Actually....they were no longer than the original Trilogy or Force Awakens. About two hours. XD I think the poor pacing was messing with your sense of time.

I feel like I should hate that they essentially just did another death star, but the weapon was SO DAMN COOL in design that I can't.

My one complaint about this movie is that they never explained the politics of the world. The First Order is apparently an imperiel remnant that escaped to the Unknown Regions and rebuilt itself. The Resistance is a private military organization founded to oppose them, because the New Republic decided to demilitarize outside of a small peace keeping fleet (which was destroyed along with the capital).

First Order isn't an Empire per se....but along the lines of....Cobra, I guess?

That's true. It was Han Solo who shot down Darth Vader. Without any training or Force and Vader didn't even sense him coming. So i guess you don't need any training at all to beat these guys.

No matter how you are trying to spin it. What i said makes sense in the context of the movie. And i'm not even claiming to be right about it.

Movie was "good", not great. No way as bad as ep 1+2...and Jedi for that matter.

We get told it was the planet where princess Leia was born and where the rebellion started. Its more than "random planets get blown up".

Though first movie vs seventh. It isnt a new franchise.

Death star lasers are more acceptable because laser beams can be reflected and refracted. Not saying this is possible of destroying a planet, but its easier to swallow. But lasers do not change direction and split up through sheer will.

And yes, at least we had the connection of Leia to alderaan for it beeing her home planet. So, you at least felt something there.

These planets that got destroyed didnt even have a name. Was Coruscant one of them then? Cause thats the only thing we can draw from "center of power of the new republic". And if it was, howcome was Leia not in one of them? 

Its a completely empty scene just trying to copy the feel of the death star. Who it killed was of little consequence. And no, none of it is explained at length. You don't even know wich planets were destroyed not does it make sense to have multiple inhabbited planets in the same star system.

Also... lol, do you know that it would take years for the beam to travel to another star system? Yeah... lol... scientific details. I always assumed the death star was on the star system where the destroyed planet was. There is no way to know for sure, but this one we know required a star... so it had to be at least at the distance of a star system. Also, it was a real planet whose atmosphere wasnt blown away if it was capable of movement and whose orbit was unnafected by the loss of the nearby star. Not to mention that the only thing capable of absorbing the matter of a star is a bigger gravity, aka a black hole that somehow the planet itself was not affected by.

Yeah, the super weapon was by far less believable than the death star. I had a huge issue with it. But i digress. It is fantasy sci-fi, but the magically splitting beam was by far the worst offender.

The reaction, you are trying to guess. You don't really know. We could know if we saw how Ren left. What happened. But we don't so we have no way of knowing how they felt. Even the actors don't seem very convinced when delivering those lines because its so non-sensical. They had nothing to draw emotions from.

I didnt say anything about the duels. And alot needs to be explained about the rest.

At the end of the prequals the empire took over and the jedi order and the republic were decimated. It makes sense that only by themselves Obi-wan and Yoda couldnt do much. But at the end of the original trilogy, the rebellion won. Theres a new republic, theres support for iniciatives, but magically everyone feels extremely down to do anything and a new empire just forms under everyone's noses? What the hell is that? That makes no sense.

Do you even remember how difficult it was for Palpatine to turn the republic into the empire? We had a whole trilogy with that. But here we go BAM! New empire! Believe it!

Theres no way you can convince anyone this is a good story when its clearly missing vital chunks, in fact, its missing the whole beggining.

You know what?  I'm not liking this comment too much.  Why?  I would consider myself one of the Star Wars community and this isn't the first time in the thread that you put us down.  I know that you're a mod and all but come on...  

I am what you would call a "real" Star Wars fan.  I am 42 years old and saw the original movie in the theater when I was four and all of the others when they were released.  I didn't piss and moan about how horrible all of the movies were.  Sure, I wan't pleased with the Ewoks or Jar Jar, but for the most part I loved each of Lucas' movies.  You can look back in my posting history and see that I stuck up for the prequel trilogy while many others bashed it because it was the cool thing to do.  It's not like the Star Wars community hates everything just to hate it.  I take exception to your comment.

Let me tell you a story.  I went to see The Phantom Menace at midnight with my friend, Manny.  After it was over I was smiling from ear to ear and he hated it.  He looked disgusted, angry, and betrayed.  I didn't get it, but it was his opinion and I really felt sorry for him.  He was also a Star Wars fan since childhood and looked at it as a disappointment.  You see, different people like different things.  We both were hardcore Star Wars fans but had differing opinions.  Don't say that the entire community hated it because that's just not true.  I have seen D21 Lewis defend the prequel trilogy in this thread and know from his posting history that he's a pretty big Star Wars fan.

Fast forward to December 18, 2015.  I watched The Force Awakens and couldn't stand it for all of the reasons that I listed in the OP.  I am not some horrible member of the SW community that hates everything.  At the end of the film I just stared at the screen until it went blank.  I felt disgusted, angry, and betrayed just like my friend Manny did at the premiere of the Phantom Menace.  As I got up to finally leave, there was gentleman in his late 30s to early 40s at the back of the theater sitting by  himself staring at the blank screen.  I glanced in his direction and shook my head in disgust.  He returned the favor and looked like someone killed a family member.  It then occured to me that this is pretty much what Disney did.  They killed off the true spirit of Star Wars.  The mythos of the force had been completely destroyed.  Now someone can just touch a lightsaber and have an "awakening" through osmosis.  What normally would take years of training now takes NO training.  To say that I'm disgusted by this is a severe understatement.  I wonder what Manny would think of this movie...

