Thoughts on Star Wars: Episode VII – The Force Awakens

All right. I’m watching Star Wars: Episode VII – The Force Awakens for the third time, and I’m going to write down my comments for future amusement.

And I’m starting off with the first Teaser Trailer, because I have lots of thoughts on that as well.

Stationary shot of sand dunes to wind noise and soft dissonant strings chord. Sounds and looks like Star Wars, right?

Also, this is totally-not-Tatooine. They didn’t actually make it Tatooine, I guess because it just would’ve been unbelievable how much of the universe’s fate hinges on this shitty backwater planet. But we’re absolutely supposed to think it is. Fan service.

“There’s been an awakening. Have you felt it?” Andy Serkis with an awesome voice.

Jump scare! Black guy in stormtrooper armor but without helmet jumps into frame to scary music. (A lot of people got worked up about the “black” part, which is fucking pathetic. Apparently “a long time ago” means the Jim Crow era? For fuck’s sake.) The more interesting part is – who is this? A character who just popped into stormtrooper armor for some reason (like Luke and Han in A New Hope), or an actual stormtrooper who is also a character? Turns out it’s the latter, which is a nice change.

Empire Strikes Back probe droid noises in the background!

Cut to black. BB-8 rolling along the desert floor.

Cut to black. Short shots of stormtroopers preparing for invasion. This part was exciting.

A ramp drops onto what vaguely looks like it might be a cityscape (but turns out to be a Jakku village). That ramp drop sound was one hundred percent Star Wars. I loved that sound. This was one of the really reassuring bits.

Rey on an exotic vehicle that makes exotic sounds. Very reminiscent of the pod racer sounds, actually.

Someone in an X-Wing cockpit. Exciting.

HOLY SHIT X-WINGS FLYING LOW OVER WATER HOLY SHIT was about my reaction to that part. Because seriously. You have spaceships – NOT IN SPACE. Think about how many possibilities that opens up! We’re going to get even more of that in a bit with the Falcon. Also, it’s a comparatively long shot for the trailer, and beautiful.

A human in cloak and hood walks through a snowy forest. (Snowy forest – new environment! We’ve had snow, and forest, but not both.) Is this gonna be a Sith?

“The dark side.” Seriously, that voice is gorgeous.

LIGHTSABER!

CROSSGUARD LIGHTSABER FUCKING WHAT

Cut to black. We’re left to stew for a bit. What the fuck was that?

“And the light.”

STAR WARS THEME AND THE MILLENNIUM FALCON FLYING AROUND AND THE CAMERA IS GOING ALL OVER IT AND HOLY SHIT WE’RE ON THE PLANET AND THE FALCON IS DOING CRAZY MANEUVERS AND THE CAMERA IS UPSIDE-DOWN AND THE MUSIC KEEPS GOING AND HOLY SHIT THERE ARE TIE FIGHTERS OH MY GOD

Star Wars Theme reaches its main point. Cut to the starfield with the Star Wars logo across it.

This was masterfully done. They showed us all the new stuff, some exciting, some weird… and then they reeled us back in and showed us that yes, they’re making a Star Wars movie, yes, they know how to do that, yes, they’ll give you everything you want and more. Everything you want: The Falcon fighting TIE Fighters. More: it’s on a planet’s surface and hot damn would you look at that camera movement! Seriously, this is such an awesome teaser. I watched that daily for a while.

Lucasfilm. No 20th Century Fox fanfare :( but yeah, obviously not.

“A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away....” oh yeah.

“Luke Skywalker has vanished.” Good opening sentence. It’s also hilarious how much he has vanished (he’s a human MacGuffin), but I think I’ll get to that later.

“In his absence, the sinister FIRST ORDER has risen from the ashes of the Empire and will not rest until Skywalker, the last Jedi, has been destroyed.” More information. I love the use of “sinister”, that’s the proper title crawl tone. They also just casually throw in that Luke is “the last Jedi”. So apparently he hasn’t been training anybody, or at least none of them have gotten far enough to earn that title. And indeed I don’t recall any Force users outside of Kylo Ren and Rey in this movie.

“With the support of the REPUBLIC, General Leia Organa leads a brave RESISTANCE.” There’s our two other factions in caps lock (though the Republic isn’t going to be playing a major role). Also, no Leia Organa Solo. Are they even married? Divorced? Not sure.

Also, the First Order against the Resistance is really just totally-not-the-Empire versus totally-not-the-Rebels. New names for mostly the same factions.

“She is desperate to find her brother Luke and gain his help in restoring peace and justice to the galaxy.” “Her brother Luke” is for those who aren’t familiar with the universe, I guess? (“The last Jedi” also kinda serves that role.) Also, nice direct quote from the A New Hope crawl. They’re doing a lot of fan service in this movie – I imagine it’s kinda an attempt to show that this isn’t “trade route taxation” Star Wars.

“Leia has sent her most daring pilot on a secret mission to Jakku, where an old ally has discovered a clue to Luke’s whereabouts....” and there’s the setup for the start of the movie.

Camera slowly drops to a view of a planet. Do we even learn which planet it is? It certainly doesn’t look like Jakku, and I’m not sure Starkiller Base looks like that. Might be a complete throwaway just for the opening scene.

Star destroyer glides into frame (including thrumming engine noises). Basically A New Hope except from a different angle. But it does a very good job at looking big – the triangular shape is really great because you can just keep going, and making the thing bigger. Now it’s eclipsed the entire planet! And little ships are coming out of it.

There’s the stormtroopers preparing for landing. Nice imagery, with the shaky camera and all.

BB-8. Look how scruffy and dirty he is! Good CGI, if it is. (I know a lot was also done with props and puppetry.)

Okay, he drives away, it’s at least partial CGI. But still good. Also, first glimpse of his voice. Kinda like R2-D2 in the general concept, but clearly a different voice. Mellower. Well done.

(Also, the editing does make it scene like the ships went directly from the star destroyer to Jakku. So does Jakku look like this from afar? I don’t see how. Or is there another planet close by? Not physically possible, but then again, Han and Leia somehow got from Hoth to Bespin sub-c in a reasonable time, so perhaps interstellar distances just aren’t as vast in the Star Wars universe.)

“This will begin to make things right.” First spoken sentence of the sequel trilogy, and you know it was chosen to be like that. It makes sense in the plot, but they’re really saying it to the audience. And I’d say they’ve succeeded.

“The general? To me, she’s royalty.” Gee I wonder who whe could possibly be referring to. He even winks at Poe as he says it. (Also, who is this? Is he from Alderaan? He gets killed real fast and then the movie doesn’t mention him again, so I’d have to refer to the literature for that.)

Empire binoculars.

Nice shot, with him running across the set and then the camera settling on a villager getting ready for defense.

And the stormtroopers landing is another nice shot. Track on the ships, get shaky, ramp drops, they run out and start shooting the place up, camera rises up to show the destruction. And then they cut to two people being shot. The bad guys are quickly established.

“Come on, BB-8, hurry!” In case you didn’t get the name from the trailers or merchandise, there it is.

An X-Wing, because apparently there’s been no technological advances since the original trilogy. (Or, better explanation, the Resistance takes what it gets.)

He’s shot at, and the ship doesn’t explode, because that only happens to people we don’t care about.

A gun drops out of the ship to fire at the stormtroopers, which is clearly from the Falcon in the Mos Eisley escape.

More shots of misery, pain, death. Setting up the bad guys well. And there’s a flame thrower stormtrooper! I love that he has fuel tanks on this back – they could’ve done without them (science fiction), but they went for the realism, and I appreciate that.

BB-8 gets the whatever-it-is, so now Poe can get captured.

He shoots up three stormtroopers with great aim, establishing himself as badass. (Nice gun sounds.)

And we linger on the third shot, and the stormtrooper is shown to be just another human. His glove came off for whatever reason, and he marks Finn’s helmet with his bloody hand. Which, apart from the imagery (something something blood on your hands), serves the quite practical purpose of making Finn distinguishable in what is otherwise very uniform armor.

Music changes! Camera staggering around! Heavy breathing! Frame bathed in red! Conscience sequence!

And as Poe glances quizzically up to the sky, the music culminates in… The Arrival Of Kylo Ren. His ship descends through the smoke to a slow, measured theme in horns. Then wide cut to a barely moving pan around the entire plateau that this village is apparently on (making the ship settling on it look very menacing) – and there’s a cut in the music too! As there’s a break in the main theme, trumpets cut in with a quick fanfare. This blew my fucking mind the first times I heard it. It’s two very distinct themes and rhythms with clearly completely different tempi, which come together to form one piece of music. Now that I’m seeing it in the movie again (as opposed to on its own from the soundtrack album), and I notice how it exactly coincides with the visual cut, I realize that this is exactly what this is. A musical cut in the same musical scene. It’s fucking amazing. I’ve never heard anything like it. (I’ve since started paying attention to it, and I’ve noticed that there’s a somewhat similar bit in the 1812 Overture (here) where the strings and the zvons just go to town during a break in the main, full-orchestra melody – but that’s more of a backdrop.) Then we cut again to a more frontal, closer view of the ship as the main melody comes in again. This is great.

Kylo Ren leaves his ship. Hood, cloak, all in black, mask – clearly Not-Darth-Vader. But in this case it’s not just imitation for the sake of the audience – Kylo Ren is actually directly imitating Darth Vader, and it’s part of his character. That’s great.

“I know where you come from – before you called yourself Kylo Ren.” More name dropping!

“The map to Skywalker.” Yeah, it’s that simple. Leia is looking for Skywalker, and the mysterious object that the mysterious man gave to Poe for her is actually a map to Skywalker. It’s absurd – where did the map come from? (Even more so when we find out that the missing bit is R2-D2.) How old is it? How long has Skywalker been there? Does he have to stay there now, because otherwise he invalidates the last clue leading to him? It’s a weird setup. And then Kylo Ren says that the other guy has “found it” – where? How? This feels a lot like Indiana Jones to me, except that nothing about this can be ancient, because Skywalker is still alive! But fortunately, it’s not like it matters much.

