A Critique of Star Wars: The Force Awakens - Part 2

it's hard to take what fans take away you know from the films and sometimes they see the films very differently than you do so it's you know I learned that when I added seven frame to show the hand didn't you shoot somebody in cold blood hello there ladies and gentlemen hi Mahler make sure you've seen part one of this assessment and then we can continue right along and for those who've been interested in exactly how long this series will take to be released I do indeed have bad news it has taken an extremely long time to edit and I haven't been able to accurately estimate the release I am afraid you will not be getting any of them weekly with how this has progressed it is far more likely for them to be released at unpredictable times due to the amount of editing they take you will be receiving more supplementary videos in general around them and that could be rages praises commentaries or what have you but this series will more than likely be released across the year and as much as that sucks please know that it is in favor of really refining it to a cohesive whole I want this to be the strongest set of videos that I can make anyway how about we talk about Star Wars we were essentially at the beginning the idea is the bad guys and the good guys are all after this MacGuffin a map to Luke Skywalker the first shot with characters developing the plot focuses right on the map itself and the film ends with what you would find when following the map it's very consistent and when you think about it it's almost very meta I imagine many fans would love a map that takes them to Luke Skywalker and so the will being obsessed with it is almost reflective of how our world would react to it too anyway the last scene we discussed was that of kylo Ren's entrance and his subsequent decisions let's just do a quick catch up this scene strongly Apes the introduction for Darth Vader in Episode four it is likely an attempt to elicit the same emotional reaction from the audience in 2015 as they had in 1977 propelling Darth Vader into infamy however unlike in 1977 this copy and pasted scene does not remain consistent with a narrative when it absolutely could have been the writers simply needed to take more time darth vader is arguably the most iconic villain in fiction the way to create another iconic villain is not to clumsily rip off the scene but to bring new ideas to the table no not those ideas still no yeah okay no new ideas isn't quite specific enough is it this scene only needs a few tweaks to make kylo function a little bit more consistently have him kill one of the villagers in cold blood calmly and you can have him threaten TECA with more if he continues to hide the information and TECA could then maybe take his own life to prevent the knowledge from getting out from there you show that kylo is only frustrated at the loss of knowledge rather than the loss of life solidifying him as a villain immediately but I always have to stop myself with rewrites because there are so many more pieces to correct that if I had the power I will be doing more than simply changing this scene either way this form of writing where old scenes are repurposed for a new narrative is common throughout the script in this case they have taken the superficial element of the classic scene the act of murder and hope that alone would simply recreate the atmosphere of what was a stole ong ago it sure does look impactful with five different shots to show one slice but it doesn't make sense for kylo Poe or TECA to have made their decisions in this situation considering who they are so let's move on Poe of course didn't leave and gets himself caught by trying to kill kylo kylo stops his blaster shot midair with the force showing more focus and power than most of what we've seen before not even Vader could stop them in midair well nine the OT anyway did anyone notice how odd it is that pose behind cover and then when trying to shoot kylo he is suddenly in some kind of open space directly across from kylo I would imagine the purpose was to facilitate this shot it's a very clear introduction of freezing a person with the force and watching him helpless as the stormtroopers approached but why in the world would Poe have moved from cover to an open space and since this is a raid wouldn't the stormtroopers have spotted a man with a rifle standing in the open lucky I suppose either way this is an extremely stylish move from kylo and I guess it's absolutely possible with what we know about the force but it does establish a precedent for his power in his freezing the blast he wanted to show that he was the real deal that he was incredibly for strong kylo has a strong understanding of the force and possesses great power this is something that seemed to be important when earlier in production for his story but it's dropped not only in this film but in the last Jedi as well in favor of pushing someone far more powerful to the forefront Kyllo figures out that Poe had the map recently with what I assume was the force and orders a personal search when they find nothing on him Kayla decides to take Poe prisoner to be placed on his ship for interrogation in the future okay I have another question for you kylo why aren't you torturing Poe immediately to get the information that is not only paramount to the success of your faction but something that you have an enormous personal stake in instead you wait not only until he's placed in a room on a ship that is in space but after he is tortured by other members of the first order kylo is asking for the map itself not the memory of post seeing it he makes that very clear so that means he knows he has to come back to this planet right let me explain what I mean kylo is going to go all the way back up to his ship in order to find information that he knows will immediately take him back down to the planet possibly back down to this very spot why is he wasting so much time honestly it's very simple torture Poe collect the Droid and the film instead its capture Poe torture him later realized there's a Droid to find and return to the planet having given the Droid a day to travel to then chase it with all the force of two TIE fighters and well I'm getting ahead of myself for those who really don't see the problem here we're dealing with yet another character choice that is incongruous with the character we already had several for the three in this scene but they keep coming in favor of jump-starting the plot let's explain it in a more entertaining way shall we what if the very possible event occurred that Poe buried the map and a one foot of sand on this very spot and kylo took Poe all the way back up to his ship tortured him and then found that he needed to travel all the way back down to pick it back up out of the sand that would be blatantly silly so silly that the vast majority of audience members would be brought right out of the narrative but with what kylo knew at this point that would have been absolutely possible than his choice is just as stupid when you think it through what was kylo expecting to learn from Poe that wouldn't mean he would need to return to the planet was he hoping that Poe aid the map there is a bit of reaching on this discussion one such example is that kylo was concerned that Poe might have transmitted the map and thus needed the distant location to analyze whether that was the case but even if we took that seriously despite not being in the film why didn't TECA transmit the map instead of hand-delivering it why didn't Poe if it really was possible writing the script for the writer is bad enough but doing it in such a way that more holes are forming is just not helpful at all and for anyone arguing that kylo requires this chair to torture people first of all he doesn't and secondly did people forget that he has a weapon that cuts through skin just by putting it near a person you have plenty of torture methods available my friend just do it the old-fashioned way the reasoning for each significant character choice in this scene is that we needed it to happen for the rest of the film to happen even at the cost of the characters that the story is supposed to be growth for that my friends is lazy writing we actually used to have more dialogue in the scene where he referenced his father and his mother but it ended up seeming too soon apparently there was more to this scene at one point and I would imagine those extra pieces of dialogue would have informed many of the character choices but that's not what we got kylo then leaves the area and orders the massacre of the remaining villagers in what is quite the harrowing scene then thanks to the three lines of blood on Finn's helmet we can identify his reaction to this event the helmet being branded was not only an impactful moment to have in a war environment but functions well as a method to reveal to us which one of the characters we are following is many people find it to be too on the nose even citing that the trooper was shot in the shoulder not the hand so it's all very contrived but for one it does look like those three marks were made with the actor's hand rather than CGI or something despite being a very cleanly done mark and to the glove looks torn as if the trooper may have injured it separately that the blood came from the hand alone and three it would be normal for someone to put their hand on a wound resulting in a bloody hand I mean I am all in favor of pedantry the devil is in the details but even then I can't seem to find an issue so take it as you will I think it was relatively clear yet surprising as we have very few moments of some significant blood to attach to our view of Stormtroopers I suppose you could argue it's almost symbolic of the troopers becoming more human and less of a series of units to be slaughtered they deal with reality and the consequences of the actions of those in charge is what I would be saying if this film had actually paid attention to what it was introducing moving on with the story however this is what helps turn Finn completely from the first order which is very interesting isn't it does Finn have no idea what the first order do is this the first time he is viewed a murder at the hands of his own faction did he have no clue that this is how they deal with opposition even from stories alone how has he not given any kind of prep or training for battle basically pounding into his head that his only goal is murder and conquest this experience is so impactful it sets Finn on his course for the sequel trilogy so if he was in a position for this to be that significant of a shock why in the will does he put into a ground assault team anyway especially when they have brain chemistry alterations and monitoring it's almost like they took a lifelong janitor and dropped him into an active combat zone which if that's the case why in the world did you do that how exactly do you expect him to perform you're not keeping more of an eye on this special case and let's not forget that he worked on the Starkiller base the very base that must remain a secret for the first order to receive a strong foothold in this galaxy and what they're sending ex Starkiller janitors into battle when they have the potential to switch sides be captured or simply blab about the entire project okay moving on though there is a prudent subject for discussion and that is the violent death of lausanne TECA and the obliteration of the villagers being bookended around a rather interesting piece of levity so it talks first you talk first I talk first everything you know it's just very hard to understand you although surgeon this is as clunky in terms of positioning as basically any joke from Ryan Johnson in the following film many cited as inappropriate for the tone of the scene though it is interesting as a comparison between the films because the conversation about this scene in the force awakens is almost exclusively about tonal clash rather than also being about dramatically contradicting an established character and I think it's just because the attitude of tossing on the go worked really well so it's it's it's a it's still keeping that kind of I told her Brian this is no surprise I said I just fundamentally disagree with your concept of this character and how you use him I couldn't agree more mark but Luke wasn't the only one I can hear you can you hear me Sela Leia has an urgent message for him I believe he's tooling with you sir I felt like we had to at the very beginning kind of break the ice and say we're gonna have fun here we're gonna try some fun stuff and it's gonna be okay to laugh with this movie so we kind of started with a little Monty Python sketch domhnall gleeson who we play with in this film again in a slightly more comic way than in the force and force awakens I found the character of Huck's I don't know I immediately found him very funny it's a lot of humor potential in him these kinds of decisions are simply made because it felt right to the director at the time Huck's became comedic because why not also I don't know if it needs stating but Star Wars and Monty Python aren't even close when it comes to tone and execution bringing comedy all you want but don't use it at the expense of character or the tone you're setting for the scene character will often be your foundation don't rot it away before you even have a story going back to the force awakens however is this scene an example of a tonal clash I would say absolutely this scene acts as a brief moment to connect with Poe he shows no fear in front of an imposing monstrous figure by making a joke and it lightens the mood that's all great but as of less than a minute ago there is a fresh corpse that belongs to what was a friend of his lying right next to him this is undeniably a conflict for the tone considering teca's death was the reason the poe reacted in the first place he became very emotional and we would be expected to follow along since he is the POV character for this scene we feel as he feels and that tone is relatively consistent once the first order arrives death destruction and domination are present everywhere it is harrowing except for this joke which was seemingly interjected from no way rather arbitrarily almost like improvisation and for me it was a very fun character play especially the idea of injecting humor JJ in in a real spirit of collaboration I was open to ideas and even improvising lines here and there and dialogue and and I think that's what makes this newest chapter in the in the saga so fresh is that there's a bit of a messiness and a wildness to it we wanted to give a little bit of a sense of humor and this was actually a reshoot that we did at bad robot there are a number of those along the way improvisation is wonderful and it can lead to some of the most iconic movie scenes in history you're gonna need a bigger boat [Music] here's Johnny you guys know all of those were improvised oh hey what about this one I love you [Music] they're gray aren't they but just because you enjoyed the line when filming or even in post that doesn't mean it's suitable when placed next to its surrounding scene just throw it in the bonus features if you want to keep it otherwise it can snowball and you'll find there is no consistency for the script at all you end up with improv that was really only effective because of the chemistry onset then what translates to the scene would be okay if I bring my cat to work sometimes he has major anxiety problems I would love to let your cat live here with you but I have a pretty severe cat allergy oh I don't have a cat it's a dog these names mark out your dog's name is my cat and Mike hat your dog's name is Mike last name hat always full name is Michael I can't say that I'm allergic to dogs so answer I do this with my mom well then we have that figured out one down no cat I mean at that point you just hope it was improv but yes this is something you can find is happening a lot in the last Jedi one of the examples I missed in my previous assessment was that of kylo attacking the Radice in the film we are shown that several of the pilots we had only recently met get obliterated by a couple of missiles that were fired directly into the hangar Po and the resistance are devastated they lost what remains of their fleet in a ball of fire and as PO is coming to realize this we have bb-8 being thrown in for comic relief this issue plagues the last Jedi you have to consider the characters the tone and how the injection melds with the rest of the scene especially if it was never in the script to begin with so can something similar be said for the scene in the force awakens Poe is actually quite calm and collected compared to seconds ago I get the character of Poe as a hotshot with nothing that truly gets to him and he can sail past all forms of pressure because he is Poe but that isn't what we were just shown and it clearly isn't the case in the last Jedi no you are not just a coward you are a traitor his emotional reaction his anger is precisely what led to his capture what we could have seen is a furious Poe having trouble containing himself as kylo asked him questions we could have maintained the urgency of the hero and the oppression of the villain but it would seem that comedy was almost mandated combine that with the idea that improvisation was encouraged and reshoots took place there may be many more instances of this in the film as it progresses it stands to reason that healthy doses of both drama and comedy allow the project to cast a wide net on the audience in terms of satisfaction but all we've really talked about is just the death of TECA and then this joke seconds later after the attempt to recover a more lighthearted atmosphere we get a rather large selection of innocent screaming village folk being annihilated in the background [Music] which means we are now at the point of tonal spaghetti though to clarify one can feel any way about this clash as they wish perhaps you did jump from excitement to tension to horror to comedy to sorrow in seconds with ease but the contradictions in how the characters deal with this scenario are undeniable and the contrast is night and day and how the scene portrays the humor and the tragedy however it's not impossible to balance these things even when it comes to adjacent pieces of dialogue plenty do many of these examples might be referred to as black comedies some of them make use of gallows humor in the diarist of circumstances to keep the audience and the characters from plummeting into melancholy despite the horrific circumstances it reminds us that these people are human and so even when facing death you can find many writers and directors will use careful deliveries of dialogue to bring out humor where you might have thought it was completely inappropriate it could