Disney, in my humble opinion, did not make a movie for hardcore Star Wars fans.  They made a movie for people that casually watch Star Wars movies and that, to me is the crime that was commited.  I still feel shocked, appalled, and betrayed by what I watched a week ago.  Do I take the series too serious?  Probably, but that is what it means to be a fan of anything.  If a Mario game came out that looked and sounded like a Mario game but didn't play like it at all Nintendo fans would be up in arms.  Why?  They are Nintendo fans and want things a certain way.  I am a Star Wars fan and want things a certain way.  You might not agree with me, but don't belittle the Star Wars community because everyone doesn't feel exactly the same way as you.   

First off, don't treat me differently just because I'm a mod. I'm a member here first and foremost, so talk to me like you would anyone else. Don't let that affect how you respond  

Anyway, the series is full of inconsistencies and vague crap all over. I don't believe Disney ruined anything related to the force. While some points are valid others feel nick picky. Like the awakening, it's not because "anyone" can do it -it's because she's a Skywalker. She's strong with the force naturally, and while the films don't say it it's pretty obvious she is a Skywalker based off of evidence the movie gave us. Her awakening was a strong indicater as well.But I digress.

And the comment wasn't directed at you nor people who disliked the movie. The comment was made because of how broken up the SW community is. There are people who only say there's 3 movies or even only 1 while others like all 7. The point of it was no matter what 7 was, it was going to be hated (I never said by everyone nor does it imply I meant the entire community would hate it) and that is because the SW community is severely fractured. People who like the original trilogy were going to find fault in it for not living up to unrealistic expectations they had created for themselves, some people have said they hated it (not here from what I've seen though) because Disney got rid of the EU, and so forth for many differing reasons. It's a series that spans how many years now? Almost 40? And as such there will be a very vocal minority that'll make it known they dislike this movie. I had actually predicted a thread title like this a few months before the movie came out when talking to the VGChartz staff XD Anyway, you took this comment too personally -however, it was my own fault for not elaborating on what I meant. It wasn't meant for you or anyone else here. It was a general statement. 

To give you my thoughts on the SW community I'll explain with the Final Fantasy community as an example. Final Fantasy has been around almost 30 years now. There are fans of the originals and fans of the newer ones. But thats only the tip of the iceberg. Some people split it into the NES era, SNES era, PS1 era, etc. and disregard some depending on the platform certain titles in the series come in. Theres also the whole SquareEnix merger thing which seperates the community, in which people don't consider any game after X to be a "true" Final Fantasy title since the Square and Enix merger changed the way the company ran and blah blah blah. Basically you can say you like a title like VIII and then be bashed immediately from a FF7 fan. The problem is that even though they share the same name with similar characteristics, they all vary from tone and feeling so much that it's hard to compare them. And even when you do there are some people dislike because of how different they play compared to others... and thats where SW comes in. Each new trilogy is going to have a different feeling from the one before it and because of that it creates a community that'll never be fully satisfied. I love the diversity of it all, but hate -no matter how good this movie was, was going to happen because of how SW is set up. It's not just a possibility it is an inevitiability.

I hope I explained what I meant well enough. I'm looking at it and wondering if I made it confusing but I already wrote it so I might as well post it XD 

Sorry about not treating like a regular member.  I am a notorious butt smoocher.

Okay.  So if Rey had an "awakening" from touching the lightsaber because she is a Skywalker, then why didn't Luke?  It was the same lightsaber that Obi-Wan gave him...

The next two paragraphs all I read was something something Final Fantasy, but I will accept your apology.

Also, you may have predicted this thread title, but did you predict who would author the thread?

It's just an inconsistency made from the series. Obviously Luke should have had an awakening but at the time the idea of "awakening" wasn't thought of yet. The jump from originals to prequels also have similar inconsistencies. It's an inevitable problem when it's a work that spans as long as it has with different directors with different visions. What they should've done is try to think out stuff for future Star Wars movies once they realized SW was a success, but that didn't happen. However, JJ was responsible for keeping things as consistent as possible and I believe he did a fairly good job at that. Perhaps her awakening will be expanded upon in future episodes but I don't know. 

Also I found this sentence from my 2 paragraphs actually summed up my point well, "Each new trilogy is going to have a different feeling from the one before it and because of that it creates a community that'll never be fully satisfied. "

Nah, I didn't. To be quite honest I barely know anyone by their username. I know people by their avi's XD

Really?  An inconsistency?  With all due respect, that's the best you could come up with?  I call it a shortcut.  Why have Rey train over the next three movies to get to the point where she can defeat Kylo Ren when we can just have her touch the lightsaber and voila!  Villain defeated.  There was no sense of her overcoming.  She just kicked ass immediately.  Even in those crappy Rocky sequels they would have a five minute training montage to show how he overcame insurmountable odds.  In Rocky IV he had to run up a mountain in SIberia before he beat Ivan Drago!

I agree with that statement for the most part.  That being said, the prequel trilogy felt more like the OT in my opinion while the Force Awakens looked more like the OT if you understand where I'm coming from.

Let me guess.  You thought that guy with the Evil Dead avatar would do this, didn't you?