The Force Awakens

Characters Part 1

Rey - With each movie I think she becomes more and more of a disaster. But let's focus on her TFA appearance. She's basically a female Luke but worse. In TFA she was probably the least interesting character and there were several moments where I legit forgot she was in the movie. Let's ignore for a moment how unoriginal her backstory is (we will have to do this a lot...). When we first see her, she's shown on Jakku, alone, scrounging for scraps to survive. I mean sure there's a sort of "charm" in that background. But unlike Luke, she doesn't have a longing to leave she actually wants to stay where she is. So her answering the "call to adventure" is kind of weak. She has no reason to follow BB-8 and Finn.

Rey is often called a Mary Sue. Personally I refrain from using that term because I honestly think if her character was a male, people wouldn't really have as much of a problem... But regardless, they made her too good at things. She knows the Millennium Falcon better than Han fucking Solo, like what? She's never used the Force but instantly masters abilities. I believe she actually "downloaded" Kylo's training according to a book or something but that's pretty stupid and a whole separate thing I'm not getting into right now... She's also never held a lightsaber before but she beats Kylo, a trained duelist, on her first try. Maybe she's just gifted, right? But giving her some flaws would've made her much more relatable and interesting I think. At the very least she needed to lose that duel.



Finn - A Stormtrooper turned good is an interesting backstory for a main character. But I don't think it was handled too well honestly. First of all he acts way too "normal" for someone who was brainwashed and forced into war as a child. Second, he makes zero attempt to help his former First Order comrades. Now I don't think the movie needed him to basically free the slaves or anything. But why not show some hesitation or reluctance when he has to fight the Stormtroopers? Just a small scene showing him feeling guilty or something. We never get this in the trilogy



Poe Dameron - Honestly he's cool. There's not too much to say because he had a pretty small role. He's just a big shot pilot in the Resistance, I think that's fine. It's the next two movies that unfortunately hurt his character



Kylo Ren - Lmao fuck. Kylo has got to be the most overrated part of the sequels. It's another deception. Adam Driver's strong performance mixed with a convoluted and illogical characterization tricks people into thinking he's a deep and interesting character that had a good arc. The reality is he's an edgelord wannabe Vader. He is pretty much AOTC Anakin but he gets a pass for some reason.

Problem 1. Kylo's turn to the darkside is not believable. In fact, Ben Solo turning, while it's not impossible, is highly improbable based on what on screen information we have. He had a strong support net. Han and Leia would have been loving and caring parents. Luke would have been a noble and understanding uncle and Jedi teacher. And to top it off, Anakin's ghost would be around to tell him how the dark side means suffering. Why is he worshipping Vader when he knows about Anakin? Sure the Dark Side can still be tempting. He could've been like "Fuck you Anakin, I'll succeed where you failed". But we are never shown anything like that or given any believable explanation in the trilogy.

Problem 2. He is pathetic. He's whiny and edgy for no reason. Throws tantrums, hates his parents when they didn't do anything, and in general just tries too hard to be like Vader. Vader's coolness was natural. Kylo doesn't replicate it. Also he gets his ass beat by fucking Rey...

Story Part 1

It's an A New Hope rehash. JJ said he was "playing it safe" but didn't think at all what consequences copying ANH would have on the universe. A bigger and badder Death Star 3 is not very believable. Death Star 2 was already kind of stupid...

So I'll ignore JJ's lack of creativity again to focus on the one thing I hate the most about TFA which I've talked about before. The one thing that sealed the sequel trilogy's fate, the thing that killed merch sales, and interest and inspiration. And that is the "First Order - Resistance war" (can't even come up with a fucking decent name for it...).

TFA made a huge error when setting up the background conflict that immediately ruined the entire time period. Rehashing Empire vs Rebels has detrimental effects on the universe.

First of all the belligerents make no sense. The battered remains of the Empire hide in the unknown regions for 30 years and then suddenly become a galactic superpower possessing sleeker and more advanced technology and equipment than the New Republic? And the NR doesn't do anything to stop them... Like how incompetent are they that they will allow a second Empire to establish itself right under their nose? And because they're so fucking stupid, Leia is forced to make a shitty Rebellion. Again.

So that's the second thing. This "conflict" completely resets everything that happened in the OT. Everything Leia, Han, Luke and the rest of the Rebel Alliance achieved, sacrificed and fought so hard for is taken away in a mere 30 years. Everyone's legacy is failure and cowardice. And that sucks...


TFA undoes the OT. Therefore in my mind, it cannot possibly coexist in the canon

World

Where is the world building? It's so poorly done. There's no cool planets, Jakku is just knock off Tatooine, D'Qar is just knock off Yavin. In fact I legit thought they were on Yavin at first lol.

All the designs are absolute garbage. All the ships like X-Wings, TIEs, are exactly the same. The First Order aesthetic is the same as the Empire with a fuckin iOS update. Resistance has the same poor, grungy Rebellion aesthetic. All the aliens are pretty much just beige colored blobs. I don't think theres a single OT/PT alien. So no cool planets, no cool ships, no cool weapons, no cool aliens. Everything just looks like a bootleg from the OT.

They described The Mandalorian as being when you have to play with the left over action figures after your brother stole most of them. Sequels are like playing with only Chinese knock off action figures lol.



Now let's talk about some lore. I notice they mention a bunch of new names and locations but it all feels like throwaway stuff. Nothing is memorable. Also I don't think the Jedi were handled correctly. Rey thinking Luke Skywalker is a myth feels weird. I think you either don't know him, or know him as a war hero. People probably didn't know about his Jedi stuff. And her knowing about the Falcon and Han and 14 parsecs is all just meta stupid stuff...

It's really sad that the Jedi have been wiped out again. Why? Did they forget episode 6 was called "Return of the Jedi". How much cooler would it have been to see Luke's new Order the way it was in Legends?


Aside from no world building, there's also no in-universe politics. Oh that's right politics bad right? Well without politics, nothing makes sense and nothing is explained. We don't know what the New Republic is and it's destroyed before we can. Were we supposed to feel something when those planets blew up? Why am I supposed to give a shit when nothing was shown to establish a connection?

Things I liked

Not a lot honestly... But there were probably more likeable things in this one than the other two. First of all I think all the new actors were really good, it's just a shame the writing was so bad. Watching John Boyega was really enjoyable tbh. His performance felt like something new and fresh. Sadly they do him dirty in the next two. But he was most interesting to me in this one and felt like the main character more than Rey actually. And the part where he grabs the saber and fights Kylo was honestly kind of epic I can't lie

Some other visuals were pretty decent I guess I don't give the visuals of the sequels enough credit due to my bias. However I don't think they're anything mind blowing or groundbreaking, kind of on par with what I'd expect from movies these days. But still decent.

You basically said what I'd probably say on the matter really I agree though, Disney completely mucked up the estimations of how hated the prequels currently were. The complete back to basics formula just doesn't naturally fit and the meta nonsense gets more and more obnoxious the more times I see it. Plus, the entire conflict is just pathetic with how staged and forced it feels. Everything in it is just two steps back from where ROTJ left off and I cannot stress how nauseatingly insufferable it is to watch that kind of regression. I wanted a New Republic, I wanted Luke's new Order, I wanted new and old worlds, aliens and new, creative ships, but instead we just got an utterly soulless, creatively bankrupt reboot that tries dressing itself up as a sequel.

Can we please just live in the parallel universe where George got to make his ST? Please?