be a comedy or it could be to simply provide a reprieve from the sorrow just took a nosedive from the ugly tree and she tries to get running out of the barn but she still got the shirt over and she goes why is this such a big joke to you three people have died in a week oh come on dr. Sherlock they were accidents you didn't see anything suspicious I know I suppose they must get really sad about like being really little in us people looking at the moon laughing at them calling them names no short arse people go around calling you a [ __ ] when you want to be called a dwarf of course you're gonna blow your head off hello by jingo yes if I ever really needed a favor then I was to call you and you do everything you could to help me yes yes I do change my mind no we've noticed that [Music] [Music] I don't want to die ready well over keen on dying at altar rather hoped I'd get through the whole show go back to work and Pratt and sons married Doris made a note in my diary on the way here simply says Oh get your stick listen huh what a face a machine gun without this he loses the shovel goes out of his grasp it hits the kerosene lantern the thing explodes the whole barn almost goes up that was it that was the last that was Dan went off to basic the next day that was the last night the four of us were together it's always going to be about context and delivery you don't need to switch genres entirely to have comedy side by side with drama a space opera can of course contain both but this scene in particular needs a simple tweak move this joke to the torture scene have our hero use it just before Kyllo shows him how powerful he is we would get endeared to poe moments before being intimidated even more by kylo as the joke completely falls flat by comparison to Kyler's power as a result this previous scene remains consistently sorrowful as I imagined was intended with this moment and we still have the joke for the people who really did find it funny however the scene we ended up with promotes two conflicting emotional states interchangeably so does anybody want to check out a tangent from a completely random TV show I figure it's time I bring this one in since I reference it all the time Buffy the Vampire Slayer a show for which I will definitely make a video for one day has a lot of writing techniques that are very relevant to tone so let's take a very specific scene from season four in which a comedic and dramatic conversation is taking place long term friends are arguing aggressively about how they've grown apart stalking about many personal subjects including sexuality and purpose but involve a drunken British man in the background and you can still maintain hard-hitting jokes how about you telling Riley every last detail of my life with angel besides when is there any us two you two were the two who are the two AHA may be that all changes when I'm doing situps over at Fort Dix digs I could understand how you'd see this as conflicting considering what we've just been over but it is consistent due to its context the character that is providing the comedy is drunk well before the scene even begins and his reactions being that of a sober serious mind would have been more so out of place than his drunken ones this is crazy combine that with the pacing of the jokes reoccurring after a consistent selection of serious dialogue from the other characters and it functions as a consistent buffer for the turmoil being experienced on top of that the drama of this scene comes down to a disagreement nothing too serious happens no Massacre so we can get a strong amount of slack to balance the atmosphere they are simply in a heated discussion which means there is tonal space as there often is in real life stretch that far I knew it I knew you hated her this alongside the fact that the situation is created by a comedic character having lied to each of those who are involved what makes you think she'll listen to you become very convincing on how watch her I think you're neglecting the past tense there Rupert besides she barely listened to you when you were in charge I've seen the way she treats you oh yes how's that very much like a retired librarian look I've not what she wants as long as she has what I want yeah like I go there oh you changed your mind not gonna join who'd you hear this from oh yeah girl inmates were talking some about being all you can be or all you can be having a laugh you might say you weren't playing with computers so much into the new thing what new thing the whole Wicca thing they were talking about that this means that the audience knows we're close to a resolution if only the communication were more open instead of aggressive which is tied to the theme of the season this means we are aware of an atmosphere that the characters are not what do you mean wrong well they certainly haven't been right since Tara we have to face it you can't handle Tara being my girlfriend it was bad before that since you tune off to college and forgot about me just left me in the basement - Tara's your girlfriend yeah it is a complicated balance but then again joss whedon always tries to juggle tone listen well brother I'm listening not always to his favor invaders create Avengers people create smaller people children but I suppose I am saying there are elements that can soften the blow of combining inherently conflicting hues to an audience in a scene being that you stay true to character you pace it out to not have one element overthrow the other you leave enough emotional room for it to be appropriate rather than jarring and you let the audience know that we're in a situation where a conflicting tonal element is expected the reason it conflicts here is because Poe should not be cracking wise after the reaction he just had to the death of TECA betraying his character the joke is spaced seconds away from two very morbid events events that are rarely seen in this saga and if used they are typically very slow allowing an absorption of the pain this puts the pacing off the tone never setting mood that jokes were incoming that we will be able to relax and laugh especially not while they were just trying to lift Vader's intro from episode 4 which is meant to say that this is a dark malicious creature in a haunting introduction do you remember an ill-conceived over joke on either end of this moment finally the audience holds no information that the characters don't also hold that would allow us to see it in a meta view of course this specific joke could work the construction of it is sound we have the idea that when a hero and a villain meets there's no official rule on who speaks first and thus it could realistically be confusing and comical to point out he's captured him and he's like like who so starts first you were me and I'm like yeah that's that's what I like I like that it is arguably a fourth-wall joke in relation to movie tropes but the malicious execution of many innocent villagers is difficult to reconcile after what I consider to be a decent joke so why would they choose to have this happen well it's profitable to utilize drama and comedy in your story as it can satisfy the audience's looking for either and both but certain viewers will be conflicted and it will take them out of the state of immersion and of course it wasn't originally in the script which is a bit telling so to be blunt it is hard to balance the tone of drama and comedy when facing that many corpses I'm not saying you can't find it funny I'm saying it is contradictive in construction and if it was to support the idea of the film being dark throughout maybe it would work as a surprise shift in tone kind of like what I was talking about in the potential torture scene but that is far from the case here the film is very much light hearted for the most part I suppose the lesson is that you shouldn't simply have comedy because you found the joke funny it's more complicated than that you know it is I don't know what it is with this script but I've just found so many places I can drop Game of Thrones references it's almost like it just feels right and I've placed them there whether or not they belong there and maybe in the editing phase I held on to them even though that wasn't necessarily the wise choice we kind of start the movie here with a with a joke and this was I held on to this anyway as I said a positive of this exchange in the force awakens is that the audience will likely be endeared to Poe as he shows no fear in the face of a man who has committed a violent murder just moments ago he really does come across as quite the hero which is part of the shame that he is only in this film for about 5 percent of it but we'll get to that the will building that brought this scene to us has been discussed in part one but now that we have seen the repercussions of that will building it is safe to now levy an additional criticism the many blatant disregard for safety and security in the approach of collecting this map has now cost all of the people who lived in this village their lives these are people who even tried to fight the first order and there is no recognition of their sacrifice nor is their responsibility taken by layer for her nonsensical decisions in relation to acquiring the map that led to this loss of life this confirmation of brutal violence and the presence of the first order up to this point shows us that the Republic and the resistance have forgotten the entire history of up to just 50 years ago this has happened before and it has been beaten before and yet it's treated in such a way that you would never have expected there even was a history in this universe which is probably an idea that JJ and Ryan find very convenient but that doesn't make it true anyway this scene also gave us the introduction to Captain phasma a visually impressive member of the stormtrooper hierarchy she is below kylo in rank yet she retains a significant level of power she is played by Gwendoline Christie who made a name for herself on Game of Thrones and it is a crying that we've already gotten through 25% of his screen time in the force awakens I wish I was completely joking with that one as much as it is a common complaint that phasma lacks character motivation and she is generally confusing in terms of her purpose in the story people will still find themselves asking why does she exist at all she is part of the first order and a member of the dark side she is a bobba fett style character which means that she is not at the forefront of the action but she certainly makes an impact a defense for Captain phasma is to apply the same criticism to other relatively well known and selectively popular characters from the other trilogies but how about we be very clear for a moment Darth Maul killed qui-gon jinn Boba Fett captured Han Solo and took him to Jabba Grievous's death ended the separatist war and it meant Palpatine had to relinquish his emergency power Captain phasma died unfortunately she is a fourth wheel in the hierarchy of the first order leadership when three villains are already too many for the modern trilogy to develop she is used to open a shield which could have been done by any stormtrooper or even by Finn if the rioting allowed it then she is put in a character fridge until she comes on-screen to die with careful editing you could erase her scenes from the story and it wouldn't change you cannot do that for these three characters this is why despite having similar developments they are remembered and have a purpose we are left to assume that phasma is a figurine come to life designed solely for marketing under the guise of adding a developed female character to the Star Wars universe though rather than focusing on what she lacks I think it's prudent to highlight the fact that she doesn't have time to possess a trait let alone lack one it is a testament to her design that people remember it long enough to be insulted by her lack of development in this and the subsequent film and she's on screen for less than four minutes across both of them it is undeniably frustrating and it's not only a writing issue but an issue of general incompetency on the part of whoever decided to shoehorn her into this film but much like the film's tend to do we can shelve her for now and move on with the scene as kylo leaves he feels something that makes him glance at Finn but he doesn't act upon it kylo Ren stops and looks directly at him because he is forced sensitivity that is the reason that is the reaction that the writers wanted but fin is ultimately a red herring to convince the audience that he will be the force sensitive character in the film and kylo sensed that but with what we know this must just be a coincidence kylo looked at Finn because of his odd behavior I suppose before the scene closes out we see the stormtroopers destroy Poe's x-wing without bothering to search it for the map just a quick reminder the first order have no idea where this map is but they want the map more than anything right now and it was very likely in Poe's escape vehicle from what the characters know but instead of remaining consistent with the narrative we need to compound that sense of dread as the first order destroy everything in the area including such recognizable pieces of Star Wars iconography I mean who knows what's on the hard drive of that ship any reasonable organization would likely prefer to process the ships strip and study it etc but no analysis of the narrative can often lay the intentions behind a scene rather bare and this opening scene is bone-dry at this point it has nothing to do with consistent characters it has everything to do with making the audience feel very specific emotions also I think it's important to mention that we have already received all the information about the origin of this map from the film that we're going to get this thing will reconnect us with the hero of the last trilogy in the series after his mysterious disappearance and it's written off as an authoress Google Maps input on top of that TECA will not be mentioned again we don't find layer mourning him despite knowing her for decades nor is it brought up as a specific execution from kylo he and Poe have yet to share a scene about it since it's nothing for him to reconcile nothing for another character to judge him for and nothing he in turn regrets it doesn't hold any weight beyond the moment it happened in which as we've been through only existed to copy a much stronger piece of source material which should compound the fact that this scene is about eliciting emotion not about staying consistent to storytelling lor San Tekka is a plot device he doesn't have a character beyond a few teasing lines and yet he provides the important piece of the map that pushes both factions through the film and his death gets poe captured so can we apply a quick fix to that well the fact is if you're going to invent a character from the Galactic Civil War that is known layer for as long as the battles took place why not pick someone that already exists like I don't know how about wedge why couldn't he be the guy with this info and this is a secret area he was retired in he could have found this information due to the connections he had obviously made we could have had Kyla kill him in order to send a message to Leia it could allow the scene if you cut the joke to contain so much more relevance because nobody knows who TECA is nor do we ever find out I feel like there really wasn't much of a discussion in terms of ideas when creating this script another thought would be that Akbar could fill this role though I suppose I shouldn't suggest him as they have great plans for his character a much more dignified death all our leadership moving on if you didn't already know deleted scenes are a thing some of them make us wonder what in the world the editorial director was thinking and some allow us to understand why they were cut but they can also tell us something about the story that was told and what changed during production take this scene I need you to go see the Senate right away tell them I insist the Republic take action against the first order both of a publicly listen not all the senator is that good I would say or maybe did you I don't care this scene accomplishes many things first of all we have the recognition that the Republic are not involved when they should be which means there are bureaucratic problems no details or depth but a line at least secondly there's the idea of looking at the members of the Republic as less than sane acting as a supplementary explanation of the will building and their lack of involvement finally it establishes that Leia is in this fight and concerned about Poe while showing she still has some of that plucky attitude we don't see in the rest of the films and look the character that is told to contact the Republic by Leia is there when the Republic planets are destroyed this adds more two layers killcount but at the very least it gives us a paper-thin character to recognize in the horrific obliteration not only might that allow an audience to care a little bit more but at least they would understand what's happening many people including myself didn't realize which planets these actually were when first watching the scene and so to clarify this is 15 seconds of film that strengthens the world the story and the characters and it was cut so that Leia could have her entrance delayed she was brought in at a time that would deliver more of an emotional punch instead of matching the narrative we originally met Leia earlier we showed an early cut of the film to Michael Arndt when he saw it one of his first notes was you should lose the scene where you meet Leia earlier because it's a far more powerful thing to meet her again through Han Solo's eyes at this point in the movie when you need a breath of fresh air this is the recipe for damaging your own script to focus on the emotional payoffs with absolutely no concern for how it works narrative Lee though sometimes it makes a little more sense to lose certain scenes when it comes to editing check out this deleted scene that's right next to it Djokovic is we ever got a chance you're compounding how important Luke is for both factions which is interesting considering how he left lair in Kyllo everyone knows he left in disgrace to live out the rest of his days on an island so why do you think that he's gonna help and how do you think he can help should we contact the Republic you have to be smarter than that I'm bb-8 immediately our future may depend on what in the world does she mean that they need to be smarter than to contact their allies who possess the most power in the universe at this moment are you trying to say the first order have people who have gotten into the system because that would be a little confusing considering the first order destroy the