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Forums - Movies & TV - J.J. Abrams responds to criticism over TFA being a rip-off of A New Hope

nuckles87 said:

Yeah...I'm not buying the sexism argument. People have overanalyzed plenty of male characters.

 

Seems to me like Neo, Luke Skywalker, Anakin Skywalker, and Harry Potter are all given a pass for the most part. To be honest I've never head any "outrage" about characters for this reason in fantasy films. 

I don't think it's a "great" film either, it's a good film, basically on the same level as things like Avatar and the first Avengers, which isn't bad considering this is the SEVENTH Star Wars film (usually franchises start to get silly/stupid by about part 3 or 4). It's better than Jurassic World and light years beyond Fast 7 which was just a trainwreck of a film (literally at times). 

It was pretty much exactly what I thought it would be ... a love letter to the OT from JJ Abrams with fun new characters and some really nice character exchanges (JJ Abrams is very good at this), probably a weak-ish plot (because this is Abrams' weakness) and your standard heroes journey. Harrison Ford was fantastic in this film too, kudos for Abrams getting "life" out of his performance, it looked like he was half asleep in the last Indiana Jones movie, THIS is the Harrison Ford that was the biggest movie star in the world. 

And that's pretty much what I got, and coming off the prequels I had low expectations, so as long as this movie didn't do anything egregious stupid like having a farting, loud, obnoxious CG character making remarks after every bit of action ... I was fine. 



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The culture that is currently complaining about Rey didn't exist in 1999. Those characters have already gone through their arcs. We have the benefit of hindsight with them. If Rey had come up in 1999, she wouldn't be getting these criticisms.



nuckles87 said:
The culture that is currently complaining about Rey didn't exist in 1999. Those characters have already gone through their arcs. We have the benefit of hindsight with them. If Rey had come up in 1999, she wouldn't be getting these criticisms.

People would have been overjoyed if TPM was what TFA was at that time. It would have broken Titanic's box office record in 1999 if this was the movie that was made rather than what we got. 

I remember it being so strange watching a Star Wars movie where there was no cheering, no laughing, no nothing from the audience .... just silence. The movie had no pulse, no life. 

"The Mummy" (release a few weeks earlier) was a silly film but it felt more like a Star Wars movie than The Phantom Menace did a lot of the time. It killed me deep down to admit this to myself. 



thismeintiel said:
Dr.Henry_Killinger said:

I posted NC because he made a good point at the end, I disagree with his entire review.

The originals, the prequels, and the new trilogy are obviously coming in at different eras and different circumstances. Who the fuck cares that it was like the old ones, the last move came out a decade ago, the first one came out 4 decades ago. It's basically a reboot rather than a continuation anyway. Cause Star Wars isn't aimed for just those who watched the previous ones. After the prequels, how is playing it safe unreasonable? Please. And FYI, I've never complained about remakes, not even TLOU RE. Yeah story wise it was weak, but it had better acting then prequels and better effects than the original.

 

You keep saying Rey mastered the force, when all she did was beat a wounded sith in training who got shot by a laser cannon and was already established as being weak in the force.

You're exaggerating how proficient she is, she stopped Kylo on accident, neither of them knew she had the force, so Kylo didn't expect any kind of resitance.

I conceded that there was some lazy writing, but your acting like its was impossible for Rey to display any of the force power just because she wasn't trained.

Basically a reboot, huh?  Funny how there's the Ep VII at the beginning. 

And the problem is you keep coming up with weak reasoning.  The worst is trying to pretend that Kylo isn't as proficient in the force, even though the movie showed us that he was.  From stopping a shot from a blaster, while continuing his conversation, barely concentrating on it.  Something we haven't seen before.  Lifting a person and pulling them to him.  Digging into peoples minds. He was freaking trained by Luke for years.  And used the Force to do something so horrible, and large, that Luke decided to live in exile, instead of facing him.  And now, he's been studying the Dark Side with Snoke for years, as well.

And given that Rey could defeat him sets it up that she is just as good as him, which is ridiculous after maybe 2 days of just finding out about the force.  Really, I wouldn't care if it turned out Rey was the most powerful Jedi EVER.  But for the love of God, show that journey, don't just have her get half way there on her own.  AFTER 2 DAYS OF NOTHING TRAINING!!

Your saying I'm using weak reasoning but you're the one suggesting that because Rei beat him right after he got shot, and by shot I mean directly hit, with the same laser cannon that has been one shoting stormtroopers, it means she is just as good as him? I don't know about you but nothing suggests that would've occured otherwise. 

Besides they've both walked away from this unscathed, if anything this makes Kylo more likely to win their next fight, which will be after she's trained with Luke. For all intents and purposes they're equal, and like nuckles87 brought up an excellent point.

In the movie canon, the only one that matters, both Anakin and Luke are displaying force abilities before being trained. Midochlorians be damned.



In this day and age, with the Internet, ignorance is a choice! And they're still choosing Ignorance! - Dr. Filthy Frank

Soundwave said:
nuckles87 said:

Yeah...I'm not buying the sexism argument. People have overanalyzed plenty of male characters.

 

Seems to me like Neo, Luke Skywalker, Anakin Skywalker, and Harry Potter are all given a pass for the most part. To be honest I've never head any "outrage" about characters for this reason in fantasy films. 

I don't think it's a "great" film either, it's a good film, basically on the same level as things like Avatar and the first Avengers, which isn't bad considering this is the SEVENTH Star Wars film (usually franchises start to get silly/stupid by about part 3 or 4). It's better than Jurassic World and light years beyond Fast 7 which was just a trainwreck of a film (literally at times). 