“And now you’re going to give it to the First Order.” Just in case you didn’t make the connection between the evil guys mentioned in the title crawl and the evil guys shown here.

Kylo Ren kills the old guy (it’s great how they just throw away that character, and he’s never even mentioned again for the rest of the movie – remember how excited we all got that Max von Sydow was in this?), and Finn shoots at him, which allows him to show off that neat ability where he doesn’t deflect the blast – he just holds it in the air. That’s a new force ability right there, and a badass one at that (especially that he just keeps it until his departure – surely that must cost some concentration?). There’s not too much of the Force in this movie, but this is nice.

And then the camera moves right up to the bolt and Poe looks back at it in shock, just in case we didn’t appreciate how neat that was.

Already using the Leitmotiv a lot here. (Yes, I know English spells it with an f. I don’t care, that’s just stupid. There’s no f in there. End of discussion.)

Kylo Ren squats down in front of Poe, and I love how he cocks his head a bit. “Curious. I wonder if this one has the map.”

Then silence. A few cuts back and forth.

“So who talks first? You talk first? I talk first?” I gotta admit, I didn’t like that line when I heard it in cinema. I was afraid of what it implied the rest of the movie might be – it sounded a bit too Disney, and I didn’t want the rest of the movie to be exchanges like this. But then it turned out to not be like that, this is just Poe’s character, and with that out of the way, I can enjoy this line.

“The old man gave it to you.” “It’s just very hard to understand you, with all the [gestures indicating mask] apparatus.” Yeah, this is exactly what I was worried about.

I like Kylo Ren’s voice during all of this. The tone is very calm, dry, and the modulation is great.

Oh look, a shiny stormtrooper. Very metal-y voice modulation as well. (Female voice, too. Isn’t it amazing that a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, civil rights improved in the same short few decades as in our world? What a coincidence! The First Order probably still hates nonhumans, but black people and women now count as human, whereas the Empire was exclusively white male.)

“Sir. The villagers.” “Kill them all.” Cut to villagers. Look, they’re people! Care about them!

“On my command.” Show Finn again, the conscience guy. He hesitates raising his weapon.

“Fire.” They don’t actually show much of the death. They cut to Poe’s reaction (he brought this on them!) and then track in on Finn who doesn’t fire.

Kylo Ren looks at Finn. Leitmotiv again. No reactions on either part – this is just setup for a moment later.

Cut to wide – the blaster shot is in frame now, and by the laws of cinema, now that we see it, we must hear it again as well. Not how sound works, but whatever.

And he releases the shot. Just to remind us that he was controlling it the whole time.

They shoot up the X-Wing, and now it blows up. Go figure.

Reaction shots are the key to tragedy.

Also, that being that just popped into frame watching BB-8 roll away was from the Mos Eisley cantina.

Diagonal wipe (wipes!) to ships flying from Jakku to the star destroyer. So I guess that must have been Jakku in the opening shot. Perhaps we saw the night side? (Also, very nice music there, culminating in an almost church organ sound.)

MOUSE DROID! Yay! :)

More heavy breathing from Finn. His armor is also a lot dirtier than the others’, which doesn’t make too much sense.

And he takes off his helmet, because heroes need faces.

Metal-y stormtrooper (Captain Phasma, right?) chastises him. And when she walks away, you can see she has a cloak as well!

Cut to what we’re supposed to think is an alien, but actually it’s Rey. It’s completely quiet and very dusty. She rips out stuff.

Wider shot of what she’s standing on. Technology stuff.

She goes down a rope. Even wider shot – it’s a hangar bay, with broken bits of a TIE fighter and an Imperial Shuttle strewn around in the sand. Very cool concept – battles have been fought, and now it’s just ordinary people picking through the rubble.

Beautiful framing. Sand, the giant engine arc, and her tiny in it.

Rey’s theme! The weird thing about this is, when I first heard it on the soundtrack album, I was really confused. I was convinced that this was an already established, popular piece. Like the one from Amélie. So that’s probably a compliment to John Williams, that he wrote this piece that sounded so incredibly familiar after I only heard it a few times in the movie.

More shots of the giant ship. It’s great.

Wide pan across the desert. Multiple planes! Foreground: an X-Wing buried in the ground. Background: a friggen star destroyer buried in the ground. In between: her, tiny, speeding along. This was such a great shot in the trailer, too, that moment where you realized: that’s not a mountain in the background. Another holy fuck moment.

Showing her get distracted at work. She has hopes and dreams, I guess? And then some robot yells at her and she gets back to work. I don’t quite understand the setup here – is she a slave? Anakin had something implanted in him so he couldn’t fly away, which doesn’t seem to be a problem for her. And if she’s a slave, it would also be weird that she has her own place (the AT-AT) and gets her own food. So probably not. Then why did that guy yell at her?

Also, establishing that she’s poor, exploited by that fat fuck, and that one quarter portion isn’t much (which will be important when he later offers much more for BB-8 – we need to know the relations here).

Aww, she has flowers and a doll. And she marks days in a metal plate! That’s a lot of days. (Someone had to make that prop, too. That’s great.)

She drops the powder into a bit of water and it turns into bread. The way they shot it has a weird vibe to it for me – I almost want to say it might be a practical effect, for some reason.

Actually, I googled it, and would you look at that – http://www.themarysue.com/star-wars-instant-bread/ – it is! Practical effect! Awesome.

Looking at a ship departing. Oh, she has a rebellion helmet! Hopes and dreams.

A wide shot reveals that her home is a broken down AT-AT. This is so great.

Talking in a weird language, for whatever reason. Everyone speaks English (Basic) almost all of the time, so why not now? I guess it shows off that she speaks several languages. Part of living in this tough world, or something like that.

Also, what just happened? This guy was dragging the droid along. Fine, let him. No, she cuts open the net (destroying it!), then tells him off, and he just scampers away. What’s the dynamic here? Why can she have the droid and he can’t? Whatever.

Look, she got technical skills.

Our heroes get to know each other, and since we can only understand one of them (but she understands BB-8! technical skills), she has to repeat what he said.

(BB-8 is “he” in my mind. Sorry.)

She gives him advice, clearly not wanting him. Why? What’s wrong with him? I mean, giving advice is fine, but then she resists when he wants to follow her. I don’t understand that.

Great reactions from here. Lovely “no!”. (I haven’t mentioned it yet, but there are Dialect Coaches in the credits, and they must’ve been worth their money, ’cause she sounds great.) And then that annoyed face.

HE’S PURRING

Awwww. This is a great relationship already.

Circular wipe to the star destroyer, and then cut to Finn inside. Bloody temples and mouth. That’s already more explicit torture than we’ve seen in Empire Strikes Back. (It is torture, right? He didn’t have all these wounds when he was captured.)

Oh, and there’s that torture droid sphere from A New Hope in the wide shot! I hadn’t noticed that the first two times.

Kylo Ren has very heavy footsteps.

Apparently Poe didn’t break under torture.

Force mind reading! A lot more forceful than previous instances. This is more like Force mind rape. Kylo Ren actually moves Poe’s head with the Force too.

Poe yells, and there’s that trailer shot. Which I thought was a bad guy, but it’s not.

Cuts. Kylo Ren leaves the room, and Poe is again just slumped in his “chair”.

(By the way, the interior of the ship looks just like it should – exactly what we saw in the original trilogy. Which makes sense, since this is ostensibly the same ships. Those landing boats looked new, but apparently the First Order doesn’t have the money to build a more badass flagship for Kylo Ren. Except – fucking Starkiller Base. Like hell it doesn’t have money.)

Oh hey, look, Domhnall Gleeson! I had seen him just earlier in Ex Machina, and he’s also Bill Weasley (though I hadn’t seen the later Harry Potter movies yet at that point). He’s great in this role, but we’ll get to that.

“I know all about waiting.” Hints!

Oh right, she just tells him. “For my family. They’ll be back. One day.” I love the little smile there. She genuinely believes it. Well…

(Oh, and the way the movie sets it up later… she’s almost certainly going to be Luke’s daughter, right? Like, I want her not to be – does everything have to derive from Anakin? – but it’s pretty obvious.)

He’ll pay sixty portions for the droid, and now that we’ve been told twice how little a quarter portion and half a portion is, we know that’s a lot of “money”.

Oh god he does the purring again. How did I not hear that in cinema? It’s amazing. (Also, wouldn’t he say something? The scene is better without words, but I feel like he should be saying something.)

“Follow the girl and get that droid.” This is why you have people.

Also, nice cut with him slamming the shop’s “window” and then cutting to the door sliding open.

“Why are you helping me?” “[solemn expression] Because it’s the right thing to do.” [music cuts out] “You need a pilot.” “[desperate] I need a pilot.” Nice dynamic.

More mouse droids! And white TIE fighters, what?

TIE fighter sounds!

Yoink! No, really, that’s the sound that cable makes as it holds back his fighter. That’s a great bit of comedy. Complete with the sound of the engine cutting down, and the cockpit starts beeping. This is great.

“Alert General Hux. And stop that fighter!” I feel like I’ve seen that guy before. But I feel like it was in an Indiana Jones movie (one of the old ones), which doesn’t work time-wise. Perhaps it’s just the facial expression.

Finn’s shooting up the hangar, because apparently he has no problem with killing if it’s the bad guys.

Wilhelm scream! Almost a bit subdued.

“Alright, we gotta take out as many of these cannons as we can, or we’re not gonna get very far!” Video game level.

“That’s the only name they ever gave me.” So how does this work? Is he a clone? Abducted from his family at very early age? Or perhaps willingly given up? Bred? None of these are good options, but I’m curious which one it is.

Finn and Poe. Finn’s name is brand new, but we haven’t been told Poe’s either, right? First time.

Kylo Ren knows which stormtrooper it was – “the one from the village, FN-2187”. That’s what that earlier moment was for. Also badass how he just knows the number.

If they’ve taken out their turbolasers, then what are those green shots flying past the TIE fighter as they’re evading the missiles?