five planets of the Republic I imagine this scene was cut because the audience would be led to understand that the Republic is almost evil but then they play sad music as they're destroyed so many people would just be confused at that point you see this scene especially I can understand being cut instead of providing tidbits about the will building they'll just hope people don't really care though ultimately I kind of wish they would delete more scenes considering so many terrible ones just slip right through not fighting what we hate seven what we love watch anymore and as we progress there will be a few more interesting things to discover from the deleted scenes but for now let's push this plot along PO is delivered to kylo stardestroyer and there is this brief moment in which PO is blatantly surprised by the ship we don't see what he is seeing so I assume it's a message to the audience that the first order is a complete shock to the resistance in terms of resources presence and power that brings up the same will building issues we've been over so there's no need to cover it more so now but it is just so utterly rushed coming back to Finn we see he is having a panic attack and before he can fully recover Captain phasma gives him a bit of a jump scare well having seen this whole breakdown and despite the fascistic nature of the first order this is still not enough for him to be restrained and delivered to reconditioning instead phasma asks that he has his blasters submitted for inspection as if that were his explanation for his performance out in the field I find this very hard to believe the fact that Finn is a faulty trooper is bad enough since you'd think they'd be detection for that but he breaches in front of his fellow troopers this is a little more than a gun jam don't you think I don't know seems pretty convenient for him to only be asked to get a gun inspection that leads to a request for reconditioning this would be some of the first indications that the first order are selectively incompetent I mean they're not entirely incompetent they got this far either way it is time to meet the project for this trilogy the character it revolves around as opposed to Luke Skywalker Rey when we first meet Rey she is tearing down smaller parts of a derelict and half buried Star Destroyer showing a skill and experience for spelunking once she has collected several pieces of scrap she ferries them back to a local village the idea of learning about a new character on a desert planet performing their boring day-to-day activities is actually fantastic to me I get to watch this person live their life I get to understand them on an intimate level but this is way too similar to Luke why make it a different planet only to have the exact same aesthetic why make it about the desire to leave one day due to the boring repetitive life references are fine great even limoges are also incredibly awesome when done right but a one-for-one take is just confusing for many certain audience members are going to start wondering what the motive is we then see Rey viciously scrubbing at the scrap she pulled it I imagine this increases its value or she does this as a job since she annoys some random alien thing by stopping for a moment but the point of the scene is to show race seeing her own future staring in an old woman who has perhaps done this her whole life which is daunting this message has achieved alongside Society on this planet being given more context daily conflict is shown alongside the detailed sets and life forms all in seconds of providing strong pieces of character this film is certainly capable of juggling many forms of storytelling at once it can do it very effectively in select moments soon after Ray has provided a quarter portion of food for the scrapped and judging from her reaction this is a lot less than expected putting her in not only a boring day but a day in which she is down on her luck she then makes her way home we are shown here marking the wall to indicate days she is probably spent here which would mean she has been at this routine for a very long time she then prepares her quarter portion and steps out into the end of her hollowed 8080 home while pining over a ship leaving orbit only to put on a helmet from a long time ago to avoid the boredom as well she can all of these moments are brilliant they get the job done we are shown so much in such a small amount of time ray is a human being she's making the best of her own life in a world that is scarred from war this is absolutely what many of us want to see not a single line of dialogue is required and we can already assume a large amount about her while leaving a lot of interesting questions in the air why isn't she left this planet is it money technology freedom or something else where does she want to go does she have any loved ones funnily enough the character that comes to my mind the quickest very comparison considering the elements here isn't actually Luke it's wall-e a lonely creature with a tedious day that's more so attempting to prevent insanity from taking over as opposed to reaching a specific goal until we get further into the story we don't know what is keeping these characters in these situations beyond the basics for survival at first we can only speculate on what this sense of enjoyment or meaning is and it can be fascinating to watch them both get interrupted in their daily routine by a new character and choose to help them at the expense of themselves one of these films has extremely consistent conclusions for all of the set ups and mystery for its characters while the other one is force awakens but at the outset wall-e and Rey have a lot in common for we are enticed to see them function and why we want to see them succeed you can even compare their acting abilities the robot is better Wyatt simple visual storytelling is becoming a lost art in modern expensive films and so seeing it even briefly always warms my cold dead heart anyway ray here's a distressed droid and pursues the sound to eventually rescue a panicked bb-8 from his captor I will refer to bb-8 as male for this assessment as the creative supervisor said so and then the puppeteers and everybody that worked to make him come to life or make it come to life you know like if it agender but Neal Scanlan gave it agenda so I am so sorry about that Ray says that the scavenger has no respect for anyone meaning that whether or not by accident rageous referred to the droid as if it were a person this sheds light on the humanity that so many droids seem to possess in the Star Wars universe or at the very least it shows that many characters perceive humanity within the droids and respect it while others don't and seem to care about them as much as one cares for a wrench there doesn't seem to be a consensus on their intelligence which can honestly be quite interesting well if droids could think there'd be none of us here would though if you ask me some characters respect them a little too much anyway what we're seeing here is the depiction of altruism by Ray she doesn't wish to gain anything from this interaction and yet she fends off a scavenger and a dove something that isn't even considered a person by many in this universe after rescuing bb-8 Raven helps fix his antenna and we are given a look from bb-8 just a slow stare as if the droid can't believe she is being so kind and he is deciding whether she is worth staying with I'm going to wait till later to go into it but the effort to communicate to the audience what the droid is feeling when they are limited to a stat of heads sliding around a ball is very much something to appreciate of course the bleeps bloops and sighs help as well the editors created some very human and understandable sounds out of the droid who didn't make it bb8 then insists on staying with ray and she's extremely frustrated by the idea probably because she doesn't want to look after both herself and the Droid or maybe she's a bit of a recluse looking back to when I first saw the film I thought this was going to be the beginning of rage showing disdain towards having any kind of relationship with anybody that she was going to be a difficult and closed-off character that needed help in that regard but the fact that she would help people showed that she had a heart of gold obviously that is not what we get either way she ends up accepting bb-8 with the caveat that he must leave in the morning like I'm not even kidding this scene is basically Shrek 1 for one what can I say what you know we then cut back to the Star Destroyer just above jakku poe is proving to be resistant to conventional torture and this supports the strong character trait we were given to understand about him he's the best there is but kylo uses the force torture we've previously discussed to get the information out of him with ease this signals to the audience that the strength of Poe despite being formidable is nothing to kylo it's quite a creative way to display Kyler's power and maintain the era of intimidation this man is experienced the information he discovers is that the map is in a droid a BB unit as he tells general Hux just that meaning there will now be a search party for bb-8 kind of like in another movie gee imagine if you tortured poe back at this point I know I know I'm still a bit salty about that though the other issue that I raised here is the idea of keeping Poe alive and the idea of doing nothing else let me explain kylo knows that the information is simply true as he can pluck it out of Poe's mind so killing Poe is expected now since he is sapped of information while also being the greatest pilot in the resistance as kylo said this isn't so much a huge problem as it can be solved by any first-order member saying we can't kill him he may have more information though isn't it so much more fun when stories subvert that cliche do you expect me to talk Mr Bond I expect you to die but if you think about that line of dialogue I just suggested where someone says hey we may need more information that kind of raises a question doesn't it why not get some extra information out of PO like I don't know the location of the resistance base it is made very clear that they desperately want that kind of information and once they obtain it through other means it creates the ticking clock for the third act when they could have found it here and now in fact why not torture the current state of the resistance out of PO why not find out what they know where they plan to attack what their goals are what their resources are he is a well of knowledge to your greatest adversaries being that he is such a high rank and you were just leaving him there in fairness Kyllo is a very busy man for the next few scenes if you guys remember he has to give this console right here a very good standing next to though to be a bit more serious they actually had Kyllo share that he knew pose position in the resistance to impress the audience when he was torturing the greatest heroic pilots so easily it really can make a character more intimidating but it once again comes at the expense of the narratives consistency so let's move on we're back with ray and she says bb-8 shouldn't lose hope about seeing him again from that we can assume bb-8 is told ray about waiting for Poe I know all about waiting for my family they'll be back one day the issue for people reading ahead here is that this now becomes the last piece of character we actually get from Rey as an introduction the rest of the film is about developing what we already have which we'll get to but for now this is a problem because what we've had so far is very descriptive of her but it isn't finished she's a hard-working survivalist who yearns for the stars but can't leave until she meets her parents since they may return to this planet expecting her to be there this means that in relation to the narrative the audience is led to wait for two payoffs that would be very emotionally driven and would likely come down to some kind of choice those being Rey reconciling with her parents and Rey leaving the planet she exits the planet in about five minutes from now it isn't treated with any gravity beyond her sharing that she would like to return soon which has dropped as we progress so her parents are the only remaining point to work with the confer the her character since the only choice she makes otherwise is not to die in the end of the film pursuing the goals of the resistance is played out like it's a coincidence she never chooses that it just happens to take place because it's the right thing to do I guess her parents have to be the payoff for her character because no other detail is placed into a developmental stage as we have previously covered there is no floor for her to overcome and no floor she ends up developing even Luke's immaturity is not present in rage she is very much a level-headed critical thinker she would actually be slightly better off for this story if she was a completely blank slate because we could soak up everything about her from her interactions but now we're expecting a progression that links in with their parents and we do that because it's what we've been provided in these scenes as we progress we will cover the interesting topsy-turvy nature of Rey's parents and what the narrative continues to tell us about them but instead of trying to fix the problem I just highlighted certain creators got an idea on how to subvert our expectations and bring the topic right back only to bury it again completely wasting her time and her story this decision went ahead without realizing that if you fail to add anything to develop about Rey and then you make the only remaining something about ray a nothing then you have nothing it takes two full movies but even after implying we won't be getting answers we get a definitive one and it's essentially the equivalent of the movie insulting us for caring nobody for dad you know Papa's grave in the Chaco desert you have no place in my story they are nobodies completing the arc and leaving the audience with subversion unless of course kylo lied but I suppose JJ will have the final decision on that one [Music] when I was about 8 years old I first saw the original Star Wars trilogy and I thought it was fine I guess what I really liked about age was the prequel trilogy it wasn't until I was a teenager that I really started to fall in love with the originals since then my favorite Star Wars movie has been Return of the Jedi I know it's not the most popular choice but I guess I'm just a sucker for a big emotional climax in my opinion the ending of that movie is just the perfect combination of everything had been building up over the entire trilogy then once 2015 rolled around the force awakens is possibly the most excited I've ever been to go to a cinema I had incredibly high hopes and it didn't disappoint me I left that cinema 100% feeling like the magic I'd grown up with had been recaptured but after watching the movie a couple of times and really letting it settle in my mind I couldn't escape the feeling that it was just sort of uh adventurous I really felt like something was missing from it and eventually I decided the thing that was missing was changed the state of the galaxy was so different between the prequels and the original trilogy than the original trilogy ended with the galaxy being changed drastically again so then why is the sequel trilogy set in a world that's almost exactly like the one from the originals to meet the world-building of it all just sort of felt underdeveloped and dull I loved the movie but I couldn't escape the feeling that of all the possible Star Wars sequels we could have gotten it was the safest and that's not necessarily a bad thing but it's definitely not a good thing I went through the same process with the last Jedi as well I loved it on first viewing and then on subsequent viewings things I didn't like about the movie stood out to be more and more I don't hate the film and I really am glad that they didn't just do everything that people would have expected them to do but do you kind of feel that if the sequel trilogy was going to be bold and daring and make all kind of controversial decisions the the time to do that would have been in the first film of the trilogy when all is said and done I can appreciate the last Jedi for what it is I just really wish they'd done something better with it and with the state of play by the end of it I'm really curious as to what they're gonna do with episode night and I still do hold a lot of hope for it when it comes to Disney Star Wars movie so I personally really prefer the non-sequential ones I absolutely love rogue one and enjoyed solo I guess you could say I think it's good but I get why some people don't really excited to see what Disney will deal with future non-sequential Star Wars films although I do hope they stop focusing so hard on the original trilogy with them personally I'm hoping for a window mall or Palpatine movie I can only hope I guess but any well-put-together movie and the Star Wars franchise will probably make me happy it's a world I'm really invested in and it's getting a lot of attention these days I just hope that with future releases we can do our best to avoid the seemingly inevitable internet flame wars you know sometimes I just feel like people need reminding that a movie even a terrible movie is just a terrible movie nothing more and nothing less we then move on to Ray taking her new set of scavenged items to unkar plutt he offers very very low trade for them once again only this time he spots bb-8 and offers very hefty sum for the potential sale of the droid ray initially agrees but looks back at bb-8 and decides against it this is an important moment for her she was weighing up the difference between 60 portions of food and the Droid one representing a strong amount of resources to keep on scavenging and cleaning each day to again earn more food and continue this cycle while the other is something new something that has interrupted her schedule and that alone is something to cherish in this environment in addition to that I think rey understood that she was facing a choice that could abandon the droid despite its desire to stay with her and that is the very same fate that defines her life I imagine she doesn't want to inflict that on anyone so she'll stay with the droid for as long as it wants to stay with her instead of giving it up this expression of guilt was enough for me to believe it anyway well done for the writing details and well done Daisy for expressing the emotions required you're not all bad not all great either stop it so adding this to what we know already there is an issue to be discussed Rey seems to have zero negative character traits if we understand what she wants it gives us something to watch her work