I think it’s the opposite: If he really structured the movies this way (and I think it’s possible, although some of the comparisons are a stretch), that just means he focused so much on the structure that he ignored the characters and their motivations.
It’s cool that the podrace in Phantom Menace starts at the same point in the movie that the speeder bike chase started in Jedi, but it’s lame if he has to set up a convoluted series of events just to center the storyline around watching a podrace.
Edit: For what it’s worth, I like some of the ideas about the Ring Theory, like how Empire starts in blue caves (Hoth) and progresses up to red clouds (Bespin), while Attack of the Clones starts with blue clouds (Coruscant) and progresses down to red caves (Geonosis). But the romance in Empire is parsecs ahead of the forced stalker-romance in Clones.
Some things were nice to have mirrored with a twist. Rey and Ren in particular were nice variations on character types from ANH. The Starkiller base, however, is dumb. On balance most range in the innocuous realm.
I enjoyed the Rey/Ren thing, too. But I would, like you, characterize those as “character types”, rather than duplicated plot elements. The added mirroring/decoy aspect of it was also a good thing.
The more closely something slavishly (and discretely) matched something from ANH, the more annoying I found it to be.
On the question of Rey’s parentage:
“We’re going to make sure that answer is deeply and profoundly satisfying. Rey is a character that is important in this universe, not just in the context of The Force Awakens, but in the entire galaxy. She deserves it. What’s interesting is I’m not creating a host of new characters. I have a lot of characters that people really love that we’re going to make sure are all honored. No one’s going to be left behind.”
I’m not sure that I agree with the idea that movie characters “deserve” things or should be “honored”. I just want a good story. I think someone upthread said that some of these people grew up as Star Wars fans, so everything from here on out is fanfic. There’s something to that if this is what they’re thinking.
I was convinced going in that for once they’d fail to blow up the ersatz death star.
I’ve tried to think of a third act threat that offers the same benefits of proximity, cause I love the forest duel that the Starkiller’s atmosphere allows, and the way the light blinks out on Han & Kylo on the bridge, but it’s tricky.
One idea was the First Order engineering a super-weapon without the usual weaknesses, basically a giant planet with new-fangled shields and hyperdrive capabilities, call it the WORLD CRUSHER or some such and when they gather for their Nazi rally they blink into space over the Republic capitol and the assembled army looks up and because of these shields they can witness firsthand as they physically ram and destroy the planet, no laser beams, just a giant fascistic fist in space (“If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face - forever”) and when the Resistance is trying to figure out how to take it out they realize you’d basically need a Death Star and Han’s all “any chance they left a third one sitting around?” ha ha of course not because that’d be ridiculous, but hey instead of Finn having been stationed in sanitation (that rhymes) he was actually in navigation and he’s like “if you can get me in there, I can fool their systems into thinking they’re coming here, for you all, but instead they come out of hyperspace on an irreversible collision course with a sun” (“you can write this shit, Slumberland, but you sure as hell can’t say it”) and so they do and everything plays out the same but instead of a duel in the snowy dark at the end they’re approaching this blistering sun and it’s all hot and sweaty and Hux orders their stationed fleet to abandon ship to so speak and when they do Poe “the nicest guy in the galaxy” and his crew blink in from hyperspace and take this opportunity to thin the First Order’s fleet in a fun space battle the bad guys weren’t ready for and so on and so forth. Having the final duel be under a baking and fast approaching sun means maybe you want Rey’s starting planet to be something else like the watery junkyard from some of the early concept art (that way you also avoid the Tatooine parallel that’s irksome) but I don’t know and here I am writing fanfic in public and I’m ashamed-
Why not a no confidence vote? I mean that’s a goal right? You can fight on a bridge OVER THE SENATE!
My mom actually explicitly called out the callbacks as something that made it all feel familiar and enhanced her experience.
