That was quite ridiculous, they could have shown excellent pilot skills without the derp.

While I haven't looked at the backstory any, I am going to trust that what you are saying is correct. It points to yet another 2 pieces of lazy story telling.

1. If you are telling a story and there is some backstory that needs to be known, you cannot rely on the audience to go get that information anywhere else. The last we saw, the Empire was smashed and the alliance had a large fleet. This information before was handled in the opening text...not my favorite way but effective.

2. Now we have to make the 1st order a significant threat and overly powerful. How do we do that? Well we give them yet another Super Weapon and we wave our hand and the Republic fleet is gone. So is the republic now done to 6 remaining Xwings?

I understand what I have seen some say, 'Abrams didn't want to take chances', 'Tough to satisfy the old guard' and all that but I was hoping for more. I tried to go in there with low expectations and it still failed to deliver. It just felt like a rehash...not a rebirth.

S

I think it likely (because this usually happens in films) that this information was in earlier drafts of the script but was lost by the time the final edit came around.
People love to point out holes and continuity errors in films, but I recall more than one director mentioning that they are already aware of them before the film is released. However, cuts for time, pacing, and sometimes content excise moments that would explain why there's a sudden wardrobe change, a puzzling weapon appearance/disappearance, etc.

SW7 is already one of the longest SW films ever made, and frankly for pacing they need to stick to 130mins max. These aren't LOTR films, you can't take that much time. Exposition is the first thing to go in a film like Star Wars. Now I grant some things should then be reintroduced in another fashion if the talky scene that lays it out gets cut, either in script or editing, but sometimes they don't have time to do so, especially if the scene was cut late.

One thing that I noted (but oddly heard few people mention when discussing the film) was that in the final battle between Anakin and Obi-Wan, you see them fighting saber to saber, then it cuts to another scene, then comes back and...Anakin has no saber? He's instead choking Obi-Wan lying on his back on a table. The book explains at a critical point he uses the Force to make Anakin's robotic hand drop his saber, a trick he knows he can only use once, but to great effect. That part was probably filmed but left out because it wouldn't have been clear to the audience that Obi Wan telekinetically opened Anakin's hand and made it drop, so they just omitted it to prevent confusion.

JJ has said the SW7 bluray will have deleted scenes, but there will not be an extended edition. That seems more a Cameron or Jackson thing to do.



The Jedi Master

Yeah a lot of that makes since. I will be curious to see the cut scenes.

The pacing on this movie was definitely crazy. They might have been better served pairing it down a little bit more, basically they tried to tell to much story in those 2 hours and as a result, none of it had any meat. It was scene...run around, new scene...run around.

When it comes down to it nothing past the first scene where kylo froze the blaster bolt had any lasting impact on me. The first scene was something new...never seen that before and implied significant power. Kylo never reached that kind of presence again in the entire movie and I think that is where the movie suffered because of it. I get what they were trying to do, show the conflict within...but he just seemed weak of mind and prowess.

Ok, that's not entirely true. The scene where the rebel fighters came screaming across the lake was visually and emotionally stunning. Now I am team empire AND I had seen some of that in previews but it was still very powerful.

S

Yes, I agree it seemed like that other than his attempt to purge himself of his light side at the climax of the film, his most impressive acts are in the opening. Instead of building him up he seems to be built down.
"Look at this badass!"
"Ok, he has some flaws."
"Well, a lot of flaws."
"At least he killed his dad, so that's bad, right?"

My hope is the later films will smooth this out and it will be a hiccup in his development and not a pattern.




The Jedi Master

Ha, that is a great synopsis. I have the same hope and I want a LOT more Fazma (sp?).

S

You mean Captain Phasma? It will be interesting to see how she managed to get off the planet before it blew up.

Yes that's her. I love her character in GOT and I was hoping she would be a bad A%% in this movie...unfortunately...no. Seems like a lot of advertising and effort put into a nothing part. I assume there are future plans for here but maybe not.

S

Both she and Max von Sydow will be in Episode VIII.

She was a shiny stormtrooper with about 2 lines and 15 seconds of screen time

Uhm...in a "5 Minutes before the First Order arrives on Jakku" flashback?

Both MvS and Harrison Ford are at an age where flashback scenes can't be too far in the past, because no amount of makeup (or plastic surgery) can make them look significantly younger.

--> Spoiler below <--

So, this is what will happen: on his way down that gorge, Han gets sucked into a ventilation shaft (remember, Empire-constructed VS suck air in (see 1st Death Star)). Noticing he's only got a slight flesh wound (cautarized), he makes his way down some corridor, at the end of which he frees Captain Phasma from the garbage compactor (they join forces to kill the Dianoga living there); together, they free Max von Sydow's character, who previously also hadn't been killed by Kylo Ren (knowing his temper tantrums, Supreme Leader Snoke gave Kylo a Lightsaber replica with the killing power of a MagLite; everyone he "kills" just pretends to die). As they journey back to the Resistance base in an escape pod, Brienne Phasma begins to fall in love with Jaime Han.

Oscar for best screenplay, please!

LOL!! Disney should hire you to write Episode VIII.

Star Wars is not in the Milky Way though

But yeah, the entire movie felt like it was set in a small closet.

The movie looks and sounds amazing, and it did manage to place its humour mostly in good places and without overdoing it.
Aside from that, saying it has shortcomings is a gross understatement
Without retconing it to pieces there is nothing that can ever make this mess anything but a shallow and brainless movie without any sense or reason.
But personally, the thing that bothers me most is the awful cut-n-paste job. This should be better called a remake of IV, anything else is a joke.

Agreed. They should have gone with an original story that simply used characters from the previous films. Then again, the film has made over 1.5 billion at the box office already so what do I know?

This reminds me of a robot chicken episode where everyone just pretends to die when Vader force chokes them. They get carried out, a fake mustache and a new identity and return to work. Classic.

S

They covered it on orientation day.

It was no mystery. It's in the novel, but cut from the film. Likely to be a deleted scene on the DVD if it was filmed before being cut.

Short version--Hux tells Snoke what's going on (Cap'n she's gonna blow!!), Snoke tells Hux to grab his apprentice and split, Hux takes shuttle and picks up Kylo literally seconds after Rey and company blast off in the Falcon. Phasma is already aboard (they didn't bother to detail her escape from the trash compactor, but my guess is a trooper captain like her would only be in there briefly).




The Jedi Master

It's a mystery for people who have not read the novel and who will not bother watching the deleted scenes on the DVD release. So I'd say that covers probably about 90% of the people who saw the film.

Yes, but the point is the explanation is banal. Watching it would've added another couple of minutes to the runtime just to say "they escaped". I suppose they could've inserted a brief shot of all of them on a shuttle flying away or something, but I don't think it would've added anything to the film. Besides, SW has a long history of ending films in such a way that it seems like the good guys won, game over, when in reality they still had an uphill battle to fight. Now in Ep8 they can have a reveal at the beginning of the film that all these villains survived.

Editing made it seem like the planet collapsed faster than it did, but actually there was plenty of time for people to escape. Not like it wasn't evident to everyone the planet was in trouble.

Now if Tarkin had survived the DS explosion, THAT would have been weird because he appeared to be there seconds before it blew up.



The Jedi Master

Shame he didn't think to organise a CAP for the ground attack