towards but if we have nothing for that element of her humanity that does she at least have a flaw in your character that could be worked on and explored with what we've just discussed Rey could be a recluse her history could inform that she's willing to trust droids alone and she tends to not only dislike people but refuses to believe she can have a strong relationship with anybody the arc could be about realizing that she has projected what she believes about her parents onto everyone she ever meets she now expects people to abandon her to betray her peer relationships with han and finn could help her overcome that however what we have is a character that is making morally righteous decisions putting genuine hard work into survival respecting others that wish to live their lives protecting these innocents even if it's out of her way and we haven't seen her for five minutes yet as a result of this the audience will be left to focus entirely on her parents for development it's all we have for a character driven goal Rae isn't trying to make money she isn't trying to bring down the Empire and save the princess she isn't trying to Tector people and free the galaxy and she isn't trying to redeem herself she's got nothing but this issue with her parents for comparison's sake let's bring in guardians of the galaxy the main character Peter quill is given several references to his parentage in both films the mystery surrounding his father is introduced but still kept in the background we know that he was abducted from Earth and that he has attributes that make him special compared to a regular earth born human man this gives us reason to think his father will be non-human the first film is focused on the destruction of a villain while building a team the guardians the sequel however takes the pursuit and mystery of quills father and explores it thoroughly giving the viewer explanations on his father's history and perspective about quills character through the events that his father brings to the film it pays off in more ways than one while serving to provide a lesson on how we define who our parents are and from there how we define ourselves Peter quill has made much more of a focused character as a result of these interactions throughout both films and he gains more perspective about his own life he is still flawed at the core but at the end of the two film journey he and the audience understand him he has grown by not only figuring out what he is not but also through what he values above all which will inform decisions he makes later so let's snap back to the force awakens we get a buildup akin to what we saw in guardians of the galaxy plenty of references and abilities that would benefit from an explanation in relation to lineage only they throw a wet blanket on the subject in this film and then they close the lid in the sequel they later declare that all those pieces are build up designed to have the audience ask questions were simply presented to reveal that you didn't need to ask questions about it at all more time is spent on ridiculous vistas and self-contained plot lines than exploring our protagonists because no effort was placed in her character otherwise Rey is gonna become a Jedi maybe gray turns to the dark side maybe there wasn't much else to speculate beyond those two options and who Ray's parents are because one comes from virtue of this IP being Star Wars and the other one is all we had to work with many attributed the disappointment from the audience that the payoff in the last Jedi to be a result of false expectations but this and many other scenes in the force awakens serve to tell the audience to expect something substantive for this topic as it will recontextualize what we are seeing now where do you come from classified really me too big secret hopefully once we discover the remaining information her story will be complete from the beginning of the trilogy to the end of it instead it currently sits where it has done since the beginning to prove this you can watch any of Star Wars Episode seven eight or nine first and you will have missed nothing about Rey's journey yes you miss how she met certain people and how she was found originally but you would have nothing missing in terms of understanding her character because she hasn't changed as of the first two films try watching Return of the Jedi first and then a new hope as funnily enough many people did Luke is a starkly different person I wonder if anybody would see even a slight difference in Rey by watching Episode eight first and then seven what about watching Episode nine first and then seven I guess it will be determined by how much JJ plans to repair his trilogy if you had investment in Rey like many did in Peter quill then you would likely have many reasonable questions such as these how was she going to feel when she finally found her parents would they catch up on lost time how would she reconcile the fact that they abandoned her would there be something about them that she would eventually find inexcusable would he willed view change based on theirs was there a much more nefarious reason for them abandoning here perhaps they were protecting here these issues are explored for Peter after leaving breadcrumbs for the audience they are what you would expect to get explored for Rey not all of them perhaps some different ones but any of them adds so much more information about her for the audience the director is telling us to pay attention to these developmental moments as if to say that they will inform significant events to come when this is the only moment that I can cite that Rey makes what you could call a decision running in the woods does not count as a choice but we're gonna get to that so once Rey meets her parents and the new information is added to the kind of experience that could completely change how she identifies herself she can then make decisions that push the plot while staying loyal to who she is becoming instead I fear that she will receive the most significant character changes off screen between episodes 8 and 9 to try and make up for these mistakes it's not like putting the significant character changes between episodes has happened before right but raise the daughter of no one she isn't even going to meet people that could force a moment of redefinition practically leaving her afloat in the developmental cycle of her character no not like that this movie takes steps to build something up it is then reignited by the sequel only to then kill that very momentum for the sake of a gotcha and on top of that completely wasting the time they had for Rey for the person this story is centered around and there is this bizarre atmosphere of blaming the audience for being invested in it and then criticism of any kind is lumped into the idea of the toxic fanbase as a whole this label applies to both the people who harass actors obsessively and those who simply criticize the writing you can see this again with star wars resistance many have criticized it for its tone and animation quality and the response to it from the other end of the aisle is that this is a result of the toxic Star Wars fandom but this isn't even solely about Star Wars another example is movie Bob's hilariously out of touch take on why the mobile Diablo game was facing scrutiny when your investment in anything be it a Diablo game or a Diablo sandwich is less about you being fulfilled and it is about the people you think you hate being deprived that's not healthy unfortunately with Star Wars resistance people are once again rolling out the argument that critical thinking about media is inappropriate for something that is meant for children let me make this abundantly clear in case anybody decided to skip part 1 content designed for children does not equate to content with lower quality standards it's sad that you would set the bar so low for what is essentially the future the very best of children's content will very often be wonderful for adults too because the story will be well constructed it will simply avoid adult elements criticizing the execution of a child's product does not make you toxic or unreasonable but let's get back to my main point you only have a limited amount of screen time to create and develop characters when creating a film so stop wasting both your own time and the audience's with information that is not going to be relevant later instead focus on the elements of the character that do explain their choices and behavior in both the force awakens in the last Jedi they had the freedom to explore Rey in any way they wished and we still have practically nothing the third film is their last chance to provide substance to her and JJ has plenty of room to wreak on both Ryan's work and his own though I think the guardians of the galaxy comparison is particularly poignant considering many people are arguing that either her parents were going to be nobody or somebody that was established in the universe when Peter didn't need to have a dad that was already a character in the MCU to act as a twist unlike Rey we weren't all speculating that Peters father was Thanos ronan or this guy and if anyone was the motive was not to fix his character because again unlike Rey Peter was already a fully fledged character a father wasn't the only way for Peter to progress but he acted as an answer to questions Peter held a chance to grow and change a lesson about what he really values this is the opportunity they lost for Rey in favor of creating a hollow surprise Rey was already dealing with the result that her parents were nothing nobody so like I said now we have nothing and that is but a taste of the terror that is involved in discussing her writing there is far more to come Rey then leaves the area and unkar plutt calls in support to go after ray and her droid meaning he is likely aligned with the first order or they have issued some form of a ransom on bb-8 which makes you question even more how the first order took so long to turn up we then cut to Finn breaking Poe out of prison he does this by telling the standing guard that kylo Ren wants the prisoner and that's it he frees him luckily the guard doesn't need to confirm this with a superior officer despite simple established methods of communication via helmets nor does this guy have any idea that this particular trooper fn-2187 is currently defective you might even think that would be procedure in this kind of fistic environment to possibly create a pariah out of someone who is no longer following the standards of the army but oh well it's not like this is the most important prisoner they have moving on Finn and Poe begin figuring out what happens next aside from Finn's character contradictions which we are certainly going to get to the chemistry is strong between these two in the few minutes we have them you need a pilot I need a pilot we're gonna do this yeah they have to deal with insane levels of pressure in their own ways po being the hero we already know is confident and proactive Finn being the defector on the run is panicking sweating and suffering strong anxiety so they act as two sides of a coin we then get quick lines back and forth representing these perspectives they get along with each other very quickly and on top of that the writing generates an argument between them based on their goals as characters not only accurate to them but reflective from a meta point of view when po shares that his goal is to find a map to Luke Skywalker Finn reacts as though he is one of the most cynical members of the audience despite being short there is some wonderfully consistent writing in this scene to support what we have already seen and heard the writing issues however are plentiful as well so let's start with Finn and Poe's relationship it is gone for the rest of this film and the subsequent film which is such a bizarre choice to have two characters brought together sharing this level of chemistry immediately with the potential for a long and trusting relationship only to tear it apart before they could develop a connection worth severing for an emotional payoff listen to this line they make the effort of seeing the names very clearly this sounds like the kind of line exchange that will be referenced as the moment Finn and Poe first met each other and their relationship was the core of some great adventures and growth only it's not it's just a neat bit of dialogue that reinforces the idea that finn kept the name that poe gave him but nothing more in fact this chemistry is gone once they find each other again as finn has a new companion i need your help from there he gains yet another new companion it is a shame because this combo has a lot of potential plenty for them both to learn and faces 80 more as foils not to say that it is absolutely the thing they should have done there are plenty of ways to write an alternative story to the one we got so at best let's just talk about what we did actually get which is a tad strange finn somehow takes poe from the holding area and shuffles him to a TIE fighter only to get caught by what we can assume is a fuel line or a safety cord the former being interesting since no fuel line should be that much stronger than the spacecraft in movement and I don't think we've ever seen a safety cord on these ships before perhaps the first order has new safety restrictions but again we're not writing for the script so why wouldn't Finn or Poe know about this I imagine it would be an established part of the first order and it's vehicle safety or maintenance so shouldn't this absolutely be something both of them would pick up on considering both of their occupations if this thing is something neither of them happen to know about and it's just a special circumstance for this particular fighter then I suppose that's just mighty unlucky for them both while also being information that the audience is unaware of but why bother especially when you could have just had people recognized who finish shuffling along and then they could quickly get into the fighter with people shooting at them the scene is exactly the same without bringing in this bizarre new cord you even show the registration of an unsanctioned liftoff that's enough right there to create the same drama this is quite interesting to consider when really thinking about the attitude of who wrote this script there is now not only evidence of countering information that came before for a new goal but ignoring information that has been established by themselves and creating more information to facilitate a goal that was possible anyway it's not just lazy its incompetent and it can leave the audience with the sad conclusion that this chord was brought in because the writers couldn't think of how to get our heroes in trouble and so poofed the thing into existence we were drama 'less for a moment and now we have generated some for free without using what we already knew another alternative would be that they got to the planet only to alert the first-order later through inventory or Security checks and have a few people sent after them it would make enough sense and it would provide a headstart but it wouldn't be as action-packed look at that destruction to take another angle however Finn and Poe realize that people are noticing the fact that they can't escape and so they have to take care of them firstly it's lucky that despite the many shots this ship sustains it does not get grounded like Poe's ship did I guess they just all missed the important sections of it then Tie Fighters are much more solid in terms of engineering on the back end regardless this leads to Finn murdering several of the first order stormtroopers many of them spill into the room and Finn deals with them immediately now we've been given some strong character traits from Finn he is a timid trooper he finds the site of death and pain enough to completely lose his composure and he shows compassion for his fellow troopers as they have been abused into this position just like he has which makes this scene confusing I believe we're supposed to assume that Finn is engulfed by the pure sense of righteousness in that he wants to protect Poe and escape at all costs thus he can murder people without a second thought after all they are just storm troopers but that doesn't play out smoothly with the build up we've received not only for the reasons of Finn's based character inconsistencies that seriously we're going to get to but for the fact that through Finn we have just established that these troopers are no less human than he is later we will receive confirmation that all troopers were taken from families they will never know I call him I was taken from a family I'll never know and raised to do one thing these guys are human and the film really wants to push that message which immediately tells you oh they're all humans in there these aren't robots because I remember as a kid thinking they were robots and to have body language and a stormtrooper behaving in a way that showed you there was something else going on on top of this the profile of Finn in a scene coming up shows what looks like a two to four year old boy so it is a bizarre choice that the film is playing in off as though Finn is doing something strictly heroic here or at the very least positive when the entire reason he was able to perform these positive actions was the sense of righteousness that is potentially within all of these troopers I have no idea what message they want to provide about morality or justice here nor do I understand what they are saying about Finn's character in fact I think they just wanted to once again have their cake and eat it too they are maintaining the fodder for battle evil drone like forces being wiped out with ease that benefits the sense of events moving forward in an action movie while at the same time telling us that stormtroopers are all potentially good natured humans enslaved to the first order and Finn was just lucky enough to break through it you have to pick one movie this is very reminiscent of the ludonarrative dissonance yeah I didn't know that was the word for it either that's present within Tomb Raider the video game from 2013 during a cutscene Lara deals with being attacked and ultimately forced to kill a person showing utter disbelief at what she had to become to survive this horrifying situation only then begin killing enemies on mass rather casually as you play through the game because that is standard gameplay from video games in general something so normal as the destruction of enemies as you progress now acts as a counter to the new narrative you wanted to build and the writers of both properties would simply prefer that we don't think about it it is the same contradiction but obviously a far different context and I understand that it is hard to catch it in the writing