And they got hit while they were distracted over an argument. Classic.

Hux also has a great accent. In the EU, British English was retconned to be the Coruscanti accent – I wonder if that’s still true. (Because if it is, that has implications for Rey’s background.)

TIE fighters have ejector seats? Since when does the Empire / First Order care about individual pilots that much?

The fighter gets swallowed by sand, and we’re supposed to think Poe’s dead.

He’s walking across the desert and getting rid of the armor. Isn’t that worth… anything? At the very least, it’s white, which is better than the black stuff he has underneath.

“Supreme Leader Snoke was explicit. Capture the droid if we can, but destroy it if we must.” Yet another totally-not – Snoke is totally-not-Palpatine. (Who he is remains, so far, unknown. It’s gotta be interesting – Kylo Ren seems to be his pupil, so it seems he knows something about the Dark Side of the Force. What did he do while Palpatine was alive?)

“How capable are your soldiers, general?” “I won’t have you question my methods.” Building the rivalry between the two.

“They’re obviously skilled at committing high treason. Perhaps Leader Snoke should consider using a clone army.” So Finn’s not a clone, we know that.

“My men are exceptionally trained, programmed from birth.” Still unclear.

“Then they should have no problem retrieving the droid. Unharmed.”

“Careful, Ren, that your personal interest not interfere with orders from Leader Snoke.”

“I want that map. For your sake, I suggest you get it.” I really like the dynamic between them.

Alright, I’m back for some more, but holy shit this takes a long time compared to just watching the movie.

“Water!” “DRÄ DRÄ DRÄ.” “Water!” “NRÖÖÖT” I like how they’re not even saying any words. Just generic rejection sounds.

Yes, that’s the droid Poe mentioned.

BB-8 has a zappy thingy!

How about you explain where you got that jacket from? She’s not wrong, this does look strange to them.

“It belongs to his master!” “Master gave Dobby a jacket!”

That droop. It’s great how BB-8 can convey emotions when he’s just a bowl on top of a sphere. (Well, he has sound, but it would’ve been understandable without that as well.)

The way he said it should at least make you suspicious whether he’s actually with the resistance. But I guess I can buy that she just wants to believe it.

“This is what we look like. Some of us. Others look different.” YouDontSay.jpg

“Luke Skywalker? I thought he was a myth.” Okay, now’s as good a time for this as any.
How the hell? Again: Luke Skywalker is alive. Everything that’s now apparently a myth happened not more than forty years ago. How has this news spread so far across the galaxy (Rey has heard of Han, too!) and simultaneously gone from “this actually happened and there were lots of witnesses who’ll gladly tell you about it” to myth and legend? This is as far back as the Mount St. Helens eruption and the assassination attempt on John Paul II. Are those legends?

The stormtroopers are calling for an airstrike. I didn’t hear that the first times, but it’s a nice tad of continuity – the ships we’re about to see didn’t come out of nowhere, someone called for them.

TIE fighter sound! They’re actually calling attention to it, which is cool because it’s such an iconic sound.

They got thrown across the frame real fast. (And BB-8 looked like Captain America’s shield for a second.) But no, no injuries or severe damage to clothing.

I like how they’re ridiculing the “damsel in distress” trope here. The hand thing, him asking her if she’s okay when clearly she’s better off than he is right now.

All this sand makes for rather interesting explosions. Not just flame, but also the sand being thrown up. Looks pretty.

“What about that ship?” “That one’s garbage!” They don’t show it at all, so it should be obvious what it’s going to be. (I have to admit, I didn’t realize it in cinema, I was too taken by the action on screen to think about it. But really, how many ships in this franchise have been called garbage?)

“The garbage will do.” And we pan over to… and the music changes to… the Millennium Falcon and the Star Wars “hero” theme. (No idea what its name is, but it’s strewn all over the movies. The most memorable occurrence IMO is after R2-D2 defeats the buzz droid at the beginning of Revenge of the Sith.) They also really linger on this shot for a bit. Yeah, there it is. Look at it. We know you love it, so we’ll just keep showing it to you.

“Gunner position is down there”, which she knows… how? Has she been on this ship before? Does she know that this is Han Solo’s ship? Because she’s heard of Han Solo.

Also, if I remember the ship layout correctly, gravity’s tilted in the gunner’s position, and his back is actually pointed up right now. At least that’s how I always interpreted it – otherwise, how does that access shaft/ladder work? And that kind of gravity tilt is perhaps possible in space (where all the gravity’s artificial anyways), but we’re still on the planet…

“I can do this.” ×4, each of them twice. Jokes!

I also like that it doesn’t just take off. The ship really is garbage, it drags its entire side along the sand before getting properly into the air.

There’s that trailer shot. Her going low. (Also, nice that he knows the TIE fighters’ weaknesses.)

BB-8 can shoot little cables into the hallway to hold himself up. Physical comedy!

I love that there are scavengers right there when the TIE fighter goes down. That’s a lot of prime material there, you’re really lucky to get there first!

(Also, I happened to pause at a good moment, and you can see Rey’s outline in the cockpit in the outside shots of the Falcon, which is a nice detail.)

Well that gun’s no good.

The Falcon flew through the flames and took a bit of the flames with it. Only lasted a couple fractions of a second, but looked very good. Great effects.

Somehow those two TIE fighters were all that was there, and now nobody’s going after them. Isn’t the First Order’s star destroyer still in the system? And if not, what the hell is it doing anywhere else? Isn’t this their most important business right now?

Rey has done amazing things that she never knew she was capable of. The Force much? (In particular, flying. Descended from Anakin much?)

Wipe to the star zestroyer. Yes, it’s still around Jakku.

(Also, whoa, that was a long shot in which nothing happened. The star destroyer just slowly inched closer to the camera. We got to take a nice, long look at it, and it is gorgeous. Probably some giant model, right?)

“Sir, we were unable to acquire the droid on Jakku.” (He looks so young.) Also, Kylo Ren has his hood off and looks kinda weird. Why? Like, both in plot and outside. Is there any reason for the character to take it off right now? And is there any reason for the movie makers to do this right there?

“It escaped capture aboard a stolen Corellian YT-model freighter.” Yes, that’s the Falcon’s actual model and origin from the EU. (YT-1300 if memory serves. I’m not going to check that, because then what’s the point of remembering it in the first place?)

“The droid… stole a freighter.” A very slight tang of that kind of dialogue I talked about earlier, but still not so much that it’s bad. I can buy this incredulousness, especially considering that Kylo Ren isn’t actually that badass. But we’ll get to that.

“Not exactly, sir. It had help. We have no confirmation, but we believe FN-2187 may have helped in the escape–” Lightsaber time! The lackey turns away, but Kylo Ren doesn’t kill him. (How fucking weak. Darth Vader would’ve either not let himself be affected at all or Force Choked him to death.) Instead, Kylo Ren cuts up the control console as the lackey flinches.

Reaction shots are the key to comedy.

Wide shots are another key to comedy. It would’ve been fantastic if they’d cut to a wide view of the entire bridge, and Kylo Ren’s just hacking away at this perfectly harmless accounting computer just at the edge of the frame. But I suppose that would’ve also had to show more people, and we didn’t need their reactions.

“Anything else?” “The two were accompanied by a girl.” Now he goes for the force choke! Or rather, he pulls the guy in, and then holds him up by the throat. Like Captain Antilles. Except Kylo Ren isn’t as tall, so we can’t get that impressive shot of the feet dangling a good foot above the ground.

“What girl?” Cut to the girl.
But first. This is great character setup. So far, we’ve just seen him be badass. He froze a blaster bolt in mid-air, captured Poe almost casually, and threatened Hux. His voice has just stayed equally calm throughout all of this.
But now – he just threw a sissy fit when he couldn’t get what he wanted. He did it in a badass way, with a badass lightsaber, but still – you demolished a completely harmless computer in a fit of rage that accomplishes nothing. It’s pathetic, and the follow-up “Anything else”, with a playing-it-cool voice, doesn’t save it. This is what he really is. Great scene.

Anyways, the movie cuts to Rey. We establish that she can fix this ship as well and is technologically well-versed. (I didn’t even mention it because I had nothing to say on it, but yeah, she also beat up two thugs with her stick.)

Finn has to negotiate with BB-8, and it’s even better because he doesn’t understand the droid’s language.

Confession time! “I’m not with the resistance.” BB-8 scoots back immediately. Physical expression!

(I was gonna write that Finn is not talking anywhere near quiet enough that Rey wouldn’t hear it, but I guess it could be pretty loud down in the ship’s bowels where she’s fixing stuff right now.)

No, seriously, BB-8 is great at physical expressiveness. Those head turns!

And again, the way Finn confirmed the information right after he got it himself should make her suspicious.

Thumbs up! And droid thumbs up! This is the moment where the audience applauds. I don’t know what makes it so great, but it’s wonderful.

“The one I’m pointing to.” Still the same theme as with the hand and the are you okay.

“That can’t be good.” Missed opportunity for the bad feeling line. It’s in this movie, right? I think they gave it to Han. We’ll see.

Giant ship swallowing the Falcon! This looks hilarious.

“It’s the First Order.” And, a complete miss. Seriously, do First Order ships look like that? (No, seriously. The landing ships were boxy, not triangular, so it’s not out of the question.)

They have gas masks, and I bet if I went back to Empire I would find out that they grabbed the masks from the same place.

“Chewie – we’re home.” Another line that’s completely for the audience (and the trailer). But it also does make sense. They’ve written the plot to where he’s actually been away from the Falcon for a long time, and it is his home. So that’s just great.

“I’m the pilot!” No one ever assumes that she could be the pilot. Social commentary and all that.

And Rey understands Chewie too. Which will be important in the next movie now that Han’s gone, but also, where does she keep learning those languages? Jakku is nothing like Kashyyyk, would there be many Wookiees there?

