Moved to there since it deals with opinions more than the analysis of technical elements.
-----------[Replying to Sothis' post in the other TFA thread]------------
I'v read it, it's a good summary but relies a bit too much on the novels. But since the movies are so reluctant to expose the background, I can see how one would be tempted to go for the book.
I started this empty thread before watching the movie, somehow feeling that it may be worthy of some analysis. However, after witnessing the clusterfuck it is, I absolutely don't feel like going through any particular scrutiny of background elements anymore.
I'll comment on a few points though.
Rey is the embodiment of what a strong lead character should be in this day and age – one not defined by her gender. The fact that she is a woman is pretty much incidental – she is a true equal to the other characters, which makes a refreshing change.
Her stats are boosted in all competences with a large stash of Force points to spend at abandon. She's like a vampiric syncretism of several main characters from ANH. Therefore, she cannot be terrible. Well, she could have been so if her prowesses had been balanced out by equally huge defaults but I'm afraid that would have required some truely hurr durr moments from her.
Before I continue, I must address the charges that she is something of a Mary Sue (a character who can do no wrong, a projection of the writer’s desired self-image into the film or book). Rey does not come through unscathed in this film – she still has no idea of who her family is, nor where they are.
That is relatively minor and not even some result from the movie's events. It's part of the character's overall background nobody would care about. This point is rather irrelevant since nothing has changed on that front between the beginning and the ending of the film.
She is kidnapped by Kylo Ren and, though she was able to escape her cell,
Not something small at all!
she was still totally dependent upon outside help to escape the planet.
Was she? She seemed to be on her way to a fighter and doing very fine playing Spiderman in such a non-conspicuous way (...). But considering the level of security inside this large base...
When she and Finn confront Ren at the end of the film, she is initially rendered unconscious!
A dozen seconds until she hacks into Ren's TK and grabs the lightsabre.
Which matters not because she still pwns him in the end anyway, because TEH FOARS!
To cut away any lingering doubt, Ren, when face-to-face with his father, makes the decision to kill him (in what was, in my view, inevitable from the moment Han stepped onto that bridge), but the act of the son killing the father – and the father, in his dying moments, reaching out to his boy one final time – is emotionally draining for Ren. The novel establishes that, far from strengthening his resolve, the act actually weakens it – he is left shaken by what he does.
I don't know... the guy is a complete Freudian psychotic nutcase. Next move, he rapes his mother and feels better.
It must take some serious madness to be willing to kill your father (who hasn't beaten you or raped you when you were eight years old).
It feels nothing more than a gross trick at pulling the audience's emotional strings.
There have been suggestions that his fight with Finn and Rey was all wrong – that Finn should never have been able to stand up to Ren – but this ignores the facts. Ren was injured (he had been shot by Chewbacca just after he killed Han), he was emotional, for the reasons already mentioned, and Finn had been through some form of melee combat training (this was clear from Finn’s earlier fight with a Stormtrooper). Despite this, Ren was still able to defeat Finn, albeit not without sustaining further injury.
So, by the time he fought Rey, he was nursing two wounds, and we don’t actually know the extent of his melee combat experience. Rey may not have had any experience either, but she was naturally gifted in the Force and unhurt.
Aside from Ren being a pretender who has nothing else to do but build a lightsabre and actually learn how to use it, the point is that since so many people, even if they liked that flick, were not convinced of the sort of deus ex pulled there, it must tell us something: it's because it's badly told.
It wouldn't be so hard to accept the course of events if Ren hadn't been shown to best Vader in about everything he's shown in the OT, especially in the telekinesis department.
You move from one guy who can effortlessly deflect or hold people or energy bolts into place and continue doing whatever he was doing before and after without even flinching or showing any need to concentrate (it is just that hax) to getting defeated by a total noob who got lucky not accidentally dicing herself to pieces with that deadly energy sword. You think that even at 10% of his abilities (and surely he didn't show to be at only 10% of his stamina), you'd expect Kylo-boy to still be a brute.
The problem is that for contrieved plot reasons that both required a showdown and a conclusion that wouldn't result in the death of the two new heroes, the nasty dude was utterly nerfed. Yet, he still manages to catch on them in the middle of nowhere! Yeah, just like that; one of those tiring tropes of people ninja'ing in or out of a scene. The kind of shit that surely breaks suspension of disbelief and is lazy writing, so often abused by American writers these days. TFA simply fails to properly convey any sense of
sufficient weakness coming from Renn. A good director would have made the clue obvious. Because when someone is really on the brink of crumbling, it should be visible beyond a doubt. What would it takes? Something like five extra seconds of movie length? Geez.
It's also problematic because most people assume, quite rightfully, that Renn is somewhat skilled. It's made clear in the movie that he killed other Jedi students and that for some reason not even Jedi *cough* Master *cough* Skywalker managed to stop him. So it comes to logic that Renn should really know enough tricks to get rid of amateurs who have never handled a lightsabre, even at a quarter of his abilities.