Galactic Déjà Vu: 25 Themes and Ideas That The Force Awakens Seems to Have Borrowed from the Original Star Wars Trilogy
Although The Force Awakens has had overwhelmingly positive reviews, like any film, it’s not without its critics. One of the main criticisms the film has received is its blatant call backs and shared themes with the films of the original Star Wars trilogy, causing many critics to refer to the film as a “rehash” of the originals. Read on for a breakdown of 25 themes and ideas from the original Star Wars films that seem to have shoehorned their way into the recent sequel.
1. How big is that thing anyway?
The film opens with a massive Star Destroyer over a vast desert world which mimics the opening of A New Hope. Despite the fact that the Resurgent-class Finalizer is roughly twice the size of the Imperial I-class Devastator and that the ship comes in to view at a different angle, the shot is similar in how it introduces the ship and conveys its massive size to the audience. The shot of the troop transports leaving the ship is also reminiscent of the opening shot of the probe droids being launched from the Star Destroyer at the beginning of The Empire Strikes Back.
2. Old guy in a little hut…
The first lines of the film are spoken by an elderly man named Lor San Tekka, who used to be quite the adventurer, but now lives a simple life in a hut on a desert planet. He is also played by a fairly notable actor (Max Von Sydow) much in line with Alec Guinness’ portrayal of Obi-Wan in A New Hope.
3. Stormtroopers Attack!
In a manner similar to the first time the world ever saw these guys in action back in 1977, the new and improved First Order stormtroopers certainly know how to make an entrance as well. Death and mayhem ensue upon their arrival.
4. Enter the dark and imposing main villain…
Kylo Ren shows up in classic Vaderesque fashion after the initial assault, carrying a definite weight of authority and menace. Although younger and more hot-headed than the original dark lord, Kylo Ren does tap in to a lot of those Vader vibes we remember from the original Star Wars films.
5. This guy means business…
Kylo Ren kills old man Tekka after he refuses to divulge requested information. Although he does so in a much more violent fashion, his actions mirror Vader’s disposal of Captain Antilles aboard the Tantive IV in A New Hope.
6. Help me, BB-8, you’re my only hope…
Poe Dameron, like Princess Leia with R2-D2 in A New Hope, places important information in BB-8, an astromech droid, who quickly becomes not only the most lovable, but the most pivotal character in the story.
7. She lied to us! Poe, not so much…
Poe, also like Princess Leia, is captured, interrogated, and tortured for information. However, unlike the force-sensitive princess, Poe cracked under Kylo Ren’s mental invasion.
8. She’s not such a bad pilot herself…
When we are introduced to Rey – the film’s main hero – we find her living out a simple but harsh existence on a backwater desert planet, much like Luke Skywalker before her. She’s also a great mechanic and pilot and displays a strong affinity for the Force.
9. Oh, I know these guys…uh…Jawas…no…Sandpeople! A Teedo? What’s that?
BB-8 is captured by a Teedo, an indigenous desert alien who is kind of like a Jawa crossed with a Tusken Raider that rides on a creature called a Luggabeast, which is pretty much a dewback with a miniature sandcrawler attached to its face.
10. What about that orange one?
As fate would have it, BB-8 and Rey cross paths on the desert world of Jakku, much like Luke and the droids Artoo and Threepio on Tatooine in A New Hope. With the help of some friends they meet along the way, the pair get off of the desert world and set out to find the Resistance base.
11. It’s the ship that made the Kessel Run in less than 14 parsecs…or was it 12?
Like the Empire in A New Hope, the First Order searches the desert planet for the droid, which escapes with our heroes on board the Millennium Falcon, the same ship that rocketed Luke away from his desert home all those years ago. Rey refers to the Falcon as “garbage” mimicking Luke’s “What a piece of junk!” comment in ANH. The TIE fighter chase also touches on the nostalgia of the Death Star escape scene from ANH as well.
12. Where’d they dig up that old fossil?
Han Solo serves as the Obi-Wan of TFA. This time around, he’s the old guy that introduces the young heroes to the truth of the Force (ironically in the same room of the same ship where he once scoffed at the “hokey religion”). The scenes on board the Falcon include many ANH references, such as the training remote and the dejarik (holochess) board.
13. Dianogas on steroids!
Finn gets attacked by a large tentacled creature called a rathtar, which evokes the memory of Luke getting attacked by the dianoga in the detention level garbage masher in A New Hope. When on Starkiller base later in the film, Han Solo mentions throwing Phasma down a garbage chute to dispose of her, once again calling back to this scene from the original film.
14. Frenemies Forever
Although the relationship is very different, and the mutual respect for one another is lacking, Kylo Ren and General Hux – like Vader and Tarkin before them – together represent two aspects of First Order leadership. Although both are efficient and feared leaders within the Order, they could not be more diametrically opposed in their ideals and methods. Ren relies on the mystical as he employs the dark side of the Force, whereas the more practical Hux relies on the strength of the Order’s soldiers, weapons, and technology.
15. Femme Fettale
Phasma is kind of like Boba Fett, and maybe even cooler looking, yet she is somehow so much less important…
16. Ladies and gentlemen! I give you King Snoke! The Eighth Wonder of the World!
Oh, nevermind…it’s just a hologram…
Supreme Leader Snoke’s introduction echos that of Palpatine in ESB as he appears via hologram before his apprentice.
17. Name That Creature!
The cantina scene at Maz’s castle is very reminiscent of the Mos Eisley cantina from ANH. A deleted scene from the film (included in the novelization) has Unkar Plutt, who followed the Falcon to Takodana, getting his arm ripped off by Chewbacca, which would have given us that severed arm in a Cantina cliché and fulfilled Han Solo’s prophetic words about a Wookiee’s temper at the same time.
18. Judge me by my eyes, do you?
Maz Kanata, a diminuative force-strong eccentric alien, cryptically teaches our heroes a little something about the ways of the Force. Hmm…where have we seen that before?
19. Move along…move along…
Rey pulls a Jedi mind trick on an unsuspecting stormtrooper similar to Obi-Wan in ANH. Although the Jedi mind trick has been used in other Star Wars films and is a legitimate force ability, this scene in itself did feel like a call back to that scene with the stormtroopers at the Mos Eisley spaceport.
20. All that sneaking around…
Rey’s attempted escape from Starkiller Base echos Obi-Wan’s solo adventure aboard the Death Star in ANH.
21. Haven’t we been here before?
Many of the locations themselves evoke a lot of that OT nostalgia while putting a new spin on the environments. What if there was a planet that was even further from the bright center of the universe than Tatooine? Apparently, there is. It’s called Jakku. What if Hoth and the Death Star had a love child? They did. It’s called Starkiller Base. What happens when you take Jabba’s palace, give it a more classic medieval castle vibe, move it to a lush green planet that is kind of like an Alderaan/Endor hybrid, fill it with the scoundrels and ne’er-do-wells of the Mos Eisley Cantina, and put a female Yoda in charge? Well, I believe I have just described Takodana. And what is it with rebel bases on forest worlds? First Yavin IV…now D’Qar?
22. Death Star Version 3.0
The attack on Starkiller base is very similar to the attack on the previous Death Stars. After Han Solo’s successful mission to take out the shield (sound familiar?) a hot shot pilot takes out the installation by hitting its only weak point. Apparently, all big superweapons have a major weakness that is fairly accessible and its destruction is enough to take out the entire thing. Han Solo even cracks a joke about this earlier in the film. A couple of pilots get shot down in an abbreviated version of the trench run from the first Death Star assault, and our heroes fly off into the proverbial sunset as the installation is destroyed. They couldn’t have been more on the nose with this one.
23. Here’s to hoping Han Solo somehow becomes more powerful than we can possibly imagine…
The main hero’s mentor dies at the hands of a dark lord who happens to be his son, echoing Obi-Wan’s death at the hands of Vader, who was at one time like a son and then a brother to the old man.
24. Join me! And, together we can rule the galaxy as…cousins? Siblings? Who is that girl anyway?
The lightsaber duel between Rey and Kylo Ren was similar to the ESB duel between Vader and Luke. Although the actual fight and the location were a lot different, you still have a novice force user taking on a well-trained enemy who attempts to convince the young hero to join him as his apprentice. The scene where Rey and Ren are reaching through the Force for the lightsaber in the snow was also very reminiscent of the wampa cave scene in ESB when Luke uses the force to draw the weapon to his hand.
25. That wizard is just a crazy old man…
Luke’s appearance at the end of the film was very similar to Obi-Wan in ANH. Luke is also living in isolation, much like Yoda in ESB. I expect Luke will serve a role similar to that of the little Jedi master in Episode 8 and beyond.
While I agree with the many critics that it certainly did feel like a greatest hits compilation of the original trilogy at times, I actually thought that (most of the time) this approach worked to the film’s advantage. What did you think about these call backs and shared themes? What other ones did you notice? Share your thoughts in the comments below.
Jordan Pate is Co-Lead Editor and Senior Writer for Star Wars News Net, of which he is also a member of the book and comic review team. He loves all things Star Wars, but when he's not spending time in the galaxy far far away, he might be found in our own galaxy hanging out in Gotham City or at 1407 Graymalkin Lane, Salem Center, NY.
I could have done without all the wink-wink stuff. Like the training remote, Han yelling “Twelve!”. Death Star 3. “This ship hasn’t flown in YEARS” Things like that were a little in your face and actually dectracted from the movie.
The thematic similarities and story echos don’t bother me in the slightest though. It’s star wars. Its all oldschool epic. It should be cyclicle to an extent.
Also I’m really bummed that one trope was left out. And that is the cut off arm. How could they leave that out?
The dejarik board was so in-your-face, it bothered me.
If you’re referring to Ren, his arm was not cut off. I watched TFA again last night and his arm is intact. Also, the novel explains things in a way that you know his arm hd not been severed.
Read Cole’s last three sentences again. Or repeatedly if necessary.
He’s talking about Unkar Plutt’s arm in the Cantina scene in Maz’s castle. It was cut from the film,
Is this scene in the novel?
Yes.
Is Naka in the novel?
No. No mention of the Vicar either.
Isn’t “Vicar” the production code name for MvS’s character though (Lor San Tekka)?
How many people reading this have corrected someone on some comments section somewhere in the last two years? “It’s not a reboot or a remake – it’s going to be the next episode”.
Turns out that it was a reboot after all and all those “ignorant” commentators were right.
Enjoyable film that would have been a classic if they didn’t pander to the prequel haters.
to be fair, the prequels were just as pandering, if not more so.
They were completely necessary to bring old Star Wars fans back into the franchise, especially the ones who got burned from the prequels. Everyone had to be reintroduced to STAR WARS and feel safe that we are in the same universe. If they had only done completely new things with the only thing familiar is the characters’ names, then it would feel like the prequels again.
I was fine with most of the references, but I found the superweapon and Jakku to be the most annoying because of how avoidable they were. Especially Jakku being so close to Tatooine. Some little things like the trash-compactor line and the dejarik board were too in-your-face as well.
I have heard this argument MANY times now and I always give this answer. The similarities were completely necessary to bring old Star Wars fans back into the franchise, especially the ones who got burned from the prequels. Everyone had to be reintroduced to STAR WARS and feel safe that we are in the same universe. If they had only done completely new things with the only thing familiar is the characters’ names, then it would feel like the prequels again.
I disagree, there didn’t need to be an almost complete rehash of EP4 , I think it was complete waste. It’s Start Wars they could have done almost anything and it would have been better then EP1/EP2 and people would still been able to follow.
the “reboot” idea was completely unnecessary.
People who know of star wars, most of the world, would have gotten it, people who didn’t…don’t probably care and just want to enjoy the story, drama, action, etc and don’t need the back story.
