it and its sequel are held up on a pedestal by which all other Star Wars films are done. Either they were crappy old movies and the ideas in them should be shied away from... or they are the beloved classics that Shepard what is to be expected in the series at least to a marginal extent. I'm mean if you want to talk about shoddy character work, take a look at Rogue One... at least Rey had a personality.

Ah but the expectation has changed. That's why a Linda Carter Wonder Woman wouldn't work today. Rogue One represents more of that "real and gritty" expectation. Now if the expectations stayed the same I could see your argument.

Mr. X wrote:

Femina wrote:
And frankly, that the original is 3 decades old simply doesn't alter its content or that it and its sequel are held up on a pedestal by which all other Star Wars films are done. Either they were crappy old movies and the ideas in them should be shied away from... or they are the beloved classics that Shepard what is to be expected in the series at least to a marginal extent. I'm mean if you want to talk about shoddy character work, take a look at Rogue One... at least Rey had a personality.

Ah but the expectation has changed. That's why a Linda Carter Wonder Woman wouldn't work today. Rogue One represents more of that "real and gritty" expectation. Now if the expectations stayed the same I could see your argument.

Isn't a Linda Carter esque WW exactly what tons of people on this website are clamoring for?

My point is, people liked Star Wars when it came out because it was a sensation and opened up the eyes of future special effects artists everywhere, in fact the ACTING and the expectation's of the TIME weren't even met. (Harrison Ford actually threatened to tie George Lucas to a chair and force the director to recite his own written lines out loud because they were so bad) it REMAINED popular for decades upon decades for VERY particular reasons (Only about half of which were carried over to the prequels, which is why they maintain a near singular position in film as something terrible that people still watch basically all the time... they DO satisfy certain Star Wars related itches regardless of being crappy films), almost none of them having anything to do with a particular stake in realism, rules, or 'breaking the mold' (so to speak) The vast majority of praise for TFA comes form relieved fans who are just glad to see something that resembles the originals, which seems to fly in the face of the idea that they are expecting anything else or something more (and anyone who says that it wasn't popular is just flat out wrong, numbers don't lie).

As it then pertains to Rey herself, I personally just don't see anything in her character that is wrong with her that isn't wrong with previous Star Wars heroes... half of whom are beloved characters. Sure she hasn't lost her hand YET... but there are still two whole movies left, neither Anakin or Luke's Major flaws were elaborated upon strongly until their sequel films, and why it should be expected differently of Rey personally baffles me.

The WW comparison doesn't make sense in the way we clamor for it here. The WW connection makes sense in the way one would view the snow as a dramatic superheroine performance, not as fetish material.
Star Wars works because of a great daunting villain and the original novelty of the first trilogy. For future success, the franchise has to be realistic not in a "this could happen sense" but in a "that makes sense" style. It makes sense that a Jedi still has to do a ton of training to match up against a major villain. It makes sense that the characters speak in a style that isn't hokey. It makes sense that a 10 year old child can't destroy a major battleship in a "cute" way.

sugarcoater wrote:The WW comparison doesn't make sense in the way we clamor for it here. The WW connection makes sense in the way one would view the snow as a dramatic superheroine performance, not as fetish material.
Star Wars works because of a great daunting villain and the original novelty of the first trilogy. For future success, the franchise has to be realistic not in a "this could happen sense" but in a "that makes sense" style. It makes sense that a Jedi still has to do a ton of training to match up against a major villain. It makes sense that the characters speak in a style that isn't hokey. It makes sense that a 10 year old child can't destroy a major battleship in a "cute" way.

I really doubt that personally. I think it'll do fine doing whatever it does for decades like Marvel has with little trouble. Disney knows what it's doing.

Anyhow, Kylo Ren hardly qualifies as a 'Major Villain' by the end of the film. The more you know of him the less of a Master badass he is, and frankly, The Force Awakens has the least hokey acting and dialogue any Star Wars film has ever had (and I'm including Rogue One in that, because Rogue One has all the character of a cardboard box)

Femina wrote: Anyhow, Kylo Ren hardly qualifies as a 'Major Villain' by the end of the film. The more you know of him the less of a Master badass he is, and frankly, The Force Awakens has the least hokey acting and dialogue any Star Wars film has ever had (and I'm including Rogue One in that, because Rogue One has all the character of a cardboard box)

You're just pointing out bad writing. Plus its inconsistent story telling. He trained for years under Luke, was his top pupil, killed all the other pupils, got under Snokes and probably got training... comparing Ren to Ray is like comparing a professional MMA fighter to some amateur athlete. Its just bad writing.

Plus what motivation does Rey now have to learn anything or get training. She already beat Ren and has no tie to him at all. Its not like Ren killed her parents or something. There literally is no motivation for her to be all mad and wanting training.

