Hey everyone!

I saw over at post #32369 everyone's quite ready to give their opinions on the Star Wars series and the new movie! Rather than have it all in the comments of that post, maybe we could have a thread for it? Much easier to discuss and keep track of posts imo.

Personally I really loved Episode 7, it was the fun space adventure that I wanted to see with lovable (and interesting!) characters. I thought it was great.

...okay, my review done! :D. Feel free to play rankings or argue about Mary Sues or Jar Jar Abrams or whatever you like!

Hope it's not too late for a thread...^^;

I fucking loved it. I had some problems with some of the character management (like Phasma and Maz) and there was some slightly iffy CG on Snoke but outside of that, I was pretty much enthralled from beginning to end. The action, effects, pacing and the new characters (especially Kylo Ren, who's easily my favorite out of the new cast) were so on point, it was almost ridiculous. It's easily going to be on my Top 10 of the year (there's still other stuff I want to see, like Carol and The Revenant) and I'm super pumped to see where the story goes next.

Also, I never thought I'd say this but, for me anyway, tumblr is officially the only decent place to enjoy Star Wars. Anywhere else and the fucking fanboys come marching out like the 501st legion on the Jedi Temple.

As episode 7 stands for me, it was a great movie, but it did have its flaws like anything really. But for me the good far out weighs the bad. Again, this is just my opinion and I really am curious to see where the new trilogy is willing to venture as well as how people now feel about this series.

I would probably put episode 7 a little bit behind the original trilogy, and miles ahead of the prequels.

Episode VII has given me a new hope in the franchise. Which is quite poetic, considering that at its heart The Force Awakens is a rehash of A New Hope: the [potentially] orphaned Force-sensitive protagonist, the Galactic Emp-... the First Order, the masked Sith lord, the Millennium Falcon, the very large Death Star, etc.

And despite the huge amount of blatant fanservice, I still love it. Whereas the prequels were physically and mentally tiring, the new movie is actually fun to watch and that goes a long way for me. I feel the story was a bit too fast-paced, although it was not excruciatingly so. All characters are fairly well integrated and well played, although, like Contorted, I feel that some characters such as Phasma could have used more screen time. As with the other Star Wars movie, the special effects are impeccable.

The only issue I have with Episode VII is how it handles the galactic conflict scale. The core Republic planets are destroyed and seconds later everybody brushes it off. There's no real sense of politics or that there really is a war going on in the universe. Also if (like me), you were expecting some new Imperial mighty mech of destruction to make an appearance, you will be bitterly disappointed. Episode VII ignores world-building in favor of focusing on the characters and their actions, which wouldn't be necessarily bad, if the movie wasn't so similar to A New Hope.

Review coda: BB-8 is the cutest thing in the universe ever! ^_^

well phasma is probably gonna act as a fututr bobba fett, tracking the traitor...
Poe Dameron is a underexploited character in my opinion..
The whole "light is tempting me seems odd"
Otherwise yeah it's fun
Still, major plot point left blatantly unexplained are making it hard for me

Poe was originally going to be killed off early on, but Abrams changed his mind.

Meanwhile the whole "light is tempting to me" is there because Kylo Ren is a goddamn Sith fanboy who refuses to acknowledge that there's good in him. I'm calling it, he's going to be this franchise's Zuko.

Harrison Ford (Han Solo), Daisy Ridley (Rey) and John Boyega (Finn) all acted out there characters great. This might be their best acting in any movie they have been in so far.

Great Visuals, Great Soundtrack but rehashed story. A third Death star is at least one if not two too much. It closely follows how Episode 4 develops and I am not that fond of the story progression there either.

The same goes for how the bad guys work in this movie. Kylo Ren is an Emo, Phasma has less than a minute screen time and gets shoved into a garbage bin during that time, General Hux is way to young to be taken seriously and Snoke is just an overgrown shadow that share's one common thing with the 3 characters named before him, a very thin personality - at least so far.

Even if you switch off your brain, I find it hard to enjoy this movie. It's very clear cut disney - these are the bad guys, these are the good ones, fights, explosions, loud music. There is actually not much to think about in this movie unless you want to theorize on characters background - which will all be revealed in the later movies and probably won't be a big surprise.

They spoil the heritage of Kylo Ren within the first 30 minutes instead of revealing it at the apex of a certain scene - a pity. What kills the movie for me is its bad writing. It's not the acting, not the sound, not the visuals, no - it is the pacing and story development. If you think Episode 4 is kind of blank, then this is basically the same, without the amazing battle of yavin but new characters,

Once the internet settles down a bit and people can distance themselves a little from the initial OMG IT IS STAR WARS it will run down the same path as Episode 1 - just with less awesome lightsaber fights and without a kickass bad guy.

Better not go out like Fett is all I can say. The resident Phantasm homage deserves better.

She was shoved into the garbage bin. There's not much lower she can get. They better make her badass in the next movie/s. At least I have some hope for her, for Mr. Snape-look-alike I have none.

This is only true in hindsight. Episode 4 discussed Luke's heritage and that wasn't totally accurate. It's only until later in the movie that it's confirmed.

Star Wars writing is always some odd melange of action quips and Shakespeare in the Park, though this was the first time I ever felt like that girl in the silent movies that always gets tied down to the train tracks while the train is approaching.

Rey being an scavenger/engineer rationalized her Force Powers enough to me to be okay. I'm more interested in Finn's story because there's barely anything exposed and I know how Rey's story will pretty much go -- after all, we live in a world where The Hunger Games and Divergent and The 5th Wave and all the other books exist -- and that's disappointing, but oddly not unwelcome yet.

All in all, fun movie. Not above criticism, but anyone who's trying to hate it should probably put their flannel away.

Trust me, it would have been way worse if they had tried to keep that as the big reveal of the movie. It's actually a bit refreshing that they reveal it that early, instead of trying to make it another "Luke, I am your father" scene. The movie already copied so much of the OT, it's good it's doing at least one thing differently..

I think it's a bit ignorant to say that this movie will get the phantom menace treatment, and that people who enjoyed it are just sheep that buyed into the hype. Many professional reviewers that aren't biased about Star Wars liked it, and that was not the case with the phantom menace.

This is one of those movies that's gonna start out super well received with a few downsides to it, that steadily becomes more disliked as time goes on.

Ultimately, it'll be remembered as just being super safe. It isn't a bad film, but it isn't good, either. It's mostly just there to sell toys, and for better or for worse I think most people are ok with that.

Fair enough. I think that the general opinion of this movie is going to really depend on how the next two movies in the new trilogy are. If they don't play it safe like this one, then I can see the force awakens being considered the weakest of the three. Hopefully that is what happens.

Yeah, hopefully we get another Empire Strikes Back. On the one hand, JJ isn't the director for the next movies. On the other hand, they're still ultimately controlled by Disney, so...