I really loved the lethal upgrading of the Lightsabers and Stormtroopers in this movie. Maybe it has more to do with the incredible sound design, but I don't remember them feeling as powerful or sinister before. Also, the Stormtroopers actually had personalities and were even kinda badass, especially that one guy who fought Finn. They even managed to tweak the Force/Darkseid powers a bit in a cool way. Say what you will about the rest, but Kylo Ren's introduction was perfect and the epitome of badass. It was so dope when he caught that laser blast and held it for a couple of minutes.

BJs Grade:

A-/A

Will give it a final grade upon 2nd or 3rd viewing. The three new heroes fucking rock, Han and Chewie are still the shit, and Kylo Ren was badass even while being an even bigger cry baby than Anakin. love this movie.

Top five moments-

1. Rey force grabbing the saber and unleashing it.
2. BB8's thumbs up
3. Rey resisting Kylo and then escaping the torture room on her own! She don't got time to wait on the boys.
4. Finn's first go with the lightsaber, and being defeated by some unnamed storm trooper. Made Finn look heroic, while giving the troopers a much needed rub. They can get things done too!
5. Kylo stopping the shot. Maybe he needs a haircut, but the man is not to be trifled with.

All of those things put over the new characters and make me very excited going forward. I thought The Force Awakens would be able to recreate the magic of A New Hope while also standing on its own. Maybe that was an impossible task. Maybe Rian Johnson will be able to achieve it. Star Wars is clearly back on the right path though and at worst we'll be getting satisying crowd pleasers for the foreseeable future.

Probably the best paragraph witten in this thread. Or the one I certainly agree with the most. David still manages to piece together well-put thoughts that I just don't agree with.

I think that in order to know if the movie has captured or recreated that sense of magic you have to ask people that had previously very little or no knowledge of the original films thus limiting the poll probably to only small kids.
Everyone else had expectations, and when you have those, I feel the sense of awe and wonder goes missing, as it involves that the movie reaches some requirements to fulfill that quota.
The reason the original movies achieved that, especially ANH, was that there was really nothing like it before and also due to the lack of the communication tools that we have today, it caught everyone by surprise, it literally came out of nowhere.
Today, with teasers and trailers being shown a year in advance and then every frame, character name, music cue, etc. being analyzed to the extreme, I think the sense of wonder and discovery is lost.

C

Easily most overrated film of the year.

I gave it a chance because the reviews were fantastic and kept myself in the dark having seen no trailers at all, but what a sorry piece of marketing. That's all that ever was.

A New Hope remains unparalleled as the only great Star Wars film. Every single story beat here felt like it was a remake of the OT in some capacity, but especially, of course A New Hope. They should have called it a remake.

I cannot believe the best story they could come up with was Han's son becoming Vader reprise. Awful. Disney played it safe the whole way through. Will not be back for the sequel.

Also, I felt the running time. Jury's out on the WOM but I'm not sure it'll be that great among the GA, non-fans. Perhaps this does not need them to like it to make record amounts of money, but I think it will be a struggle to beat Avatar now.

I'd say that some people, though not me, thought Jurassic World captured its franchise's spirit well enough.

My own ranks:

A New Hope
Empire Strikes Back
Return of the Jedi
The Force Awakens
The Phantom Menace
Attack of the Clones
Revenge of the Sith

The entire prequel trilogy is garbage. TFA is not terrible, but just not noteworthy. The OT just descends in quality.

After having a few days to settle. I'd give this:

A-

Preface: I'm not a Star Wars megafan by any stretch of the imagination. Casual fan only.

There's no way this was ever going to live up to the megahype, and of course after seeing it, it doesn't. It's certainly significantly better than the prequels; I guess the problem is that, in going after the vibe of trying to feel like the original trilogy, it ends up feeling like A New Hope a bit too much. That doesn't change that this is a highly entertaining bundle of pure unadulterated fun throughout, though. A lot of good new characters (and the potential for them to build in the next few films). I'm not sure I've had a bigger smile on my face in a movie theater this year than when Han Solo and Chewie first appear. The new "trio," John Boyega, Daisy Ridley and Oscar Isaac are all very good, especially the Keira Knightley doppelganger Ridley. I'll probably end up seeing this a second time in theaters due to holiday circumstances and I'm interested to see how much the experience is different. B+

How much do you have to remember and know what happens in the previous films to get what is going on? No spoilers please.

Nothing.