I enjoyed watching it but did TFA necessarily had to be made to necessarily “bring old SW fans” back? After all, SW films should (keyword: should) be made with attracting a new, younger generation in mind to bring them in to the fandom (just like the PT did when they came out for that relevant generation; similarly with the OT when it was made with the youth of the time in mind), and in original and creative ways.TFA would still make a lot of money as the hardcore fans would go pay to watch it multiple times (just like many did when the PT movies were released; they made much money and many enjoyed them (you can also look at their RT scores & other critic rankings) which propelled GL to make the TCW TV series that ran for 6 seasons).
My point is this: movies are made with youth and young adults in mind nowadays and there’s no need to go against this trend (and that includes Star Wars), Old Gen X-ers need to get this straight: Star Wars isn’t really for you anymore (despite of TFA). You’ve got the OT, be happy with that. Yeah, TFA might harken back to the OT but guess what? Ep. 8 and 9 WILL TAKE RISK IN BEING ORIGINAL AND UNCREATIVE, some that probably won’t appeal to your generation and more so to the younger folks. Get used to this! And if it turns out that they have a similar “OT rehash” feel, the backlash of “copying” will be felt more prominently in the subsequent episodes. And FYI: trends change and what appeals to one age group may not appeal to another age group (this is a fact).
Uuuuh… a snapshot of the ending from a screening, pirate copy of the film. Brave, guys.
For me, The Force Awakens is a purposeful stroke of synchronicity
that shows how even time and space can’t separate the powerful bonds of these
characters. I also liked the theme of how history is starting to repeat itself.
Don’t fool yourself, the writers blatantly played with these
ideas and kept things fresh by having strategic loose ends which the next two
films will have to answer. If done right, The Force Awakens will be a stroke of
genius.
I’m fine with every single one of them, save for the “Death Star III”,
I read somewhere that the original idea for Jakku was a tropical planet where the remains of one of the Death Stars were floating in a swampy sea. This would’ve worked a 100 times better than just disguising Tatooine under another name, IMO.
Also, Starkiller definitely feels like a complete insult to any sensibly intelligent person. And it wasn’t necessary, besides. A preemptive strike to prevent the First Order from launching a regular attack on the New Republic, while trying to rescue Rey to stop her from spilling out the beans to Kylo Ren, would’ve worked much better than Death Star on steroids.
Either this or that the idea for the Resistance’s own superweapon had been used, just to even the odds (for a change) and shake things up a little. The trench run here was almost anti-climatic, especially with it happening at the same time as the lightsaber duel, something that the audience was much more invested in at that point.
I loved TFA but I think Star Killer Base would have had a better effect if a blew up a star rather than a few planets.
Was Majel Barret the nurse for Chewie?
She died.
I guess I did know that as soon as you posted. Just forgot.
I thought the exact same thing! Though, I did remind myself quickly that she had passed a few years back.
Even though I really enjoyed it. the whole thing feels like a big business decision because of the general distain towards the PT, and that is lame.
Or maybe it was a creative decision to avoid being exceedingly average…
THANK YOU for posting this article! I’m glad SWNN isn’t just putting their fingers in their ears over this. This movie borrowed too heavily from the past and J.J. needs to address it. Otherwise he’s no worse than Lucas ignoring criticisms.
he’ll get right on that after he’s done counting the billions of dollars the film is making. 😉
You’re assuming I hate the movie. You are stupid.
Easy there tiger. Think there’s a little satire hidden in this article.
If this movie sucked, I would agree that they just rehashed the OT, but JJ Abrams and Larry Kasdan worked with similar themes to breath new life into a dying franchise. I love the one about how Rey sneaking around Starkiller base was just like old Obi-wan sneaking around the first Death Star. Are they the same character with the same objectives? They are practically twins? I don’t think so. Evidently, anyone sneaking around the bad guys base equals Obi-wan? Really? No one cried about another Death Star in ROTJ!
I don’t agree with those things. I also like TFA. I like the fact this site isn’t just making excuses.
I was 7 when Star Wars came out. Been following the progress of this one, like the prequels, since it was announced. I was glad to know more practical effects would be used. I was perfectly happy with this one. I put it in the top 3. Maybe Empire still 1st and a tie w/ ANH. My problem with the prequels has been the CGI (either overuse or just the use of) and along with the main point I think George was trying to do with the plot over-all, dare I say, resulted in too short of movies. Could have been like LOTRs or 1 or 2 more ‘episodes’. The ‘fall in love crap & get married in a few days’ with ‘I love you like father/brother/whatever see ya later bro to I want to kill you a couple (days?hours?) later’ didn’t work for me. Anyhow, I really like the Force Awakens and the way it was directed and paced, trying to appeal to 2 generations 20,30 years difference in age. Kinda a re-boot, but thank God – not. I’m thinking the next 2 WILL be more ‘original’ for the other folks.
Remember when the emperor claimed the circle is now complete when Luke threw a mere temper tantrum?
annakin’s descent into the dark seemed very well plotted by comparison.
I have zero problem with any and all similarities to the original films. Whether the TFA is considered a homage, a greatest hits, or reboot. The movie’s main strength is its characters, and this to me its the essence of a SW movie. However, I don’t subscribe to the movie being considered a rehash. Having seen the movie 4 times now, and I plan on seeing it at least one more time before its cinematic run ends, I never once felt like I had seen this movie before. Some people have yet to understand there is a limited number of scenarios a movie of this type can take. After all there are only two directions a SW movie can go, either the good guys are on the assault, climaxing in some intergalactic battle (Episode I, II, IV, VI, and VII), or on the back foot against the bad (Episode III and V). These are unfortunately the confines of a SW movie. The anthology movies have a bit more agency to deviate from the scope unlike a saga movie.
Haters be like: “it insists upon itself” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0pnwE_Oy5WI
I could of lived with most of it, and it was an enjoyable film. However it missed the mark for me in borrowing so heavily. I would have looked at the script and made two changes:
1: Maz becomes Lando – now at first you think its another throw back. But what if Lando was killed in that First Order attack? Han then becomes torn between revenge and helping his son find redemption. Lando also gets the lightsaber from old contacts at Bespin, so the whole thing of Rey finding it still basically works.
2: Starkiller base becomes a giant shipyard building Super Star Destroyers rigged to do the same as in the film. The threat becomes greater and one ship escapes to carry the threat into the next film. You also get a full on ground attack by the Resistance so its a reverse of the Hoth battle.
I mentioned the Lando as Maz in another article and it makes total sense when you think about it. Such a missed opportunity.
I like the idea of the First Order being a smaller organization since it is if you read the source books and no way they could ever afford another superweapon like that.
It’s true, all of it!
However, the old ideas are put in the film in such an elegant way that TFA doesn’t seem a simple remake of A new hope.
We were told from the beginning that it would be a lot of the old with a lot of new. Mark Hamill even said “nothing has changed really, well… everything has changed but nothing has changed”. People wanted Star Wars. They got it, if it had been to different than we would have a ton of complaints anyway. I didn’t mind it, I loved it.
The emulation of the original trilogy is absolutely fine for episode 7, but i think they should move away from all the call backs for episode 8
I agree! I was disappointed when I was 10 and saw that the Empire had built another Death Star, but I got over it. I didn’t hear anyone crying over the Death Star in ROTJ. The Force Awakens is a nod to the old school. However, if they continue to feed on existing themes, the next movie will not be nearly as good. They need fresh ideas and I think that we’ll get them. The franchise will not continue to be good without fresh ideas.
This is the big, recurring criticism of The Force Awakens, acknowledged even by those who like the film, and who may not be overly concerned by it. I love the movie – particularly the characters, old and new, their journeys and the dynamics between them. The repeated tropes don’t bother me at all – and in some ways this form of repetition resembles ancient sagas (some of which had a nine-fold pattern) symphonies and poetry. Granted, TFA didn’t need to be quite as derivative of the OT as it was. On the positive side, I think there are certain aspects of repetition that reflect real history and add a certain believability to the saga. As far back as ROTJ, to not have had a second Death Star and to have done something else, would’ve been more original. But what would the Empire have done, if it really existed? They would’ve built a second, bigger, better Death Star. Of course they would. History repeats. Even after failure we repeat the same old patterns, the same old mistakes, the same old wars. So in regard to Starkiller Base, the structure of the First Order and numerous other repeating patterns – I see some of the saga’s recurring plot lines as being one of the more realistic, plausible and convincing aspects of the story, mirroring the way real history unfolds.
They should have had the Starkiller base fully operational running around for years destroying planets. All 3 Death Stars now have been destroyed within days of becoming operational
I don’t see this as a negative.
9. he’s not captured by A teedo, but by a guy named Teedo. Other than that, I don’t want to waste my time but I can find 25 differences coming from these 25 similarities found here.
My question to those who complain about this is: did you like the movie? Yes? Then what’s the problem?
Actually…Teedo serves as the name of the species that has a peculiar sense of individuality, and therefore they are all named Teedo as well as being a Teedo. It’s confusing, I know, but both you and I are correct. 🙂
And yes, I loved the movie, but I wanted to have a little fun addressing the popular criticism.
ooookaay. Have fun. Certainly we’ll rip each others here in the comments section.
I didn’t mean to sound rude, and I apologize if I came across that way. It’s hard to read into someone’s tone via a typed comment. Anyways, my intent was to be informative about the Teedo race. You’ll get no ripping from me. 🙂
I like your list of differences above and I acknowledge that it’s not an exact copy, just that some elements were blatantly used to give us that feel we missed in the PT. I thought it was different enough to not feel like an exact copy.
For instance, none of the characters were direct copies of any one character from the OT. Sometimes Rey reminded us of Luke; at other times Obi-Wan. At different times Poe reminded us of Leia, Han, and even Luke at the end with the attack on Starkiller Base.
Oh, don’t worry, I felt more rude to you actually, sorry 😉
Oh… I was ironic when saying “we’ll rip off each others” and I was meaning to ‘we’ as us-readers of your entry
The similarities make it harder for some to like the movie as much
Please list those differences so they can be used.
1. The first scene doesn’t feature a chase behind a blockade runner, and it doesn’t show the destroyer from the same angle and is just a silhouette of the ship.
2. Lor San Tekka is not a jedi, and lives in a tent-hut presumably he’s from alderaan, while obi-wan is a jedi living in a rock-building from another planet I don’t remember the name of.
3. stormtroopers are not boarding a rebel ship, they’re landing from a transport on a planet and attack a small village with a few armed men.
4. Vader’s entrance looked a little more ridiculous. And took place on a ship.
5. Vader Chokes Antilles, Kylo slains Tekka.
6. … this happens on a planet in a more tense environment than on the ship in ANH.
7. Hard case said it, Kylo actually got the information from Poe. Plus he uses a Force ability to do that, and not a probe.
8. Luke was a farmer, Rey a semi-enslaved scavenger.
9.I’m still not sure Teedo acts as a name for both species and character
10. rey has no protocol droid. Plus on Jakku they meet Finn by chance. Luke met Obi-Wan because R2 was searching him. And Luke didn’t want to leave Tatooine at first.
11. The TIE fighter chase on Jakku takes planet between ruins on a planet, the death star chase in ROTJ takes place inside a superweapon and features much less spectacular maneouvers.
12. making references is not copying. Also, at this point we care about Han a different way than how we cared about Obi-wan in ANH.
13. again, calling back to a scene is just referential. Dianoga was on a death star, Rathars were hunted and captured on some planet by Han.
14. Hux/kylo are 20 years younger than vader/tarkin. Plus Vader and Tarkin respect each other (as various canon media shows), Hux and kylo don’t.
15. Phasma is Female and a first order military officer, Fett is male and a mandalorian bounty hunter.
16. Snoke’s hologram is showing him sitting on a throne, not just his head, is much more detailed and is inside a cave, on a planet-weapon, not on a super star destroyer.
17. Wookiees ripping arms are not jedi cutting arms.
18.Maz is orange and a pirate. Definitely not as wise as Yoda.
