The Force Awakens – But I Still Have Questions

MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD – TURN BACK NOW IF YOU HAVEN’T WATCHED EPISODE VII YET!

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So, I took some mental notes while watching The Force Awakens that I wanted to share while it is still relevant.  AGAIN, do not read if you have not seen the movie yet!  It is spoiler rich!

 

1. The music seems 90% recycled or refurbished to fit the new film.  We played a lot of Star Wars music in my middle school band, so, it’s ingrained in my brain to notice that.
2. About a week ago I posted on the Is Luke Evil Now theory, where it was suspected that he was Kylo Ren.  The theory was very, very good and well argued, but, alas, it did not happen.   It seems like we fell for the trap that the director wanted us to fall for with his classic misdirection!
3. I like that the film shook up some gender/diversity roles by having Fin (the black dude) and Rey (the young white woman in all the previews).
4. Rey is clearly the person the Force Awakens in, so I expect her to be the daughter of someone important (since her family’s identity was never revealed).
5. Rey was totally great, but Fin felt like he was borderline retarded and overly loyal for no logical reason.  Now, Fin was a Storm Trooper who just decided to bail on his job, so maybe he was just clinging to whoever said a kind word to him, but he seemed ready to jump into danger over people he had known for only a few hours (at best).  So perhaps that accounts for why he seemed kind of slow too, but I couldn’t help but repeatedly think to myself “is he this dumb because he’s a Trooper or because he’s black?  WHAT are they trying to say?!”
6. Jakku is clearly a discount Tatooine so why bother to make a new planet that feels exactly the same instead of just setting the beginning on the familiar planet to begin with?
7. Is Rey a slave that works for food, or did she work off her slave debt and now she works for food to survive?  I mean, if this was going to be a Watto situation, and we have no timeline for the lifespan of most aliens in Star Wars, then, again, why not just use Tatooine and Watto and let all the prequel haters groan a little?
8. Why does Rey care about BB-8?  She immediately befriends the machine for no good reason.
9. Fin gaining his own identity and rebelling against his Storm Trooper training made no sense.  If they are trained and conditioned, why did he appear to regain his personal ability to think for himself after seeing one fallen comrade?
10. The New Order lost the one Storm Trooper in history who can actually hit his target.
11. Why does Fin assume Poe died when no body was present?
12. When Poe reappears, why do we hear Fin’s side of what happened at the crash, which we already saw, but we hear nothing about how Poe escaped or got back to the Alliance?
13. When Fin ejects from the Tie Fighter he wakes up sweaty. You actually can’t sweat in a desert like that, the moisture is so low that the sun evaporates it before you ever had a clue you were sweating.  The Storm Trooper helmets, though, should have caused very sweaty heads. Ever have a Halloween costume with a plastic face mask on a string?  You were ready to throw it away half way through the night because you were so sweaty, now imagine your whole face stuck like that.
14. How in the heck did Han Solo get his ship stolen from him, and he could track it so quickly after it was in space, yet he couldn’t find it for anywhere from 1-30 years while it was parked in a pretty desolate desert?  Didn’t they have to turn the thing on to get it to the junker’s place?
15. How is the Falcon still running?  The thing looks half ripped apart and rusted when Rey takes it.
16. Why does Rey keep calling Luke and Han myths?  The Empire collapsed 30 years ago, not 500 – how is this old enough to be mythology already?  Kids these days… *sigh*
17. So, anyone can use lightsabers?  Not just Jedis?  A close range weapon seems like a really poor choice in an age where blasters can hit people from across the room.  So, since Fin can wield a lightsaber does that mean that we should stop assuming that anyone with a lightsaber is a Jedi?  I guess so…
18. I’d love more information on how this new Storm Trooper recruitment policy.  The hinted at thing was that kids are abducted and raised to be soldiers, but, wouldn’t that have hugely negative side effects and cause people everywhere to revolt more and more against the First Order?  They don’t say they take orphans or accept recruits like an Army, but they are no longer clones and are “taken from families.”  It’s confusing as to why anyone thought this was a good plan when they purchased/custom made the last batch of Troopers.
19. Our big baddy, Kylo Ren, is quickly revealed to be Ben Solo, Han and Leia’s son who went Jedi training and went to the Sith side.  But the kid looks nothing like either parent – more like Anakin cloned himself through his daughter somehow.
20. Kylo Ren removes his helmet way too much – is the point not to help hide his identity (which I’m sure would be tarnished if his lineage were well known in the First Order)?  Ren doesn’t need the helmet to breath, and it seems very heavy (symbolic for carrying on Vader’s legacy), so if he doesn’t want to keep it on, why the heck does he even have it?