Mr. X wrote:

Femina wrote: Anyhow, Kylo Ren hardly qualifies as a 'Major Villain' by the end of the film. The more you know of him the less of a Master badass he is, and frankly, The Force Awakens has the least hokey acting and dialogue any Star Wars film has ever had (and I'm including Rogue One in that, because Rogue One has all the character of a cardboard box)

You're just pointing out bad writing. Plus its inconsistent story telling. He trained for years under Luke, was his top pupil, killed all the other pupils, got under Snokes and probably got training... comparing Ren to Ray is like comparing a professional MMA fighter to some amateur athlete. Its just bad writing.

Plus what motivation does Rey now have to learn anything or get training. She already beat Ren and has no tie to him at all. Its not like Ren killed her parents or something. There literally is no motivation for her to be all mad and wanting training.

Not to mention we are led to believe that kylo was skilled enough to wipe out an order of jedi and drive away Luke....his nickname is the jedi killer in canon....its poor writing.

Perhaps for the training the better question is...what the hell does she have left to learn?

LadySapphire wrote:Perhaps for the training the better question is...what the hell does she have left to learn?

How to keep both hands?

If she is Luke's daughter, which is sorta implied, she comes from a line of Jedi that keep losing their grip.

sugarcoater wrote:The WW comparison doesn't make sense in the way we clamor for it here. The WW connection makes sense in the way one would view the snow as a dramatic superheroine performance, not as fetish material.
Star Wars works because of a great daunting villain and the original novelty of the first trilogy. For future success, the franchise has to be realistic not in a "this could happen sense" but in a "that makes sense" style. It makes sense that a Jedi still has to do a ton of training to match up against a major villain. It makes sense that the characters speak in a style that isn't hokey. It makes sense that a 10 year old child can't destroy a major battleship in a "cute" way.

The original trilogy has stuff that makes little sense. Even without being Force sensitive, a bunch of primitive teddybears were able to construct and operate heavy machinery. These were creatures who had reached a stone age level of civilization, living in basic tree dwellings, wearing basic garments and using spears. Yet, after just a day or two with some Rebels, they're constructing and operating a huge AT-AT-crushing machine. Suddenly, these primitives are engineers who can rig devices to destroy advanced military vehicles and operate said devices with precision timing.

Within a few hours, they've won a battle against the Empire which enables the Rebels to destroy another Death Star.

C'mon, that's fucking silly.

Mr. X wrote: Ah but the expectation has changed. That's why a Linda Carter Wonder Woman wouldn't work today. Rogue One represents more of that "real and gritty" expectation. Now if the expectations stayed the same I could see your argument.

Maybe the expectations of adult fans who want their obsession with a bunch of family films to be justified by darker "this ain't kid's stuff" themes which exclude a younger audience. The expectations of the general audience haven't changed much. There has always been - and probably always will be - a huge audience for lighter escapist fantasy.

As for Wonder Woman, the writing wasn't that much lighter than on modern TV shows. Sure, there were fewer 'issues' covered, but social mores and social awareness have evolved over the last forty years. The actual tone of the show isn't so different from Supergirl in terms of the mix of comedy and drama.

It is, however, less sophisticated than something like Supergirl in terms of the quality and quantity of action we see on-screen. But that was mainly down to money. Hell, after the first few episodes, they couldn't even afford the WW2 uniforms anymore and the villains became a succession of unshaven middle-aged henchmen and their clean-shaven middle-aged bosses. The same type of villains used on literally every Action show of the 70s and 80s. Often played by an actor who would show up next week as a villain on Bionic Woman.

The Force Awakens was just a bad unoriginal story.

Ignoring the Rey question.

Too many similarities to New Hope

I thought the Ewoks were understood to be the Jar Jar of Return of the Jedi. I have yet to hear anyone of any maturity express any enthusiasm at having them present in the movie.
The trilogy stops being good after Solo is rescued from Jabba, though Vader's fight with the Emperor and subsequent scene with Luke is quite good.

The original trilogy has stuff that makes little sense. Even without being Force sensitive, a bunch of primitive teddybears were able to construct and operate heavy machinery. These were creatures who had reached a stone age level of civilization, living in basic tree dwellings, wearing basic garments and using spears. Yet, after just a day or two with some Rebels, they're constructing and operating a huge AT-AT-crushing machine. Suddenly, these primitives are engineers who can rig devices to destroy advanced military vehicles and operate said devices with precision timing.

Within a few hours, they've won a battle against the Empire which enables the Rebels to destroy another Death Star.

C'mon, that's fucking silly.


Is this a bit I missed in Return? Didn't they just use logs and ropes? The same tech they had used to build their tree village? And then just logs to de-leg an AT-ST? And the precision timing consisted of cutting ropes at the same time. I'm dull as hell, but I'm pretty sure I could have come up with all that even back in the Stone Age. Or as its known in Wales, the 1970's.