process when you were simply trying to create something bombastic but that is what separates the good from the bad if it's going to take time to fix then take the time moving on oddly Poe is able to break free from the safety line by doing nothing more than going forward and you might wonder as an audience member what was the point of them being caught by this chord we've never seen just to break it and leave the hangar without being damaged anyway as we established they could have been detected in any other way which would allow for the coming battle with the turret regardless but the fact that they were caught allowed them to engage in a shooting spree for Finn which means they must really have wanted this moment which is fine by the way who doesn't love seeing their characters take initiative and control the situation it's just so fundamentally contradictive to Finn as a character as well as what the film is trying to tell us about storm troopers I understand that the scene is small but it still calls into question just how much they cared same thing with Ryan he's in charge of the ship but he runs it with such a so a PO then takes himself and Finn out of the hangar with the TIE fighter and makes his way to the turbolasers on the underside of the Star Destroyer he says they have to destroy them before the reverse happens these are extremely dangerous turrets we've seen it time and time again you have to focus on evasion or you'll be shot down it is not impossible for them to hit fighters they are designed to hit both static and moving targets so when you have characters saying ridiculous things like he's too small and too close as a reason for every turret being absolutely useless across a plane of a dreadnought it can be distractingly stupid as a writing tool the idea that they have allowed their own turbolasers to lack the ability to destroy fast fighters on a capital ship for space warfare when a century of development or more has taken place from a time in which they could and they create new and upgraded ships regularly writing should never be that weak in aid of a spectacle precisely because it can draw the or right out of the spectacle though this is a selection of thoughts for another film The Force awakens does fine here Poe instructs Finn to shoot the turrets he does and they make a strong get away from the destroyer meanwhile Huck's orders his men to charge the ventral cannons in order to take down the fighter these are essentially homing missiles so you see this makes sense as a reactionary move they've just been alerted to the unsanctioned release of a fighter carrying an extremely important prisoner of war and so Huck's as a calm yet quick call has ordered for the most suitable countermeasure this is the second time he's been shown as a competent commander this perspective will be reaffirmed by the film and we will cover it as we go kylo then has a thought about who helped Poe escape the one from the village fn-2187 this does raise the question of why in the world did kylo do nothing when he felt what he felt about Finn the reason this moment is here is that they are setting up again that Finn will be the force sensitive character and someone as powerful as kylo can recognize something about him but it doesn't gel well because they want kylo to have noticed him for that reason to have jumped immediately to him being the defector here but to not have acted on it in the first place I suppose we're supposed to chalk it up to the fact that simply decided not to anyway the ventral cannons are fired and the fighter takes a hit downing it on the planet Finn was able to shoot the first missile before it hit them he didn't destroy the second one because he was in the middle of an argument with Poe but what they will both do next in terms of survival which is a very strong reason for someone like him to be distracted it's not arbitrary and you even get the proximity alert getting faster and faster in the background being missed by them both I think the film wanted to be very dramatic while forgetting that a human being would likely not survive that but then again as long as he was a force user he would have survived it just fine we then see Captain phasma for a second time in one of her final scenes she says that Finn was evaluated and sent to reconditioning as I said previously it boggles my mind that the first order of this incompetent when it comes to controlling potential defections not only do they have no supervision for first-time battles for janitors but when they are actually spotted as being out of phase with their conditioning there politely asked to go back to conditioning this little oversight among many allows the film to take place so please don't question it Huck's then immediately surmises that they were already heading back to jakku and that despite the crash landing it is likely that they will look for the Droid which is quick and on point once again in response he dispatches a squad firstly the squad is pitiful you are sending a group to retrieve something that could be anywhere on a planet by the time you reach it for some reason it takes you that long to get there and this thing that you are trying to get is apparently going to secure your stranglehold on the galaxy and so what does this group amount to two stormtroopers and two fighters what I know and I'm not kidding by the way by my count which might be wrong of course there are two of each personally I would recommend sending a few squads or better yet swarm the planet with inspections otherwise our heroes may be able to escape rather easily assuming they have access to a ship but that complaint would be in a world in which the first order did not have an exact location of not only the crash site signaled by their tracking technology and this wreckage but that they also have a trail of stormtrooper to follow directly to the settlement considering them that you have the location why not send oh I don't know a battalion like you did at the beginning instead of two guys the writers clearly want the battle that is on the way to be the one that our heroes can realistically overcome but it can [ __ ] the respect one would have for the first order not to mention that the first order do not control the space around the planet they only have the one Star Destroyer that will be mysteriously absent from the coming scene so why not bring in another few Star Destroyers that we thankfully now know you do indeed have in your arsenal so that you can secure this planet this would mean that no one can escape the planet without detection while you search for the droids and even if they do you can use the old hyperspace tracker to keep an eye on anything that blasts out immediately since the last Jedi established that every Star Destroyer is equipped with this I don't know if you guys have picked it up yet but the last Jedi has dealt quite a bit of damage to the stakes of the force awakens retro actively as well as the saga as a whole finally why is it that the first order didn't simply allow poe to escape track the TIE fighter and then send in a squad if he found the Droid because then you'd be able to take it from him this is very similar to the planning in the original film they'd attract his victims rather than outright killing them so he could find the location of the rebel base here though there's no such grace or planning in the slightest the film would end if any of the contradictions I've raised her to be operating as expected but that's why they are issues I am currently describing things that are breaking the flow they are attempting to get the audience invested in for clarification these issues are not nitpicks I'm afraid they are not the same as where the lights should be working anything else well yes the what took them so long Huk sends fighters from the moment they have the location of the crash site predicted they were headed back to jakku the fighters projected a crashing that goes on badlands so the fighters would leave find the crash site follow the obvious tracks and catch him at any point in this timeline before he makes it to the settlement I mean I honestly don't understand how they aren't at the scene the moment finn wakes up I guess a crashing ship travels much faster than one in pursuit and what luck for Finn to find a water source at the moment of dying from thirst which actually brings yet another thought to the surface why did Finn choose to wear Poe's jacket considering his current predicament of being isolated on a desert planet in a why pick that up and wear it when it's one of the most significant pieces of clothing to identify the escaped prisoner to top it off you were dying of dehydration and you put on more clothing what are you doing fin it's almost like he has to wear that jacket for the plot this joyce's you stole it but yes fin gets to cross the desert without a single first order related hiccup and once he has explained the situation to the one person who can help him with the required droid the two troopers finally find them the best defense for all of this is that the force did it and that the first order are incompetent which is not a strong argument but even if we took it into account and agreed it was simply true why in the world would the first order be the dominant force in the galaxy for pity's sake and as for the force did it well there's a lot to that statement that really falls apart if you start to think about it at this point if you thought the force awakens was a rather well-written film that perspective might be challenged but I can understand if you are still firmly in the camp of this film being very good outside of a couple of details so let's continue by rewinding a little bit finn wakes up in the desert of jakku near the TIE fighter he was happily ejected and survived the crash Poe however is presumed dead as Finn cannot find the body oh yes we are going to get to that one folks but not right now so Finn makes an arduous trek across the desert heading towards a distant settlement while dropping his trooper gear and he finally sees Rey's village in the distance we then cut to Huck's saying that they must capture the Droid or at the very least destroy it captured the Droid if we can but destroy it if we must we will remember that line kylo responds by criticizing Huck's and his men perhaps brought on by the idea of destroying the droid kylo is very much invested in getting the map and so he would not want the Droid to be destroyed he says rather quickly that they should perhaps use a clone army instead thanks to kylo sharing that that's an option the audience will now ask about it as well why not use clones as we covered in part 1 the film never really bothers to tell us the answer but there are decent reasons you can find in third-party sources relating to the enemies of the Empire or the first order using clone DNA exploits then again that information would counter kylo asking the question and of course this isn't in the film I mean let's be honest here this is the beauty of leaving it up in the air for the original trilogy as far as we can know from the film's these men are conscripted because clones may be outlawed or inefficient or perhaps the cloning facilities were destroyed it's never presented as a preferable on top of that the story functions regardless it doesn't affect the plot to change the stormtroopers in these scenes two clones but in the force awakens this throwaway line to reference the clones has now brought the question in is kylo wrong here wouldn't clones actually answer how they managed to have so many troopers if their men are so incompetent and they fall away from the brainwashing then why aren't they using clones and this moves into Huck saying that his men are exceptionally trained programmed from birth I know I'm not convinced of course we have been over that and we will come back to it but since Finn later says that he was taken from a family at a young age they are obviously not programmed from birth unless you're telling me they have a series of families that live on a particular planet for the first order to poach from like a human farm and they program everybody on this planet from birth only to conscript them at age 4 or whatever but begin how would this have been under the Galactic Republic snows where were they getting soldiers from before this idea is providing them able-bodied men and women and this is just contradictive stuff I have to sift through before realizing that I'm trying to make sense of writing that I am currently making up for them again fact is they didn't need the line at all kylo could simply have insulted the troopers performance regardless but let's go back to what Huck's actually said my men are exceptionally trained programmed from birth I really wish they were but who on earth would rate these guys as exceptional and the problem Rises once again if we compare them to clones because clones didn't have these issues in the mainline movies in fact they were shown to be loyal to a fault and effective the obvious intention of the scene is to breed conflict between these two characters but it once again shows the writers playing with will building rather than trying to structure it and the irony is a lot of people accuse me of being someone impossible to please without a glossary and an accompanying film to explain every last piece of what came before and how we got here but there are many things I would prefer left unexplained in terms of making the story far more structured and this is one of them but again the world-building is already so damaged that hopefully we can at least salvage the characters as we've been over Huck's makes it clear he is willing to destroy the Droid and kylo counters with a threat this compounds the fact that the pursuit of Luke Skywalker is what matters to him the most and I do appreciate this exchange I won't have you question my methods good should have no problem retrieving the Droid careful Ren that your personal interests not interfere with orders from leader Snoke Hux is not afraid to challenge kylo and they are on somewhat of an equal footing changing the dynamics we have previously seen in Tarkin and Vader or Palpatine and his many minions unfortunately this is retconned in episode 8 I do want to make it clear however that just because episode 8 arbitrarily changed a character in the interest of shoving and more slapstick comedy and humiliation that doesn't make the dynamic in this film worse this one stays the same and it has a purpose the change is the fault of the last Jedi not the force awakens' found him very funny one last thing on this scene however kylo immediately assumes from the recent events that it is the performance of the individual stormtroopers that is the issue when the concerns should have been the number of troopers that were sent in the first place not to say that they aren't underperforming as they are but there was - when there was like 50 before on top of that why wasn't this his mission considering how invested he is in this map but nothing else is happening in his life aside from staring at a console he was invested in this personally at one point he got extremely close to finally having the map itself and he just relegate sit to a squad there is lots of blood to be drawn out of this stone of a scene but I do think it's worth talking about kylos aesthetic and his voice both are rather impactful for many viewers it's a copycat of Vader while remaining individual many of the Sith across the countless mediums associated with Star Wars all have major similarities and differences kylo is very much able to fall in line with the aesthetic of the Sith yet he is unique in the design of his mask the cross guard saber which we will talk about later and the voice allowing him to remain at the very least individual I want for your sake I should just you get it Kyle Oh at this point in the film is quite an interesting specimen he's extremely contradictive in his actions but who knows how he will evolve oh and for those who are getting upset that I refer to kylo as a safe there isn't a meaningful difference between the darkside users who are and are not safe in the Disney films they don't put the effort in to distinguish them because we'll building is horrifying as a concept to these writers yes there is a difference no the film's don't outline it so I guess I won't be either we then cut back to Finn as he is desperately searching for water and he finds some in the trough of a large creature he is then distracted by Rey who is being attacked by what we can assume is unkar plutt smen she disposes of them rather quickly but not without a rough battle it is quite interesting to think that Rey takes a straight punch to the face here by some random milk working for this guy point being even these lowlife lowly trained randoms can hurt her in significant ways this is balanced in terms of adding to her struggle the fact that she's a female protagonist is not protected from being punched right in the face as anyone else would I mean she only narrowly wins the fight here if these guys had a knife it may not have turned out the same and to think we get this what two days later there is always a discussion surrounding Rey and many of her attributes which ties into the label of two specific words to sum her up and I've already talked about it at length in my previous series so Before we jump back into that all I have to say right at this moment is that she beats these random guys with the stick and they lose the fight to her after pulling off a solid set of attacks leaving her exhausted flustered and frustrated we have seen her with a staff long enough to assume she's had some practice and these two guys don't seem very skilled ultimately another small victory for Rey is okay as long as her luck starts to run out anyway right after this bb-8 identifies finn through his jacket and rey hunts him down now I kind of want to share something here that I think is kind of funny to think about in terms of how rough Finn's life has been juxtaposed to the reasons these things happen to him we have a guy who's been through some really horrible events leaving his own faction due to the rampant massacres they commit to after being forced to join them and possibly being given a Clockwork Orange style assimilation that he may have broken from so getting to the point where he nearly died when attempting to save someone who became his friend to escape from these people that friend presumably died minutes later he then comes back to some level of safety only to begin dying of dehydration to then try and help another stranger out of kindness and it results in what seems like another person trying to kill him what an utterly stressful day I've had a pretty messed up day right anyway ray gets ahead of Finn despite being behind him when