21. For that matter, why does the First Order want a moody kid as their frontman again?  He seems to not be fully converted, and is repeatedly chastised by Snoke, yet, Ren is the face of this new Empire.
22. Is there no couple’s counseling in space?  It seems like Han and Leia should have really been working their crap out instead of doing their default jobs from Episode IV.
23. Is Leia not a Jedi too at this stage?  I get she may not have done the training, but if she is Luke’s twin, it stands to reason that she should also have at least minimal force powers without going into full Jedi training.
24. When Rey touches Luke’s old lightsaber, she gets a vision of his robot hand transmitting information to R2-D2, yet she doesn’t get the actual information, nor does she see where Luke went (that would be too useful, I guess?).
25. Right before that scene – how does BB-8 get down those stairs?  I was ready to see him do some awesome twirl/climb with his wire-thingys, but alas, he goes from top-of-stairs to bottom-of-stairs with zero gratification…
26. All of these planets get blown up, quickly, and yet the audience is left with no emotional feeling towards it.  That action doesn’t even really push the plot forward, it’s just a nice visual effect to show the Empire’s power levels needlessly.  We don’t even know what planets just exploded – anything we happen to be familiar with?  Fans would like to know!
27. Rey has an obscene amount of Jedi powers that she learns to work very quickly and without training.  Luke couldn’t do anything until Obi Wan told him that he could, but Rey seems to break all the rules and master everything on her own – which means she’s either got all the midichlorians (sp?) left in the universe coursing through her veins, or every other Jedi who went through training courses completely wasted their time.
28. Harrison Ford either agreed to return for only “one more Star Wars movie,” or else Han Solo is not dead.  I did not get enough visual or emotional closure to feel anything when that scene happened, so I am skeptical that it’s all that meets the eye.
29. Was Kylo Ren really conflicted, or was that just a ruse to get Han Solo close?  If Ren is wavering, again, seems like a weird person to have in such a powerful position.
30. Did Rey chop off Kylo Ren’s hand?  It wasn’t highlighted enough to tell for certain. I thought I saw his head come off too, but I was mistaken.
31. Why are the baddies still using Tie Fighters and the goodies still flying X-Wings?  These are iconic vehicles, and I assume the marketing people thought that the kids don’t care what toys they buy, but adults will be very likely to purchase nostalgia – so, profits are my only reasonable assumption for why 30+ year old vehicle designs haven’t become improved or replaced for the new movie.
32. Since Luke is not Kylo Ren or part of the Dark Side, why in the heck is he on this hidden journey?  They say it’s to find a Jedi temple over his guilt of Ben Solo turning evil, but that seems like a very poor judgement call to just vanish with such a convoluted way of finding him.  I have to assume that Luke was afraid of being converted to the Dark Side (which he heavily favors by the end of Return of the Jedi).
33. The film mentions that Luke was training the next generation of Jedi’s, so where are they?  If Ben was his only student, that is more of a dying hope than a training camp.  If he had others he was working with, what, did he just up and abandon them too because one student turned Dark?
34. Does Luke not realize that people need him?  Obi Wan talks about feeling Alderaan get blow up, but here we see multiple planets get decimated, his close friend gets murdered, and Luke just stays where he’s at?
35. If Leia became a General specifically to find Luke again, why does Rey go to fetch him without Leia?
36. I would also like to know the circumstances by which Leia remained a Princess after Alderaan was destroyed, but she no longer has a royal title now.
37. What has Luke been doing all this time?  Just standing on this tiny island’s mountaintop?  There’s no sign of food, shelter, or a Jedi temple anywhere in sight.
38. Clearly, Luke is being shown/referenced as the new Obi Wan Kenobi as they look as identical as two non-related people can.
39. Now, if Jedi are basically monks who cannot marry/love/reproduce, where do baby Jedi’s come from?  This film has again confirmed that the Force is essentially in your DNA and is passed down from parent to child, so if Jedi’s aren’t supposed to have mates – where do Padawans come from?  I guess Force-using parents aren’t a prerequisite for being a Jedi/Sith, but with this film’s muddy clarification on what “the next generation of Jedi” means, number wise, it stands to reason that the best way to promote the Jedi order would be for said living Jedi to have children.
40. There is no hint or reference to Jar Jar Binks as an evil Sith Lord, which, after seeing that fan theory, I am very disappointed over…
41. There is no end-of-credits scene.  In this day and age, everyone expects that from a live-action Disney-associated movie.

Star Wars and Luke’s Role

It’s been awhile since my last post, but I have to admit, after never really being a hardcore Star Wars fan (I’ve seen the movies in full once each, dating as far back to 1998 when the re-releases of the first trilogy came out) I am getting very excited for The Force Awakens.