(MY QUOTING GOT MIXED UP WHEN I EDITED OUT THE STUFF I WASN'T COMMENTING ON, SO MY APOLOGIES)

Not to metion (On the Ewok mention) they were basically hurling rocks at Storm Troopers supposedly wearing top of the line durasteel armor and succeeding WILDLY. Ever throw a rock at a suit of plate-mail to see what happens? It doesn't hurt the armor much.

Mr. X wrote:

Femina wrote: Anyhow, Kylo Ren hardly qualifies as a 'Major Villain' by the end of the film. The more you know of him the less of a Master badass he is, and frankly, The Force Awakens has the least hokey acting and dialogue any Star Wars film has ever had (and I'm including Rogue One in that, because Rogue One has all the character of a cardboard box)

You're just pointing out bad writing. Plus its inconsistent story telling. He trained for years under Luke, was his top pupil, killed all the other pupils, got under Snokes and probably got training... comparing Ren to Ray is like comparing a professional MMA fighter to some amateur athlete. Its just bad writing.

Plus what motivation does Rey now have to learn anything or get training. She already beat Ren and has no tie to him at all. Its not like Ren killed her parents or something. There literally is no motivation for her to be all mad and wanting training.

Again, you're not giving it time to gestate. Luke's bigger connection to Vader didn't arise until Empire. Yes he had a few minor connections via the 'killed your father' lie and then a need for vengeance for Obi-wans death but all the MAJOR through threads came up in the sequel. You're also wrong that she's got no motivation for being mad. Han Solo was her Ben Kenobi... I mean TFA's biggest flaw is it's comple rehash of New Hope's themes, and that was as much one of them as anything... in fact just about the only thing BRAND new it did was pit its Luke against its Vader for an early round 1.

I won't deny that Kylo Ren was mishandled in the slightest. He never should have taken his helmet off this early in the series to begin with, (and he may not even be an actual villain at this point i some of the theories turn up true) but that frankly doesn't have anything to do with Rey as a character. It's not REY'S fault that Kylo Ren was a disappointing bad guy.

LadySapphire wrote:

Mr. X wrote:

Femina wrote:
Not to mention we are led to believe that kylo was skilled enough to wipe out an order of jedi and drive away Luke....his nickname is the jedi killer in canon....its poor writing.

Perhaps for the training the better question is...what the hell does she have left to learn?

The key words there are that we are 'lead to believe' Now if the series was DONE this would be a minor to major plot hole (depending on how heavily that past comes into play) but with two whole movies left to explore this, we can only theorize about what wiped out the Jedi and drove Luke away, we can't actually place any facts... and Ren's nickname is stated as being 'for preventing the rise of the new Jedi order' which could be accomplished in any number of ways... and who knows what the state of Luke's academy was when it happened? I don't think Anakin had to be a bad ass Jedi General to slaughter all the younglings... that was probably the most gruesome thing he ever did... but also probably one of the easiest. To me, it almost seemed like the entire POINT of Kylo Ren was to mislead. We were SUPPOSED to believe he was this big frightening indomitable Vader-esque monster... and then learn that he was just a stupid scared little kid. I get how that can be annoying for some people, I REALLY do understand, but it still doesn't really reflect poorly on Rey in any way except in that it gave her a less menacing bad guy to deal with than her predecessors for the opening arc of her series.

Finally there's the force 'Awakening' It's sort of been hinted at that the force is more powerful now than its ever been. Of course this is just being hinted at as well, but I'm just saying... mostly what I'm advocating is that you can't judge the entirety of plot and character in a trilogy basied off the first 1/3 of the final product anymore than you could have judged all of the original trilogy by A New Hope which is a LOT less compelling without the retroactive inclusions of Empire.

I agree with the point Femina brings up about keeping the helmet on longer. And why does he even need or have a helmet? Vader's was to keep him alive. The Emperor never wore one (as far as I recall).

But I don't see Han as Rey's mentor regardless of dialogue. At no point was there a setup for that relationship. Han takes to her way too quickly; it comes across as forced and trite. Too little time was spent on characterization, and too much time was spent trying to cram in all the action seen in the original Star Wars ("Hope").

As for the unfair criticism, I agree it's unfair to criticise the movie as a trilogy, but I don't think it's unfair to point out the weaknesses seen in the movie when it has to do with the acting, repetition, illogical plot points, and lack of characterization. Those are stand-alone issues.

And the hokey dialogue needs major improvement. And though one can say it was hokey in the original series, why can't we ask that the dialogue be better now that the franchise has so much money and support?

Dazzle1 wrote:The Force Awakens was just a bad unoriginal story.

Ignoring the Rey question.

