Nice thoughts. Here's some of mine (Off-Topic)

by Avateur , Friday, December 18, 2015, 18:56 (3252 days ago) @ Funkmon

I'm going to do my damnedest to avoid spoilers by keeping mostly in tune with how you went about describing things. I'll avoid plot details as a whole.

To start, the script was weak. The plot was thin. Luckily, the writing for the characters and the pace of the film help to make up for these flaws. It's also unfortunate that some characters get completely shelved or underdeveloped for half (or more) of the movie. They missed some good opportunities.

I'm not going to sit here and try to tell anyone that this movie was better than IV or V, or even better than Mad Max: Fury Road. It wasn't. I know you brought up fanfiction, but I'm not feeling it on this one. I couldn't shake the feeling of fanfiction while watching the Hobbit trilogy that didn't need to be a trilogy. I'm not feeling it with Episode VII. That could drastically change depending on how they handle VIII.

In a way, it can be viewed as disappointing that Episode VII relied so heavily on setting a foundation for the future instead of taking any true real risks (like you pointed out). At the same time, I'm completely fine with it because the goal of this movie was to show that Star Wars could be great again (to the old fans) as well as new and exciting to new fans. It didn't take itself too seriously, and it managed to establish some really great new characters that we'll be going along with into the future.

As part of the whole "we saw this before in IV" mentality, one reason I feel like this works is because of how it was handled. We're thirty years after Jedi. Thirty years ago, what was the real world like? The more things change, the more they stay the same, right? War, peace, and revolution continue on, and this remains true in a galaxy far, far away.

There are definitely a lot of unanswered questions, some of which were hinted at via Force-vision, and are clearly being held off for future movies.

Granted, the movie was "safe" in the sense that it didn't want to implode on itself right out of the gates. The movie was actually fun and enjoyable, it had intensity, emotion, nostalgia, and really excelled with the new characters and the ideal promises of what's to come. Where this movie fails, as you pointed out, is in how safe it tried to be. There was nothing spectacularly new like in the previous six movies. Even though the prequels failed, they did attempt to do their own thing in a lot of ways. The true test is going to be reinventing the greatness in what lies ahead as opposed to continuing to repeat. The lack of Abrams at director should help with this. There's new life in the franchise, so now hopefully VIII can go do its own thing.

I don't want to see a repeat of V or VI. It's time for an original plot and story now that VII accomplished its mission. It threw back enough to IV to make this movie work and ground the universe yet again. It was fun, exciting, and the movie was actually great. I'm willing to put it up there with Jedi. Since you provided your own order, I'll give you mine as far as what I feel are the best movies to the worst.

1. Empire
2. A New Hope
3. Jedi
4 (or tied at or close to 3? I'll give it a few viewings). Force Awakens
5. Revenge of the Sith
6. Attack of the Clones
7. Phantom Menace