I went to college for Film Studies in college (which, yes, it’s less useful than a degree in basket weaving) and watching this video made me realize all the things that I looked over as a 13-year-old watching Star Wars for the first time.

For example, while I wasn’t obsessed over the movies, I did have an extensive collection of toys (mainly the action figures).  And I’ve always noticed that Luke’s clothing told a story that the films seemed to gloss over.  Luke enters the film being iconically dressed in white – film symbolism for goodness, purity, hope, etc – in A New Hope.  Really, try to remember his clothing – the first thing that you will recall is likely that white robe thing with the light colored pants.  And, throughout this film, Luke gets little exposure to the Force and what it means.  Quite literally, he’s a hick kid who’s never had an opportunity to be corrupted, so he is completely good.

I now, it seems so simple, but, really, film directors will use the color of clothing to tell you who is good and bad (ie Leia = white dress, Darth Vader = all in black, Han Solo = black and white mixed together because he’s our anti-hero who isn’t good or bad, just out for his own interests initially).

In The Empire Strikes Back, Luke ends up wearing a lot of grey, which is the color of change, choices, or a shift in morality.  When Luke is riding the Tauntaun at the start of the movie, his pants and cuffs are grey.  As the movie progresses, more of his outfits are grey or other neutral colors – and this is happening long before Luke has any idea of his paternity.  This is also a point in time where Luke is going from learning about the Force to really training to learn how to use the Force with Yoda, which is highly suggestive of whether Luke will be a Jedi or a Sith when all is said and done.  After all, he is a teenager who has been through great emotional turmoil since the start of this film (starting with the death of his aunt and uncle and NOT getting any better as his story progresses).

By the time we see Luke in Return of the Jedi, his clothing is completely black.  Lets see, Yoda dies, the girl he’s interested in turns out to be his sister, his father is the ultimate evil of the galaxy, and, oh yeah, he’s lost a hand – eeeyup, I’d say this young man has a lot to be emotional over these days that might push him towards the Dark Side.  As the Film Theorist points out, Luke makes several grabs for the Dark Side despite being constantly warned (oh, those petulant youths!), including an attempt to murder Emperor Palpatine and going into an extreme emotional frenzy when Vader threatens Leia.  So, the actual ending of Jedi is a real let down that never made a lot of sense to me.

Well, apparently, Georgia Lucas scrapped the original ending of Star Wars where Luke walked off ominously into the sunset, Han Solo dies in battle, and Princess Leia is adapting to her role as queen.  Which – wait a second – if her planet was blown up she would have either become queen on the spot (in which case, it seems a little silly that we refer to her as a princess for three movies), or, as her planet is gone, she would have no people to rule.  Any surviving Alderanians would now be refugees on other planets, under other governments, and Leia would have no ruling power or authority what-so-ever.  Since that ending didn’t happen, I supposed that is a moot point, but, I still demand consistency!

Also, a lot of people openly proclaim their hatred of Episodes I, II, and III.  I wholeheartedly disagree with the sentiment that they are terrible and/or useless to the franchise, because, truly, this is the only way we have to compare what Jedi’s were supposed to be versus who Luke was turning into.  The Jedi’s live by a high standard and moral code, in which they essentially deprive themselves of all human emotions and feelings to act as perfect diplomats.  Now, the original trilogy talks about this – but the words of two old men (or an old man and a muppet..?) don’t hold a candle to getting to see the order and what a thriving Jedi society looked like way back when.

Now, to finally touch on The Force Awakens.  Assuming you’ve watched the video I posted above, there is evidence to suggest that Luke Skywalker is now acting as Kylo Ren (the new Vader-esx villain).  The Film Theorist really makes a great case for this, especially since Mark Hamill has his name on the posters, but has been visually absentee throughout the advertising.

Personally, I would love to see Luke on the Dark Side, because I think the original films shorted us from that experience.  However, with a director like J.J. Abrams, I think Luke become Kylo Ren may be too obvious.  Abrams took a number of measures to keep secrets about Into the Darkness hidden, including making up fake things to leak, just to keep the internet at bay.  So, it seems to me that if Kylo Ren’s identity were to be a big, surprise reveal, and the one that’s been guessed at, then Abrams would have released trailers with fake footage of Luke Skywalker as a Jedi – or at least throw him on the posters with a green light saber – to throw the world off of the scent.

 

We have a bit longer than a week to find out, and, I have to say, if the absence of Luke’s image was just to get people stirred up and in line for the movie – it has worked for me at least!