Too many similarities to New Hope

Yeah I think this is the key. The Super Monster Mega Death Star and how it is destroyed is several orders of magnitude worse writing than anything involving Rey. No part of the planet death star base thing is consistent within the Star Wars setting. No part of how it is destroyed is now after Rogue One. It's literally the same plot as two of the three original movies but written by a child who wants everything to be bigger regardless of sense. It's just abysmal. It's not even impressive it's just dumb, because of how little sense it makes.

Kylo Ren's helmet and costume was an idolize imitation of his grandfather, Darth Vader. The fact he was a pale imitation is kind of gloss over. It's why he wanted Luke's lightsaber since it was made by Vader in his early days.

The Force Awaken writing was how may references can we make to the original trilogy. All that they missed were CGI versions of some Jedi like Yoda.

What was in interesting was a mention of balance between the sides of the Force. Jedi and Sith keep trying to completely destroy the other side yet there always are a few left of the losing side.

Dogfish wrote:

Dazzle1 wrote:The Force Awakens was just a bad unoriginal story.

Ignoring the Rey question.

Too many similarities to New Hope

Yeah I think this is the key. The Super Monster Mega Death Star and how it is destroyed is several orders of magnitude worse writing than anything involving Rey. No part of the planet death star base thing is consistent within the Star Wars setting. No part of how it is destroyed is now after Rogue One. It's literally the same plot as two of the three original movies but written by a child who wants everything to be bigger regardless of sense. It's just abysmal. It's not even impressive it's just dumb, because of how little sense it makes.

The " science" is what bothered me most about it...yes little known fact whe. I am not teaching zuumba, spin, or cosplaying porn playing I am studying physics in college....the part of sucking the star "sun" dry taking hours then sending a light speed beam of energy across the galaxy destroying the planets at the same time....and people on other planets able to see it happen....that part was really weak to me....it was stretching it and just not believable even in a sci fi kind of way....and for the record I LOVE Kylo's helmet....I have met plenty of chics who are costuming genderbending his character and a few who do it really well....I hope Rey turns to the dark side!

batgirl1969 wrote:

Dogfish wrote:

Dazzle1 wrote:The Force Awakens was just a bad unoriginal story.

Ignoring the Rey question.

Too many similarities to New Hope

Yeah I think this is the key. The Super Monster Mega Death Star and how it is destroyed is several orders of magnitude worse writing than anything involving Rey. No part of the planet death star base thing is consistent within the Star Wars setting. No part of how it is destroyed is now after Rogue One. It's literally the same plot as two of the three original movies but written by a child who wants everything to be bigger regardless of sense. It's just abysmal. It's not even impressive it's just dumb, because of how little sense it makes.

The " science" is what bothered me most about it...yes little known fact whe. I am not teaching zuumba, spin, or cosplaying porn playing I am studying physics in college....the part of sucking the star "sun" dry taking hours then sending a light speed beam of energy across the galaxy destroying the planets at the same time....and people on other planets able to see it happen....that part was really weak to me....it was stretching it and just not believable even in a sci fi kind of way....and for the record I LOVE Kylo's helmet....I have met plenty of chics who are costuming genderbending his character and a few who do it really well....I hope Rey turns to the dark side!

Yeah it's daft. It's simultaneously so fast it travels between star systems within minutes yet slow enough you can see it. And it'd disappointing too because there's scope there for so much more drama than what they had. I mean perhaps the projectile takes a few days, so the planet has to be evacuated. Maybe the projectile is intercepted and a fleet tries to destroy it. Just saying, "And then suddenly five planets simultaneously explode" is just, blarg. It makes me genuinely angry because it's so lazy and so bad and yet there it is, in a fucking Star Wars movie. I'd think it was lazy if it won a short story competion for hyperactive kids. The idea somebody got paid money to do that is just insulting.

That was truly pathetic and my biggest gripe (and I had a LOT of gripes). As you say just lax and incoherent. And they are firing from a fixed point on the planet - its not exactly aim-able like a rifle. A planet SPINNING in its own system, firing the slowest energy beam ever created across the galaxy which doesn't dissipate in any way - and it must use the greatest targeting system ever created. Absolute pants. But hey, luckily they built it with one weakness. Why don't they ever build these things with several weaknesses so the rebels are wracked with indecision over the best one to chose and so would just spend their time arguing about which bit to attack?

It seems like a lot of our frustration with the franchise is that we see a property worth literally billions being given such a poor treatment. How about spending up for top end writing talent? Or vetting the talent in a better manner. How much time did they have before churning out this drivel of a story? In 10 years they couldn't come up with a better plot? If the plot is weak, the producers should have rejected it and waited for a better one.