he started running and knocks him to the ground he is then interrogated by hare and bb-8 about Poe Finn tells them both that he's not only with the resistance but that he tried to help Poe and he died at some point in the crash Rey is clearly impressed and excited about Finn story and we get what I think is a decent line of humor I've never met a resistance fighter before oh this is what we look like some of us a little different Finn is clearly distressed so in an attempt to be strong into the circumstances he says something utterly stupid luckily Rey didn't notice because she is surprised to have yet another new and interesting element added to her life another example of the humor being character accurate whether or not you laughed Finn then mentions the bb-8 has a map to Luke Skywalker and Rey reacts in a certain way it would seem that Luke Skywalker has fallen into myth now the crawl said he had disappeared in a rather dramatic exclamation and I assume this means recently but we are finding out that there are characters who aren't even sure that he's real the man that brought Darth Vader and the Emperor to destruction the man who freed the galaxy let's not mince words here he provided a release from the tyrannical government for the entire galaxy he should be immortalized along with the fleet of the rebels as heroes for every culture and Creed across the universe to marvel at assuming of course that they were in the Empire's jurisdiction and they were unhappy as far as they would be aware this is the greatest achievement of any group of people ever so why is it the Rey thinks he's a myth just thirty years after the fact especially when he hasn't disappeared for as much as ten of those for all we understand the world wars are scarred into the memory of our planet and culture with many discussions retellings and descriptions of what happened to this day despite the remaining surviving soldiers of World War one having died years ago it is damaging to the culture and history of the relevant factions to even consider it anything truth and a serious lesson in more ways than one this is why many find it ridiculous that the story of Luke hasn't spread through the galaxy when trade and communication between Weald would have been free there wouldn't be a corner of the galaxy without the story of Luke Skywalker the man who freed all of us but now we're being told that he is practically a ghost and people weren't even sure he existed in the first place which is the kind of thing you expect to happen once maybe a millennium passes but in 30 years that's pretty frustrating when the exact process I'm trying to describe the story of a hero doing something incredible that spreads throughout the galaxy is shown to take place at the end of the last Jedi even though it doesn't make any narrative sense for it to be able to spread at that point not just for lack of knowledge in terms of what even took place but the logistics of it they have it backwards again what the hell is going on there is an argument floating around saying that this is a random scavenger on a random planet in the middle of nowhere why would she know anything about Luke's story well she knows enough to know who he is and what he's potentially done so whoever told her apparently knew enough for it to be a myth but not enough for it to be true which doesn't make a lot of sense she knows that Han Solo was a successful smuggler and was real so why not Luke man let's not forget that she's scavenges from a crash-landed Star Destroyer and she lives in a downed 8080 and plays with a rebel helmet and on top of this according to the third-party Canon Jack who is the planet that saw the last battle that the Empire and the rebels fought that's why there is Galactic Civil War wreckage everywhere so considering all of the other pieces of information how would she not know she had never heard of Luke Skywalker which didn't really make sense because later she's heard of han Solo and you just didn't quite buy it so the idea was that her life was so isolated and so sad and so without hope that the most optimistic thing Luke Skywalker himself was nothing but a myth JJ that still doesn't make any sense you can't just pick and choose which people Rey remembers or has decided as a myth when they're all from the same galaxy saving story well the idea that Luke Skywalker now you know nearly 40 years after the first movie came out I started thinking that he would be as good of a myth to people who were you know 19 20 years old and the idea of a new group of young people not really knowing who he is or who any of these characters were it was the beginning of what became the story of the film rewriting history was the foundation for this script that makes a lot of sense actually I just find it hard to believe that people wouldn't be aware of Luke Han and Vader in a post Vader time but because he was the villain it meant he was in the shadow of Darth Vader so we embraced Vader we made our bad guy aware of Vader as he would be living in a post Vader time oh so it's based entirely on when you want it to be with who you want it to be about what you want it to be this seems like very consistent writing Luke is a myth now people don't even know for sure that he existed despite his involvement in saving the galaxy just stop thinking about it it's like the writers are trying to generate whimsy and fantasy on a planet that would be so much more likely to contain cold hard facts and reverence of a war that was hard fought is it to try and maintain that element of Star Wars that acts as a fairy tale myths and legends sound very enticing when were in such a wonderful fantasy world don't they though I think many would agree that the fairy tale element of Star Wars has already been flushed down the toilet with that title crawl alone man the original Star Wars trilogies so good there are lots of good things about those movies but the characters really stand out their actions mostly fit with something that was established about them not every decision is rational because people aren't always rational but even they're irrational actions make sense based on how the character was established and how they've developed and character developments are typically a believable response to some event all of this helps make the characters feel realistic and interesting even after a lot of viewings that's why I can't stand the prequels the plot was lazy but even though the plotting was so lazy the characters were still just glorified text-to-speech devices that seemed to exist solely to dribble plot information from the mouth the prequels are still worse than any other Star Wars movie just because they have some of the weakest characters I've ever seen thinking of which rogue one Wow in terms of characters that prequel was almost prequel trilogy bad almost as in it was kind of hard to decide if it's not worse I had no excitement when the force awakens came out but I felt great right after I saw it I had finally seen a new Star Wars movie that felt pretty Star Wars II I didn't like ray or Poe but Finn was okay and kylo was at least an interesting approach to a Star Wars villain so heavily conflicted that I had no idea what he was gonna do in Episode eight that initial feeling gradually faded a bit thanks to the plot conveniences and contrivances and some of the worst characters but I still thought it was decent so in the last Jedi came out I was excited I heard a lot of negative things before I saw it but I avoided the spoilers and went in with an open mind and a great interest in what they were gonna do it didn't do much for me while I was watching it and afterwards I felt pretty neutral so I said to my wife that it wasn't that great but I didn't understand all the hate so we spent the next four hours or so discussing the details and by the end my opinion had turned pretty negative it's hard to think of any character in that movie who comes across as sympathetic or interesting I sort of liked Luke but that was in large part because I knew him from the previous movies and because from my experience arguing against religion I can make up some reasons why he might see the religion built around force use as dangerous and want it removed I like that but everything I like about that came from my own head not the movie and aside from Luke to me there's no character who's anything but annoying and boring solo I didn't see I have no plan to I'm at the same point with Star Wars now I was at with the prequels when episode 3 came out let's get it over with and solos not required to get it over with episode 9 though is I'm curious what they do with it I'll do the same thing I did with the last Jedi go in as open-minded as I can just hoping to see a good movie I don't think it'll transform the trilogy into a work of brilliance but I hope at least it can be a good movie on its own terms coming back to the scene bb8 spots two stormtroopers that are getting information from the man Ray had fought previously and so Finn grabs Ray's hand to begin running as the troopers try to kill them until they reach a ship obviously plot armor in these situations is common none of the troopers land a shot by luck it's just that these particular troopers are inept in more ways than one though let's first tackle the more aggressively referenced part of this scene being that Finn takes Ray's hand more than once and she's furious at the prospect implying a sense that she doesn't need a man's help and his offer alone is not chivalrous it's offensive this interaction frustrates a lot of people in fact it downright infuriates a lot of people so let's break it down why did Finn grab Ray's hand and why did Rey react so aggressively to it was it a show of patriarchal dominance from Finn for Rey to smash right through as would be relatable to the conversations that take place thanks to the current social climate or was it a natural and harmless way of showing growth during action well Finn has already shown that he cares about Rey and Finn thinks she's being hunted because she was near him when he was found Rey clearly isn't registering this repercussion yet remember this squad was sent to find Poe and Finn as far as Finn knows they're for Finn feels responsible for her safety as he put her in danger and so he wants to get her out that's one reason for him to grab her hand next up Finn is an ex stormtrooper so it's safe to assume that he would believe he knows how to best evade and survive against stormtroopers and thus he wants to lead the way instead of the local desert bound girl doing it instead that's 2/3 Ray is still surprised or slow in certain parts of the scene coming across as stuck in disbelief meanwhile Finn is searching for a weapon the moment they are discovered he knows what can happen if they are captured this is in line with what we've seen from him before Finn is a reactionary at heart and so he grabs a raised hand she needs to escape now she can process this later so grabbing her hand makes sense from a character standpoint with but what about ray getting flustered about it isn't that forced well from what we know up to this point Reyes had no family possibly since she was very young as far as we can tell she has no loved ones and she lives alone she even has trouble with the prospect of a droid spending time with her at first so yes she doesn't like people getting close and certainly not touching her so that's one ray doesn't know Finn at all only that he has told her that he is resistance she sees these troopers and with no context at all he grabs her hand as if the troopers are after both of them when she has no idea why they would shoot her she even says thanks sarcastically for getting her into this mess so now she'd probably like to make her own choices that's - ray doesn't want to be a fugitive she's broken no law that she's aware of she simply wants to maintain her very simple and legal position while she waits for her parents but running from the troopers implicates her immediately something Finn explains moments later so perhaps she didn't want to run yet this strange man had grabbed her hand and pulled her along that's three Raynaud's jakku far better than this crash landing alien she will be a better guide in terms of where to go and how to avoid adversity yet he is guiding her which is understandably frustrating for her it doesn't take long before she begins to drive their escape instead of Finn as she knows the place far better than him ultimately there is nothing wrong with Finn showing chivalry and Rey trying to get across to him that she can take care of herself if that were the scene alone then it's a kindness from Finn and a moment of Rey being frustrated at the thought of a babysitter when she is fended for herself for so long completely reasonable from them both and I would say both of their actions are supported by their histories but the key detail I think people may miss about this scene is that it tells a very quick story Rey has her hand taken by Finn and assumes it's hostile then she has it taken after he explains he wants to get them both to safety as they're being hunted they both get blown away by a blast from the fighters solidifying especially after the blaster shots that these two are in trouble together and as a result she goes to see if Finn is okay because he's likely hurt and the first reactionary thing Finn says about the entire situation is okay Rey is clearly surprised the first thing on this man's mind after being shell-shocked by an explosion is her well-being rather than his own she knows now that the hand-holding wasn't hostile it wasn't even assertive he was trying to protect her he cares about her and she doesn't need to understand why she simply knows it's true and so instead of taking his hand she will offer hers I know many think Daisy can't act whatsoever but the quick reaction here she gives to Finn's line always gave me this impression it's a kind of instant camaraderie that is present in a lot of stories when people share a scenario even though they don't know anything about each other but again my proof of this concept is how the shot ends after denying his hand twice Rey offers her hand back to Finn and he takes it their friendship has begun later in the film when the wrath tears are released Finn grabs Rey to get her out of danger again and this time she accepts it again showing the progression of their relationship surely she would have batted him off again if the writers were being consistent about a specific social message subjectively speaking I know why people felt how they did about this scene and it may have been clumsy and execution from the perspective that this would be a common interpretation regardless of their intentions and I will level with you guys I had the same reaction in the cinema it felt a bit over-the-top to me and it was only after some time with the scene that I realized I might have been seeing something that wasn't there because of conversations that are currently taking place outside of the film I simply think that mechanically it's a really strong piece of character development during an action scene with bombastic explosions that pushes the plot forward this small selection of seconds is achieving a lot regardless of what the plot currently looks like moments like these let you know that these people are human which is incredibly important to Star Wars and any character driven content there's a lot of theories about strong character moments coming at the expense of the plot or the world not to say this doesn't happen whatsoever but the plot will usually be strong precisely because it's pushed by the consistent yet growing characters with preferences and goals in this case the first order and subsequently kylo Ren are attempting to retrieve a map to control the wheel because they have fascist leaders that are hell-bent on the domination of the galaxy Finn is fleeing this regime because he doesn't want a hippie Bohan both as a result of that character trait and the connection to the droid he is also protecting this girl he's just found if we flip over Ray wants to be left alone in order to meet her parents but she will help those in need which means getting this droid to safety and now assisting the people it belongs to despite being weak and contradictive in parts all of these character motivations create the plot thus they create a story of who gets to Luke first and they leave mystery for what would happen after that but none of the people in this scene are here for any other reason than characters desiring outcomes based on their own values and the actions taken are more than explained however I wouldn't want to imply that there are no Metis statements about political issues in these films some are blatant and embarrassing with many of you pointing them out easily but as I have said I like to try and avoid that on this channel you guys have plenty of political analysts to choose from out there people with far more experience than me in that field so I'll try and stick to the quality of the storytelling on this channel alone and from what I can discern on a storytelling level this is one of the better things to come out of the film but I may have missed something important and so I will appreciate your thoughts on the subject now let's cycle back to a recurring theme the incompetence of the first-order one of the troopers says and so I have to wonder is the airstrike additional to the scent squad meaning that all they sent to find Finn and Poe when they had their direct location was two stormtroopers and those two fighters were only called in as part of the airstrike to be clear for anybody saying that there may be hundreds of troopers all over the planet they have a very isolated area of the planet to follow Poe and Finn from what they would know from the crash remember they were headed back to jakku the fighters projected to crashing that goes on badlands they were going back for the Droid send a squad to the wreckage for the sake of the crumbling narrative let's assume that this guy was commanding the already deployed TIE fighters to attack they were already sent as part of the squad though you simply have to ask why would the first order only send two fighters and two troopers for what is their most sought-after item in the universe right now you have so many resources for goodness sake the TIE fighters then consistently hit array and Finn but their plot armors much too thick which we can chalk up to bad aim then they they they reach the the Millennium Falcon and it pans to the Millennium Falcon amazing reveal such a great idea that I mean my audience applauded and the camera twists to reveal the Millennium Falcon as they're running towards it it was an amazing way to introduce an iconic spaceship when the reveal happens man woo everyone in the audience walked