19. when rey does that, she’s captured on Starkiller Base. Obi ean does that to avoid capture. Plus pointing this out as a similarity means that even Luke doing it in ROTJ was copying obi from ANH.
20. Obi is trying to turn off the tractor beam, rey is trying to escape.
21. D’qar has more mountains and is not a moon to a gas giant. for all the other things…
If I git it right Jakku is more sandy than Tatooine and is closer to the core, the death star was entirely built, starkiller base wasn’t (also they have different power sources), alderaan was a mountanious planet so you can’t really say that takodana is a mix between endor and alderaan (also because endor had way taller trees), Yoda is very different from Maz, and so on.
22. Han lands ON THE BASE to turn the shields off, The battle isn’t centered on a trench run, starkiller base gets transformed into a star and doesn’t blow up in the end.
23.Obi wan and Anakin always felt about each other as brothers and friends. Plus a figurative idea of feeling as a father can’t be compared to a parentage by bloodline.
24. Literally evry single dark side user craves for apprentices. To Sith following the rule of two e.g. it meant that they could kill their master at that point.
25. Luke is on the planet where the first jedi temple was, wich is different than being exiled on dagobah. It’s more like a pligrimage.
There. Happy?
Yes, I am on your side and was from the start. Plus Rey did NOT get in an X-Wing and blow up the Superweapon. Rey didn’t want to leave the desert planet unlike Luke and young Anakin.
Glad to see others thinking what I do
Good list. A lot of the differences were actually mentioned in the article as well, and I mostly agree with you. But the similarities cannot be denied and to do so would be to turn a blind eye. The fact that we have to also make a list of differences proves that the similarities are there.
In response to #23, I would argue that Obi-Wan practically raised Anakin into adulthood, while Han more than likely missed out on most of that with Ben. Ben was likely trained by Luke from a very young age and spent most of his time with him. I’d say that Obi-Wan and Anakin were probably closer to one another than Han and Ben. Regardless of Leia’s “But you’re his Father” comment, I’d say that the relationship that Luke and Ben developed in the past may prevail where blood ties did not. We will see. 🙂
I get your point, and thanks for liking the list. I actually meant to bring up the differences to sort of balance-out the similiraties
Hey Tito didn’t capture nobody
You mean I waited 3 years to watch a film I’ve seen a hundred times? ^_-
*feels sheepish* (__|__) <(Waa-waaa…)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bxU2eqZtYmc
tho JJ is more like quoting than rhyming
Yeah. If Abrams was a musician, he’d be the best cover artist, bar none. But he’s a cover artist, all the same.
Great analogy. I’ve seen some great cover bands and had many wonderful times at their concerts. J.J. is great at what he does that’s for sure. Originality be darned, I had a blast at the dang concert. 🙂
I didn’t mean it as a compliment, lol. Abrams is great at what he does, true. But he’s the equivalent of a rock star that is all flash, no substance 😉
So he’s kind of like KISS in a way. Lol. I don’t mind them actually, but they are the most overrated band in the history of rock, largely due to their stage presence and presentation, which apparently spoke volumes to the youth of yesteryear.
I grew up on KISS, actually. KISS and SW…that was my life as a kid, lol. Yeah, I think that’s a fair comparison. And like KISS, which had a few great songs, Abrams also has his moments (IMO, TFA’s at its best when it’s not borrowing so much from the OT, for instance).
Love this movie, just like I love Aliens, which did the same thing, yet still holds up as a classic. I read the following list of similarities from a AICN commenter named Simple Jack, and he was right on the money. None of these plot rehashes from Alien make me love Aliens any less…
* People waking up in their underwear from cryosleep.
* A breakfast scene.
* A dropship lands on the same planet.
* The facehuggers are the first encountered.
* There’s a non-xenomorph antagonist who wants to take the alien back to earth.
* Motion-tracking technology where later the humans fail to think in three dimensions and get caught out.
* Both movies have an android and both end up getting torn apart.
* The need to reach minimum safe distance before an explosion.
* Ripley goes back to rescue a small, defenseless member of her team.
* The alien stows aboard.
* Ripley sneaks off to put on a suit.
* The alien is blasted out of an airlock.
* Ends with going back into cryosleep.
Oh man.
This is the perfect rejoinder to these criticisms.
Actually, though, I don’t mind that lots of people don’t like the movie. What I find really insulting is when some of them feel the need to claim that those who do are stupid, immature, blinded by herd mentality, etc. Completely ad hominem…
Similarities do not make a rehash, reboot or remake.
The simple truth is that the plot of both movies were, indeed different.
A NEW HOPE The plans to an an Evil Empire’s planet-destroying armored space station are delivered to a group of rebels in time to mount a successful attack on the station before the station destroys the rebel base.
THE FORCE AWAKENS Resistance fighters race against dark forces to locate a missing Jedi Knight. Both sides seek clues to locate portions of a map that will lead to the secret location of the Jedi’s hiding place.
THANK you. While I will agree to a point regarding Starkiller Base it was still bigger, more powerful and more dangerous, able to wipe out multiple planets with a single shot. That’s not the point of what I’d like to say though. The assault on Starkiller base for me “played second fiddle” to the search for Luke and the confllct between Kylo Ren and Rey. So the plot was different. A piece of it had similarities.
At least Rey didn’t pilot anything to directly blow up Starkiller Base like Luke did.
I’m glad they got their fanboy movie out of the way, just don’t freaking do it again.
If in Episode VIII:
Luke tells Rey he can train because she is too old
Rey Is told she is someone’s daughter, cousin, love child
There is a walker assault
There is a location involving snow, astertroids, swamp, of a city in the clouds
Chased by bounty hunters
One of the 3 protagonists gets captured
Someone gets their hand cut off
Lando shows up
Madalorian armor shows up
a ship constantly breaking down
Rey says she is not afraid, and Luke says you will be
a cave with someone’s darkest fears
Any of these things I’m going to puke, be livid, and then puke some more
Shhhh don’t give Disney any ideas.
you jest, but i would love for at least half of those things to happen, especially the walker assault part. besides, you seem to forget most franchises operate on “formula”, not just SW. so if your looking for ground breaking original story telling your in the wrong place as even the OT was derivative.
At last people are opening their eyes, this movie is so dissapointing
Right. All that repeat business and all those glowing reviews prove how disappointing it is.
reviews can be bought
Please. Spare us the conspiracy BS.
go to sleep , how old are you 10?only a child could love a garbage like this, is the same movie as episode 4 what did you watch???
go away then
Please tell me what missing Jedi knight everyone was looking for in Episode 4? Can you tell me that, please? Because that was the plot of The Force Awakens. Strange, I don’t recall A New Hope being about that at all. A New Hope was about delivering plans to the Death Star to the Rebels, who then mounted an attack on it. It had nothing to do with good guys finding clues to locate a Jedi before the bad guys did. If you are going to parrot that same critique repeated elsewhere, please explain that first.
well, technically leia was looking for obi-wan who had dropped off the grid for 20 years before she was captured. 😉
It actually wasn’t the plot of TFA – the plot was a race to get a droid, carrying some vital secret data, away from the bad guys and to the hidden rebel base before it gets wiped out by a planet-sized super-weapon. That the secret data was a clue to Luke’s location instead of the plans to the super-weapon is irrelevant to the story.
It absolutely was the plot. Read the opening scroll. It’s all about finding Luke. No mention of the Starkiller Weapon at all. The droid’s vital secret data was THE LOCATION OF LUKE. Of course it was vital to the story of FINDING LUKE. Duh!
Judging by your punctuation I would say you’re in that demographic.
LOL and 9/11 was an inside job, right?
Yeah, and the Chancellor is really a sith lord. I mean where do they come up with this stuff?
And 3/4 of the reviews on rotten tomatoes were actually pretty negative and brought up many of the same points here.
You can bet Disney shelled out lot sof $$ to get favorable reviews.
Yeah, and I can sell you the Brooklyn Bridge.. LOL!
You’re right, hope someone can stop the juggernaut before it starts to break some box office records.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qzTZ76vhnKk
The reality is there is only so many ways to tell a story. I figured there would have to be some parallels before the movie came out. I was still very pleased with the result. Keep in mind George Lucas was heavily influenced by Joseph Campbell’s “The Hero with a Thousand Faces”. Just about every movie ever made borrows something from the “mono myth” in essence…
1) There is the reluctant hero
2) When the hero is presented with a challenge he/she will initially decline
3) When faced with overwhelming circumstances he/she accepts their journey
4) The hero is presented with a gift / token / object to represent and assist them on their journey.
5) The hero receives wisdom and guidance from a teacher who is older and wiser.
6) The “enemy” represents the ideological opposite of the hero.
7) The teacher has to die to before the hero can become self relent.
8) The hero defeats the enemy
9) The hero receives his reward and returns to pass that on to others.
Don’t just think Star Wars, but apply them to movies like The Matrix, Mission Impossible, The 10 Commandments, National Lampoon’s Vacation, just about any animated Disney movie from the past 80 years, etc.
I totally get what you’re saying, but why did it have to be a direct parallel of the Death Star for example, along with a Porkin look a like (Know in honesty its been pointed out that their are other large people in the Star Wars universe, but in reality its just another copy). Why not a giant shipyard with the First Order creating WMDs to be transported into a enemy system. Basically I’m saying yes you’re right, but there are things JJ and co could of done to make it fresh.
Greg Grunberg is a long time friend of Abrams, who just so happens to be a big dude. He was not cast as a big dude or another Porkins.
You sure about that? He’s a big dude who so happens to be a Resistance pilot.
Why did he have to be in a role similar to Porkins along with roughly the same facial hair…….he can be called someone else but he’s basically a Porkins.
Every fat person in Star Wars is Porkins? Seriously?? Or maybe its every heavy guy in an X-Wing is Porkins? No way! There can only be ONE fat guy in an X-Wing in all of Star Wars history and that ONE BIG FAT GUY is PORKINS! #Porkinsforever!
Its laughable!
Braveheart, Gladiator, Robin Hood,
Happy Gilmore.
I’ve always viewed Happy Gilmore as a better version of Billy Madison. I do love Happy Gilmore, though! Great movie!
Force awakens did have its Owen story.the maguffin was to find Luke. The sub plot however was a bit of a rehash n I’m ok with that for most point. I wish starkillerbase base was just a base and not deathstar 3.0. But it was! if going down that line they should have not had it blown up first film but maybe disabled the wepon.
But this is my opinion! On most part it diliverd in spades. We are back in the same gritty world we left in return of the Jedi.the mystery is back some how JJ manged to make the Jedi and the force mystical again and not try and explain it away.he has set us on a path to explore new story’s that will connect with past ledgend. Ryan Johnston has been handed a great toy box to play with n I carnt wait to see where we go from hear in a galaxy far far away
it was very evident that a fanboy directed TFA. in my opinion, the parallels were a TAD too obvious, but the movie was done expertly and is an all-around extremely enjoyable film to watch. JJ had an incredible task to accomplish and considering a LARGE majority of people enjoyed the film, i would say he accomplished everything he needed to and more. if people are looking for originality, they should start the count-down to Episode VIII and IX right away. we’re in for a treat!
this franchise is proving to be a great sociological experiment. we fanboys complained that the PT was to different from what makes star wars special so they go back to give us what we think we want and yet we still complain because now its too similar. i’m beginning to think some people just want something to complain about, no matter how big a stretch it is.
my thoughts exactly
Yup, a few of them are regular on here.
That is why I don’t give a shit to others opinion.
I enjoyed this movie and I ‘m going to watch for third time. Just loved it, the way that it is!
Mega-dittos!
Maybe the solution is something in the middle? ^_-
There are certainly a few of those amongst the people I’m defending TFA against.
But the vast majority are Prequel Fans who have a “payback” agenda. Don’t let them fool you with this whining over “Death Star 3.0” this is much deeper for them than that. This is about Mr. Plinkett. This is about People vs. George.