I haven't hated the "science" in a science fiction show that much since I saw a list of the top things Star Trek: The Next Generation got wrong. It was like no one that read the script knew any science or wanted to fix it. I can understand wanting to have some dramatic tension, but they could have had that and fixed the mistakes.

Second worst mistake was the timeline of the fight scenes compared to the count down on firing the planet killer. Would it have hurt them to just make the count down longer to match the other actions. Or was this some new Jedi mind trick that allows them to adjust time?

tallyho wrote:That was truly pathetic and my biggest gripe (and I had a LOT of gripes). As you say just lax and incoherent. And they are firing from a fixed point on the planet - its not exactly aim-able like a rifle. A planet SPINNING in its own system, firing the slowest energy beam ever created across the galaxy which doesn't dissipate in any way - and it must use the greatest targeting system ever created. Absolute pants. But hey, luckily they built it with one weakness. Why don't they ever build these things with several weaknesses so the rebels are wracked with indecision over the best one to chose and so would just spend their time arguing about which bit to attack?

Plus to destroy a planet with the vigor that Alderon was destroyed the weapon would have to generate more power than 20 g type stars.

*Sigh* Star Wars is NOT Science Fiction. Science Fiction is Star Trek, and 2010 a Space Odyssey and that one by Christopher Nolan with the Lexus car commercial salesmen. Star Wars is and always has been Science FANTASY. There's a much much MUCH larger scientific plot hole with lightspeed, the frequency of life sustaining planets, and freaking sound in space than there is anything to do with powering weapons by sucking up stars. If you're watching Star Wars, shaking your head and saying to yourself 'A wormhole doesn't behave like that' then your missing the point. Star Wars is Lord of the Rings in space, its about exploring human themes in a fantastic and epic way, it isn't about the science, it never has been, and it never will be. The problem with Starkiller base in a STAR WARS film has everything to do with it just being the 'Death Star Mark 3' and nothing to do with it sucking up a sun, because sucking up stars is not impossible in a galaxy that hasn't ever operated by accurate (or even definable) laws of gravity.

tallyho wrote: Is this a bit I missed in Return? Didn't they just use logs and ropes? The same tech they had used to build their tree village? And then just logs to de-leg an AT-ST? And the precision timing consisted of cutting ropes at the same time. I'm dull as hell, but I'm pretty sure I could have come up with all that even back in the Stone Age. Or as its known in Wales, the 1970's.

(MY QUOTING GOT MIXED UP WHEN I EDITED OUT THE STUFF I WASN'T COMMENTING ON, SO MY APOLOGIES)

But how did the huge logs get up there? The Ewoks would have needed to devise a system of ropes and pulleys to raise these massive AT-ST-smashing logs high up in the trees. Along with the manpower (teddybearpower?) to actually lift the humongous logs and test the trajectory at which they would need to meet in the middle to smash an AT-ST.

It's a bit more advanced than building little huts in trees with much smaller logs.

Femina wrote:*Sigh* Star Wars is NOT Science Fiction. Science Fiction is Star Trek, and 2010 a Space Odyssey and that one by Christopher Nolan with the Lexus car commercial salesmen. Star Wars is and always has been Science FANTASY. There's a much much MUCH larger scientific plot hole with lightspeed, the frequency of life sustaining planets, and freaking sound in space than there is anything to do with powering weapons by sucking up stars. If you're watching Star Wars, shaking your head and saying to yourself 'A wormhole doesn't behave like that' then your missing the point. Star Wars is Lord of the Rings in space, its about exploring human themes in a fantastic and epic way, it isn't about the science, it never has been, and it never will be. The problem with Starkiller base in a STAR WARS film has everything to do with it just being the 'Death Star Mark 3' and nothing to do with it sucking up a sun, because sucking up stars is not impossible in a galaxy that hasn't ever operated by accurate (or even definable) laws of gravity.

Have to agree on that point on Star Wars. One of my problems with the Abrams reboot was that Star Trek was always the thinking person's science fiction series as opposed to many others. Abrams destroyed that.

Heroine Addict wrote:

tallyho wrote: Is this a bit I missed in Return? Didn't they just use logs and ropes? The same tech they had used to build their tree village? And then just logs to de-leg an AT-ST? And the precision timing consisted of cutting ropes at the same time. I'm dull as hell, but I'm pretty sure I could have come up with all that even back in the Stone Age. Or as its known in Wales, the 1970's.

(MY QUOTING GOT MIXED UP WHEN I EDITED OUT THE STUFF I WASN'T COMMENTING ON, SO MY APOLOGIES)

But how did the huge logs get up there? The Ewoks would have needed to devise a system of ropes and pulleys to raise these massive AT-ST-smashing logs high up in the trees. Along with the manpower (teddybearpower?) to actually lift the humongous logs and test the trajectory at which they would need to meet in the middle to smash an AT-ST.