“Where’d you get this ship?” “Nima outpost.” “Jakku? That junkyard?”
First. Does he know the name of every outpost on every junkyard in the galaxy?
Second. Are they not still just around Jakku? Why is he so surprised? Shouldn’t he have seen them fly off the planet? It’s not like they drifted through space for weeks.

Finn thanks Han for badmouthing Jakku, because Rey wants to go back there and he doesn’t.

“Told you we should’ve double-checked the western reaches.” So apparently it’s feasible to actually search the galaxy for a ship, just by going to the places and asking around. At least that’s what they’re making it sound like. That’s one hell of a scale you’re dealing with here.

They’re telling a stealing chain of how the ship got where it is. Han, of course, didn’t steal it, he won it in a gamble.

“Well you tell him that Han Solo just stole back the Millennium Falcon for good.” Was that for the sake of those few in the audience who don’t know the names Han Solo and Millennium Falcon? Not sure.

“This is the Millennium Falcon?” Really? She’s heard of the ship too, but never connected it to the garbage in her village’s back yard?

“You’re Han Solo?” You can basically copy+paste my legends comments from above here.

“I used to be.” Makes no sense, but sounds very much like a Han Solo line.

“Han Solo, the rebellion general?” “No, the smuggler!” Funny how they’ve heard of him through completely different grapevines. (But also, did Finn’s education include history classes?)

“This is the ship that made the Kessel run in fourteen parsecs!” Every Star Wars nerd knew exactly what Han was going to say next. Total fan service. But totally harmless fan service. I love it, of course.

“TWELVE! [mutters] fourteen…”

More establishing Rey as a good mechanic, right down to her and Han saying the same thing simultaneously.

“Chewie, throw ’em on a pod, we’ll drop ’em on the nearest inhabited planet.” So apparently they’re already in interstellar space? I don’t understand how distances work out here. But again, Empire had the same problem with Hoth and Bespin.

“What’s a Rathtar?” “They’re big and they’re dangerous.” That’s all we need to be told, too.

“How’d you get them on board?” “Used to have a bigger crew.” That’s great. That’s pre-A New Hope Han Solo. All of his crew except for him and Chewie died, and he don’t care. Probably expected it right away. (Suddenly reminds me of Dead Man’s Chest, too.)

“What are you gonna do?” “Same thing I always do, talk my way out of it.” Yeah, it’s Han Solo.

We begin with Han Solo talking his way out of it.

“Han Solo.” I love that he has an Irish accent. Where’s Space Ireland?

“You’re a dead man.” I just realized that this is totally-not-Greedo. I think I’ll get to that later, but this plot sure is derivative, isn’t it?

“I never made a deal with Kanjiklub.” “Tell that to Kanjiklub.” Cue Kanjiklub entering behind him. That’s totally a Han Solo situation.

(Also, it’s a nice moment, but how did this come to pass? Did the Guavian Death Gang and Kanjiklub coordinate this? Did they get here together? Did they happen to arrive almost simultaneously by chance, and Bala-Tik somehow knew of it just before Kanjiklub opened that door?)

Kanjiklub speaks Space Chinese. Because if they look Asian, they can’t speak English (Basic). Doesn’t matter that all kinds of aliens speak it – these Asian guys (who clearly understand it) have to speak their own, exotic-sounding language. ’Tis Hollywood law. (Chewbacca is different – he actually can’t produce the language with his vocal tract. But these guys are humans.)

That was a lot of words for “Twice.” Also, great how even Chewbacca nods at that.

“There’s no one in the galaxy left for you to swindle.” Just in case you thought Han was going to play a big role in this trilogy.

“That BB unit. First Order is looking for one just like it.” Really? Would they have put out “wanted” posters that quickly?

“I got a bad feeling about this.” There it is! Of course Han got that line.

I also love how Finn is grinning widely before she tells him that she opened the wrong doors.

And now she has to save him. Tropes!

Also, that Rathtar is taking its sweet time to eat Finn.

Chewie got hurt, so Han takes his gun and learns how great it is. That’s a bit weird – wouldn’t he have seen Chewie use it before? This is almost certainly supposed to be the same gun Chewie had in the original trilogy (I don’t remember if he had it in Revenge of the Sith). They must’ve been in a lot of situations where Chewie would’ve used the gun.

“Is that even possible?” “I never ask that question until after I’ve done it.” Yeah, we get it, it’s still the same Han Solo.

A HA HA that sound of the engine cutting down again :D exact same sound as all the other times. The garbage still living up to its name.

“Inform the First Order that Han Solo has the droid they want, and it’s aboard the Millennium Falcon.” Why is he telling them? Does he get a bounty for that information? (But also, another line for the audience, I’d say.)

Wipe! To TIE fighters! And they’re flying toward Starkiller Base, which we see for the first time. Kind of a non-reveal, huh.

“The droid will soon be delivered to the Resistance.” Oh yeah, Andy Serkis with the awesome voice again. (Totally-not-Palpatine, too.)

And they cut to the interior, with Kylo Ren and Hux standing before a giant being. It’s certainly a nice image.

Oh yeah, and there’s a male choir in the soundtrack again! More not-Palpatine-ness!

“Leading them to the last Jedi. If Skywalker returns, the new Jedi will rise.” Same question again – what did he do before he vanished? He apparently trained Ben and others for a while. How long? New Jedi won’t just bounce out of the ground as soon as Luke’s back – it’ll take some time to train them.

And what are the conditions of Luke’s absence, anyways? “If Skywalker returns” makes it sound as if he can’t return right now. Like he’s actually stranded, and needs rescuing. But then later, it sounds more like exile. Couldn’t he choose to return at any time? Or, conversely, couldn’t he resist coming back even when they find him?

Also, Snoke leans forward into the light so we can see his face better. Which is… weird. Right now, we might think he’s some sort of giant, but later, that’s revealed to be just a hologram. So he’s probably just another human. In that case, what’s up with his mouth? And his scalp?

“Supreme Leader, I take full responsibility–” “GENERAL!” Don’t interrupt me!

“Our strategy must now change.” “The weapon. It is ready. I believe the time has come to use it.” Why “the weapon”? Is it just to save a reveal for the audience? (Like we couldn’t guess what that totally-not-Death Star looking thing is gonna do.) But really, why does he phrase it like that?

“We shall destroy the government that supports the Resistance. The Republic. Without their friends to protect them, the Resistance will be vulnerable, and we will stop them before they reach Skywalker.” I don’t understand the relationships here. Are the Republic and the First Order at war? Or do they just control different parts of the galaxy and are formally in some sort of armistice? And the terms of that agreement forbid them from supporting the Resistance? But really, why is this three factions, when one of them is then destroyed before it can play any role? It’s weird. And also, why is destroying the Republic a new idea? What the fuck else were you building Starkiller Base for, if not to destroy the Republic?

“Go. Oversee preparations.” “Yes, Supreme Leader.” I love the look Hux gives Kylo Ren before he leaves. Yeah bitch, my weapon’s going to fix this, not you. What now?

“There’s been an awakening. Have you felt it?” There’s the trailer line. Also, nice symmetry.

“Yes.” Kylo Ren’s voice almost breaks here, it sounds really weird.

“There’s something more. The droid we seek is aboard the Millennium Falcon. In the hands of your father, Han Solo.” Bit of a weird way to do this reveal too.

“He means nothing to me.” In comparison to Snoke, his voice sounds oddly high-pitched and almost quavery here. Nice touch.

“Even you, master of the Knights of Ren, have never faced such a test.” I wonder if we’ll get the background on the Knights of Ren from the movies. Because this guy is like, in his twenties. When did he become this master? And who are these Knights?

“By the grace of your training, I will not be seduced.” “We shall see. We shall see.” Holo-gone!

More scenes of Rey and Han working together.

“Move, Ball.” That sounds like a line you’d want to use in your personal life.

It’s the game that R2-D2 played against Chewbacca! Callbacks! I like how Chewbacca also looks up at this, like he’s never seen this thing since then. It’s your ship, isn’t it?

“This map’s not complete. It’s just a piece.” This doesn’t make a lot of sense. Can’t they look up any of the stars or planets in this map fragment in other maps?

Luke was training a new generation of Jedi. One boy, an apprentice, turned against him and destroyed it all. Luke felt responsible and just walked away from everything. And he never came back? The next movie will have to expand a bit on the motivations here. I hope they won’t make it as easy as Luke just going with Rey without discussion. She should have to convince him that it’s not his fault and the galaxy needs him.

Apparently Luke went looking for the first Jedi temple. Which is a bit weird. Surely the Jedi order in its heyday (i. e., before Order 66) would’ve known where that was? Sounds like an important place, and they definitely had the resources to look for it. And then, wouldn’t that knowledge have fallen into the Empire’s hands? And wouldn’t the Empire have destroyed it? But anyways, I expect we’ll learn more about the Jedi’s origins next movie.

“The Jedi were real.” Again. Order 66 was no more than sixty years ago, and before that, Jedi were everywhere. They were the generals of the Clone Wars! They were actually dispersed throughout the galaxy – that was the entire purpose of the Clone Wars, to make them vulnerable! Millions of people must’ve seen Jedi personally, and everyone else saw their adventures on the Holonet! How the fuck did they go to legends in the short time afterwards?

Han’s a believer now! And the force theme.

Why are they visiting Maz, by the way? They already know where the rebel base is, BB-8 told them. So what are they doing there now?

“I didn’t know there was this much green in the whole galaxy.” She isn’t that young when we see her being left behind on Jakku in the flashback later. Was it not green wherever she came from, too?

“I’m a big deal in the Resistance.” What’s that about? Why is he saying that?

Han gives her the gun, because we need to build more of a relationship between them so his death is more meaningful later. “You got a lot to learn.” Too bad he won’t be around to teach it!

Name dropping again, if we didn’t remember it from earlier.

Aww, job offer. Which she declines for stupid reasons.

“Why are we here again?” “To get your droid on a clean ship.” “Clean?” “You think it was luck that Chewie and I found the Falcon? If we can find it on our scanners, the First Order’s not far behind.” Okay, that’s why they go there. Question answered.

