Star Wars : The Force Awakens (contains spoilers)

[SpontaneousOrder]

Rey, who is an obvious Mary Sue

Not even a Rocky-style montage to skip past the years of training and brushes with death that Luke went through to get handy with the force?

Not seen it yet but I think that will irritate me. A 120 pound girl beating the crap out of trained soldiers, flying like a TopGun ace, and fixing up the Falcon better than Han with his decades of personal experience with it - all without any effort expended to achieve such prowess just kind of cheapens the whole thing.

People are always harping on about strong female leads, and this kind of thing undermines it all. Luke started out a big wet lettuce, and slog & hardship made him a bit of a quiet & wise ninja who could defeat the evil Empire. Without that, isn't it all laser beams & fist fights just for the sake of laser beams & fist fights?

[Dallas]

They are currently casting in london for the next one - any takers

[greenlake]

They are currently casting in london for the next one - any takers

[unixman]

Kylo Ren was good, especially his creepy voice. When he took the mask off though, he struck me as too young to be properly evil. And wearing the mask for no reason anyway - what is that all about.

The first thing Rey does in the film is beat 3 men at fighting, all at once, something even Tyson Fury would be pushed to accomplish. She then defeats Fin at unarmed combat. Apart from being a powerfully built young man, Fin is a trained, front line infantry soldier. Of all the fantasies presented in the film, this was the least believable. Distracting nonsense injected for political reasons.

Also Rey is a better at flying the Millennium Falcon that Han, despite the fact that Han has his own MF, has been flying it for 35 years and used it to blowup 2 death stars. After zero experience, she is a better electronics engineer than Chewbacca, a better swordman than Kylo, has greater Jedi powers than Yoda, is a crack shot with a blaster, an expert climber, multilingual, can talk to robots, is a visionary, ...and so on. With this sort of unchallenged supreme character, it becomes difficult to construct a meaningful plot due to lack of danger and challenge. I know it is meant to inspire little girls in the audience, which is nice, but isn't it setting rather an unrealistically high standard for them too?

[Zero Liability]

The fact that the stormtrooper acted like a human being who had been raised in a functional family and undergone regular peer-peer socialisation (rather than master/slave), also stretched belief. You'd expect some serious emotional scarring and deficiencies, given what is known of them, probably close to what Kylo Ren was like, albeit in his case that was due to serving the Dark Side, where that is kind of the aim.

Rey was terrible, but the villain made up for her boring ice queen routine. However, I don't think it was implied that she was better than Kylo Ren. After all, he was pretty severely injured, and for some reason stopped drawing on his force chokes etc. when battling her. It was one of those scenes where she just had to "tap into" the memories she experienced when touching the lightsaber to become a master of it.

[Dallas]

Kylo Ren was good, especially his creepy voice. When he took the mask off though, he struck me as too young to be properly evil. And wearing the mask for no reason anyway - what is that all about.

The first thing Rey does in the film is beat 3 men at fighting, all at once, something even Tyson Fury would be pushed to accomplish. She then defeats Fin at unarmed combat. Apart from being a powerfully built young man, Fin is a trained, front line infantry soldier. Of all the fantasies presented in the film, this was the least believable. Distracting nonsense injected for political reasons.

Also Rey is a better at flying the Millennium Falcon that Han, despite the fact that Han has his own MF, has been flying it for 35 years and used it to blowup 2 death stars. After zero experience, she is a better electronics engineer than Chewbacca, a better swordman than Kylo, has greater Jedi powers than Yoda, is a crack shot with a blaster, an expert climber, multilingual, can talk to robots, is a visionary, ...and so on. With this sort of unchallenged supreme character, it becomes difficult to construct a meaningful plot due to lack of danger and challenge. I know it is meant to inspire little girls in the audience, which is nice, but isn't it setting rather an unrealistically high standard for them too?

Haven't you read the spiel online - the force is strong with her, hence they had lukes light sabre calling her name, that's why Han is on payroll for the next one

[EternalOptimist]

I was completely unimpressed by the storm troopers infantry assault tactics. It looked more like a teenagers afternoon out at laser quest, than a deadly mission to exterminate a village.
Where was the covering fire and the overwatch and the small unit move and fire coordination ?
I for one would never consider serving in such a rag tag bunch

and where was the ribald pee taking when fin refused to use his personal weapon ? where was the bath of cold water and the space-VIM and the stiff bristled broom ? These so called imperial storm troopers have a lot to learn if they want to be a modern army

[SpontaneousOrder]

I know it is meant to inspire little girls in the audience, which is nice, but isn't it setting rather an unrealistically high standard for them too?

That's the problem I have with it. I have a new niece, and I don't want her growing up to think that she can do anything she likes - I want her to grow up thinking that if she puts in the graft, like Luke Skywalker, she can do anything she likes.

I fear the former is the very kind of thing that leads to so many girls now, for example, believing that 'real women' are fat, and that being fat is something to be proud of. Instead of young boys who grew up with Van Damme thinking that if they put the effort in they can be trim and take care of themselves, and feel proud of that.


Still looking forwards to the film though. I heard the score is good.

[SpontaneousOrder]

I was completely unimpressed by the storm troopers infantry assault tactics. It looked more like a teenagers afternoon out at laser quest, than a deadly mission to exterminate a village.
Where was the covering fire and the overwatch and the small unit move and fire coordination ?
I for one would never consider serving in such a rag tag bunch

and where was the ribald pee taking when fin refused to use his personal weapon ? where was the bath of cold water and the space-VIM and the stiff bristled broom ? These so called imperial storm troopers have a lot to learn if they want to be a modern army

Those white suits are a LOT of surface to polish

[EternalOptimist]

Those white suits are a LOT of surface to polish

exactly

where was the space-sergeant-major poking the trooper with his pace-stick shouting 'TROOPER, there's some cosmic sh!te on the end of this stick'