It's a bit more advanced than building little huts in trees with much smaller logs.

The logs that hit the Scout walker aren't that big. Only about 6-7ft long. The big long ones just roll down the hill its the short ones that got swung. And you don't need pulleys just loop the rope over a branch. Its less efficient but would still work. But you are forgetting 2 fundamental facts.
1) they had hang glider technology
2) it was all built by set designers.

If it is science fantasy...I want a crime lord like jabba that has penis like fingers...each secreting a different intoxxxicating fluid that he feeds and treats his concubine with....as well as any other captive male female or both that fall into his traps.....I know...I will probably never work for mainstream films lol

The science fiction science fact thing is a moot point really. All fiction is stuff that probably couldn't or wouldn't ever happen. The key though is consistency. If you've got one set of rules in one movie, then another in the next, that's bad. So for example the rule in Star Wars is that ships can travel vast distances by hyperspace jumping. Great. Now how does an energy projectile do that?

What makes it worse is that Rogue One was just so much better at all of this. The complications of the ground mission at the end, the way new problems arise time after time and everybody has to dig deeper, risk more, sacrifice more, it's just majestic. Meanwhile Force Awakens is like, "How do you blow it up there's always a way."

Dogfish wrote:The science fiction science fact thing is a moot point really. All fiction is stuff that probably couldn't or wouldn't ever happen. The key though is consistency. If you've got one set of rules in one movie, then another in the next, that's bad. So for example the rule in Star Wars is that ships can travel vast distances by hyperspace jumping. Great. Now how does an energy projectile do that?

What makes it worse is that Rogue One was just so much better at all of this. The complications of the ground mission at the end, the way new problems arise time after time and everybody has to dig deeper, risk more, sacrifice more, it's just majestic. Meanwhile Force Awakens is like, "How do you blow it up there's always a way."

Spoilers for Rogue one
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Rogue One is NOT any better than Episode 7 at conflict consistency, not in any way shape or form. There was also more character in ten minutes of Episode 7 than there was in the entire running time of Rogue One. For a movie about an entire 'unit's' sacrifice for a cause it was basically absent of heroic sacrifices. The robot and the blind guy are the only ones whose deaths were at all sacrificial, the rest just sorta.... died. If they wanted a movie about the death of the whole group the least they could have done was make most of their deaths at least SEEM like a calculated sacrifice and less like 'oops there's a grenade'. I mean, the big guy who basically died for no reason after the blind guy finished their job. One of them died basically off screen... Jin and Cassian also might actually have survived if they'd bothered to go looking for a ship of any kind... A couple of random senseless deaths sprinkled throughout in a film like this isn't 'terrible' exactly, but by and large, films make a better impact if the characters seem to know whats up when it happens.

Oh and then there's the HORRIBLY timed 'Vader kills everyone scene.' Why is this scene where it is? I mean the scene itself isn't so awful, but this is a movie about 'Rogue One'. Vader has exactly one scene preceding this sequence, everyone in the movie you're supposed to care about and be rooting for in the film is already dead when this scene happens. The heroes 'heroic' or mundane sacrifices finished... by rights the credits ought to have rolled when the deathstarsplosion engulfs the two main characters... but no, it continues, and there's Vader closing a movie that doesn't really belong to him. It's a terribly placed sequence. If they wanted to end the movie with Vader murdering a hallway of rebels (Whose deaths are all far more of a 'calculated sacrifice' than any of the main characters at this point in the film) who desperately keep him at bay, here's a thought, why not make those rebels the main cast? Wouldn't that have made for a better and more engaging Vader murderspree?

'By rights the credits should have rolled when the deathstarsplosion engulfs the two main characters'
No because that wouldn't have given the continuity between this and New Hope. You would have all those sacrifices and then somehow magically Leia gets away with the plans. It gave the context for the start of New Hope which was the whole purpose of the film.

Also I don't see how you can call the Vader hallway deaths a calculated sacrifice when they were trapped by a stuck door. None of them WANTED to die there, they were fighting for their lives to escape and failed.

The Vader scene is a good example of Force Inflation since the old films. The guy who made it look like it required a bit of concentration to muster up a forcey strangulation in A New Hope is now casually throwing people around with Hogwarts handwaftium.

But let's bear in mind that A New Hope - or to use its original title, Star Wars - was our introduction to the force. It wasn't retitled as the "fourth" episode until its wild success guaranteed there would be a market for prequels and sequels. So a forcey strangulation was quite an effective scene in an opening chapter. Yet now it seems an incredibly small demonstration if someone watches it after 3.1 prequels featuring Jedi and Sith doing magic ninja shit.

Heroine Addict wrote:The Vader scene is a good example of Force Inflation since the old films. The guy who made it look like it required a bit of concentration to muster up a forcey strangulation in A New Hope is now casually throwing people around with Hogwarts handwaftium.