“She’s run this watering hole for a thousand years.” This sounds like it remained unchanged for those thousand years. Two regime changes apparently didn’t have any effect out here?

It’s totally-not-Mos Eisley Cantina! With the music and everything!

“Han Solo!” Maz yells, and everyone stops in their tracks. Record scratch moment. Why? Because she rarely yells, or because he’s that famous?

“Where’s my boyfriend?” “Chewie’s working on the Falcon.” “I like that Wookiee.” Wait, what?

Was that the robot from Metropolis?

And the Resistance and the First Order are immediately informed that the droid’s there. Shouldn’t Han have seen this coming?

Wipe to Starkiller Base and a star destroyer passing in front of it. Still looks great.

“Forgive me. I feel it again. The pull to the light. Supreme Leader senses it. Show me again the power of the darkness. And I will let nothing stand in our way. Show me. Grandfather. And I will finish what you’ve started.” It’s the lines from the trailer – “Nothing will stand in our way. I will finish what you have started.” – but in a completely different inflection. In the trailer, it was just the villain narrating his evil plan. Here, it’s a moment of weakness, with the quavering voice and everything. It’s nice how the trailers didn’t give anything away about Kylo Ren other than that he appears to be the generic villain. And as he stands up, we see Vader’s mask, burnt and deformed. Where did he get that? Did someone pick that up on Endor? Are the remains of Anakin’s head still in there?

Imperial March slowly playing! That’s the only time we hear it in the movie, right?

Wipe back to the watering hole. “I need you to get this droid to Leia.” “Hm – no. You’ve been running away from this fight for too long.” You do it yourself!

“The only fight. Against the darkness.” Oh, I thought she meant a personal thing between Han and Leia.

“Through the ages, I’ve seen evil take many forms. The Sith, the Empire. Today, it is the First Order. Their shadow’s spreading across the galaxy. We must face them. Fight them. All of us.” I don’t like how the Sith are just one in a row of evils here. Palpatine and Vader were Sith. Aren’t Snoke and Kylo Ren Sith as well?

“There is no fight against the First Order. Not one we can win.” Demotivational speech! But also, why? Sure, he’s an insider, so he knows their power. Which raises the question – does he know about Starkiller Base? If yes, wouldn’t it be time to mention it?

“Look around. There’s no chance we haven’t been recognized already.” Good point, and also weird that you’re not doing anything about it. “I bet you the First Order is on their way right–”

She does a weird thing with her eyes/glasses. “If you live long enough, you see the same eyes in different people. I’m looking at the eyes of a man who wants to run.” Neat idea.

“You don’t know the First Order like I do. They’ll slaughter us.” Isn’t that a given for the evil faction?

She gives Finn a way out, and it’s confession time. What is BB-8 saying right now? Because Finn can’t understand him except for the general sentiment. Rey, on the other hand, can.

Oh, not even confession time? Alright.

Apparently he understands those aliens.

Oh, now it’s confession time. Doesn’t make a difference, because Han already knows it.

“I’m a stormtrooper. Like all of them, I was taken from a family I’ll never know.” So apparently it is early abduction. Must be very early, with “my men are trained from birth.” But okay.

And he goes away with the aliens. (I just noticed that one of them has an artificial leg. Space pirates!)

And now it’s time for the vision sequence. I’m watching this with part with subtitles.

Darth Vader breath! Not sure I heard that in cinema!

“YODA: (ECHOING) Its energy...” Definitely didn’t hear that in cinema. Yoda’s in this?

“YODA: ...surrounds us...” still Yoda. Interesting.

“MAN: (ECHOING) No!” That’s Luke’s scream when he learns Vader’s his father, right? Weird that they didn’t subtitle that. (I went back and listened to it a second time. I’m almost completely certain it is.)

“YODA: ...and binds us...” okay, it’s starting to get embarassing that I didn’t notice this.

Luke (presumably) putting his artificial hand on R2-D2! We want to see that in Episode VIII.

Kylo Ren kills someone by stabbing them through the chest. Is that in reference to Han’s death or something else? The setting’s quite different.

“OBI-WAN: The Force will be...” more characters I didn’t notice. But yeah, if you pay attention, that’s Sir Alec Guinness’ voice. (“...with you. Always.”)

Rey’s standing before Kylo Ren and several others (the Knights of Ren?) on a field that is – holy shit I just noticed that – littered with bodies. This will be very interesting.

Yeah, they’re all wearing masks like him. Probably the Knights of Ren.

Young Rey screaming. “UNKAR: Quiet, girl.” (Unkar is the guy who later gives her portions.) And then Rey looks up at a ship flying up into the sky. So… her family deserted her here?

“OBI-WAN: Rey?” Oh wow. That’s clearly Alec Guiness’ voice. They must’ve cut this out of some longer word to make it sound like he was saying her name. (Perhaps the name was deliberately chosen to make this possible? Seems a bit far-fetched, considering that this is quite a small part of the movie after all.)

Oh, and she’s now standing in the snowy forest (which will later turn out to be Starkiller Base).

Kylo Ren appears before her with his lightsaber drawn, she stumbles back and is suddenly back in the small room below Maz’ place.

“OBI-WAN: These are your first steps.” That’s said in a whisper that doesn’t sound anything like Alec Guinness or Ewan McGregor. Doesn’t sound unlike them either, it’s just – it’s a whisper, those aren’t recognizable. I’m not sure if it’s possible to recognize Obi-Wan here without the subtitles.

“That lightsaber was Luke’s.” So she just knows that Rey touched the lightsaber? Did she witness the vision as well? Isn’t there anything else in that room that could’ve caused this reaction? (Okay, no, probably not.)

“And his father’s before him. And now, it calls to you.” Gee, I wonder if Rey is related to Luke.

“But there’s someone who still could [come back].” At first I thought she was telling Rey to go after Finn, but she means Luke.

“The light. It’s always been there.” So Rey’s been Force-sensitive her entire life already, and didn’t realize what it was? Like Anakin with the podracing? Is that why she could beat up those two thugs earlier? (And the flying the Falcon part.)

Run away! Where is she going? She doesn’t seem to be going to the Falcon – she’s just running into the woods. How is that going to bring her back to Jakku?

Wipe to Starkiller Base, now focused on the destructor beam part.

OOOHH now’s the time for Hux’ speech! I love this part. I’m gonna watch it without comments first and then come back and watch it again with comments. But first I want to enjoy it without constant interruptions.

Alright, I’m back. Here we go.

“Today is the end of the Republic.” I love how he rolls that r. Rrrrrepublic.

“The end of a regime that acquiesces to disorder.” Nice play on words. It even translates well into German, though „Erste Ordnung“ sounds a bit weird.

“At this very moment, in a system far from here, the New Republic lies to the galaxy while secretly supporting the treachery of the loathsome Resistance.” I still don’t understand the relationships here. Is the Republic’s support for the Resistance a secret?

“This fierce machine which you have built, upon which we stand, will bring an end to the senate! To their cherished fleet!” I want to call something a “fierce machine”. (Also, I’ll have to watch out for this, but I don’t think we see the destruction of their fleet.)

“All remaining systems will bow to the First Order” Very nice cut. Show his face just as he really gets into his rage.

“and will remember this as the last day of the Republic!” It’s great how he yells here, compared to e. g. Palpatines speech (“the Republic will be reorganized”).

Everyone rising their fists in unison. Eventually we’ll have run out of gestures, right? Right palm with straight arm is already out. Palm to forehead is regular military salute. Remember that ridiculous thing The Wave did? (I’m not sure if that’s specific to the 2008 version, but that’s what I remember.)

And now they start running the thing. He didn’t give them a signal, which feels weird. Of course this is a planned moment, but still, why wouldn’t you show someone saying “fire”? Remember how awesome it was when the Emperor said “fire at will, commander.”?

Oh no, he does yell it. They were just preparing. Okay.

The beam starts emerging from the opening we already saw in the opening shot. It’s deep red, and a lot less clean-cut than the Death Star’s beam.

Great shot of that forest destruction. And then they cut to that huge “troop gathering place” (there’s a word for that which I can’t remember right now) being bathed in the beam’s red light. Nice imagery.

Is Hux supposed to look… sad? regretful? in this shot? It almost looks a bit like it, but that doesn’t seem to match his character at all. Perhaps it’s joy that this moment, which he’s awaited for a long time, is finally happening.

That beam isn’t moving very fast, actually. Again, interstellar distances.

Nice camera movement around Kylo Ren, as if we’re watching from the beam’s point of view as it moves past his ship.

And here’s the part that really confused me in cinema. Finn and everyone else on Takodana can see this beam. How does this work? Like, on several points.

1. The beam is still moving across the sky at a rather measured pace. How does it get anywhere in a reasonable amount of time? Interstellar distances.
2. How are they close enough to see it? You can make a physical argument about how much energy that beam must be losing by giving off enough light to the side to still be visible in the day sky in a completely different planet (remember, stars aren’t visible at day, so this must give out a lot more light), or you could just observe that the beam still has a certain thickness to it, which it just shouldn’t have from this distance.
3. If I recall correctly, they’ll later explain that this thing somehow travels through hyperspace. In that case, how can they see it at all?

The beam splits up. (Somehow. But if it’s capable of traveling through hyperspace, I can buy that it can split itself up.) It hits a moon first. (That planet and its moons and the distances in between are probably not to scale either.) And the people on the capital (Coruscant? No, right?) can see the destruction of the moon before they’re killed themselves. So clearly this thing moves slower than light speed.

THE PEOPLE ON TAKODANA CAN SEE THE CAPITAL PLANET AND ITS MOON IN THEIR DAYLIGHT SKY! The explosion of the main planet takes up a significant area! What the fuck are the distances here?

“It was the Republic! The First Order, they’ve done it.” How do you know that? And again – did you know that Starkiller Base was a thing?

Rey’s in the forest, and BB-8 followed her. (I notice that it’s different from the Endor forest: looks more tropical. Variation!)

TIE fighters! Holy shit, that shot of them in front of the sunset is great.

