Post by Harkovast on Dec 30, 2015 18:27:49 GMT
Spoilers blah blah why are you reading this if you haven't seen the movie?
Anyway, You are probably expecting me to bang on about how much of the film was lifted almost exactly from A New Hope. While that is true and it is a big problem (especially later on in the film when the bad guys build an EVEN BIGGER Death Star...but one that is even easier to blow up!) it is NOT the problem I am going to talk about today.
Now when you think back to the film, you probably realise, if you are honest, that the film's final section is not as good as the earlier sections. It doesn't turn into a disaster, but it isn't quite as good. This is partly the aforementioned drawing from earlier movies starting to break the suspension of disbelief, but there is another factor.
I can actually point to the exact moment when the film starts to go down hill.
It is when Poe Dameron shows up alive again.
Even as I typed that, I felt a great disturbance in the Force, as if millions of fan boys suddenly cried out in butt-hurt. Well allow me to suddenly silence them.
I am not saying I didn't like Poe Dameron. Poe Dameron was cool.
But so was his death!
Poe Dameron was the "best pilot in the resistance" and a cool heroic dude. He was clearly the one guy with the elite skills to evade the First Order and get the map to the good guys.
So when his ship crashed and he seemed to have been blown up that was a big deal! The awesome hero guy had failed. The First Order was just too powerful and now who was left to save the universe?
So then it falls to Fin (Is that how you spell it?), whose kind of a dork and just wants to get out of the First Order and leg it as far as possible, to complete the mission.
How can this loser, some drop out storm trooper, succeed where the greatest hero in the galaxy failed?
That's a pretty fucking cool set up!
So when Poe shows up alive with no real ceremony or set up it really sucked all the wind out of what was an interesting plot.
It cheapens everything that happened earlier, including our mourning for Poe.
Now I admit when they didn't show his body I kinda suspected he wasn't dead, but so long had passed by the time he suddenly came back that I had gone from assuming he was dead to just forgetting about him.
When he shows up, he's flying an X-Wing with a load of other resistance pilots.
This is scene is more about "the resistance have arrived!" than "Poe is back!" so taking him out would have detracted.
After the battle, Leia shows up as the spokes person for the resistance anyway, so Poe doesn't actually get to do that much.
When we finally get to talk to him again his survival is basically hand waved.
He was thrown clear, completely unharmed, woke up and then got back to the resistance some how.
I was okay with Fin miraculously surviving the crash...but both of them? And both being thrown separately, not seeing each other and wandering off in different directions?
A previously cool scene is made to seem silly.
The fact that Fin only barely survived the First Order is reduced as both of them survived. The First Order didn't manage to kill either of them, or even cause Poe any trouble in getting back to base.
Combined with the really one sided fighter battle when he shows up, The First Order suddenly stops seeming so scary.
Originally Poe was meant to die but it got rewritten, but the off hand way his survival is explained pretty much made that obvious to everyone.
But the problem with Poe living only gets worse.
During the final battle we have the rebels/resistance/whoever attacking the bigger death star by flying down a trench to attack its weak point.
A new death star would be pretty lame at the best of times (it was dumb in return of the jedi) but Poe's presence ruins the battle.
Poe has already died once for the viewer, in a really big dramatic way.
After returning from a death like that he isn't going to bite it from some slub Tie fighter. Anyway death now would be an anticlimax to the awesome way he died earlier.
So not only is the scene is a repeat of a previous end battle, but we know that the main guy in it has total plot immunity.
This led me to start willing the weapon to fire successfully, or be damaged but not destroyed or anything just to make this different to my expectations. When the thing was easily destroyed I wasn't cheering, I was kinda disappointed.
Now you might argue that we needed Poe in the final battle so we had someone there we could get behind.
I disagree.
Space battle was really a backdrop to what Han, Chewie, Ray and Fin were doing.
Leia and the whole resistance were in peril, so its not like we needed a hero guy there to raise the states.
With the shield down the weak point, generator thing could have gone down to massed fire from the X-Wings. That would have been a bit different, rather than hero guy flying down a trench AGAIN. Once the heroes completed their mission to plant bombs, the Star Killer Bases destruction was assured (yes I do know what it was called, but calling it the bigger Death Star is funny and accurate.) It wasn't like they were going to do all that and have it not work, so the exact method or who got the final shot in was not really that important.
I liked Star Wars, especially Fin and Rey who were great and had tons of chemistry.