They’re looking for ANYTHING in TFA to give them an angle and the best they’ve been able to come up with is this “Death Star” bs.
https://youtu.be/5koDp-2eB6I
There are ao many insane physics issues with the Starkiller weapon that it’s almost impossible to overlook. Take a star, siphon it’s entire mass – if you can do so without destabilizing it’s gravitational balance and causing a nova or black hole – compress it and put ALL of that mass inside of an earth-sized planet. Everyone on the surface gets squashed flatter than tin foil as you have just added the mass and gravity of a bazillion ton star to the core of your planet. Ok, lets say there is some sort of First Order Gravity – Nullification device that prevents said effects; another problem is that unless Starkiller had a planet-sized hyperdrive, then it’s a one shot-deal, as you just sucked down your home star and then have no place else to recharge. Ok, say you DO have a planetary hyperdrive – why not just cruise on over to your target planet, queitly suck away their star, and kill the whole system that way?
Ayeayeaye so many headaches…
Yeah, they “drain the star [to nothing]” to power up the weapon…. they do this TWICE…. so what happened with the first parent star ????!!!! Interestingly, according to ART OF book, it was ILMer Dennis Muren himself who came up with the starkiller concept, and that one actually destroyed the star, which I think would have been a much better and fearsome idea and visual.
In the novel it’s even more convulted. Instead of siphoning solar plasma, Starkiller was using concentrated “Dark Matter”
Yeah I always wondered why the Ring of Power can only be destroyed in Mount Doom too. So convoluted!
Question, do you too wonder how a lightsaber can hold so much energy, but lacks a power source to do so? it’s so convoluted it gives me headaches.. The same as Legolas’ insane bow skills, that no other elf seems to have. Or the way K.I.T.T. 2000 seems to be bullet proof and scratch resistant, yet still is able to drive at insane sub-sonic speeds without becoming uncontrollable with conventional run-flat-bullet-proof tires.. such headache, much convolution, wow.
Regarding Legolas, the elves throughout Tolkien history are pretty amazing beings. Legolas’ abilities are totally believable in the context of it all. His never ending supply of arrows is perhaps not believable at all!
If you have issues with the physics of the Starkiller base, what about the physics of everything else? Lightsabers, X-Wings, TIE fighters, the Force, blasters, the Death Star, Darth Vader? It’s called science fiction for a reason. Sorry you don’t like the Star Wars franchise. Suspending disbelief is the whole point! This is not history or even applicable science, it’s fantasy, dude!
That’s pretty much how I feel about it. In order for a lightsaber to cut through human flesh, it would have to be so hot that it would melt the person holding the saber and everything else in the vicinity. Tie-Fighters and X-Wings shouldn’t be able to execute barrel rolls and other fancy flying maneuvers in space with no atmospheric forces acting on them, but they do nevertheless. I just think of Star Wars technology as, in some respects, far beyond most of what we presently have on Earth. We can’t explain all of it based on our current understanding of scientific principles.
Star Wars has always been ‘space fantasy’ though, not so much science fiction. It’s a fairy tale that just happens to be set in space. Exactly how all this fantastical technology works has never been a true focus. You don’t need to know the mechanics behind ‘magic’. It only works because the basis of the plot requires it to.
God you are the biggest ‘fanboi’ of all time. Could you have your nose any further in Disney’s backside? By your logic lets put wheels on xwings cuss “hey its science fiction”. Jedi’s should have wings and fly! “Hey its scifi!”
There has to be elements of believability for sci fi to work idiot. The Starkiller base has zero believability.
Sorry you don’t like me… wait… no I don’t! We all have our limits, bud.
I am sorry that you feel that I am an idiot, but I am honored that you think that I am the biggest “anything” of all time! You must have took a lot of time to come to such a conclusion. Thank you for your consideration in this matter.
Here in Czech a lot of people are seeing this as A new hope 2.0 thus give it from 60% to garbage. That simple. Ahhh, and there is a massive dislike of the main hero, mostly after he takes the mask off.
There’s even the line “We think they’re splitting up… we think they’re on…” in the Starkiller Base.
I don’t know, I really enjoyed the film, but I found it lacking in what I can only describe as ‘lazy writing’, little things that could have been clarified with even just one line of extra dialogue…… The derivations were clearly deliberate, and I’d like to think they could indeed have written more originality, but equally this ‘pattern’ following is successful precisely because of its familiarity (akin to GL opting to keep the OT Jedi robes in TPM).
Thing is, Owen Lars wore the same robes.
Would be easier and shorter to list the few original ideas in it. One of the main ones that really pissed me off was how open the Resistance Base was. The Yavin base wasn’t exactly a fortress but it was well hidden inside a temple and Echo Base was in the middle of an arctic wasteland that was well entreached but D’Qar looked like Hobbit Town and they were pretty much fucked if any troops landed there since it would have been a complete slaughter with their lack of planetary defenses which makes Leia look like a complete moron of a strategist. Even something boring like a mountaintop base or one under the crust of a planet would have been more practical.
Original ideas:
1. The plot being centred on finding a central character
2. Main character is female, and destined to be a Jedi
3. Humanisation of a stormtrooper
4. Use of parody
5. Idolisation (Kylo Ren of Vader)
6. Main villain struggles with the light
7. Use of force vision
8. Knights of Ren
9. Rival gangs
10. OT beloved character killed off
11. Non-Jedi uses lightsaber as a weapon
12. Use of force to freeze laser blasts
13. Female Stormtroopers
14. Pirates
15. Castles
16. Electrified crowd control batons
17. Black stormtrooper
18. Luke has no dialogue
19. X-wings taking out enemy ground troops
20. Female First Order officers
21. Village massacre
22. Church of the Force
23. Storm trooper wearing medieval suit of armour (Phasma)
24. Han Solo no longer owns the Falcon
25. Stormtroopers with flame throwers
26. First Star Wars movie to have more than one X-Wing dogfight scene
27. The Falcon portrayed as a recurring character
28. Third Reich undertones
fair point, can also point out that all of their fighters were parked out in the open. one sneak attack or raid and they would be screwed. hopefully the resistance will have something more practical in VIII.
Exactly! Not even camo or anything like they even had in the EU comics, long as they were recyling ides from that they could have used some of the good ones.
Yeah and what did they have like 10 xwings? I mean the attack on the Starkiller base was SOOOO underwhelming. How did the rebels go from this large, strong force to 10 xwings? The whole thing was done terribly bad.
10 isn’t even a full squadron either, So they had less vehicles than they did at the start of ANH hence why it should be referred to as a reboot.
I’m just hoping Luke has a classic era X-Wing under an old tarp somewhere on that island.
For me, starkiller base made me want to vomit as badly as jar jar (and to this day i hate jar jar.) In jar jar’s defense, at least he was original! Not only was starkillser obviously redundant but it was just poorly done in terms of breaking up the flow of the story. The war threat should have been a rebuilt fleet, or if we absolutely need a superweapon how about a new super stardestroyer that has some of the power of a deathstar? I also wishedthe movie offered an ounce of political perspective to explain why the loser of the war 30 years earlier is building a superweapon and the winner is hiding out in dingy accomodations that serve as a central base. ANH gave the 1 ounce of political background that gave the audience perspective to understand the empire’s tightening grip and the jedi’s fade from the galaxy. There is also no explanation offeredto explain rey’s abilities that supercede those of a trained force user. I do love rey, best acted character in all of sw universe, just no believability.
Man so well said. Thank you.
“borrowed”
“With every intent to return it.”
Well, it’s Star Wars.
It has ships (here, in my town, there are 3 or 4 people driving the same car during the last 30 years) and planets, and creatures,and stars, and wars, and sabers, and Jedis, and stormtroopers, and milions of cantinas in the galaxy (i think in my town there are one hundred, more or less, i’m not sure in the city neighbour…whatever), and same characters, and fanatics of past empires, people who knows the Force, and old Jedis, and big weaphons, and young people finding their places in the world (i’m not sure if in my town of 15000 habitants there are young people anymore), and sand, and trees, and robots, and duels…and…
Whatever…
Even thou i love TFA is is a copy paste of OT sadly.
It seems you have not watched my video. Scroll down, click play and look at the “copy / paste” 😉
In my opinion Starkiller Base is the worst. All other things listed here I count as nods and same kind of similarities that already exist between the previous six films. It’s not like there weren’t these kind of things in the prequels.
So, I would’ve hoped they came up with something better than Starkiller Base, otherwise it was all good for me.
Yes totally. Its a step to far in that it could of easily just been a different kind of base.
Yeah, and I remember there was a rumor about the set while they were shooting at Pinewood. Then it was described as just a base or “fortress” built into rock or mountainside or something. That sounds, and is, a pretty cool idea to me. It’s just that the idea of the Starkiller weapon is blah after the Death Stars. As well as the Resistance attack on it, I would suggest a new strategy. 🙂
Starkiller Base reminded me of a larger version of the Galaxy Gun from the Expanded Universe’s “Dark Empire” storyline. The way that the Galaxy Gun operated (for those of you who haven’t read “Dark Empire”) was that it could fire proton torpedoes through hyperspace. In Episode 7, I’m wondering if the energy beams from Starkiller Base reached the Republic in a similar fashion.
THANK YOU!!
Someone besides me knows what EU superweapon Starkiller is actually emulating.
Sorry for being out of context, but I think that Kyle Ren will complete his training by Episode 8 and finally earn the Darth moniker. I think Lucasfilm will also pay homage to the EU and change his name from Kylo Ren to Darth Revan. Both characters look very similar. Maybe Kylo’s appearance will progress to Revan’s final look. Also, anybody catch Kylo referring to Snoken as “wise” in his interaction with Han Solo. Episode 3 also mentions Plegis as Darth Plegis the wise. Another point, did anyone also notice that Rey uses the force to retrieve Luke’s light saber in the same fashion from Episode 5. Same lightsaber half buried inverted in snow. Just little things I have been thinking about.
I think rey mirrors kenobi more they way she is scullking around the base.a hermit and lone wolf. strong with minde.all so you ha have the “RAY” in vison spoke by Alec Guinness and “theas are your first steps” Mcgreggor”
I love how even though they borrowed a lot from the OT and its characters, not one character was a direct copy of an OT character. For ex. sometimes Rey reminded us of Luke, sometimes Kenobi. Sometimes Poe reminded us of Leia, at other times Han, and in the end he did the Luke thing and blew up the base. They cherry picked a LOT of stuff, but it was just different enough IMO to not feel like a direct copy.
“This weapon is your life.”
Takes on a whole new philosophical meaning is Rey is Kenobi’s grandkid.
I mentioned the lightsaber in the snow thing in the article. I loved that part. 🙂
I agree, just far too much re-hash. But in the end, as always, it comes down to money (safe money for the studios) and originality pays the price. Unfortunately 2015 is the year of the “soft re-boot”.
https://www.inverse.com/article/9633-thanks-to-the-force-awakens-and-jurassic-world-2015-is-the-year-of-the-soft-reboot
To call it plagiarism would be too strong a word,I could be a glass half-full bloke and use words like borrowed,homage and a favourite on here “it rhymes”.
A half-empty bloke and use words like copy and paste,rehash or reboot. But
We’re all pissing in the same pot and are all basically agreeing.
George Lucas is an artist and visionary , who gave Us the original six star wars films before . These are His paintings.They’re original pieces of work. Lucas sold His artistic rights to Disney, Disney then commissioned an artist to paint Their picture in the style of Lucas.
So what I’m saying is that TFA is not Picasso’s Sunflowers. It’s a copy of the
painting from an alternate angle. If You look closely at the bottom right hand
corner of the painting, You’ll see it’s signed by Disney and not George.
So for this reason I couldn’t, in all fairness, rate a copy above an original
piece of work. They are separate to Me. And so shall rate these new films on
there own merit and separately from Lucas’ work..