It was pretty much exactly what I thought it would be ... a love letter to the OT from JJ Abrams with fun new characters and some really nice character exchanges (JJ Abrams is very good at this), probably a weak-ish plot (because this is Abrams' weakness) and your standard heroes journey. Harrison Ford was fantastic in this film too, kudos for Abrams getting "life" out of his performance, it looked like he was half asleep in the last Indiana Jones movie, THIS is the Harrison Ford that was the biggest movie star in the world. 

And that's pretty much what I got, and coming off the prequels I had low expectations, so as long as this movie didn't do anything egregious stupid like having a farting, loud, obnoxious CG character making remarks after every bit of action ... I was fine. 

I guess we should all have had low expectations then. It would have made the movie so much better.



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Dr.Henry_Killinger said:

In the movie canon, the only one that matters, both Anakin and Luke are displaying force abilities before being trained. Midochlorians be damned.

You are still wrong. Both Luke and Anakin demonstrate force affinity by having higher than natural reflexes and "luck."

Luke at least gets SOME training from Obi-Won before he demonstrates anything more.  Anakin was essentially the same.

Again Rey goes super sayain/jedi with NO training. She demonstrates force powers that ONLY masters have demonstrated before. Abrams only threw this in to make it feel more like the Original Trilogy and it didn't freaking fit.

I mean how did she even know that she COULD force suggest people? She lives 18-20 years never doing it... never witnessing someone doing it... and then just randomly does it?

"Shes discovering her powers." FUCK DISNEY.



^The Force AWAKENS, it doesn't go through a long period of training and serious developments of magic skills.

It's a fantasy you know?



Dr.Henry_Killinger said:

which was after she stopped him from reading his mind.

Oh I see, you meant to say that he was surprised at Rey resisting his mind reading, I thought you meant something else.

However, Rey resisting his mind-reading power means that she either was stronger or powerful enough to negate his mind attack.



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sabvre42 said:
Dr.Henry_Killinger said:

In the movie canon, the only one that matters, both Anakin and Luke are displaying force abilities before being trained. Midochlorians be damned.

You are still wrong. Both Luke and Anakin demonstrate force affinity by having higher than natural reflexes and "luck."

Luke at least gets SOME training from Obi-Won before he demonstrates anything more.  Anakin was essentially the same.

Again Rey goes super sayain/jedi with NO training. She demonstrates force powers that ONLY masters have demonstrated before. Abrams only threw this in to make it feel more like the Original Trilogy and it didn't freaking fit.

I mean how did she even know that she COULD force suggest people? She lives 18-20 years never doing it... never witnessing someone doing it... and then just randomly does it?

"Shes discovering her powers." FUCK DISNEY.

Rey: There are stories about what happened.

Han Solo: It's true. All of it. The Dark Side, the Jedi. They're real.

 

So, Rey has some (or much) knowledge about the stories involving the Dark Side and the Jedi. She didn't know it was true until she becomes a Force user (an awakening triggered by the events at Maz Kanata's place). 

 

 



sabvre42 said:
Dr.Henry_Killinger said:

In the movie canon, the only one that matters, both Anakin and Luke are displaying force abilities before being trained. Midochlorians be damned.

You are still wrong. Both Luke and Anakin demonstrate force affinity by having higher than natural reflexes and "luck."

Luke at least gets SOME training from Obi-Won before he demonstrates anything more.  Anakin was essentially the same.

Again Rey goes super sayain/jedi with NO training. She demonstrates force powers that ONLY masters have demonstrated before. Abrams only threw this in to make it feel more like the Original Trilogy and it didn't freaking fit.

I mean how did she even know that she COULD force suggest people? She lives 18-20 years never doing it... never witnessing someone doing it... and then just randomly does it?

"Shes discovering her powers." FUCK DISNEY.

I basically agree with you that the whole idea that Rey has such strong powers out of nowhere is not matching anything that came before this movie.  But, if you throw out the prequels and non-original trilogy canon, what you are left with is an increasing use of force abilities in episodes 5 and 6 by yoda and Darth Vader.  In Star Wars (ANH), the force is only a minor influence on things or people.  In Empire, Vadeer now shows an abiity to move object of considerable size (Yoda too) and to even use the force to talk to Luke out in space.  By ROTJ we move up to the emporer having lightning shoot from his fingertips.

Because Abrams was following the escalation that was demonstrated in episodes 4-6 and then later overused in episodes 1-3, the door was now wide open. 

I was 7 years old when Star Wars(ANH) came out.  That movie was pretty cool back then.  But, one thing we weren't all talking about after it, was using the force.  It was such a small part of the movie, it was hardly even talked about.  The "cool" thing from Star Wars was Lightsabers.  BUT, right after Empire came out, what was everyone talking about?  The Force.  The super powers of it.  By the end of ROTJ, the force was now a big element in the Star Wars mythology.  Thats why Lucas overused it so much in the prequels.

Point is, Abrams was forced to make it a major part of the new film and the whole "it takes lots of training" to gain the abilities was simply discarded as it wasn't convenient to the story.  I agree with you that this is a major plot hole to the die hard fans, but to most people it is simply irrelevent.  Becasue we have yet to see the next movie, we don't yet know if their wil be some explanation given or if this is what it seems now, weak story telling or just a simple change in canon.  By the ned of the next movie, we will know.  Today we wil have to be "disgruntled".





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