Apparently, Maz had Luke’s lightsaber for ages. Timeframes.

“Where’d you get that?” “A good question for another time.” HA HA she pretty much tells the audience that we don’t get the backstory now

They’re blowing up the building! That looks ancient :(

I also love how that shot served two purposes. First, it just pans across the temple, showing the destruction. But then it keeps on panning, and flying out from behind the temple is Kylo Ren’s shuttle, and his theme plays as well, and suddenly it’s a shot of his shuttle landing, with the destruction just serving as backdrop.

She made a great face when she first shot that gun. Even better that it was still locked.

Also, the legendary accuracy of stormtroopers. She was busy fumbling with her gun, and he shot right past her. At least her first shot missed as well.

Han shoots a stormtrooper without looking at him. Hrm.

That was actually pretty bad CGI right there – it looked pretty obvious that he was moving his arm on his own, not because Maz grabbed him.

Hang on. Why is the lightsaber blue? Oh right, it’s the one he lost on Bespin, isn’t it? I guess that makes the “ages” a bit more plausible. Gives it another decade or two, and Luke can still have his new one.

Han borrows Chewie’s blaster so he can appreciate it. It now has even more effect than back on the ship.

Why the fuck does this stormtrooper exist? Why does he have that weird lightning staff that’s a good weapon against lightsabers? Does that ever come in handy at other times?

They’re captured. The Resistance is going to show up right now, right?

“We have incoming” right after I resumed the movie. Yup. But we still have to wait for the March, right?

Nope! There it is! Aww yiss.

Long shot going from Finn, to Poe’s X-Wing, with Finn in between, more X-Wing, finally resting back on Finn, all without a cut. Nicely done.

Kylo Ren is tired of you shooting at him

“The girl I’ve heard so much about.” Well… not that much. One thing, pretty much.

It looks like the camera keeps going slightly out of focus every now and then. Shot on actual film instead of digitally? [checks Wikipedia] yup, 35mm and 65mm.

“Forget the droid. We have what we need.” You’re gonna regret that very soon. But also – even if she wasn’t able to resist him, could she really remember the map that well?

And there’s Leia. And the soundtrack plays… Princess Leia’s theme. There is no Han and Leia theme. There’s a Luke and Leia theme, in the A New Hope soundtrack, because when John Williams scored that he had no idea they were going to be siblings, and I suppose that did seem like the more likely romance. But I find this highly amusing.

“Goodness!” Another great laugh for the audience. That’s exactly what C-3PO would do.

”You changed your hair.” “Same jacket.” It’s amazing how old her voice sounds.

“I saw him. Leia, I saw our son.” Wouldn’t you say “Ben”?

But also, yeah, you’re seeing each other again for the first time in a long while, so let’s immediately remind you why you separated in the first place. Good job.

Diagonal wipe to resistance ships flying through space. Two X-Wings and the transport. We’ll get to this later, but that’s not a lot of ships.

(Also, come to think of it – why the hell was Leia on that transport? They went into a battle with that!)

Okay, no, more X-Wings. And their planet has a ring, which is neat.

And there’s the March of the Resistance again. What a great piece.

(Also, them flagging down the X-Wing was again completely taken from A New Hope, on Yavin IV.)

GONK DROID IN THE BACKGROUND! Please let him speak too.

Also, Poe got back to the Resistance remarkably quick. They didn’t waste that much time on Takodana.

This base in the temple is also totally-not-Yavin.

“Finn’s familiar with the weapon that destroyed the Hosnian system, he worked on the base.” Well that answers the question. Could you really, at no point in time, have said anything about that?

I love the little scene with Chewbacca and the nurse. It’s hilarious.

“It matches no charted system on record.” That could answer my question from earlier why they don’t look up any of those other stars. Not sure if I buy that their maps are that incomplete, but at least they addressed it.

R2-D2!

“It is very doubtful that R2 would have the rest of the map in his backup data.” Yeah right. Because this droid never had anything to do with Luke Skywalker, right?

But also, he’s in a coma.

“There’s still light in him, I know it.” No idea why they didn’t go for the proper quote, “there’s still good in him”. Perhaps they didn’t want to get too derivative.
[wheezy laugh]
Okay, no, I have no clue.

Wipe to TIE fighters flying over Starkiller Base, which is shown to be a snow planet.

Rey isn’t tortured for some reason. (Perhaps because her information is less tangible, and they have no hope getting it out without Kylo Ren and the Force?)

“Where are the others?” “You mean the murderers, traitors and thieves you call friends?” That’s one hell of a jump. This is probably an attempt at Dark Side seduction, but he absolutely sucks at it.

“You’ll be relieved to hear I’ve no idea.” That’s a nice way to phrase it.

“You still want to kill me.” “That happens when you’re being hunted by a creature in a mask.” And that’s already enough to get him to take the mask off.

And, hilariously, underneath the mask is a twenty-something moderately handsome and slightly pimply youth. That’s fucking hilarious. This is the moment where you lose any respect you might’ve had for Kylo Ren. It’s great how they showed us this character, and we just assumed that he was going to be a badass villain, and then they took him apart and turned him into this.

He drops the mask (needlessly violently) into… ashes? What?

(Also, up close, that mask is remarkably battered. Lots of scratches and dents. Vader’s mask was flawless.)

They have the rest of the map, somehow. I hope it’s not exactly what R2-D2 has later, because that would be ridiculous.

“Somehow, you convinced the droid to show it to you.” Yeah, there’s something called not being evil. You should try it one time.

“You know I can take whatever I want.” Do I need to say it?

“You’re so lonely.” His voice is really quavery.

“So afraid to leave. At night, desperate to sleep. You imagine an ocean. I see it. I see the island.” Hm, is this the island she’s going to find Luke on? Did she have a vision of that and now he sees that vision?

“And Han Solo, you feel like he’s the father you never had. He would’ve disappointed you.” Some more details here would be nice. How did Han disappoint Ben?

These scenes must be hilarious to shoot.

“Don’t be afraid, I feel it too.” He thinks he has the situation under control…

“I’m not giving you anything.” “We’ll see.” Sounds intensify, which is pretty much the only way you can show what’s going on.

And now the sound is stuttering. Yeah, without sound this scene is probably harder to understand.

“You. You’re afraid. That you will never be as strong as Darth Vader.” And the tables are turned! (It’s not really much of a reveal, since they’ve already shown him being a Vader fanboy and being weak. But now she knows, too.)

Also, Luke is just a legend, but Darth Vader isn’t?

“The scavenger resisted you?” It’s awesome how Snoke intones incredulousness. Like with the “General!” earlier.

“She is strong with the Force! Untrained, but stronger than she knows.” I like how he points back at her general direction. He looks exactly like a small child diverting the blame for something.

“And the droid?” And Hux enters at exactly the right moment to dis Kylo Ren. “Ren believed it was no longer valuable to us. That the girl was all we needed. As a result, the droid has most likely been returned to the hands of the enemy. They may have the map already.”

“Then the Resistance must be destroyed before they get to Skywalker.” Again. Was this not your plan before? What did you build this weapon for?

“We have their location. We tracked their reconnaissance to the Ileenium system.” Okay, the location was perhaps secret before that. It’s unclear how they tracked the ship – this isn’t like A New Hope where they had all the time in the world to put a homing beacon on the Falcon – but it’s believable enough.

“Good. Then we will crush them once and for all.” Has a villain ever actually defeated their enemies once and for all? No resistance ever again?

“Prepare the weapon.” Really.

“Supreme Leader, I can get the map from the girl.” Please let me prove myself.

“I just need your guidance.” But please help me with it. This is great.

“If what you say about this girl is true – bring… her… to… me.” Drawing out that line like crazy. Andy Serkis is great in this.

She tries the mind trick. This stormtrooper is apparently Daniel Craig in a cameo, which is hilarious. The “and you’ll drop your weapon” part even more so.

And it actually works. So clearly, she’s pretty strong with the Force. We’ve never seen that being done without any hand motion.

This is even better. He completely loses it when he discovers she’s gone. Starts hacking away at the room with his lightsaber and screams like crazy. And we don’t see most of it, because instead we’re shown his subordinates. Reaction shots are the key to comedy. But also, what a great way to make him so weak.

“Begin charging the weapon.” “Yes sir. Weapon charging.” Still “the weapon”. Also, again a countdown for the final battle.

Charging the weapon is apparently done by sucking in THE SUN through some vent that’s tiny even in relation to the port that fires the weapon, never mind the actual sun. Again, scales don’t work at all here.

“They’ve somehow built a hyperlightspeed weapon built within the planet itself.” Yeah right, that totally looked like hyperlightspeed.

“It’s another Death Star.” I think I’ll talk about that at the end of this scene.

“I wish that were the case, major. This was the Death Star. And this is Starkiller Base.” It’s bigger. Just the muzzle is almost the same diameter as the entire Death Star.

“So, it’s big.” Han has the right reaction.

“How is it possible to power a weapon of that size?” Oh hi, Admiral Ackbar! I think I read somewhere that it’s actually him, not just a member of the same species. Sounds the same too – did they get the same voice actor? [checks Wikipedia] yup! Awesome.

“It uses the power of the sun. As the weapon is charged, the sun is drained, until it disappears.” Again, the scales don’t work. Starkiller Base is the size of a planet, and stars are bigger than planets. Now, granted, according to What If?, the energy density in a star isn’t actually that high, so that’s not necessarily the problem. But there’s just no way to transfer all that material in any reasonable amount of time.

“Without the Republic fleet, we’re doomed.” Remember, that fleet that we didn’t see get destroyed. (But also, C-3PO said “we’re doomed” again, so that’s good.)

“Okay, so how do we blow it up? There’s always a way to do that.” Han Solo is the audience’s proxy in this scene. With that comment above, and now this question.

The base has to have some kind of thermal oscillator, which is clearly some technical mumbo-jumbo we’re not supposed to listen to.

Finn knows where it is, of course, and as soon as he points to it, it’s also highlighted in the hologram, because that’s how that works.