Sure, but I think all of us are of the opinion they could have changed the vase that the flowers are in, or the table that they are sitting on or made the background a different colour. Not so much the same. But unfortunately it’s the safest move to do it this way.
I just hope they don’t continue with this method for the next installment………if Rey breaks her training with Luke (Yoda) to go rescue her friends (Finn/Poe) in a cloud city, then I’m out !
It actually makes me look more forward to Rogue One where it is a stand alone and should therefore be more original, other than the ending of course…
P.S It’s Van Gogh’s Sunflowers 😉
Judging by Rian Johnson I doubt that would happen. I actually have higher hopes towards Ep VIII than I’ve had to TFA. Looper has flaws, but imo its a very well made conception.
I really hope he doesn’t do that for the sake of all of us. Still need to find some quiet time to watch Looper.
Its not a perfect film, as it has some plotholes, and its idea about time-travel is a wrong conception, but still its a smart movie and shows that Johnson is capable of making an original and intellectual story.
SW films are all products of their era aside from ANH which was light and fun rather than dark and serious like most 70’s films were.
TESB/Jedi – 80’s blockbuster but with heart
TPM – 90’s blockbuster with high production values and primitive CG
AOTC/Sith – Overtly CG packed blockbuster
TFA – remake/reboot
Imo all Star Wars movies are some kind of rehash of ANH (except ESB). ROTJ has a 2nd death, and TPM has a 3rd one with a belt (actually im suprised how few people seens to realise this). And AOTC and ROTS has a story which was already summarised by Ben Kenobi so again zero originality.
I think TPM version of the Death Star is viewed differently simply in that its a smaller scale, but you’re right in that plot wise its basically the same. Anakin takes it out and basically saves the day.
However there is no trench run for Anakin, nor a Porkin lookalike…
Anakin did have a trench run analog.
In that he accidentally crashed into the ship and blew it up from the inside? Maybe, but then that proves it can be done differently.
Not just the new trade-fedaration death star, but also Instead of Luke there is Anakin on Tatoonie who goes from nobody to a jedi-ish something. I never got wtf was Lucas thinking, I mean fckin Tatooine? Obi-wan hid Luke on the birthplace of Vader and even let him use the Skywalker name?
Luke mirroring his father was right there from the start though. From Obiwan paralleling their piloting skills to gifting him his father’s “Jedi weapon” basically saying “your dad wanted you to be a Jedi too” to Kenobi flat out saying Anikan had left his home to follow him on a crazy adventure – then asking him to do the same. Lucas baked that notion in at the top and would naturally follow up on it with episode 1. An old man emulating the same actions he took as a young man isn’t totally unbelievable.
Yeah, Owen could have just pretended to be Luke’s dad.
But what if Vader returns to visit his birthplace? He would definitely feel Luke. Fck he lives next to Anakin’s mom’s tomb, he dont even have to feel him, just to open his eyes.
Well, he didn’t “feel” Leia (that sounds more perverted than I meant). And those two actually spent way more time together in the OT than him and Luke. Plus Vader, no longer identifying as Skywalker, was “born” on Mustafar. Why visit the home of some guy named Anikin 😉
Yeah, old “Ben” Kenobi wasn’t too great at stealth.
Technically, Vader was born on Coruscant. But he also had a storng connection with the dark side on Tatooine aswell, when he killed those tusken raiders. It would be completly logical for him to visit a planet where he was born without a father, it might be a very important place to learn about the dark side. And he could just visit the tomb of her mother (maybe to take her to a worthier place).
Oh I get where you’re coming from. This has been an issue since 1980 and the prequels didn’t help with that much. I was just reinforcing Obi-Wan’s “certain point of view” defense 🙂
It use to be portrayed in the now non-cannon stuff that Vader never wen back to Tatoonie due to his previous life as a slave and his mum’s death, hence he never personally went down to oversee the capture of the droids. However, I believe in the new comics he’s been down. So maybe Luke’s connection to the force hasn’t truly awaken at this stage, much like Anakin’s reactions only being Jedi-like in TPM.
Ofc it has been portrayed like that otherwise it would be a major plothole. And ofc you can make up an explanation, prequel fans also say that Leia has seen a ghost of her mother when Lucas fcked up the continuity. Or how Obi-wan dont remebers R2, or how R2 dosent fly, or dosent explain everything to Luke, when he has all the information Luke needed about his past in its memory…
iMO it isn’t a major plot hole. The force isn’t an exact science and despite its origins explained in TPM it still moves in mysterious ways. Leia might be referring to Bail’s wife whom may have died in her childhood, the dialogue in RotJ isnt about her true mum at the time.
In regard to Obi-wan – maybe he told a lie, did that a bit in the OT from a certain point of view. R2 not flying……look again at the moments he needed to fly in the OT.
The Leia thing would make sense if Luke wouldnt’ve directly asked if Leia remebered her REAL mother.
How would it benefit Ben Kenobi if he lies about his relationship with R2? And again, R2 knew everything from the prequels Luke needed to know, as its memory wasnt ereased, so why the fck did it keep everything?
Lucas fucked up when he included R2 in the prequels. It was only there to remeber the fans that they are watching a star wars movie, but it contradicts with everyhing in the OT.
That’s the thing though, Luke only asks if she remembers her mother because he never knew his parents. He hadn’t at that point said oh by the way Vader is you’re dad and we are brother and sister. It would of been better if GL had Bail take Padame as a wife to cover Anakin’s relationship and for that to push him over to the dark side.
What benefit in covering up knowing R2? Maybe to allow Luke to discover things for himself on a personal journey, a Jedi kind of thing. That or he had forgotten, being an old man and human makes him prone to mistakes regardless of being a Jedi.
I agree that GL fucked up a lot in the prequels with to many yes men around with no balls. IMO he fucked up selling to Disney without keeping some control over the overall direction of the movies.
Its not they way it works. Disney is mega corporation you either give everything or no deal. Im personally glad that Lucas dropped out from Star Wars. He made some great things when he was young, but now there are people who understand Star Wars way more than he does.
But you can’t name over 50 references to past films like you can in this one.
Are you serious right now? First of all Ben Kenobi tells the story of the prequels in epsiode IV, so where is the originality? Second, almost every scene in the preuquels is copy from the originals
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9yOYiVHKOog
Yet you are aware that you are comparing six films to a single one here? There were also many contradictions of Ben’s idea of the PT to what we saw in I-III if you ever saw any of the films not made this decade.
Well, Ben tells what was before the Empire (The Republic), he tells the jedi were the guardians of piece and justice in The Republic for a 1000 generations. He mentions that Vader was a pupil of his, who helped the Empire to destroy the jedi, because he was seduced by the dark side. He tells about the clone wars, and how he fought in it.
Tarkin even mentions the Senate during his talk with Vader.
So, where is the originality if I might ask? The midichlorians or prophecies? Im sorry, for me those two were never competent expansions of the SW lore.
,,if you ever saw any of the films not made this decade.” Sorry I dont understand what are you trying to say there. I usually understand primitive english, but not this primitive, sorry.
He also says Yoda trained him too and Leia claims to have known Padme when she was young. Both of those were contradicted in the PT along with many other ones that people thought they knew while watching the OT.
It’s not very difficult to understand this is the first SW film in the saga to literally repaint vehicles from past films and try to pass them off as new ones and recycle old planet terrains under new names. I’m not even counting all the other shit they stole from other films. Abrams is to filmaking what Olive Garden is to fine dining.
Well, those two you have mentioned are rather contradictions (so fck ups) than expansion or originality. TPM even takes place on Tatooine, where the young hero lived before becoming a jedi. He even destorys a death star (with a trendy belt) at the end of the movie. Sound familiar?
I think in TFA they recycled so much, because the wanted to be that similar to the originals. Its not like they couldn’t come up with anything new, they just simply didnt want to. They wanted to say directly into the audience’s face: This is not anything like the prequels!!!!!
Oh, I got it you meant that I havent seen any movie made before this decade. Well you could’ve guessed from my comments that Im an OT fan, so I probably watched those movies from 40 years ago.
I can asure you, there is no important movie since the 70s that I havent seen. Well I missed some from the 2010s because I hate marvel and other crap like those.
If you think a Death Star is Droid Control Ship or even a superweapon then you are in dire need of both a dictionary and optomotrist.
Exactly! Which is why the primary factor behind this new trilogy was greed. It could have been all-new while paying respect to the OT and NOT been anything like the PT but instead they recycled the worst aspects of the EU that most are too dense to see because they never read a single book from it.
I didnt say the droid-controllship is the same as a death star, but its the same as a plot device. Its a giant Orb in the centre of the ending arc, which gets destroyed by the protagonist. If its so hard for you to understand references and hidden meanings in a movie, than stay at watching marvels and star wars prequels.
Noone asked Lucas to sell his rights to Disney. He did it, Disney bought it and continued the star wars legacy.
If there was greed as a motive behind the making of any SW was: ROTJ (ewoks) and the whole prequel troligy (pretty much self-explanatory judging by Jar-jar and the childish style of the movie)
But that’s how pretty much all giant capital ships work in the SW galaxy. Even Star Destroyers and Super Star Destroyers have the same reactor core weakness and it had no superweapon either nor did it take out any planets like Starkiller did.
For money and not because the saga had anywhere to go after Jedi. Lucas wanted to sell them the six films but they turned him down since they wanted their own films to turn into theme park rides, merchandise to kids, and air on their channels so he gave them his notes and they threw them away.
Lucas did the PT for the same reason he sold SW to Disney, Because he has thin skin like most celebs and Tauruses so he did it as a gestute to appease his detractors.
TFA: Marvel superhero movie in space.
Yet I still thought Guardians Of The Galaxy captured the Star Wars feel more than this did.
Bingo – said that a year ago to someone actually – GotG is the best SW flick since I walked out of the theater in ’83.
I was hoping it would set the bar higher for TFA. I’d probably have enjoyed it more had they copied GotG than ANH honestly.
True. I think the main reason was that the heroes were basically a band of miscreants. And they were having fun. This new Star Wars was so… dull. They played it way too safe and lost all emotion along the way.
It felt like one of the bad EU novels that would just drag on forever except it’s canon which makes it worse.
As fans, we should just all consider the Zahn trilogy as the true sequels and refer to the new movies as the “Disney-canon”
No arguement here. At least his books never read at a grade school level.
if we fans make enough of a scene about it, we may just get Disney to honor the original sequels.
Well it worked in terms of them cutting back on the PT material. Plus the rating has dropped from 98 to 95 to 93 on RT in less than a month.
Exaclty. Never underestimate the power of nerd rage
You know it! Why doesn’t Rey ever get cold on the arctic Starkiller base too? Especially considering she grew up on a desert planet? Or why does humanist Finn start whooping after murdering the Stormtooper buddies he was raised with? Those are exactly what I mean by plotholes.
Good questions!
a) The force keeps her warm. Must be. Right? 😀
b) Finn essentially acts out the emotions the audience is supposed to feel during the whole movie.
As much as I liked Boyega’s portrayal (he’s a fine actor), his character was terribly written. As was Leia. As was Maz Kanata, Kylo Ren and Snoke.
The best written character in the movie was BB-8.
Yeah, He’s totally the impulsive act rather than think first type. Maz and Snoke had worse CG than Episode I for some reason, Probably since Abrams has no clue about digital technology. Carrie had the most wooden performance of anyone, She even made Natalie in the prequels look good and Driver was way over the top.
I can’t argue with that though I looked forward to him interacting with Artoo which we only saw for seconds.
So now that the dust has settled, are people not liking it??
Personally I enjoyed the film, but then I enjoyed the prequels. I do however see both in missing the mark. JJ got the feel and visuals right, if a little dark for my taste as a children’s film, however the plot was a little on the lazy side that relied to much on ANH for inspiration. It simply needed a few tweaks to make it less like a rehash and it would of been golden and not appear as a soft reboot.