I enjoyed this, certainly. It was a quite fun movie, and even disappointing Star Wars is better than most movies.
BUT...it is kind of disappointing. Probably my least favorite Star Wars film. The characters and acting here are a significant improvement over the prequels. But the prequels were different; they weren't remakes of the OT. Besides the silly bit with the Queen being forced to sign a treaty to make their invasion legal in TPM (What?), they had interesting, relatively original plot lines.

TFA isn't exactly like the OT, and especially A New Hope. But the parallels are so obvious, I can't believe the makers didn't realize they needed a bit more...verve? Which Star Wars movie am I talking about? The film opens with our hero getting captured by a villain in dark clothing and a mask due to their droid which has important information that they need. The droid escapes and is captured by small creatures, only to be bought by a young person down on their luck. They get an old mentor who is killed by someone who meant a lot to them, and the whole thing ends with blowing up a huge battleship. In the midst is a scene near the middle of the movie where they get critical help from a scandalous character in a club filled with interesting creatures.

It was distracting. I had fun with the characters, and I'm certainly excited to see the sequels (which will hopefully be better and more original). I enjoyed how the old movies were almost like myths to the new characters. I'm interested to see what happens with Luke and Rey. But as it stands, TFA is a simply a passable, but still enjoyable setup for hopefully more involving future installments.

B+

List
1. Attack of the Clones (A+) Fuck off
2. Revenge of the Sith (A+)
3. Return of the Jedi (A+)
4. A New Hope (A+)
5. Empire Strikes Back (A+)
6. Phantom Menace (A+)
7. Force Awakens (B+)

If this gets nominated at the Oscars, it's a joke and a ploy to get more viewers. It's not even close to a great enough film. I'm happy to see that it probably won't be getting nominated at the KJ awards either

Grades!

1. Empire A+
2. Hope A
3. Force A-
4. Jedi B+
5. Sith B-
6. Phantom C+
7. Clones C+

of course its gonna get a BP nom h8ter (zwack), not that it matters, the asscars are shit

1. Empire Srkes Back A+
2. A New Hope A+
3./4. Return of the Jedi A / Force Awakens A-/A
5. Revenge of the Sith A-
6. Attack of the Clones B-
7. Phantom Menace C-

THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK - A
A NEW HOPE - A
THE FORCE AWAKENS - A-
REVENGE OF THE SITH - B+
RETURN OF THE JEDI - C+
ATTACK OF THE CLONES - C+
THE PHANTOM MENACE - C

[quote="zwackerm"]

List
1. Attack of the Clones (A+) Fuck off
2. Revenge of the Sith (A+)
3. Return of the Jedi (A+)
4. A New Hope (A+)
5. Empire Strikes Back (A+)
6. Phantom Menace (A+)
7. Force Awakens (B+)

/quote]

Troll

And child

Why am I not allowed to have opinions? I will mastubate to my prequels all the fuck I want.

I realized I enjoyed this more than AOU, actually so I will have to raise the grade to A-. But beyond the characters, this is no better than The Phantom Menace.

Except for the dialogue, direction, and pacing, you mean.

There is nothing special about the direction of TFA. Nor is there anything wrong with the pacing of The Phantom Menace. Overall, I'd actually say The Phantom Menace is more tightly plotted. This meanders a bit in the middle. The Phantom Menace goes directly from plot point to plot point besides the bit on Coruscant, which I agree is a bit slow. But no slower than some of TFA.

Giving AOTC and TPM an A+ is the offense here, not the B+ or A- or whatever for TFA.

THE PHANTOM MENACE is a film about trying to resolve a trade dispute, until everyone stops off on the backwater planet for 45 minutes to deal with a race, before then dropping in on the Senate, then pivoting to Jedi deciding whether to train the kid from the pod race, finally resolving in a battle between the Jedi and Sith, the latter being a group we know nothing about.

Basically, you're either trolling or you don't actually know what tightly-plotted means. I should hope you're trolling.

I dunno. It may have taken two hours to get there, but Jurassic World absolutey managed it with the Trex/blue vs Indominus fight. Nothing in Force Awakens made me feel like that, despite being an overall better film.

The Jedi are the ones trying to resolve the trade dispute. So it makes sense that if they come across a force sensitive child, they will try to get it trained. And the Sith are behind the Trade dispute; Nute Gunray answers to Sidious. So it's not like its all unrelated.

But there's no connective tissue. There's no drive. THE PHANTOM MENACE isn't moving toward a climax. It's a film with a stunning lack of narrative momentum.