Blow that thing up, the entire planet blows up. Simple.

“They have defensive shields that our weapons can’t penetrate.” “We disable the shields.” Remember the Second Death Star?

“So we disable their shields, we destroy that oscillator and we blow up their big gun.” Simple plan, right?

Alright, scene’s over, here we go.
Large parts of this plot are RIDICULOUSLY derivative, and this scene is where it shows most. But let’s start at the beginning. Jakku is Tatooine. Rey is Luke. BB-8 is R2-D2. The map is the Death Star plans. Starkiller Base is the Death Star – they made it bigger, which changes exactly nothing. It can fire longer ranges, but that makes no difference, because the Death Star was able to move to Yavin pretty quickly. The disabling shields part is stolen from Endor and the Second Death Star. It really is ridiculous.
I think the reason for this is that they tried too hard to not make the mistakes of the prequels. No one cares about taxation, planetary blockades and the Trade Federation. So they went back to what worked in episodes IV and VI. And I think they went much too far here.
But at the same time – this is only the overall plot. The details and parts in between are very much different. This isn’t a Star Wars remake – it’s a sequel that copies too much of the general plot, but then fills it in with new stuff. Rey is pretty different. Kylo Ren is totally different. Finn is new. Many of the scenes are really, really great. And so I can still love this film. I wish they’d come up with more plot of their own, but if they thought this was necessary to reel in the audience, I can’t blame them too much.
Mostly, I hope that Episode VIII will explore more new ground. There’s ample opportunity, first and foremost with Luke, of course.

Leia tells Han to bring Ben home. Yeah, good luck with that.

“She’s just beginning to test her powers. The longer it takes to find her, the more dangerous she becomes.” Interesting concept. She doesn’t actually use the Force again until they fight in the forest, right?

Han explains his plan for getting through their shields. It’s simple: they only work below lightspeed. So just go out of lightspeed beyond the shields.

Also, bullshit. There is no way you can make that precision manually. NO WAY. Not unless their lightspeed is ridiculously slower than our 300000km/s.

Great landing. (Also, they went straight through solid tree trunks. The falcon must’ve taken more damage than that.

And Kylo Ren can sense Han Solo.

The music sounds a lot like on Hoth, which is fitting. (Also, there are weird AT-AT-like things here that I never noticed in cinema. I hope we’ll see more of them in the next movies. Pretty surprising, actually, that they refrained from using them in this one.)

Finn has no idea how to disable the shields, he just wants to get Rey. That’s amazingly short-sighted. What exactly are you going to do afterwards? You think Han and Chewie will just let you fly away, especially after this admission? And what are you going to do afterwards? Just live in a cottage somewhere, and the First Order won’t care?

“People are counting on us, the galaxy is counting on us!” Han Solo is not really in the place to accuse Finn like that.

“We’ll use the Force.” “That’s not how the Force works.” Goddamn now I’m starting to feel sorry that they killed him. Harrison Ford is so great in this.

“Weapon charged in fifteen minutes.” Ah, yes, we’re entering Movie Time, which has no relation to real time. It’s monotonous, but that’s all. Can accelerate or be drawn out as required by The Plot.

Great editing. Door opens on a stormtrooper (full frontal shot), he says “hey!”, cut to Chewie shooting him (full frontal shot), cut to the stormtrooper being thrown across the room (wide side shot). I also love that there’s bits and pieces breaking off his armor as he slams against the wall. Nice detail.

Finn and Captain Phasma meet up again, because that still needs to be paid off.

He forces her to lower the shields. And for some reason, she even does it.

“What do we do with her?” “Is there a garbage chute? Trash compactor?” Callbacks!

“General! Their shields are down!” “Thank the maker!” Yes, give C-3PO more opportunities to say things.

Okay, here’s another scale issue. The Resistance’s entire fleet is like… a dozen ships. That’s utterly pathetic. How is this any kind of threat to the First Order?

Why can’t they raise the shields again?

“Remember, when the sun is gone, that weapon will be ready to fire.” Well, it’s certainly better than just a countdown.

“But as long as there’s light, we got a chance.” Remember this for later.

Oh look, it’s Rey not needin’ much rescuin’.

And then they immediately reunite. Somehow, either Rey or the other group got over that chasm pretty fast.

Han Solo breaks up your emotional scene

Holy shit, some gorgeous imagery there.

“Two more X-Wings down. That’s half our fleet destroyed.” Yes, six or so destroyed ships overall is half their fleet destroyed. The scale really is ridiculous.

Han gives Chewie the detonator, so you can guess which one of them’s going to survive.

Somehow, none of the stormtroopers see Han walking up to that bridge.

“Han Solo. I’ve been waiting for this day for a long time.” Hasn’t he been afraid of it?

Chewie hears Finn and Rey come in, and their arrival also throws a shaft of sunlight across the room. The stormtroopers remain oblivious.

“Take off that mask. You don’t need it.” He means metaphorically, but it’s also literal. He doesn’t need that mask, he purely wears it out of misunderstood worship of Vader (who didn’t just wear it to look cool: he needed it.)

“What do you think you’ll see if I do?” “The face of my son.” Interesting that he didn’t phrase it as “my son”. “The face of” is still true.

“Your son is gone. He was weak and foolish, like his father. So I destroyed him.” What, you think you’re no longer weak and foolish? You’re betraying yourself.

“That’s what Snoke wants you to believe. But it’s not true. My son is alive.”

“No.” Oh, okay then. “The Supreme Leader is wise.”

“Snoke is using you for your power.” A HA HA HA this is a hilarious line. I think I’ll talk about this later, but it’s obvious that Kylo Ren’s power is pretty pathetic.

“When he gets what he wants, he’ll crush you.” What does he want? World domination?

“You know it’s true.”

Aww, Ben’s got tears in his eyes!

“It’s too late.” “No it’s not. Leave here with me. Come home.” Yeah right, and everyone will be cool with that?

(No but really, I want to see that for once. What if Vader hadn’t died on the Death Star?)

“We miss you.” Aww.

(Also, light Force thrumming here. I wonder what the implication is. Is the Force generally responsible for feelings? Or is Kylo Ren actually doing something right now?

“I’m being torn apart. I want to be free of this pain. I know what I have to do, but I don’t know if I have the strength to do it. Will you help me?” “Yes. Anything.” Well, not quite what you had in mind.

Right now, there’s red and blue-white light on his face. Red from the place they’re in, and blueish white from outside, where Rey and Finn are watching. But as the sun dies…

He takes off his lightsaber and hands it to Han.

And the sun is gone, all of a sudden. Only red light left on Kylo Ren’s face.

He hasn’t let go of the lightsaber yet, and now they’re playing tug of war with it. Which is pretty funny.

And he ignites the lightsaber straight through Han. The angle at which they’re holding the handle doesn’t work at all, but who cares.

“Thank you.” Han caresses Ben’s face with his hand before dropping down into the infinite abyss. (In cinema, I was half hoping that he would grab his clothes or something and drag him down. Wouldn’t that have been hilarious?)

Also, if you go back up and reread Kylo Ren’s monologue, it still fits. Except – how does this free him? He just added more guilt. If he has a conscience, it’s just going to be worse now.

Leia feels that. She’s one quarter Midi-Chlorian, I’ll allow it.

Chewie shoots Kylo Ren. Which is fucking hilarious. He was just standing there, contemplating or whatever. Yeah, guess what? You don’t get to have moments like that. You’re a whiny wimp. If you just stand there doing nothing, people will fucking shoot at you.

Chewie, Rey and Finn are all shooting at stormtroopers, and not at Kylo Ren for whatever reason.

They exchange fucking looks as the place blows up! Why don’t they shoot at him?

“The oscillator has been damaged, but is still functioning.” Thanks for the exposition.

And they repeat the countdown for us. Like it matters.

Somehow, Kylo Ren got ahead of them.

“We’re not done yet.” No, there’s still almost half an hour to this movie. Which I’m honestly surprised by. Does their final fight really take that long?

“You’re a monster.” Yeah, that’s going to turn him right around.

“It’s just us now.” (...) “Han Solo can’t save you.” And then he pounds his side with his fist, and we show that he’s bleeding onto the snow. Because apparently that’s his only way of channeling the dark side, to physically hurt himself. Yet again pathetic.

She tries to shoot at him, and he throws her ten meters into the air against a tree trunk. Death.

AND HE THROWS AWAY THE LIGHTSABER AND RUNS TO HER SIDE HOW FUCKING RETARDED CAN YOU BE

“TRAITOR!” What, is Kylo Ren actually upset that one random stormtrooper betrayed the First Order? The fuck? That stormtrooper earlier had a similar reaction. Why is this such a big deal?

Oh no, he threw away his gun, and takes the lightsaber from Rey (who’s still unconscious). Apparently. No, actually, he should’ve had the lightsaber. It just looked like he took it from her. Whatever.

“That lightsaber, it belongs to me.” Okay, technically, yes. Perhaps. But it’s a weak claim.

“Come get it.” Lines.

Finn charges at Kylo Ren and somehow isn’t killed immediately. Keep this in mind. But then, he’s thrown to the ground… and Kylo Ren walks away and pounds himself some more. Fucking what? When are you going to kill him, if you waste an opportunity like that?

Finn charges at Kylo Ren, who just sidesteps a bit, which is enough to make Finn stumble past him. Good: Finn isn’t that great at fighting. Bad: this should’ve been an opportunity for Kylo Ren to kill him.

Oh, now there’s this part. They’re standing there, lightsabers crossed, pressing them against each other. And here’s the one time that crossguard comes in handy: Kylo Ren can stab Finn with it. And Finn has a good scream of anguish, too.

And then Finn hits Kylo Ren in the shoulder as well!

Kylo Ren somehow flings Finn’s lightsaber away, and then? PUNCHES HIM FUCKING WHAT DO YOU HAVE YOUR LIGHTSABER FOR

But then he slashes Finn across the back, so that does take care of that. (Also, that is at least paraplegia. How much flesh does he have back there protecting his spine?)