But let's bear in mind that A New Hope - or to use its original title, Star Wars - was our introduction to the force. It wasn't retitled as the "fourth" episode until its wild success guaranteed there would be a market for prequels and sequels. So a forcey strangulation was quite an effective scene in an opening chapter. Yet now it seems an incredibly small demonstration if someone watches it after 3.1 prequels featuring Jedi and Sith doing magic ninja shit.

In fairness in the original movies Vader's power to force choke people is so powerful he can do it over a video phone call. That's some pretty fricking good, the guy he kills in that scene must be miles away on another ship.

tallyho wrote:'By rights the credits should have rolled when the deathstarsplosion engulfs the two main characters'
No because that wouldn't have given the continuity between this and New Hope. You would have all those sacrifices and then somehow magically Leia gets away with the plans. It gave the context for the start of New Hope which was the whole purpose of the film.

We didn't need that at all!? As soon as the plans were out of the force field it's easy to assume it got on a ship and was transported to Leah without having to actually SEE it. It also sort of retroactively makes the first sequence of A New Hope look kind of... well... stupid.

Vader: "Tell me where the plans are!"

Rebel Dude: "*gag* This is a.... diplomatic... vessel..." *Choked to death.

Vader: Dude Puh-lease!

In the original this plays a lot differently, NOW it makes that rebel guy look like a friggin idiot. I mean, Vader basically CHASED the plans onto the spaceship... at least die spitting a loogie into his helmet and not making up a pathetic and doomed lie.

Nevertheless. If this scene HAD to be in the film (which it didn't but whatever) it could easily have taken place BEFORE the main characters get deathstarsploded and the MAIN CHARACTERS could still have closed their own movie. Or (the far superior option) The main characters could have just got off the planet, and made the desperate run to Leah's ship themselves, each one getting cut down by Vader sacrificing themselves one at a time to get the plans out.

But none of that happened. Instead we have a sequence that seems like it's out of a completely different movie plastered onto the end of Rogue One like a sticky note.

Also I don't see how you can call the Vader hallway deaths a calculated sacrifice when they were trapped by a stuck door. None of them WANTED to die there, they were fighting for their lives to escape and failed.

It's NOT a calculated sacrifice... it's just MORE of a calculated sacrifice than half of the main characters who should have been making calculated sacrifices in a movie about sacrificing oneself for the greater good.

I was hoping for Ahsoka Tano to be in and have Vader finish her off.....I love her!!

Femina wrote:
It's NOT a calculated sacrifice... it's just MORE of a calculated sacrifice than half of the main characters who should have been making calculated sacrifices in a movie about sacrificing oneself for the greater good.

How can it possibly be ANY kind of calculated sacrifice of any quantifiable level you care to name when they got stuck there by accident?

The sacrifice the characters make is when they choose to go on the mission. That's the point, that's why they are the heroes. Anybody caught up in the heat of the moment can make the ultimate sacrifice, what the movie does is have the characters make that decision with cool heads in a safe rebel base. They have the option of safety, they have the option to (as Jyn says) not look up at the flags, but they choose certain death. And then they ride out to meet it. And what makes it better in this film than something like 300 which also deals with a literal suicide mission is that there's no glory in it, no celebration.

I think maybe it's a bit British and some folks don't get that. It's all a bit, "Bout that time eh chaps? Right-o" rather than going all high fives, last minute escapes and a party at the end.

Dogfish wrote:The sacrifice the characters make is when they choose to go on the mission. That's the point, that's why they are the heroes. Anybody caught up in the heat of the moment can make the ultimate sacrifice, what the movie does is have the characters make that decision with cool heads in a safe rebel base. They have the option of safety, they have the option to (as Jyn says) not look up at the flags, but they choose certain death. And then they ride out to meet it. And what makes it better in this film than something like 300 which also deals with a literal suicide mission is that there's no glory in it, no celebration.

I think maybe it's a bit British and some folks don't get that. It's all a bit, "Bout that time eh chaps? Right-o" rather than going all high fives, last minute escapes and a party at the end.

No that's just a choice to fight. The idea there is that they all still expect to do everything they can to get back out. Its not 'calculated sacrifice' until you're looking death in the face and use it to further the cause knowing that it absolutely will mean death.

