[SPOILER] Star Wars Discussion Thread

[Kreekakon]

Spoiler below!

I saw the movie yesterday and I have to say although I didn't think it was masterful it was incredibly enjoyable.

My biggest problem with the movie is that it feels all like one gigantic prologue as in the whole movie is build-up to the next chapter. I didn't see anything which really felt like amazing payoff that gave off a vibe of beginning, middle, and end. This is a significantly smaller problem if you accept that you have to view the whole sequel trilogy as one continuous story as opposed to three standalone segments which are connected by an over-arching story.

Also there were too many plot conveniences for my taste, with Han Solo happening to be the one to randomly pick up the Millennium Falcon, and Luke's lightsaber just happening to be in the basement of the place where Han Solo was asking for help being the main ones.

However onto the good stuff though: I absolutely LOVED Kylo Ren as the villain. Him being a mopey, whiny teenager with an inferiority complex was EXACTLY the reason I loved him so much. When he starts off he's built up to be this badass dark warrior but as time goes on you can see that he is constantly frustrated with everything because he secretly knows that he is not as awesome as everyone else believes or how strong he actually wants himself to be. Rey's appearance as another force wielder only amplifies this insecurity because it means his position is more threatened than ever. He even has to constantly try convincing himself that the dark side will make him stronger and solve his problems while making him more powerful. It makes him an extremely human villain and I love him for that.

Another further way to look at Kylo Ren's status is that he has likely been the only active force user for several years now. He KNOWS that his skills are not completely up to standard, but there has literally been no one in the galaxy to challenge his inferior skills as a force user so everyone just treats him like a badass when in actuality he's only seen as this strong because there are no others to be compared with. This also means that he is likely very rusty with his force user vs force user combat. I have a strong suspicion that Snoke never trained Kylo that much at all. All he did was give a bit of dark side talk and then send him off to do "bad things" because why bother any further if there's no force users to challenge him anyways? A person with stupidly low skill in a craft will still be number one when no one else knows the craft.

This is also likely the reason Rey was able to best Kylo Ren even with JUST her un-honed potential. I still take issue with Finn being able to last even five seconds against even a injured Kylo Ren though because all Finn was doing was the equivalent of flailing a stick around with no idea what he was doing.

Speaking of the ending, it was extremely entertaining. It was tight, exciting, and the fight was absolutely gritty. It felt real and I would've gladly paid the whole movie ticket just to see that ending fight.

Those are some of my more standout thoughts on the movie which while I did not enjoy as some other people did, I still loved immensely for the positives.