Also, there’s tons of new stuff - a conflicted dark side apprentice, freezing blaster bolts in mid-air, mental probing, freezing people with the force, jumping to lightspeed on take-off, bypassing shields at lightspeed, an enchanted lightsaber, the scavengers feeding on the remnants of OT ships (metaphor!), a storm trooper with a personality (actually 3 of them, if you count Phasma and “TR-8R”), and, uh… Rathtars I guess. It adds to the mythos in powerful and interesting ways, and also in Rathtars.
I’m not sure honored means that the story is aware of that in this context… The very act of creating Force Awakens was, from the production side, full of honoring the Star Wars legacy. He probably means that, creatively speaking, they’re trying really hard not to fuck it up.
I took it to mean that because he’s got the last movie of a trilogy, he’s going to be working primarily with characters that are well-established, and that fans will expect are the center of the story. So he isn’t introducing new villains and protagonists.
I don’t think it’s at all clear that we won’t find out Rey’s parentage before then, those his comment about deeply satisfying does make wonder how that could be true if it was Han/Leia or Luke/mystery lady. Though I suppose it would depend on the identity of the mystery lady.
Chewbacca/Maz. He’s tall and hairy, she’s short and hairless, Rey is right in the middle and has some hair (brown, like her daddy). It’s already set up in the first movie (“Where’s my boyfriend? I like that Wookiee.”), and it makes the Rey/Chewie and Rey/Maz scenes that much more poignant. Plus, “Maz Kanata” means “Lost Mother” in German.
I’m calling it right now: Chewie/Maz. Tell your grandchildren you heard it here first.
In Wookie, Maz Katana means “Mexican Cantina” Which is where she and her Hairy lover had their moment. She legally had her name changed to remind her of that magical night! So is Rey the illegitimate child of Chewie and Maz? Yes, its true… all of it.
I’d like Snoke to be her father. We learned nothing about him in the first movie, having him being her father could make me care instead of having him be some random fugly dude. They set up Rey’s daddy fixation in the first movie so now they can cash it in and have her go darkside. Join me, and together we can rule the galaxy as father and daughter! (it’s like poetry, it rhymes). Also due to her prowess with a pole-staff, she wields a double-bladed lightsaber similar to Darth Maul.
I didn’t toss in the towel at that point, I didn’t even toss in the towel after sort of semi-enjoying it as the highly-polished but fairly brainless roller-coaster ride it is. As can be seen from some of my earliest comments here (as if anyone would bother :) ), I was even at one point trying to see if I could salvage some emotional connection to the whole thing.
What I’m saying is that my heart literally sank when I saw Poe putting the info into BB8 - that, combined with the poster showing a Death Star copy, gave me a bad feeling.
But - cognitive dissonance. Hard to credit that the movie’s a turd, just like tPM, though for different reasons. Hard to believe that Star Wars has been fucked again. How the hell could that happen? So one tries to salvage it in one’s mind. High degree of polish, extraordinary visual realism, kinetic excitement, yadda yadda. But we all know none of those things amount to a good movie.
What I’m also saying is that I reckon there’s a lot of cognitive dissonance going on here, just as there was with me at first, and I’m also saying that I predict most of you likers’ views will change more to my side in a few weeks or months. (Although Andy probably won’t change his mind :) )
(And I’ve never actually defended midichlorians in any strong sense, what I’ve said is that the animus against them is ridiculously exaggerated, as an artifact of their appearing at the culmination of a long string of things going “too far.”)
It’s unfucked. It’s the unfuckedest. There’s no fuckage on display here. I’ve seen it twice and the second time was more emotional than the first, even though I anticipated the shortcuts and OT cribbing to bother me once the scales of first-viewing had fallen from my eyes. Again, I place it third best in the series but it’s got two moments that I find more stirring than anything that precedes them.
Right, because I’m not a complete cynic who has to trash something because other people like it.
Sorry, but you’re in the minority here. From what I’ve read, most people enjoyed the movie. And no, it’s not “cognitive dissonance” or anything like that. I’m sorry you didn’t enjoy the movie, but that doesn’t mean everyone else is crazy. We’re not going to come around to your viewpoint someday.