Look I liked the film alright, it was decent with a lot of storyboarding issues which were almost certainly caused by the humongus last minute reshoots totally visible by the fact that basically half of the first trailer for the film includes sequences that weren't even in the film, but don't think I'm just touting that 'Rogue One sucked!' It was okay. In my oppinion it was better than the prequels, and less than the rest. I'm simply pointing out that this movie was far from the gold standard of Star Wars that it was pointed to as 'versus episode 7'

The biggest problem for me in rogue one is that by the end of it I barely know who any of these characters are or why I should care. When I saw Ep 7, I had my issues with it, but none of them involved the characters, which each had personalities, senses of humor, a presence of their own. I felt none of that watching Rogue One, and it just doesn't help that I feel many of their deaths (Which is basically what all these characters existed for, to die in this battle) were much more than the result of a random grenade toss here, a pointless suicide rush there, all of which simply going through the motions of a film that feels like it's struggling with a complex that it has just GOT to kill them all by the end SOMEHOW no matter what!

batgirl1969 wrote:I was hoping for Ahsoka Tano to be in and have Vader finish her off.....I love her!!

he ever increasing bloodlust from the Star Wars fanbase is a troubling issue all its own,

batgirl1969 wrote:I was hoping for Ahsoka Tano to be in and have Vader finish her off.....I love her!!

I thought she died in the animated series. Got blowed up.

Mr. X wrote:

batgirl1969 wrote:I was hoping for Ahsoka Tano to be in and have Vader finish her off.....I love her!!

I thought she died in the animated series. Got blowed up.

No she's alive. It's a lot easier to see on the blue-ray than it was on the TV when it aired since like... Disney XD seems to never play in HD or something, but at the end Vader is limping away from the exploded temple and Ahsoka is limping into it. What EXACTLY happened is unknown, I personally suspect they were just both so messed up by the explosion as to be basically incapable of fighting anymore and called it a draw... for now. Some people think Anakin spared her, and yet others think they'll pull a shocker on us and we'll learn that SHE in fact spared him....

But it's all just theories except that the final shot of Vader limping away definitely also has Ashoka going into the temple.

Femina wrote:

Mr. X wrote:

batgirl1969 wrote:I was hoping for Ahsoka Tano to be in and have Vader finish her off.....I love her!!

I thought she died in the animated series. Got blowed up.

No she's alive. It's a lot easier to see on the blue-ray than it was on the TV when it aired since like... Disney XD seems to never play in HD or something, but at the end Vader is limping away from the exploded temple and Ahsoka is limping into it. What EXACTLY happened is unknown, I personally suspect they were just both so messed up by the explosion as to be basically incapable of fighting anymore and called it a draw... for now. Some people think Anakin spared her, and yet others think they'll pull a shocker on us and we'll learn that SHE in fact spared him....

But it's all just theories except that the final shot of Vader limping away definitely also has Ashoka going into the temple.

I thought the bird represented her soul and that it flying away and then switching to her stepping through that doorway was her passing into the after life.

Mr. X wrote:

Femina wrote:

Mr. X wrote:

batgirl1969 wrote:I was hoping for Ahsoka Tano to be in and have Vader finish her off.....I love her!!

I thought she died in the animated series. Got blowed up.

No she's alive. It's a lot easier to see on the blue-ray than it was on the TV when it aired since like... Disney XD seems to never play in HD or something, but at the end Vader is limping away from the exploded temple and Ahsoka is limping into it. What EXACTLY happened is unknown, I personally suspect they were just both so messed up by the explosion as to be basically incapable of fighting anymore and called it a draw... for now. Some people think Anakin spared her, and yet others think they'll pull a shocker on us and we'll learn that SHE in fact spared him....

But it's all just theories except that the final shot of Vader limping away definitely also has Ashoka going into the temple.

I thought the bird represented her soul and that it flying away and then switching to her stepping through that doorway was her passing into the after life.

The bird's been following her around since Clone Wars when she was very much definately alive (It's most likely 'the daughter' or some aspect of her) While there are a sect of people who think that symbolized her passing on, it's a hard sell in my opinion. Most of the people who think she's dead are just the hard core Vader fans / those oddly bloodthirsty Star Wars fans I was mentioning being a troubling trend before. Lot's of characters have died in Star Wars to this point, and very very few of them felt the need to go make a metaphorical spirit walk.

Golden rule of Television and film (but very very particularly television) If it didn't happen onscreen, it didn't happen. They could always show it happen in a flashback in the future which would retroactively make it have happened now... but until its on the screen it simply didn't happen. That she was standing and walking the last time we saw her is all we've got. So while she COULD be dead, my opinion it is much less likely than a stalemate (and if that makes the Vader fanboys cry, they should just try to remember that an enormous explosion forcing a stalemate isn't a very hard knock at his street cred, that explosion was frikkin huge)

I thought it seemed a very good symbolism ending especially given the musical score and what just happened. I also thought, given her spryness, that Vadar had shielded her from the blast and took most of it himself if she had not died.

"Golden rule of Television and film (but very very particularly television) If it didn't happen onscreen, it didn't happen."
That's what I feel about people trying to explain Prometheus.

Mr. X wrote: That's what I feel about people trying to explain Prometheus.

That way lies madness