But Poe should have stayed dead.
Anyway, You are probably expecting me to bang on about how much of the film was lifted almost exactly from A New Hope. While that is true and it is a big problem (especially later on in the film when the bad guys build an EVEN BIGGER Death Star...but one that is even easier to blow up!) it is NOT the problem I am going to talk about today.
Now when you think back to the film, you probably realise, if you are honest, that the film's final section is not as good as the earlier sections. It doesn't turn into a disaster, but it isn't quite as good. This is partly the aforementioned drawing from earlier movies starting to break the suspension of disbelief, but there is another factor.
I can actually point to the exact moment when the film starts to go down hill.
It is when Poe Dameron shows up alive again.
Even as I typed that, I felt a great disturbance in the Force, as if millions of fan boys suddenly cried out in butt-hurt. Well allow me to suddenly silence them.
I am not saying I didn't like Poe Dameron. Poe Dameron was cool.
But so was his death!
Poe Dameron was the "best pilot in the resistance" and a cool heroic dude. He was clearly the one guy with the elite skills to evade the First Order and get the map to the good guys.
So when his ship crashed and he seemed to have been blown up that was a big deal! The awesome hero guy had failed. The First Order was just too powerful and now who was left to save the universe?
So then it falls to Fin (Is that how you spell it?), whose kind of a dork and just wants to get out of the First Order and leg it as far as possible, to complete the mission.
How can this loser, some drop out storm trooper, succeed where the greatest hero in the galaxy failed?
That's a pretty fucking cool set up!
So when Poe shows up alive with no real ceremony or set up it really sucked all the wind out of what was an interesting plot.
It cheapens everything that happened earlier, including our mourning for Poe.
Now I admit when they didn't show his body I kinda suspected he wasn't dead, but so long had passed by the time he suddenly came back that I had gone from assuming he was dead to just forgetting about him.
When he shows up, he's flying an X-Wing with a load of other resistance pilots.
This is scene is more about "the resistance have arrived!" than "Poe is back!" so taking him out would have detracted.
After the battle, Leia shows up as the spokes person for the resistance anyway, so Poe doesn't actually get to do that much.
When we finally get to talk to him again his survival is basically hand waved.
He was thrown clear, completely unharmed, woke up and then got back to the resistance some how.
I was okay with Fin miraculously surviving the crash...but both of them? And both being thrown separately, not seeing each other and wandering off in different directions?
A previously cool scene is made to seem silly.
The fact that Fin only barely survived the First Order is reduced as both of them survived. The First Order didn't manage to kill either of them, or even cause Poe any trouble in getting back to base.
Combined with the really one sided fighter battle when he shows up, The First Order suddenly stops seeming so scary.
Originally Poe was meant to die but it got rewritten, but the off hand way his survival is explained pretty much made that obvious to everyone.
But the problem with Poe living only gets worse.
During the final battle we have the rebels/resistance/whoever attacking the bigger death star by flying down a trench to attack its weak point.
A new death star would be pretty lame at the best of times (it was dumb in return of the jedi) but Poe's presence ruins the battle.
Poe has already died once for the viewer, in a really big dramatic way.
After returning from a death like that he isn't going to bite it from some slub Tie fighter. Anyway death now would be an anticlimax to the awesome way he died earlier.
So not only is the scene is a repeat of a previous end battle, but we know that the main guy in it has total plot immunity.
This led me to start willing the weapon to fire successfully, or be damaged but not destroyed or anything just to make this different to my expectations. When the thing was easily destroyed I wasn't cheering, I was kinda disappointed.
Now you might argue that we needed Poe in the final battle so we had someone there we could get behind.
I disagree.
Space battle was really a backdrop to what Han, Chewie, Ray and Fin were doing.
Leia and the whole resistance were in peril, so its not like we needed a hero guy there to raise the states.
With the shield down the weak point, generator thing could have gone down to massed fire from the X-Wings. That would have been a bit different, rather than hero guy flying down a trench AGAIN. Once the heroes completed their mission to plant bombs, the Star Killer Bases destruction was assured (yes I do know what it was called, but calling it the bigger Death Star is funny and accurate.) It wasn't like they were going to do all that and have it not work, so the exact method or who got the final shot in was not really that important.
I liked Star Wars, especially Fin and Rey who were great and had tons of chemistry.
But Poe should have stayed dead.