and I was delighted I worked as well the Millennium Falcon just sitting there in the same village that rain actually let's save that conversation for now there will be more of this particular thing and I think it'll be more suitable to wait before discussing where is the most consistent destructive element to this script instead let's bring in a nitpick fin points to the Falcon suggesting that they use it and Ray decides against it this is an odd move with Ray being ahead of fin and thus being unable to see what he is pointing to and fin would know that of course you could explain Ray's reaction by saying there were no other ships in the area but I think it was a choice made for the viewers to follow the scene with ease as we now expect a ship to turn up on the left of the screen and so we pan over anyway when they start heading to the fish ship its destroyed by the TIE fighters but then they head to the Falcon and the Thais decide not to shoot it at all apparently not you would think a static ship would make for an easy target wouldn't you especially one that large but it sits there for a hefty amount of time and the fighters don't attack it until it's moving like what in the world of a TIE fighters shooting out here aim for the Falcon maybe some would argue that they didn't want to kill ray and fin only capture them but if that were true then you would have to explain all of these moments and you would have to ignore Huck's saying that the orders were to destroy it if they must also during this scene Ray refers to the Millennium Falcon as a piece of garbage garbage the ship has clearly not been immortalized despite being among the two ships to cause the destruction of the Death Star twice I understand that it is a standard ship design meaning it could get lost in translation over the years but I seriously doubt anyone being able to lose track of the Millennium Falcon especially Han Solo this ship has gotten the heroes through so many skirmishes that to simply be blunders thrown away can be very frustrating again not impossible just why and of course there is an attempt at reasoning for it which we will cover soon but it should be in a republic Museum or refurbish to be one of the most respected ships in history or you know it should be with Han Solo but it shouldn't be here not sitting in a desert with a bunch of rags hanging off it with people referring to it as garbage just thirty years after this [Music] I imagine several people listening to this video of being frustrated by the fact that Luke considers the ship a piece of junk when he first sees it [Music] what a piece of junk this style of argumentation has cropped up before for example you see Luke threw his light saber away once before meaning that him doing it again makes complete sense well yes if it were as simple as recreating a visual to maintain the character and their values than these films would be perfect copies look Luke is wearing clothes he did that in the original - what these people are ignoring however is context Luke threw his lightsaber away here to signify that the fight is over he will not kill his father and the emperor can do nothing to tempt him the lightsaber is gone and he will believe in his father no matter what here though he is doing it because it reminds him of a past that he is ashamed of and how it represents the Jedi Order of which he has denounced which makes no sense the scene itself is played for a laugh whether by accident or on purpose as a result of the lack of information to explain this move and as a juxtaposition to the tone set in the force awakens it was confusing for many in the audience when Luke throws the lightsaber oh yeah it was like dead silence back heard where Luke did this as a culmination of the three films we had just watched he does it here for reasons that we will find out in a flashback and some smaller pieces of contradictive dialogue copying a visual does not guarantee the copying of its gravitas or its context though that's not the first example of this kind of ineptitude or the last for another example why does Luke refer to the ship as junk well at this point it's a Smuggler's ship a ship that is meant to avoid notoriety and appears worthless on the surface so that the Empire or other factions wouldn't recognize its significance as a vessel designed to break the law narrative Lee speaking this is accurate for a portion of Episode four but I can assure you that Luke would never an ironic Lee refer to it as junk after it helped him free the galaxy and neither should the people inhabiting it now and it just so happens that Raynaud's of han Solo or at least enough to reference his Kessel run and the name of the ship but apparently she never knew that this was the same one or even the same model how can vini n't the point of the line in the force awakens is to try and reference the classic one but again they failed to match it narrative Lee how about that looks like we got a patent already folks so ray makes it clear that she has never piloted this ship before while fin is still a novice on the turret front yet both of them perform rather well in this scene fin being a trooper and simply pointing and shooting is absolutely fine especially considering his brief experience earlier and honestly the clips of them reassuring themselves is great for character insight they are both in way over their heads and we get to watch them struggle emotionally these would be some of the topsy-turvy elements to the scene another example is raised piloting results in damage to the ship several bumps and knocks alongside shots of her clearly being stressed this supporting the idea that it's a crapshoot and she is simply trying to make the best of a situation she clearly has very little control over but the scene is going to happily contradict itself by having Ray be quite adept at piloting to the point of being a Marvel you see you get into the pilot's seat yeah I believe it's the money in fall key that shot looks amazing are you flying it I asked you that she pulls off a particularly impressive maneuver where she drops the Falcon deliberately by turning off the engine which helps Finn aim his jammed gun right at the TIE fighter that is still chasing them leaving him to simply pull the trigger he nails the shot she started back up and they are home free ray is pulling off the kind of feats that require set up her navigation of the Down Destroyer is fantastic for someone who did this on her first liftoff in the Falcon the film has her say that she has indeed piloted before but she's never left the planet and she has never piloted the Falcon in its time on the planet a ship that is asymmetrical is being flown through tight stretches of land while requiring a co-pilot for efficiency by someone who has never flown it before alone so it is fundamentally a skill an impressive skill as is her fighting abilities and her resourcefulness alongside her conviction and simultaneous kindness and willingness to trust or assist those in need she is piling up positive attributes at a commensurate rate with the minutes that fly by in this time code and this is becoming a big problem though if jump back to the original scene that this scene is aping Luke and Han destroyed two fighters each by missing several shots and finally nailing them there was no need to have either of them pull off anything utterly ridiculous to have a triumphant scene because it was obvious that what they were doing wasn't easy but here in 2015 it could never be that simple it had to be something beyond the limits of piloting we have previously seen throughout the saga otherwise we may not recognize just how impressive Rey is on top of that she is telling Finn off for not doing his job properly during the scene just adding to the confidence and skill levels but what is the reason for this particular skill Rey makes this turn and thin fires at the TIE fighter and destroys it was all about their relationship that their rhythm their timing how well they worked together thanks to everyone's work including John Wayne's these two characters are now bonded forever as well so it was an aid of bonding here and Finn as characters that's a respectable goal but you had to give her a strong skill in exchange for it however if we again for curiosity just jump back to the original scene it was nerve-wracking and bombastic while also allowing Luke and Han to bond and it required nothing more than shooting a turreted simple targets and possibly more important it didn't come at the expense of the antagonists the Empire wanted the Falcon to escape let's put a pin in that though and take a different angle as they are lifting off Finn says this allows for an action-packed dogfight with an iconic ship that takes us through a space ship graveyard while acting as a consistent Bank on Finn having been a stormtrooper he would likely know the functionality of the first order even though he didn't know about the safety cord and Rey would believe he is aware of this kind of strategy being that she thinks he is a resistance member even though he can't pilot whatsoever and all of that only makes sense if we assume that there's been a well known war between the first-order and the Republic for a substantial time which do you see why the will building is important either way it's pretty clever when you forget a handful of everything which is another possible subtitle for this movie oh and hey it gives us the big trailer payoff shot so that's neat aside from that though why isn't there a swarm of fighters after them right now from others calling this in why isn't the stardestroyer aware of the fact that they spotted the traitor and the Droid and they're in pursuit did these guys not report this to the Star Destroyer at all they could then cut the Falcon off just outside of the atmosphere with said Star Destroyers and at the very least track the ship or you know use the hyperdrive tracker am i right aside from that why are the pilots so awful at their jobs that they are losing a dogfight to Rey and Finn this is not assisting their competency levels or their intimidation factor and hell if we jump to any other film this time we get strict contradictions in Episode four they were attacked by double the amount of Thai fighters despite the point of the attack being focused on allowing the targets to escape and yet in this scene they send two when Snoke is personally invested in the acquisition or destruction of the droid do you remember how many fighters are deployed in Return of the Jedi when the Emperor wants something done how about the Phantom Menace I mean even rogue one got this right now wait I guess the force awakens got it right too sometimes the only film that supports this kind of enemy ineptitude is the last Jedi in which they assault the remainder of the resistance fleet with four fighters despite having access to potential thousands in both the force awakens and the last Jedi these things happen contradictive to the narrative because the writers need our protagonists to survive but cannot think of a manner in which they can do it without artificially crippling the enemy forces and yet despite all of the intellectual inconsistency in this scene the emotional resonance was potent for many once in remove for awesomeness show the Millennium Falcon everybody yay ten minutes later show Han Solo yay the dangling of nostalgic keys in front of the audience got the fleeting emotional reaction it wanted and thus it is awesome it isn't there as part of the writing process or the structure of the story and those things now take a hit in favor of eliciting that audience reaction and believe me this sort of thing is very much planned this chase is kind of a Star Wars wish fulfillment for these characters and for the audience that you get to fly in or in their case you have to fly and pilot and and fire from not just one of the great ships from Star Wars but one of the great vehicles from movie history but to be fair I'm all in favor of fanservice I just wish they would executed in a more consistent manner rather than haphazardly throwing it in anyway let's look at some of the stronger details in this scene the moment debris reaches the ground in jakku scavengers capitalise on it regardless of its origin this helps build a bit of the culture of the planet they are desperate for resources irrespective of what tragedy provides them this would be an example of will building during a plot pushing scene built by character choices though it is ultimately a nitpick in a positive light I suppose what do we call those again neat pics yes it's a neat pic the second detail however is a little more important you remember how a few sentences ago I talked about the lack of setup for the things Rey is achieving well it's not all weak writing Finn tells her to find cover and she says they end up going through the starship graveyard that ray likely scavenges every day as we've been shown this may have been an area she was heading to the whole time because she wouldn't know what the inside of it looked like from where she had been previously scavenging she knows it exists and thus uses it to her advantage that's not a huge benefit being drawn from what is essentially her profession but her navigation of the debris with the Falcon is still undeniably ridiculous and that closes off the scene which is a horrible mess but it happened fast so maybe some people don't notice it so much it should be mentioned that they move on to the scene in space with Han Solo very soon and that up to this point the situation of having this incredibly important droid this man who knows the importance of the Droid and the inner workings of the first order and this woman who is an ace pilot as well as the future most powerful Jedi to exist that nudges kylo to kill snow can gets Luke out of retirement all meeting up is incredibly lucky magic and coincidences oh look that's just the Millennium Falcon it's just sitting there if not for Rey both Finn and bb-8 would likely have been captured or killed by now the interesting comparison is that in Episode four obi-wan is seeking out a good pilot with the interest of smuggling them and so they get the attention of just that and they pay money for that service thus Han Solo smuggles them out with strong piloting here though lady Lucas Milan another simple comparison to Episode four would be the nature in which the Empire inspected Mos Eisley using checkpoints and search teams while here the first order is happy to blow up the entire area even if they completely missed their target it was an interesting piece of will building that the Empire would not want to cause unnecessary issues with the huts in their controlled area of the galaxy so this was their method of approach instead of assault I imagine the Empire ran the galaxy rather efficiently from the perspective of many factions and I suppose I pine for a Hollywood star wars movie that explores the demise of the Empire being something awful in many different ways be it in relation to maintaining borders trade or even peace but no we have this story and we have the first order on jakku being totally barbaric when they had the potential to perform the same searches and pinpoint attacks yet they send two troopers and two fighters to blast away and they can't even do that right with static defenseless targets anyway the Falcon approaches space without a hitch and Finn celebrates that fact with Rey while frustrating the audience where is the first order why isn't Kyle of ship here why isn't his faction aware of this just turn your brain off Finn and Rey then talk to each other about their achievements and on top of the other relationship writing we've had it's safe to assume that many will be getting right behind their growing relationship a friendship that is now being developed instead of the potential of another though that old connection is not entirely lost Rey asks for Finn's name and he gives a brief look reminding himself of the fact that the first friend he likely made outside of the first order gave him his name and now he's going to keep it fed short all right it's a strong moment we even get a cut of bb-8 being told that finn is a member of the resistance and he gives him a this guy sort of look although immediately after finn is hit with the guilt of his lie moments like these are what connect me more so to the script rather than pushing me away when character is being spilled on screen via choices and reactions expressions of emotion there are results of events that were pushed by the characters in the first place it can be juicy for the viewer on the subjective front once you see all the connections laid out versus a story that is contrived perhaps that offers a further explanation for objective assessments having their place in debate as was said in part one intellectual satisfaction can encourage emotional resonance thus there is reason to at least consider it for everyone you can compare your emotional reaction to the facts at hand allowing you to understand your own interpretations and how they're constructed this is self reflection at its finest and objective assessments can encourage that process though if you absolutely are uninterested in that element you might find it stimulating just a note how these things are created moving on finn considers telling Rey the truth about himself but he's interrupted by a malfunction in the Millennium Falcon telling us that he does not want to be in the position where he has to lie to her we're then taken back to the Star Destroyer that has now happily been acknowledged right next to jakku but obviously it's unable to interact with the Millennium Falcon because the first order were not given any information on the craft and its whereabouts for no reason even if they lost the location of the Falcon it's surely just sitting a few space miles from them in a particular direction why not use that scanner that gets established later or the tracker that's established in the sequel or hell they could just look outside the ship right it is interesting that episode 7 will ape so much from the original content but awkwardly refused to copy over what made the events fall in line after one another if we could ignore the retcon in the last Jedi the force awakens could have copied all of the ideas from the same scene in Episode four and had the characters make the jump to hyperspace to write themselves out of the Star Destroyer stopping them but instead they just happen to not get noticed perhaps if they had used that same reasoning people would then be saying that they apes too much from the original and so they opted out of keeping that element that's a fair choice but you can't then do nothing to replace it the meta reason they haven't used the hyperdrive yet is that they need to meet han Solo first as the writers want