Right on. They just needed the balls not to take sooo much 1:1 from ANH. Personally I think the “risk” would have been worth it. “Golden” would have been an understatement had they done that. Anyway it is as it is. Can’t change it now. I just hope K.Kennedy and others read these forums for fan feedback and take it in as healthy constructive criticism for the other movies going forward.
They’re on track to gross two billion – they’re not going to take any constructive criticism, no matter how much it might be needed.
Depending on how it will do in China, it might even close 3 billion. In the US alone it will end around 1.2 billion.
Point being, no matter how much fans might say “Um, hey, guys, can we suggest….?” Disney and KK are still going to be all like “Marge my friend, I haven’t learned a thing. Because dosh.” Rewarding shit writing begets more shit writing.
Hopefully they will be still open to criticism. However, for me everything was good except the new death star. And I really doubt there will be any more death stars in the franchise (except Rogue One ofc).
The acting, characters, dialogues, humor, so the overall feeling was very well made and written imo. They just need a better story.
please, please don’t refer to these as “children’s films’. it rankled me to no end when lucas did after jar jar flopped like a dying fish. its a general audience film that kids for the most part can still enjoy. besides it had a PG-13 rating and a fair warning.
The OT are U and all but one of the prequels PG. The majority of the merchandise is aimed at children. The franchise is aimed at children, but not young children, therefore children’s films. I grew up watching them as a kid, though when ANH was released I was 3, so when I say kid they were on VHS.
We’re in the nitpick phase that’s all. When I was 10 we nitpicked the shit out of ESB too. But the net didn’t exist then.
The more one thinks about it, the less one likes it.
TFA is the second worst Star Wars movie (Attack of the Clones is still the worst by far).
So TPM is better with Jar-jar? Or ROTJ with ewoks? Well, different people different taste…
People get too hooked up on Jar Jar. As annoying as he is, there are much bigger problems with TPM. I’ll admit, it’s a close call. The only version of TPM that I watch is a fanedit which edits out about half an hour of crap and makes the movie rather watchable.
ROTJ on the other hand is brilliant. Yes, the Ewoks are dumb, but the finale more than makes up for it. Aside from the Ewoks and the whole Luka and Lea are siblings angle, ROTJ has a great story, great acting and with Vader’s redemption an unexpected and satisfying conclusion to the saga.
Also, just compare the excitement of the final space battle and death star charge with the trench run in TFA and the duel between Vader and Luke with the one in TFA. It’s no comparison.
TPM is just as terrible as AOTC imo (well, TPM at least isnt a cgi fckfest).
As much as I love the originals, I could never really like ROTJ. The acting is probably the worst of the OT, and ewoks defeating the empire is just…
The Luke vs Vader scene is brilliant I admit it tho (its also one of the best scenes in the entire trilogy), thats the only reason the movie is worth watching. Well maybe with the new music, the ending is also good (I never liked yup-nub)
I hated the death star rehash already back then.
You are right, ROTJ is kind of a muppet fest. The acting is not nearly as good as in ESB, but as we agree, that finale is fantastic. The death star rehash could have easily been fixed: Instead of the death star, just use the imperial fleet and have the final confrontation take place on the emperor’s command ship. It would also remove the necessity for the whole Endor adventure. I wonder if some faneditor will attempt to do something like this. I loved how they changed the Prequels into watchable movies.
TPM or AOTC… I think what really killed AOTC for me was the whole factory scene. Thatto me was even more painful than Jar Jar’s antics.
Its not really the acting as much as its just that Leia and Han are wasted. They spend the whole movie running around with TEDDY BEARS!!!
Ikr? Its like one those old british kid shows with adults doing funny things next to animals. No wonder why Gary Kurtz left the project. I think around ROTJ was the time when Lucas turned to the dark side… You can feel the prequels atmosphere too much.
It all boils down to this with George:
He wants to tell his story and push visual effects. That’s nice and his stories have some great and important themes. But, it means nothing if the audience can’t follow the story because of teddy bears, racist sounding characters, bad dialogue and bad acting. No matter what the themes and novelty, you can’t always ask people to watch something that becomes unwatchable.
Kurtz was hugely important in conceiving the Force and holding Lucas to creating a good movie, not just some nifty fantasy story. Plenty of good novels and comics are good stories, but they almost always have to be altered to make a good movie, whether its cutting down on exposition, marginalizing a character or just getting rid of events. Lucas has trouble doing that, which is why Kurtz, DePalma, and Marcia Lucas were so important. They helped him simplify things, get rid of excess exposition, and also brought some real editing skills that the first 2 films benefited from immensely.
And of course, we know his marriage was effectively over by the time they started making ROTJ. That might have been an important moment.
Actually, this is just a thread explicitly discussing the one flaw that people quoted in all of their favorable reviews lol
The Force Awakens was directed better than those directed by George Lucas. J.J. Abrams is best dramatic director than George Lucas.
What is problem with that The Force Awakens like retro? Is about of Star Wars, the story of the Skywalkers, the force against the dark side, all movies must look like.
The fact so much of Rey’s journey mirror’s that of Luke’s I actually have no problem with, and I thought MOST of the parallels and homages were reworked in a pretty clever and fun way (like Rey being the one who pilots the Falcon off world, or Han becoming the new Obi-Wan figure)…
…but the recycling of the Death Star for the third time just feels SO blatant and uninspired that I have a hard time getting past it. And unfortunately it’s the one thing that continues to drag the movie down for me (especially considering so much of the second half revolves around the thing).
Well, if your concept of “death star” is reduced to any large ball shaped superweapon then the death star appears in every film. Annie blows it up in episode I, clone troopers blow it up in episode II, it’s half built in Episode III, fully built and blown up in episode IV, used by the rebels to sack star destroyers in Episode V, blown up again in Episode VI, and blown up one more time in Episode VII.
That’s a decent point, but the presence in this movie is so glaring that we actually have characters in the story pointing it out to us. “It’s another Deathstar.” It’s almost like the movie itself is basically saying “yeah, everybody, we’re doing this again . . . sorry about that.”
Exactly. That’s the kind of line I would expect in a Family Guy or Robot Chicken parody of Star Wars.
They ain’t sorry about it.
They know that’s what you want to see.
That’s why this movie made a Billion in only a week and a half.
I didn’t say it was a sincere apology 🙂
Starkiller is Death Star 3.0…. your other comparisons make little sense.
Starkiller was completely lame and diminished the movie from great to merely good for me unfortunately. The PT episodes were nowhere near the OT in terms of quality, but at least they felt original and took star wars different directions and lead to some of Lucas’ best work in tcw series.
JJ lost a bit of credibility for me with the blatant copy and paste of the deathstar.
Actually they make a LOT of sense.. you just don’t want to hear it.
Well go back to gushing over your orange rabbit then. TFA does not need you to think it’s a great film: it IS a great film irregardless of what you think.
Oh, ftr, TCW is Dave Filoni’s work. Stop trying to pad Lucas’ chin with credit that isn’t his.
TPM was not original. Then Fett and Chewie were shoehorned into bad films for no reason whatsoever.
Yeah that starkiller thing really pissed me off, not just for it’s lack of originality but also with just how ludicrous an idea it actually is!!??! I’ve seen the film 3 times and i really REALLY like it, but that whole thing is just dumb!! Tho i always perceived that it was han and the kids that did the main damage with those explosives.
Well well well look at what I found:
https://youtu.be/2gkrla4wD50
Almost word for word what you said right at the 14 min mark.
I think that makes you a expert at unoriginalty, LOL.
It’s like I’ve been saying, parrots like you have got bigger issues with this film and I can see through the smoke your blowing in my face.
Nothing in the prequels is a planet destroying superweapon with a achilles heel weakness. Recycling it for Episode 6 was bad enough, but again in Episode 7 is just unforgivable.
Well at least in Episode 6 we got a truly epic and spectacular space battle out of it, which went a long way in redeeming the idea in my eyes. And I also loved how the whole thing was basically just a giant ruse on the part of the Emperor to destroy the Rebellion.
Unfortunately Starkiller Base isn’t used in nearly as clever a way in TFA. It’s just yet another weapon to terrorize the Republic and… that’s about it.
It’s amazing how despite the OT being 30 years old, the space battles in ANH and ROTJ are more exciting than the one in TFA.
Death Star plans in Episode 2 and a half finished one Episode 3.
Man, and to think I don’t even like the prequels..
2 second snippets which have no bearing on the plot at all.
Doesn’t matter. It’s in there. You’re wrong. Deal with it.
You’re a fucking retard, kill yourself
You forgot about Han’s worthless encounter on his stupid freighter between the Deadpool cosplayers and The Raid cast dressed like Mad Max extras – just before the man-eating meatballs. The scene somewhat echoed the infamous Greedo standoff in ANH: Han, the smuggler, getting himself in some hot water after botching a job.
I had a real hard time with all the shameless “rhyming stanzas” in this flick. It was overall enjoyable to me, but the bombardment of familiarity took me out of the moment a big bunch. I mean it’s one thing for a group to release an album with one or two covers, but one that’s nothing but covers? That just makes you a tribute band. Which isn’t bad, but I was expecting more. Let’s hope the next couple episodes take us somewhere new.
Those CGI monsters are as bad, what was JJ thinking….. So much for less CGI when he includes a blaster shot hanging in the air by Ren and a not so scary Snoke…. (still can’t get over that name either).
Snoke was definitely a disappointment. The Andy Serkis interview that put everyone in a twist about size also had him claiming that Snoke had to be CG because what they wanted to do with him just couldn’t be done practically with makeup and prosthetics. But when he’s revealed, he’s just a regular dude with a pretty messed up face. I wouldn’t have minded some CG doctoring to up the aesthetic, but the whole character CG? That was just excessive and unconvincing IMO.
Serkis makes millions off his CG work. Of course he’ll claim there was no other way of doing it.
Bottom line: if a character “can’t be done” unless he’s 100% CGI, then that’s a good indication the character shouldn’t be done.
Also, Yoda in ESB is a great example of how just about anything can be done with animatronics.
Well it was going to be CG because its a hologram – I don’t know why the CGI is an issue – a hologram is always going to be CGI.
I just want to know how bad he’s injured – how much worse than Javier Bardem in Skyfall? Likely pretty similar and that was just touched up CGI but mostly make-up effects. I don’t think its going to be too much more than that.
Snoke is a motion capture performance, the same as Maz Kanata. His first appearance being in hologram form has no bearing on this fact.
Which fact? How the CGI looked in a hologram? A hologram, an in-movie artificial representation of an artificial representation of a motion capture? Its a hologram.
Or the fact that he probably doesn’t have to be motion captured in the first place, because that’s what I’m curious about, I’m not sure its necessary.
Well, the latter. I don’t
recall anyone griping about the ‘hologram’ part. They replaced a real live
person with a cartoon so he could sit in a chair for a few minutes with a
banged up face. Could be episodes 8 and 9 have Snoke’s body revealed to be
freakishly disfigured as well (beyond practical) and this first appearance was
just for consistency’s sake. Otherwise, why bother?
Metallica did it twice.. No one calls them a “tribute band”.
Two full albums before they had any hits of their own? Wow, I didn’t know that. Cool.
Wrong-o, Hanson fan.
Garage Days Revisited published in 1987 after 3 iconic albums loaded with original material.
Garage, Inc, published in 1998 after 4 iconic ablums loaded with original material.
But hey, just keep singing your tune..”Mmmmm-bop, dubdub-doowop..” LOLOLOLOLOLOL
So . . . they DIDN’T start with covers then. Like Disney has.
My intended analogy was: if an unknown band has a debut album that winds up being covers of another group then, however great a job they did, is that really all that satisfying? If that’s all you were expecting then it probably would be. I wanted more is all. Make sense?
“Hanson fan”? How do you know my secret shame?! Are you a wizard?!?!
