What did people ever see in this movie? - Star Wars: Episode VII - The Force Awakens (2015) Discussion

[–] [deleted] 5 years ago

I never liked it from the moment I saw it. It felt "manufactured" rather than "hand-crafted", and it showed that originality had left the series.

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[–] MovieChatUser497 (18943) 5 years ago

Me too, the first time I saw it I thought it was a bland and unoriginal rehash. then I see people like Chris stuckmann completely blow their load over it then watchmojo ranks it as the number one “film that revived its respective franchise” and from my perspective it was so much worse than the prequels so there is something I’m apparently not getting here.

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[–] arflexit (2376) 5 years ago

I am there with you; I was shocked by all the back lash that TLJ got; I was like thinking after TFA what the hell did you think was going to happen.

I mean at best TFA is a by the numbers rehash (borderline carbon copy) that has no respect for the original lore and is merrily a nostalgic dependent marketing gimmick designed to apply to the lowest common denominator and be a safe non-challenging 'love letter' that had no overall plan for the trilogy (or even an idea of where to go from the executive level). And that is at best what it was. At worse it was a garbage film, with bland nonsensical characters, poor acting, mediocre visuals, nauseating pacing, insulting to the original characters, an incomplete setting (first order origins, situation with the republic, no answer for what happened in the 30 years between films), and a plot that not only made no sense but was riddled with plot conveniences to propel the story forward and other bad writing devices (such as deus ex machina and macguffin devices).

I mean my god what a mess of a film to launch the trilogy.

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[–] MovieChatUser497 (18943) 5 years ago

You need to go back and watch stuckmanns reviews of TFA, it is embarrassing how much he fanboyed over it. Example: “in my last review I said there were only two SW films I loved well now it’s three”.

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[–] Threadkiller (3089) 5 years ago

%100 percent agree. I was among the minority who immediately saw TFA for the garbage it was and therefore was not at all shocked or despondent by TLJ as I had already detached myself from this Di$ney trilogy as a lost cause. Frankly I think TFA was worse(most of what's wrong with TLJ can be traced back to it) and is the root cause of the failing of the entire trilogy. I still firmly maintain that if you were one of the nostalgia blind fools who sung the praises of TFA, overlooking its multitude of glaring fundamental flaws, then you deserved every bit of TLJ and worse.

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[–] arflexit (2376) 5 years ago

Yeah me too. It was tough back in those days. Only about 10% or so were calling TFA out for what it was. The other 90% would come at us hard.

I was also detached from TLJ by the time I saw it I thought it was bad and didn’t do anything to help the situation but it still was not shocking how it turned out. Anyone in that 10% could see what was coming. But I agree TFA is the worse of the films. My interpretation of why Rian Johnson went against expectations was due to frustration that neither JJ or Kennedy had an actual plan but left him to clean up the mess in room. Rian took that and just started throwing everything out including items that were cared about. Who is more to blame in that situation though the ones that caused the mess or the one that did a full clean house of everything.

I would say I felt validated that TLJ was bashed as bad as it was but now with ROTS JJ has gone and brought all the mess back from the dumpster and people seem to be welcoming it. Which means people for the most part still view TFA favorably and put a majority of the blame on Rian and TLJ

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[–] AmeriGirl26 (15124) 5 years ago

I think it was because people were trying to see this movie as something it wasn't, and later viewings did not reinforce that view at all. It didn't take long for people to realize this movie (and its sequels) were not as cool as they originally thought, and soon saw them for what they were: multi-million-dollar, crappy fanfictions.

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[–] MovieChatUser497 (18943) 5 years ago

Totally agree with your assessment. I said on another thread that back in 2015 people wanted to like this movie and they weren't evaluating it objectively. I never saw anything good in it.

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[–] arflexit (2376) 5 years ago

I think that it took TLJ and then the completion of the trilogy before even a large minority started to see TFA for what it was. From appearances TFA is still well regarded and a majority of the 'fans' push blame on Rian Johnson and TLJ.

Most average people still say TFA was flawed but mostly enjoyable; this means they are still not seeing the damage TFA did to the lore, mythos, and world building\continuity; but instead saying things like "JJ set up a great potential story and Rian ruined it by not moving forward on any of the mystery boxes".

This drives me crazy a bit too because I will go and try to point out how the story never stood a chance and those mystery boxes were so open ended they could never be answered in any way that would fit in with the previous story nor serve as proper world building for what she come next. In response I see the worse forms of sophistry imaginable to try to deflect or deny the criticisms.

of Course TLJ arguably didn't even bother with trying to fix anything, which is sort of like a person trying to walk on a broken leg it does even more damage.

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[–] johnmarti59 (2356) 5 years ago

We all see movies differently; so give boggled brain a rest. What I saw in the movie was a story and Daisy Ridley and John Boyegatwo were really good. I enjoyed the movie so much that I ate two big buckets of popcorn.

There was one line (maybe a grunt) in the movie that was worth the price of the ticket.
It was Boyegatwo and Chewy.

This is not meant to be mean.

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[–] MovieChatUser497 (18943) 5 years ago

You thought Daisy Ridley and John Boyega were good? Wow that's a new one.

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[–] [deleted] 5 years ago

Why are you calling him Boyegatwo?

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[–] furiousstyles (4392) 5 years ago

I really enjoyed it, after the prequels, we needed a atar wars movie that felt like the OT, this did the job , retro movie but with its own story

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[–] MovieChatUser497 (18943) 5 years ago

I thought the Force Awakens was much much worse than both the OT and the prequels. To me the prequels felt like SW, the Disney films don't. The thing that probably bugs me the most is the constant nostalgia bait (example: the theme music kicking in once we realize that the "junk" is the Millennium Falcon and BTW that entire chase sequence was garbage).

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[–] furiousstyles (4392) 5 years ago

Well i love the nostalgia stuff , and the chase scene was great , just as good as any falcon chase scene

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[–] MovieChatUser497 (18943) 5 years ago

For me I’d rather the movie stood on its own rather than having to constantly reference other better movies

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[–] furiousstyles (4392) 5 years ago

Considering its a sequel trilogy its hard not to , its set 30 years after ROTJ

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[–] MovieChatUser497 (18943) 5 years ago

So then you admit TFA couldn’t stand on its own?

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[–] Grimace788 (269) 5 years ago

Agreed- I really wanted to like this movie. The prequels were a complete letdown but it seemed like Disney and JJ were going to be bringing it back into the right direction. I read interviews at the time where JJ was saying that he wasn't really concerned with the prequels and wanted to make the new movies more like the originals. That sounded awesome at the time. Then I saw TFA and realized he didn't want to make it like the original, he wanted to make it exactly the same as the original. Extremely disappointing.

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[–] Indiscipline (778) 5 years ago

I got caught up in the hype of the OT characters coming back, I wanted to like it and I felt like I did back then. Halfway through TLJ I knew everything they set up was ruined. TLJ made me see the truth about The Force Awakens and now I can't enjoy it at all.

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[–] MovieChatUser497 (18943) 5 years ago

What's quite interesting is even people like Chris Stuckmann who fan boyed in his pants over TFA and TLJ now even see that this entire franchise was completely directionless.

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[–] AP (5295) 5 years ago

I had a very empty feeling after seeing it and I was surprised so many people liked it. I actually appreciate TLJ a bit more if only because they tried to do something new with it. Make no mistake, that movie was terrible but at least there was effort to do something other than "Fuck it, let's remake ANH". I even tried to rewatch TLJ on Netflix out of boredom but I never made that attempt with this movie.

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