And then he puts away his lightsaber to Force Grab the other one instead. For whatever reason. We get, again, the shot of a lightsaber being stuck in the snow as a character tries to grab it with the Force.

But somehow, that’s too hard for him, and instead it flies to Rey.

And the music is now that of Luke discovering that the Empire was at their farm and his Aunt and Uncle are dead. Straight from the A New Hope soundtrack. Not sure if it’s supposed to have significance or they just wanted to use that particular piece again.

Her fighting style seems to be more athletic, agile.

Scherzo for X-Wings! Another awesome track from the soundtrack.

More countdown that doesn’t matter. “Prepare to fire.” Yeah, right, they weren’t doing that already.

The oscillator blows up and throws a really stunning shockwave. Looks amazing with all that snow being thrown up.

Apparently the entire planet is now coming apart even before it properly blows up. Not sure why. Did they excavate it and then hold it back up with some form of support that’s now breaking away?

“You need a teacher! I could show you the ways of the Force!” Yeah right, you. She’s already overpowered you in mind reading. You think you can teach her?

“[whispers] The Force?” I’m not sure what this is. Are we supposed to believe that until right now, she never realized that what she was doing was possible because of the Force? And now it makes sense to her and that allows her to overpower Kylo Ren? That’s the best explanation I have, but it feels weird. (I need to read the novelization. They got a good author for it too, apparently.)

She goes into meditation mode, and the Force theme plays. And then she snaps out of it and defeats Kylo Ren. I’m not sure exactly what she did. She sliced through something – was it just his clothes or also a limb or something?

And then she stabs at his shoulder. (I think it’s the one that Finn hadn’t gotten earlier. Symmetry!)

Also, he clearly still has both legs, so she must’ve only sliced through clothes. Perhaps she also got the leg, but she didn’t sever it.

She overpowers him yet again, slices through his lightsaber, and cuts at him once more for good measure. He got fucking REKT.

Oh, they show the result of that last slice! That went right from his forehead over the corner of his eye all over his right cheek and shoulder. (Ernst Stavro Ren.)

And then the ground rips apart between them, because we have to break up the fight without one of them dying. Deus ex planetary destruction.

“Supreme Leader! The fuel cells have ruptured. The collapse of the planet has begun.” Even Snoke’s hologram is breaking up.

“Leave the base at once and come to me with Kylo Ren. It is time to complete his training.” Honestly, at this point, you might be better off with a new apprentice. (One far younger and more powerful?)

Rey finds Finn, and we see that the cut doesn’t go across the spine. Man, they’re ticking off so many of the issues I raised… but good for them.

Also, by the powers of The Plot, this part of the forest is still perfectly stable.

Look who got the Falcon again! Chewie, of course.

Oh, I just realized that there’s a parallel of Chewie now looking after Finn after Finn looked after Chewie earlier.

The planet is turning into Mustafar.

And then it turns into the sun. Yet again, scales. Suns are bigger than planets. A sun even close to the size of a planet (yes, the planet gained about 30% in diameter – that’s not enough) simply can’t sustain fusion. That’s a brown dwarf.

Leia and Rey hug. I guess someone told Leia who Rey is. It’s not too implausible. (Some people got upset that Chewie didn’t get a hug. I don’t mind that. The way he dragged himself past Leia showed, in my opinion, that he was devastated and couldn’t bear to talk to her right then.)

R2-D2 wakes up now, somehow. (Surely he isn’t Force sensitive? Does he sense Rey somehow?)

“You’ve found what? [beeps] How dare you call me that? [slaps R2’s dome]” right back to their old dynamic, huh?

“Find master Luke how? [beeps] Come Artoo, we must go tell the others at once!” That last sentence sounds a bit weird. (Also, I just noticed there’s a GONK DROID! to the left of them. Sadly, quiet.)

“R2-D2 may contain some much needed good news.” Well… kinda.

R2-D2 shows a map of the galaxy. At least, there’s a spiral galaxy in the center of it. And then there’s a huge chunk missing. How does that huge part not overlap with anything the Resistance might’ve found in their maps? Whatever.

Also, the way this looks – where the hole and the map piece both have this weird cutout shape that makes zero sense except for them to form a two-piece puzzle – is almost an insult. That’s how the map goes together? Really? Wow.

(It’s also unclear what that red path is. It starts off in a completely different corner of the map and then goes around the border to eventually reach the missing piece. What is that?)

“Oh my dear friend, how I missed you.” Of course he only says that after R2’s plot function is complete.

Shouldn’t Finn be in a bacta tank?

“We’ll see each other again. I believe that.” Yeah, what part of this is questionable? If he’ll wake up? Of course they’ll see each other again.

And she kisses him on the forehead. I really, really hope that this is where it stays. Probably a futile hope, but let me have my dreams until Episode VIII destroys them. And one of them is characters not turning into a love story. Can I have that, please? Thank you. (I am grateful that none of the earlier hugs turned into more.)

“Rey? May the Force be with you.” I forgot to mention this earlier in the Rey/Maz scene, but yeah, this movie easily passes the Bechdel test.

Rey is now the pilot of the Millennium Falcon, and Chewie remains copilot. Instead of him becoming pilot and her starting out as copilot. But I don’t know much about pilot- and copilotship; perhaps that just makes more sense.

Rey’s theme? It didn’t feature much in the movie, did it? First time I’m noticing it since her introduction.

And now we’re about to get to the Jedi Steps and Finale, which is another great piece of music.

Is there only one island on this planet? Did she pick up his beacon signal? Whatever. Luke found Yoda too, we can ascribe that to the Force.

She walks through primitive, deserted dwellings. Is this really the origin of the Jedi? But it sure looks interesting.

Oh, and here we go. Right as she finds Luke, the music turns really sinister. How great is that? It sounds like he’s a friggen Sith lord now. That’s amazing.

Also, he was just standing there, looking out over the sea. And then he turns around, and of course he knew she was coming. (The Force.) And he looks fucking amazing. Like, remember how we were afraid about the prospect of old Luke? At least I was. But Mark Hamill actually pulled himself together and turned into this really cool form, where he’s old, but grizzly and badass and not frail.

Also, how great is that? They hyped this up as the return of the old gang, and had him on set the entire time, and then his entire role in the film is to stand there for one minute at the end. It’s not even a speaking role! That was some great misdirection. They could only top that by killing him off right at the start of the next movie. Which I wouldn’t approve of – but still, I would fucking applaud.

But really, he was a MacGuffin for the entire movie. He didn’t serve any purpose in this movie except to motivate the search for him.

Also, the music. I have some more to say about the music. After the really sinister bit (which is awesome) is over, we get the old The Force / Binary Sunset theme. And we get it in the variation from Revenge of the Sith, where the melody goes from g minor not to C major, but to A flat major, before returning to g minor via the D major dominant. I was a tad upset about that the first time. I’ve always liked how, at what was at that time the last piece of the Star Wars soundtrack, John Williams completely surprised us with this twist in one of the most famous themes of the entire thing. You can’t see that switch coming. (There’s also a great switch in the Revenge of the Sith credits that’s only on the soundtrack album, because they had to cut the entire Throne Room segment because it was too long for the movie. A real pity. I cut myself together a version of the film that replaces the credits music with the one from the soundtrack album and stretches out the credits to make it fit. Makes the credits scroll real slow, and was a bitch to get right because video editing on Linux is apparently a pain in the ass. (Yes, Blender. But learning curve.) But it’s worth it. That piece of soundtrack is absolutely worth it.) And then he reuses it here. I don’t want him to reuse it too much. But then again, this is the end of another movie, with another really important scene. It’s not like it’s a throwaway. And then it’s not just a straight copy, he adds another new part to the scene before transitioning to the credits (which is always an odd transition, where you have to somehow get from d minor to E flat major). I can live with it.

That helicopter move around them is also weird. I know the movement of the background is real, that’s what it actually looks like when you do that shot, but it still looks weird. But whatever, there’s great soundtrack over it.

And I still need to talk about Kylo Ren. Let’s summarize. First, he’s looking pretty good. Stopping that laser blast, extracting the information about BB-8 from Poe.
But afterwards? He lets the droid get away, confident that he can get the information from Rey instead. Then, when he attempts to read Rey’s mind, she reads his instead. She is completely untrained in the ways of the Force and, in fact, if I interpreted that later whisper correctly, doesn’t even realize that she’s using the Force. She even needs three attempts to overpower the stormtrooper! But here, she defeats him, and exposes his psychological problems.
Then he lets himself get shot by Chewbacca.
In the forest, he fights Finn. Finn has never been trained with a lightsaber and doesn’t even seem to be Force-sensitive. He’s really just any other stormtrooper. But while he defeats Finn in the end, Finn manages to put up a decent fight against him, and wounds Kylo Ren several times.
Then he even struggles to pull the lightsaber out of the snow. Instead, it soars right past him into Rey’s hand. And then he fights Rey, who also has never used a lightsaber before. Finn had at least already used it on Takodana, but she just got it. And after that moment where he offers to train her and she connects with the Force, she kicks his fucking ass!
And this guy is one eighth Midi-Chlorian. Grandson of Anakin Skywalker / Darth Vader, who was conceived by the Midi-Chlorians and brought back balance to the Force. How pathetic is Kylo Ren in this? It’s amazing. And that’s not even mentioning his emotional problems, or how he needs to punch himself for battle. Just on a pure power scale. He was trained to be a Jedi from young age and then trained some more by Snoke, whoever he is. He should not have any trouble with any of this.

And I think that wraps it up. I think my main issues with the movie are how the scales don’t work multiple times (interstellar distances, time frames, tiny Resistance fleet), that the relationship between Republic, First Order, and Resistance isn’t explained well, and that some plot elements are way too derivative. But none of that is too bad. Because if you put it up against what we got… we got one hell of a movie. I still love this. And you know what I need to do? I need to watch it again without writing down so much. Because holy shit did I underestimate how much time this takes. I must’ve been at this for at least eight hours overall.