Well, hell, in that case I would just point to Shinedown. Most people under the age of TPM believe they actually wrote “Simple Man”. And most of them who have that song on their playlist would also admit they don’t know a single other song from that band.
But even if I was to play Skynyrd’s version for them virtually all of them would still play Shinedown’s version. That’s how superior their cover of “Simple Man” is.
Same principle for TFA.
OMG I’ve never seen a group of people so desperate to find a reason to hate this movie. You are actually trying to “StarTrek” this movie!
Hate? Acknowledging the faults in something you genuinely like isn’t hate. It’s just opinion. There’s no such thing as a perfect story that satisfies everybody. What’s wrong with sharing thoughts on aspects of a story you weren’t totally in love with?
When Lucas decided to write a story inspired by Flash Gordon, he wasn’t oblivious to the massive flaws that silly story had. He still loved it but wanted to write one that was the same but better. One of the nitpickers here, albeit unlikely, may end up writing the next amazing sci-fi epic based off what they would have done differently with this movie. It’s not coming from a place of hate. Well, not me anyway.
What are you talking about? Star Trek 2009 was actually pretty damn good. Much better than TFA in every regard.
Keep telling yourself that.
Yeah, I disagree. Star Trek was a great movie, but I thought the plot holes in it were pretty big. TFA was a much better movie IMHO and…. its Star Wars!!! Great to see the franchise back. I think Abrams and Kasdan set up the whole franchise for success at this point, even though, evidently, millions of people hated it.
Relax, “millions of people” don’t hate it. That’s a blatant lie told by the author of that hack piece. He has no evidence to back up that claim.. outside of the voices in his head, of course. His twitter post of that article had only 14 likes as 4am this morning. Do the math. This is a tiny minority opinion trying to hijack the perception of this movie.
Agreed!
Yeah, I agree. The “millions of people” was sarcasm.
Eh, despite our criticisms and nitpicks you’ll notice that the majority of us on here still rated it pretty highly in the recent poll.
And even with the problems I had with the story, there were still more than enough great moments in it for me to rate it a 7 or 8 out of 10 (hell, just the great Rey, Han, and Falcon scenes alone make it totally worthwhile in my book).
Hey, just because someone doesn’t love something with blind passion that doesn’t necessarily mean they hate it. I can like something without being crazy about it or blind to its shortcomings, just like this film.
Of course there are so many similarities… But wasn’t it good? Wasn’t it entertaining?
It’s really hard finding new ideas and this movie may have went too far with rehashing but it was still enjoyable. There were some moments where I was like, “Well, they totally brought the same.” but mostly I realized the hidden similarities after rewatching the movie for the third time.
It was entertaining, but it certainly wasn’t good. The first 30 minutes were decent, after that the movie just fell apart.
I agree about the first act, however, the rest was quite enjoyable but really its pacing felt so rushed to me.
I absolutely loved it. There are definitely a ton of similarities in the movie, and I am okay with TFA being called a modern retelling/refreshing of ANH for a new generation (and thankful that JJ didn’t reboot Star Wars like Star Trek. Still loved the Trek reboot anyway).
I think the reason that so many fans of the OT loved TFA is (1) because the callbacks of characters and plot points to the OT went hand in hand with a homecoming return to a more traditional look and feel of the OT movies. (2) Because characters and themes have always been a crucial part of Star Wars storytelling, and TFA set up new characters and themes that really resonated with audiences and went in new directions from the originals. You have Rey, who unlike Luke grows up under much harsher conditions and wants to stay out of space adventures on her planet, waiting for family, rather than Luke wanting to leave his planet and family behind, looking for space adventures. Finn, who starts out as a stormtrooper, programmed to be and do things that he soon becomes ashamed of, running away from his troubles, but daring to become the heroic person that he feels others are seeing in him. Kylo, who unlike early OT Vader is still young and conflicted by his YA feelings and personal family history, being pulled towards the light rather than solidly trained and embracing the darkness.
Before TFA came out, I showed all six Star Wars films to the students at our church to get ready for the 7th. TPM and AOTC didn’t engage them though ROTS did as it brought back that sense of character and emotion and stakes that much of the PT missed out on. But I was saddened that ANH didn’t really engage them either (despite physical effects and powerful characters and themes) because of its limited budget, slower early on pace and filmmaking style). Only the last 1/3rd of ROTJ really engaged them (as the film’s budget, effects, pacing, characters, themes, and stakes really shined through).
Anyway, I love that because of TFA’s similarities to ANH, we not only get a familiar return to what we grew up loving in the OT, but also get to introduce this next generation to everything we loved about the original movie (yet with bigger budget, modern filmmaking and pacing, powerfully, compelling characters, themes, emotions, and high stakes in the battle for good and evil) while still being a continuation of the original stories. At the same time, the new characters and themes take old and new viewers alike to new adventures and twists and turns yet to come. I for one am a very happy camper. (And for the first time ever reading a Star Wars movie adaptation novel after seeing the movie three times and absolutely loving it. Go Alan Dean Foster!
Can we takes these points one at at time? TFA definitely borrows a lot from the OT and at times I found it a bit much such as space chess and maybe the remotes that Luke used with his lightsaber aboard the Falcon, but other borrowings I thought fit the plot well. Let’s start at the beginning… 1: The movie opens with a spaceship coming onto the screen, slowly moving its huge body into view… just like 1,000 sci-fi movies since the original Star Wars! What a rip off! Well, if Star Wars can’t rip itself off, what about all the other movies that do that??? Besides, to call it a copy is kind of silly. If it started with a spaceship chasing another spaceship and the shot was similar, I’d agree, but not in this case.
2: Old man in a little hut…
Didn’t see the connection here. Obi-wan had a much bigger and tremendously important role in ANH and inspires Luke to learn the Force and basically save the universe. Lor San Tekka is barely in the movie and while his role is somewhat important, his death doesn’t hold too much weight. Although, Lor San Tekka’s death does get Poe captured, which is essential to the plot. I just don’t see the connection. Maybe Lor San Tekka is a Obi-wan copy, but not based on what we saw in the movie. If you want to hate the movie, I guess the connection can be made.
3: Stormtroopers attack! Yes, that’s what they do. Do they attack and decimate the good guys in a spaceship as in ANH? No. They also attack the Falcon in ESB while the good guys blast off from Echo Base, just like on Tatooine when leaving Docking Bay 94, but no one cried about that.
4. Enter the dark and imposing main villain… Well, that’s kind of how the audience is introduced to dark and imposing main villains. I don’t really know what to say here… It’s part of what makes them dark and imposing. It is similar to Vader, but so is the introduction of many bad guys in many books, stories and movies. The bad guys in James Bond are sometimes dark and imposing. Are they copies of ANH too? Like I’ve said, there are similarities, but it doesn’t make it bad IMHO.
5. This guy means business. Again, this is like number 4. Dark and imposing characters will do bad things. This is what defines them as “the bad guy”. I thought the death of Lor San Tekka was much different than the death of the Captain of the Tantive IV. Still bad guys killing good guys, but I thought Kylo Ren’s killing of Lor San Tekka different. They had to be careful not to make Kylo Ren exactly like Darth Vader, although Kylo’s character wishes to be. There is no doubt that Kylo Ren IS the Darth Vader of this movie, but the character is quite different.
6. Help me, BB-8, you’re my only hope… OK, this is very similar to ANH and maybe it is the same but the plot device works in TFA. If people want to rant and rave about this, go ahead and vent! I’ll call it like I see it and this one is pretty hard to defend, but I don’t think it really needs to be defended because it really works plot-wise at least. It is interesting to me that no one thinks that BB-8 is a copy of R2D2. I think the similarities between those two are more evident than some of the other gripes. That being said, I really did like BB-8 and they certainly made his personality different than R2D2, but they are both astromech droids and I thought that might bring more criticism than it has.
7. She lied to us! Poe, not so much… I’m not sure why this is even a topic of discussion. We saw much more of the torture of Poe than we ever saw of Princess Leia. The torture of the Princess was more eluded to than shown onscreen. Maybe if you saw it as good guys being tortured by bad guys, there’s a similarity there, but, again, that’s kind of what bad guys do. If Poe didn’t give up the info, that would be a definite copy, but he did. This is another place where it might be similar to ANH, but I thought it set up the confrontation with Kylo and Rey when Kylo tried to get the info from Rey the same way. We learned that Rey can reject Kylo’s psychic force information extraction talents and even turn it back on him, which I quite enjoyed!
8. She’s not such a bad pilot herself… Shame on TFA for this one. They did not explain this. According to the book “Before The Awakening”, at least it is my understanding, the book explains how Rey excelled at some sort of flight simulation while on Jakku. Maybe there were some deleted scenes that might show up in future releases? They should have explained that further or at least eluded to it. The book also tells of how Rey found the Falcon and worked on restoring it which is how she knows about new modifications to the legendary ship. Shame on Lucasfilm for that.
9. Oh, I know these guys…uh…Jawas…no…Sandpeople! A Teedo? What’s that?
Another criticism that I saw as laughable. There’s only one guy here (we saw a lot of Jawas and Sandpeolpe) on a creature that does not resemble a Sandcrawler. Sandcrawler? Really? As far as Teedo is concerned, had this guy been in Maz’s cantina, no one would be comparing him to either a Jawa or a Sandperson.
10. What about that orange one? OK, here is where I’ll have to admit some serious copying. I guess the only thing I can say is that after 30+ years, the good guys finally found another brave astromech droid with a personality. I did think that BB-8 had his own personality and was different than R2D2’s, but maybe that’s just me. I liked BB-8 and don’t think that I was the only one who did.
11. It’s the ship that made the Kessel Run in less than 14 parsecs…or was it 12? OK, finding the Falcon by Rey was a fine plot device. A bit too coincidental, maybe, but I thought it worked. How could you have Han Solo without the Falcon? The fact that Rey got the number of parsecs wrong was good. It showed that while different people had heard things about the OT, it was the thing of Myth and legend. All the details weren’t worked out.
12. Where’d they dig up that old fossil? So Han Solo = Ben Kenobi now? He can’t be. He’s got too much Han Solo in him. Han playing the role of the wise old guy is a great place in his character’s development and shows that a lot of time has past and while he’s still the Han Solo we know and love, he’s grown as we all do.
13. Dianogas on steroids!… So, while the scene with the Rathars was not my favorite for different reasons, comparing them to the Dianogas is a bit much for me. The Rathars served as a plot device to get Han and Chewy back on the Falcon and to get them teamed up with Finn and Rey. You might as well say that the Sarlacc and the Rancors are the same thing because they are both monsters in pits. There were other things in TFA to complain about.
14. Frenemies Forever… It’s called storytelling! Bad guys do not always get along. Good guys don’t either. It’s what makes things interesting. Get over it. Do other bad guys in other stories always get along? What about the classic Megatron and Starscream relationship? Yes, I am a geek.
15. Femme Fettale… I don’t think we’ve seen all of Captain Phasma and I hope that she has a bigger part than Boba Fett. Boba Fett is awesome, but he didn’t exactly have the biggest part either. Captain Phasma is supposed to have larger role in Episode 8.
16. Ladies and gentlemen! I give you King Snoke! The Eighth Wonder of the World! Oh, nevermind…it’s just a hologram…
It’s no secret that Snoke is the emperor of the new films, or at least they are setting him up to be. We’ll have to see what the writers do with him in future installments to make a fair comparison. Maybe Kylo will kill Snoke and become the new Emperor? Who knows?
17. Name That Creature!
Maz Kanata’s cantina is the new Mos Eisley Cantina. There’s no denying it. Maz Kanata is supposed to be a pirate, so it would make sense if there were alot of good guys and bad guys there as the scene indicated. Copy? Yes. Did it make sense and forward the story? Yes. Was it cool? Yep!
