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[Editor's Note: By continuing to read this submission, you take full responsibility if the movie gets ruined for you. You were warned!]
Going against the tide of positive reviews for "The Force Awakens" the new Star Wars movie, L'Osservatore Romano, the Vatican's daily newspaper, found much to dislike. Most of the review seems to fault the movie for being more glitz than substance, "more reboot than sequel":
"Not a classy reboot however, like Nolan's Batman, but an update twisted to suit today's tastes and a public more accustomed to sitting in front of a computer than in a cinema."
The reviewer was not impressed with the depiction of the evil characters, particularly when compared to Vader and Palpatine:
"The counterpart of Darth Vader, Kylo Ren, wears a mask merely to emulate his predecessor, while the character who needs to substitute the emperor Palpatine as the incarnation of supreme evil represents the most serious defect of the film," it wrote. "Without revealing anything about the character, all we will say is that it is the clumsiest and tackiest result you can obtain from computer graphics."
In contrast, the newspaper was very impressed with such movies as the James Bond Skyfall, and described Mad Max, Fury Road as a "real, true masterpiece."
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Username on Monday December 28 2015, @06:24PM
My biggest beef is with rey’s abilities. She can fly any ship, fix any ship, mindfuck a sith lord, and fight on par in a saber battle. All without training, but she can’t figure out a blaster. IDK I’m just a girl, guns are complicated.
(Score: 4, Informative) by ikanreed on Monday December 28 2015, @07:33PM
These would be the nerd objections; many just gloss over what we were given.
Most of those concerns are answered by the fact that, as a Jedi, Kylo Ren is just straight up incompetent. And he's intended to be. He's not powerful. He goes out of his way to overcompensate, with big dramatic gestures. He barely beats a pacifist stormtrooper in a lightsaber duel, before getting beaten by a novice.
So anything to do with her beating him comes from her being a natural, and him being a showy incompetent.
And fixing ships also makes sense, she carefully disassembled them for scrap for years, identifying key components and what they do is also part of her backstory. As a reminder, her (probable) grandfather built a droid and a racing pod with no experience at age 8. Unreasonable mechanical skill for Jedi seems to be an in-universe thing.
I'll grant you that that doesn't align very nicely with her not getting the basics of blasters.
(Score: 2) by Non Sequor on Monday December 28 2015, @10:21PM
The way I parse it is that the Force is actually revealing these techniques to Rey. Perhaps its intended to parallel the origins of the Jedi order. Perhaps in the absence of trained Force sensitives, the techniques reveal themselves to key individuals.
Kylo Ren on the other hand, is trying to seize control of the Force and he's failing. He might actually have been stronger as a Jedi than he is now. He hasn't been trained to the extent that a typical Sith apprentice would be trained. My expectation is that Snoke knows more about what's going on with the Force than anybody else and he's manipulating Kylo Ren to set him up to take advantage of some kind of opportunity later.
I thought it was a great movie. I liked it better than what I've seen of the expanded universe material.
Write your congressman. Tell him he sucks.
(Score: 2) by SubiculumHammer on Tuesday December 29 2015, @05:55AM
Reys vision seems to reveal that she was present at Luke's Jedi school. As such she may have been trained in the force as a child and either forgot, repressed or had her mind force wiped of the memory.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Username on Tuesday December 29 2015, @04:07AM
Not sure how he made it to sith lord being such a pansy, you would think another sith would have beat him out for the title if he was that bad. Him almost getting beaten by a storm trooper makes sense. They are highly trained, pacifist or not. Luke almost got his ass kicked several times if he didn’t run away. It’s just too much to instantly know how to use the force. Anakin and Luke even had to be trained before they could be useful.
One thing about her story, is if she is so mechanically inclined, why didn’t she just refurbish a tie fighter, or troop transport off one of the wrecked destroyers? Then use that to stop off at Space-Mart for groceries instead of scavenging for parts to trade for food rations locally. Sure, she’s waiting for daddy like a good little girl, but she could just leave a note on her imperial walker house, saying she’s off trading and would be back in an hour in case he does show up.
Another thing, how did she not notice that ship was the millennial falcon? She was all impressed meeting Han Solo, saying she knew it ran the kessle run in 14 parsecs and all. How did she not put two and two together. I’m sure the guy who owned it would have been bragging left and right he got Solos ship. I would have.
On the blaster issue, she would have found tons of those on the imperial ships. There’s no excuse.
(Score: 2) by CoolHand on Tuesday December 29 2015, @03:54PM
In the 2nd half of the movie he is largely incompetent, yet in the beginning, he is able to freeze a blaster pulse in mid-air, something we've seen from no other Sith.. So, the movie seemed inconsistent with itself. That is a problem for a lot of people. (and Kylo Ren wasn't the only example of that)
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