Vince wrote:I'm not going to go through each bullet point GF and counter everything you've written. I'll say this much- Luke didn't get enough training during Empire, hence him getting his ass whipped against Darth Vader and losing a hand because of it. Yet he still had training of some kind. What you fail to grasp is that we all presume Rey was a youngling and has had some training cause everything she does seems improbable. Yet that should've been told to us. We aren't fucking watching a tv show like Lost where we need to wait week by week until they reveal all. This is a motion picture. It needs to stand on its own. This film doesn't.
Training of SOME kind. A weeks worth. Yeah.. that's pretty piss poor when you really get into the nitty gritty of it. Also.. did Yoda give Luke the Jedi handbook as he left during ESB so therefore between then and RotJ he had time to study? Or did Obi-Wan give him training in spirit form? I mean if there were no Jedi left.. how was he learning? It would be considered a plot hole but I can actually fill in the blanks to make it work.. just like I can fill in the blanks to make this movie work too.
You want this movie to stand on it's own and yet I actually believe this does. You want answers spoonfed to you yet you aren't patient enough to consider that all will be revealed in time. It's like wanting a murder mystery novel to tell you who the killer is so that as the story unfolds you can know everything as it happens.
Rey's origins are meant to be a mystery. Just like at the end of ESB when Yoda says there is another.. we are all meant to then speculate as to who it is. To keep us interested yet it seems it's pissed you off more than anything
Vince wrote:In terms of character development, if you think Rey is well developed then I'd like to hear how. She goes from being kick ass at the beginning to being kick ass at the end. She learns nothing about herself (cause if she did then we'd know so there'd be no speculation on her super powers) and the only remotely interesting thing that goes nowhere is her missing parents.
Rey went from being an isolated, very independent scavenger who held onto the idea that her family were coming back for her. She was reluctant at first to even help BB8 (note how she went to grab all the portions and then her decision to do the right thing overrode her own need to survive comfortably)... When she realised that the Force, Han Solo, Luke Skywalker aren't myths.. her attitude in my eyes seemed to change again. When they made it to Maz's planet.. she still turned down the job because she wanted to go back to Jakku because she was so desperate to be there in case her family showed up.
The moment with the lightsaber freaked her out and she wanted no part of it.. she ran. Yeah.. she was pretty good with a blaster.. but then again point and shoot coupled with having latent abilities for accuracy as a jedi.. I'm okay with this.. she got completely OWNED by Kylo Ren though. She wasn't kick arse in this scene at all which screws up your belief she was kick arse all the way through. If you actually watch the movie.. pretty much every time she is confronted with a new situation (flying the falcon, using the gun Han gave her, doing the persuasion trick) she doesn't actually get it right first go.. she quickly adapts though which is effectively how a Jedi works.
As for her learning about herself? She learned that she has a connection to the force. She accepted that he parents aren't coming back (which when you think about it would be a fairly upsetting realisation). She is force sensitive but she doesn't really know much more than what she heard from Maz and Han and her flashback thing with the light saber. She's accepted that she has to move on in order to find home and part of that path is going and seeing Luke as per the map.
As for not learning more about herself/powers? Tell me.. if I told you that you were adopted.. would that instantly unravel the mystery of your origins? No. It wouldn't. Give them time to tell a story and stop being so Veruca Salt about it all.
Vince wrote:Finn is a total doofus in this. Can't really do anything at all that well. Over reacts to everything he does. Starts off not wanting to be a storm trooper seeing his friends die then kills his friends to escape! He has no arc whatsoever and is a very one dimensional character. And it's sad cause they're played so well by both actors and I really want to love them. I can't wait to see how they develop in later films but it shouldn't be like that. This should be the film we see them develop instead of just being cardboard cutouts and over powered human beings.
If you were to compare Han Solo's arc in A New Hope to Finns.. you'd see that there isn't much depth to Solo. He's a scoundrel who consistently shows he wants money and that's it. He has a change of heart at the last minute. That's pretty much Han Solo in a nutshell from a New Hope.
Finn goes from being a stormtrooper put into battle for the first time and realises he can't do it. He freaks and has a fight or flight moment. He chooses flight and generally speaking I would say that the Jakku village scene really made him turn his back on all his fellow soldiers (in the novel I heard that he was a gifted but somewhat insubordinate loner who only had one friend.. who was the one that died in his arms). He was in flight when he used the Tie Fighter guns. and really... they all looked the same.. plus they were shooting at him first remember?
He spent the first part of the movie running and being afraid and he showed/voiced it. When he saw Rey get taken.. he realised he had something/someone to fight for.. He then choose to stay and rescue her. His response went from flight to fight. From someone who showed how fearful he was of the First Order.. I'd say that is pretty significant. He was human.. he questioned his actions as he did them. He grew in confidence as the movie went. If you compared Finn to the one who was shitting his pants as he crossed the hangar floor with Poe to the one who stood up to Kylo Ren. You can't not see the difference.
If you still feel that Finn had no arc.. well then.. I guess Han Solo didn't have one either.
Vince wrote:Like I said though, you loved the film and all the power to you. I don't hate it but just wish that it wasn't so willing to pander to our love for the OT. It should've been a totally new concept instead of a retread of the originals. Say what you want about the prequels but George Lucas tried new things in them.
He tried new things but he actually ended up doing the very thing he said from the OT he'd never do.. and that is be so reliant on CGI. The script from the Prequels is woeful and that isn't trying new things.. that's just being bad at scriptwriting. He tried stuff and it didn't pay off. Well it did financially but the movies are not considered to be anywhere near as good as the original trilogy and rightly so.
I do not envy JJ Abrams. At all. He was given possibly THE most high risk restart of a movie series. EVER. People were very disappointed with the prequels. People wanted what the original trilogy brought. He did actually do that.. but the question is.. how do you give people what they got 30 odd years ago but make it not that? Granted he could have tried to avoid the whole "plan/map in a droid" start... and a giant world destroying super weapon... I dunno.. it's hard to say what could have been an alternative that was deployable as a motion picture.
Thankfully we only have to wait till May 6 2017...