18. Judge me by my eyes, do you?
Is Maz Kanata the new Yoda? I think not. She’s strong with the force, but no Jedi Master. Old and wise like Yoda? Yes. Will she train Rey? I hope not. Also, I don’t think we’ve seen all of what Maz is yet.
19. Move along…move along…
Did Rey perform the Jedi Mind trick? Yes! Is Rey strong in the force? Yes. Did she have to do it multiple times in desperation in order to get it to work? Yes. I thought it was good that they showed that while Rey has the force, it’s all kind of not formed within quite yet. She needs to let the Force in. BTW, that stormtrooper was Daniel Craig.
20. All that sneaking around…
Right, because anyone that sneaks around a bad guys base is Obi-wan, right? This makes no sense. Rey was sneaking around to trying to leave. Obi-wan was sneaking around trying to let others escape. He knew he would not be leaving. Luke and Han were also sneaking around, but they’re not Obi-wan either!!!
It was more about the imagery than what she was doing. Like when she pulled the lever to gain access to the service area under the walkway. When I saw that I was instantly reminded of Obi-Wan walking around the tractor beam control and shutting it down. She was alone, walking around a neo-imperial facility. Her motivation was different than Obi-Wan but the imagery was there.
21. Haven’t we been here before?
Yes, the good guys set up bases on planets that have the color green on them. It’s not a hard and fast rule (Hoth), but if you were setting up a base, you’d probably look for water and a temperate climate, too. Hoth was cold. Really cold!
22. Death Star Version 3.0
Yes, this is another Death Star. I thought the same thing when I was 10 and saw ROTJ, but NO ONE cried about it then!!! I swear I was the only kid who even noticed. Out of all the super weapons you could have come up with… another Death Star. I think they did this to pay homage to the OT. Now that being said, I did like the difference in the Starkiller base. It destroyed the entire New Republic funding the Resistance and the New Rupublic’s fleet (if you noticed) in one shot. This was an interesting plot point because it resets the clock on both The First Order and the Resistance. I was led to believe that most of The First Orders stuff was on Starkiller base so now they are of limited resources. The Resistance is without funding and support. I wonder what they will do in Episode 8? So, Death Star copy? Yes, just like in ROTJ.
23. Here’s to hoping Han Solo somehow becomes more powerful than we can possibly imagine…
We will have to see what Han Solo’s death will mean in upcoming movies. I don’t think that every time a good guy dies by lightsaber he’s Obi-wan Kenobi. Qui-gon Jinn’s death was more of a copy of Obi-wan’s death than Han Solo’s death via his own son. Again, no one is crying about that. It was interesting to see Han’s body ‘fall into the light’ when he passed. Good symbolism there.
24. Join me! And, together we can rule the galaxy as…cousins? Siblings? Who is that girl anyway?
In my opinion, there is NOTHING to complain about here! Great scene ending in a convenient opening up of the ground to end the conflict. Rey would have been able to kill Kylo if it weren’t for the ground opening up, but I guess they had to save Kylo for the next movie. A bit predictable, but understandable nonetheless.
25. That wizard is just a crazy old man…
Yes, they set Luke up to be the wise Force mentor to someone that is very strong with the Force. Would you have it any other way? I found this completely acceptable. There were other ways to introduce Luke, but they chose this one. I like it. I really do! This movie served to introduce the next group of heroes (Rey , Finn and Poe) and set up the future of Star Wars for success, which it did extremely well. Were there some issues? Yes. But if you put Luke in the movie earlier, the movie would be about Luke and not the next generation. The time between ROTJ and TFA has a ton of history and mystery with Luke and I hope we get to find out much of that, but this was a transition movie to get us to move onto the new generation. If they keep glancing backwards to the OT and not come up with new fresh ideas, I will have huge problems with that, but I like TFA and thought it was a fun great Star Wars movie. It beat the prequels hands down! Nothing will ever be as great as the OT, but Star Wars is back and in grand fashion. It’s a great time to be a Star Wars fan!
Would I have it any other way? Yes, actually.
Luke is fine in the mentor role, but introducing him as a recluse, who runs away from the fight while an intergalactic war is going on, compromises the character significantly.
Think about it, Luke Skywalker is the quintessential Star Wars hero. And yet, he runs away from his nephew, and what he’s become. He runs away from The First Order, and lets them run rampant. He runs away and lets a solar system be destroyed and does nothing about it, even though we know he can feel it (think about how viscerally Obi-wan reacted to Alderaan being destroyed). He runs away and lets his best friend, Han Solo, be killed (Luke can feel when his friends are endangered- Empire Strikes Back- and yet, he does nothing!)
They’ve taken Star Wars greatest hero, and turned him into a coward.
And I disagree that it beats the prequels hands down, because at least the prequels, like the OT, were consistent with who their characters were, and what motivated them.
You understand why Obi-wan has become a recluse on a desert planet (to watch over Luke).
But here, the explanation flies in the face of everything we know about the character.
I agree. Arbitrary characters.
When Poe and Finns escape at the beginning and Poe informs Finn of His mission to find BB8 and They have to go back to Jakku. They both get ejected onto Jakku. Finn stumbles across Reys’ village and You know the rest. Poe just makes His way back home, doesn’t try to finish His mission.
Or when Solo goes to the Starkiller base to turn the shields off So the x-wings can get through. How does Solo get past the shields to turn the shields off ? He goes past them at light-speed. So why didn’t the x-wings just do that ?. Bit dopey for a General.If he would have just said something at the war council,maybe someone would have pointed that out..Old age suppose.The mission to turn the shields off was pointless.
The real mission was to plant the charges,but this was shown as an after thought on Solos part. More men with more charges would have done the job with the x-wing attack as a back up plan,
Yeah, It’s not a perfect movie. The only thing I could think of is that going in at light speed was considered reckless and Han’s the man for that job. My entry here was that Han does not equal Obi-wan from ANH, which your argument kind of back me up on, I think. I don’t think Obi-wan from ANH would have gone in at light speed. Reckless Anakin from the prequels would have done that and Obi-wan would have used the term ‘reckless’ for that IMHO.
This is what I like to call the J.J. Abrams Effect.
The first time you watch the film, it moves really fast and its funny and enjoyable, but as time passes, and the further you get away from it, and the more you think about it, you say to yourself, “Oh wait, that didn’t work” or “Jeez, that was really stupid.”
It’s like a really hot chick you start dating and your really excited about that after a few dates you start to realize is as dumb as a stack of bricks.
Lol, what a brilliant way to describe Abrams. For the life of me, I can’t figure out how some people actually think that the guy’s a brilliant director. Lucas in his prime had more creativity in one of his pinkies than this pedestrian filmmaker.
Let’s see what Luke has been doing for the past years before we call him a coward. I’ll admit, if Luke decided to run away and hide, that would be quite un-Luke like, but we don’t really know what he’s been doing. I’ve heard a lot of fan-theory about how he might have become a recluse to learn about the darkside of the force so that he might learn how to defend against it. That’s badass! Maybe he even found a way to use a bit of both for a greater cause. Who knows! To just call him a coward when we know so little is jumping the gun.
Sorry, I can only judge this film on its own terms.
Besides, what excuse could he possibly give would validate why he wasn’t there for his nephew, his best friend, and the galaxy, that would satisfy anyone?
Let’s face it, J.J. and the other filmmakers just wanted to use Luke as a macguffin because he thought it would be cool, without thinking about what it did to the character, and how people would view him.
I don’t know what they could do at this point. They put out a pretty decent movie that people liked and for what it is, I think it gets way too much criticism. Was it perfect? NO! Was it good? YES!!!
And I can only react the way I react and I’m sorry you think the film gets too much criticism, but I had problems with it.
Nothing I say will change the way you view the film. Just like nothing others will say will change the way I view the films I loved this year like Fury Road, Ex Machina, Bridge of Spies, and Man from UNCLE, even though those films very much have their critics.
When a movie isn’t working for you. You pick it apart, that’s natural. And J.J. is very good at making very fast, very fun, and very dumb movies. The further you’re removed from his movies, the more glaring the problems are, so he kind of leaves himself open to this.
This is the first Star Wars movie that didn’t really work for me on a lot of levels, and that’s disappointing.
So was it perfect? NO! Was it good? YES!!! Could it have been a lot better? YES!!!
It can be argued that what he’s been doing is ultimately with the greater good in mind. He didn’t seek out the first Jedi temple to hide in it. He went there for answers.
What answers could he possibly find would justify his not being there for his nephew, his best friend, a solar system, and the galaxy as a whole?
Unless he finds the answer to time travel, and he can go back and rectify the things he failed to save in this picture, it’s not going to be worth it.
“But if you put Luke in the movie earlier, the movie would be about Luke and not the next generation.”
Good storytellers can easily overcome this challenge. Take Tolkien, for instance. When The Fellowship of the Ring came out, Bilbo Baggins was his previous book’s protagonist, and the book (and the film) even starts out with his birthday party. Still, by the end, Frodo and co. had completely taken over as the new main characters.
Besides, this problem remains for Rian Johnson in Ep. VIII, because Luke can’t remain in the background forever. Sooner or later, he’ll have to come to the forefront.
I get what you are saying, but Bilbo was a different kind of hero than Luke in my opinion. If we saw Luke, a most powerful Jedi by this time, I’m assuming here, he might have swooped in and been able to solve all the issues instead of the newcomers.
Bilbo was a very different character indeed, and he wasn’t the star of an entire trilogy either, like Luke & Frodo. But still, the transition from Bilbo to Frodo must’ve been hard for Tolkien, because he couldn’t have possibly known how his Hobbit fans would take it back in the day. In that sense, Bilbo was the same as Luke, IMO, and Tolkien pulled it off.
That’s what I’m talking about here. A good writer can make the transition from an old protagonist to a new one. Now, I’m not saying I disliked the idea of having seen Luke so briefly in TFA, because it works for the story that was presented in the film (w/Luke going from protagonist to McGuffin).
I’m just saying that he could’ve been featured more prominently and the transition from Luke to Rey as the MC still could’ve worked. And again, this will have to be done at some point (best guess would be Ep. VIII, of course), especially now that Luke has finally been found. So, IMO, claiming that more screen time for Luke would’ve been distracting is just an excuse, frankly.
There is literally no way to distract people from Luke. Below there’s an essay on how important Luke is as a hero. Referencing the old characters is what bogged down the EU, they weren’t going to get caught in that trap. Use them to serve the story of the new heroes without becoming distracting to the old audience. They did that here, and its easy to say: ‘Just write the story in this way’ and put a requirement on it haha
I almost guarantee there was a thought to end the movie with Rey going into hyperspace with Chewie, Artoo and the map.
But people would have burned down the theater.
If you use the character wisely (say, like Vader in the OT or even give him less screen time than that), Luke would be a strength as opposed to a distracting factor.
Yeah, I know it’s easy to say “just write a story this way”, but the writer in me knows that part of the fun in writing is the challenges you encounter along the way, such as not overexposing your main or most popular character when the story doesn’t call for it.
Moreover, as I’ve already noted twice, this situation will have to be
addressed sooner or later. That is unless Luke is killed off in his
first 5 minutes onscreen in Ep. 8, or if he’s seen for less than a couple of minutes in the next 2 films, too. And then people will burn down the theater for sure 😉
I think that Darth Vedder should write the next 2 episodes! Great name!
I saw it 3 times. Yes I agree. It was like a greatest hits compilation but it was somewhat necessary to revisit all those great moments in the OT and pave the way for a new story. Now if the next does that I’m gonna be really mad and just think Disney doesn’t know what they are doing. Yea I hated how Luke was just basically non existent in this movie. He could have at least got a few lines in. I really hope Rey is his daughter because she is the perfect heir to the skywalker legacy.
outstaning work puting all that together. But this is exactly why I was dissapointed in the movie.
Speaking of themes, the March of the Resistance score sounded like a mixture of the Trade Federation theme from the prequels and something from Indiana Jones.