the narrative reason is that the hyperdrive is disabled by the compressor making it even more likely for the first order to find them right not to mention the unkar plutt could tell the first-order about that compressor I mean just scan for them they can't escape or well I mean not really because they can still hyper drive anyway as you can see the stakes are very clear and very easy to understand I simply feel that it would have been preferable to not make our antagonists blind deaf and dumb so that the heroes can have a fighting chance and for the plot to progress but do you catch what's happening here the writers are the ones that put the antagonists contradictive to what we knew from episode 6 in this position of power only to now place the antagonists contradictive to what we knew from this movie in a position of incompetence it is clearly tied to whatever the writers need at the time on the Star Destroyer a subordinate reports the lack of and absolute ineptitude of the troopers sent to find the map which resulted in the wayward trooper the Droid and some girl escaping it's rather interesting that kylo is getting this update from some random instead of keeping tabs on it from a control room especially considering how personally invested years in the hunt for this map I covered it previously but it is compounded here Kyla came down to the planet himself at first but now he prefers to sit in this room and stare at consoles that tell him nothing about the current situation my theory would be that if Kyla went after it personally they would have to write reasons for his failures that would allow the heroes to escape and so they had him sit here so that he could react like this later they wanted to create a reflective scene in which he demonstrates his power and emotional instability compared to his control earlier but it comes at the expense of what this character would have chosen to do on top of that we get something extra at the end of this scene and it will require a small comparison during Episode five Vader is given information that his entire invasion of Hoth is compromised by his Admiral coming out of hyperspace too close to the system a small yet important failure that was motivated by the idea of surprising the rebels Vader is in each of the ground forces that are present in the film searching for the rebels due to his obvious investment in the war and in his son and so due to this failure delaying two of his goals Vader kills the Admiral promoting someone more competent immediately in the hopes of preventing this failure in future this is consistent with what we know about Darth Vader up to this point he suffers no fools especially insubordinate ones and he reestablishes his intimidation by showing the audience he's willing to kill his own men out of the interest of improving the overall effectiveness of the Empire this isn't arbitrary the force awakens tried to copy and paste this payoff with a much more flashy coat of paint but removed the character-driven reason for it to take place kylo is directly informed by his desire for the Droid leading to Luke and so finding the Droid would be a consistent and emotional goal for kylo only now he's doling out punishment for a messenger and for what are easily referenceable as his failures this could be accounted for by his nature of being a man-child but his decision to do nothing on the ship actually count as that very notion he should have been hunting this down personally precisely because he's a man-child and besides you can essentially roll out the manchild excuse for every choice kylo ever makes that seems as though it doesn't suit his progression kylo Ren is probably the most interesting character in this entire franchise now are you sure though are you sure doesn't modded you with the idea that the writers that have told his story have had a conflicting plot to have to reconcile him with and thus created a completely inconsistent character and masked it with he's angry only to then have a sequel movie that doubles down on that very problem but in a context of another writer who has a whole other set of ideas of what this character should and should not be doing and so as a result of both films we're looking at what is the personification of tangled Christmas tree lights and so some people might start assuming that this is a multi-layered complex character when it's actually the result of so many conflicting intentions for him that people don't know what to think and assume he is simply too complex to put in a box could it be that he simply makes no sense and you're convinced that there is something to figure out that's a that's one way you could think about the character I guess but there's they it's maybe more complicated I guess I can't deny that it would still make him interesting but I doubt that is a complement to the quality of writing that something is fun to watch by virtue of making no sense when we next see kylo pursuing the droid the first order are successful compounding the idea that they only kept him out here because he is efficient but even that element is diluted by the sequel as I said in part one use what you establish and stay within it regardless kylo reacts very aggressively to this information adding a psychopathic nature to his repertoire this is not the controlled and meticulous man we may have thought he was we then cut back to Rey and Finn fixing the Falcon and what is potentially the best exchange of dialogue between three characters during the Disney set of Star Wars films the summary is that bb-8 wants to get to the resistance Rey wants to help bb-8 and then go home to jakku while finn wants to do anything to get away from the first order they all conflict in different ways Rey being questioned on her desire to go back to her life on jakku without explaining a strong reason why bb-8 struggling to decide if trusting these two with location of the resistance base is wise and finn trying to convince rey against going home while simultaneously keeping secret that he is not a resistance member there is a careful balance of perspectives with some emotive performances from them all most notably bb-8 showing off how much effort they put into the droids telegraphing of emotion okay I'm just trying to get away from the first order want to get bb-8 to the resistance deal upon finn revealing to bb-8 that he is not resistance the droid recoils in shock and then once finn is explained his position and why bb-8 should reveal the location of the base to Rey bb-8 drops his head as if to give Finn a look over deciding if his story is worth trusting but in seconds the droid is rushed to a decision by Finn saying bb-8 is the one who should share the location with rey expecting an answer before bb-8 has even decided how to deal with the situation the droid is confused unprepared and almost seems to say wait what I know because hey with the conversation ending on what is possibly the most referenced gesture from bb-8 a robotic yet endearing thumbs up it is always an interesting topic to cover but the droids in star wars are rather unique they will absolutely die for their masters following their every order but they also make their own decisions thanks to this sentience or be incredible programming they appear to have their own morality and their own characters there is a reason many pick r2d2 as their favorite Star Wars character there isn't anything quite like the connection the audience can make with a non-human character showing human reactions I would rather die eating cheeseburgers and levels steamed colorful what do you mean what about you if you die eating cheeseburgers what do you think happens to me they'll send me back to the warehouse and wipe my memory [Music] did you know that wasn't me Sam can I ask how it happened yeah I saw something on TV that distracted me there's something wrong with when I came in the TV wasn't on perhaps you were imagining things yeah you think too much pal Marvin you saved our lives ha wretched isn't it hey what's the matter you can harass old men but you can't handle kids I told them to stop but they wouldn't listen next time that happens just say self-destruct sequence initialized and then start counting down from 10 why would I do that Frank the subtlety of this idea is delivered with all the grace of a wrecking ball in solo but we're not talking about that for now another thing worth noting in this scene is Finn's question to Rey about whether she has a cute boyfriend it was always a vague implication that these two could have a romantic relationship and this line felt as though it was the beginning of that potential but that isn't developed further in this film and it's essentially dropped in the sequel Finn maybe starting a relationship with rose now and Rey has the inkling of one with Poe things like this just make me wonder how much JJ and Ryan's intentions differed especially considering how close race seems to be towards Finn at the end of the force awakens but it's not like JJ had different ideas for where this story was going right I mean obviously a lots happened between that I have to like I say makeup backstory sit the besides peeking you know thinking that kylo Ren you know thinking the the new Hitler the next oh that's on me but they're having more to be to justify even cutting off my telepathic communication with my sister so I mean but that's my job I mean I'm not the one bit and there was there were practical things a much different vision for what was gonna happen today the first thing I said to Ryan as I said how he explained to be in my Jedi ceremonial rose when when where I first be ready you know things like that to make sure that dear another neat pic I like here is the bb-8 is constantly balancing himself to maintain the position he wants to look being that he is a ball with a moving weight at the top balancing himself would be constant and it's a detail that they could have overlooked but they did it so excellent job folks moving on our heroes discover that something is boarding their ship Finn believes it is the first order and suggests releasing the poisonous gas they're just fixed to potentially kill the invaders the boarding party enters and it's none other than Han Solo and Chewbacca how unlikely it's been like five minutes since they even left the planet and as much as we love to see these characters it just seems a little convenient for him to be within the area the moment that finn and rey escape the first order and we're gonna get to that as a whole topic i swear though i do want to say subjectively speaking it is warming as a longtime fan to see Han and Chewie after all the time that's passed more so even than the Falcon for me and after a brief silence Han says sure [Music] this would be a blatantly important moment for the fans that have been waiting to see more original Star Wars content and in terms of these few seconds the script nailed why the characters would use these lines as well as acting as a meta line for the audience however their position here is highly contentious so Rey begins setting up the gas trap as she runs out of time because Han and Chewie find them before they can complete it which makes sense being that Han would use these compartments to hide himself and so he would know to check those areas especially after hearing a noise as the conversation begins Rey somehow manages to respond to Chewie letting the audience know that she can indeed speak Wookiee where's the pilot and you too so watch it fun lines I guess but my goodness Rey is now multilingual understanding English droids and aliens from planets she would have absolutely no reason to understand yes I can because I speak Wookiee why though why in the world would a desert planet dwelling scavenger know a language from a near extinct species that's been out of the picture for over 40 years on a completely different distant planet they could have thrown a random Wookiee in the background of jakku or maybe had a resident that knew Rey and had a bit of a backstory but at that point it would have been forced for the sole reason of having her speak Wookiee just another ability to add to her list though it does serve a narrative purpose and perhaps that highlights something a little clearer than last time anyway Han and Rey discussed how it is the Falcon ended up on jakku and the film is almost tongue-in-cheek about the ship passing through many hands before getting back to han Solo I stole it he stole it from the irving boys who stole it from ducain who stole it from me he will later comment that he was scanning for the ship looking for it for a long time so the idea that a lost Millennium Falcon could theoretically be found by Han Solo after a period of searching time is fine he scans for its unique frequency or whatever and it's only a matter of time right right right the problem is about Han finding it at this very moment he happened to be in the position that he didn't find it for many many years but the moment ray gets on the ship and pilots it for about half an hour just before deciding where to go next for the plot there he is something that I should specify here is the convenience does not mean impossible events occurring in this instance it simply means that what happened was just what was needed for the plot unlikely not impossible so countering these points with logic that allows the event to make sense does not counter the point of them being convenient things like this happen in real life of course but it would be rather lucky to find it on this scale a supporting example would be that the girl who is going to continue on to be trained by Luke Skywalker and help defeat Snoke the girl who is the protagonist for this trilogy ended up with the very ship that was used to destroy two Death Star's owned by Han Solo the best friend of Luke Skywalker the Falcon ends up being integral to the plot in both the force awakens and the last Jedi while also being one of the most iconic elements of the original trilogy both in universe and in the matter it's just so great that we were able to write all of that with such finesse getting just the reaction they wanted you could have used a new ship a new design that Ray had created herself in prep to leave jakku I make this example because you can get a lot of personality from another ship make it unique and have it work on it for over a decade featuring upgrades that say something about her character perhaps an abundance of Defense's and cloaking but little in terms of locking and firing mechanisms and those things are added as the trilogy progresses and she gets further in her training or hey how about completely custom cloaking from scanners or far more agility than your typical craft that she built from studying what the crashed Empire ships were lacking she has plenty of resources to work with and you have that kind of freedom in this universe we can then have the characters ask her why in the world she would have built it and the realization could be that she assumes her parents are criminals and that if they return she can protect them could you imagine the discussions characters can have with her she would miss her parents so much that she doesn't care who they are or what they've done this could tie into her desperation for a lack of conflict or here unwillingness to connect to people and she could therefore be tempted to the dark side in the second film as the only feasible means to reach a level of superiority that would allow her to stop the war personally to end the violence she could then lose control as she is unprepared for that amount of and kylo has to stop here you know something entirely character-driven instead of a convenient and simultaneously gratuitous reference assuming of course that I was allowed to completely rewrite Rey and possibly the film but no it had to be Han it had to be the Falcon and all we get is rey explaining that it has traded hands several times in order to explain how all of this came to pass the writers are hoping you aren't paying enough attention to notice how ridiculous each event has been up to this point and for what's to come the method of moving events along by stripping down characters and will building to reach emotional payoffs is providing more and more damage to the script scene-by-scene yes we have had positive highlights yes we have had strong writing mixed in but it's sandwiched between other things and as we progress it may or may not get worse so let's just see how this pans out I suppose I am afraid to say that this series was intended to release weekly but the schedule is created under the same time assumptions as the tlj critique and with the bump in editing quality it's taken me much longer than I could have predicted I haven't even begun editing part three yet as many other projects will be lining up not to mention April first having what you could call some very special plans I couldn't complete a series of this magnitude ahead of time as my channel would be barren for far too long I would prefer not to guess when these parts will be released as people will often interpret estimations as deadlines but I am continuously working on this series my channel in general and the evap podcast more content for each of them will be throughout 2019 regardless I hope you've enjoyed the series thus far can you believe it where two parts in and we haven't even gotten to the wrath towers yet her wrath to us thank you for watching folks and I will see you next time to that point if you had to describe your experience making this film in one word what would it be and why mind-bending not really one word though is it may be too to be clear for anybody saying that there may be hundreds of troopers all over the planet they have a very isolated area of the planet to follow pin and fo from pin and fro god always makes me laugh

Channel: MauLer

Views: 1,759,388

Rating: 4.8626847 out of 5

Keywords: spoilers, discussion, the, last, jedi, Star, wars, Disney, Luke, Skywalker, movies, films, VIII, daisy, ridley, rian, johnson, john, boyega, adam, driver, carrie, fisher, hamill, episode 8, Kylo, Ren, rey, snoke, Lucas, Film, review, lore, George, Rebels, Empire, terrible, worst, awful, Yoda, Oscar, Isaac, Dombhall, Gleeson, Andy, Serkis, Phasma, critique, episode 7, force, awakens, analysis, mauler, mooler, movie, bob, rlm

Id: uFtFjH8NyQQ

Length: 139min 15sec (8355 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 05 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/Vensamos]

Get this man a glass of rhino milk, the absolute unit finally did it.

[u/Garavon66]

When you're more happy about MauLer's new Star Wars Critique than about new Star Wars movie

[u/StillFlyingHalfAShip]

I love this RedLetterMedia style of thumbnail. Some funny stuff but nothing too in your face.

[u/Lord_Mhoram]

I wonder if, by the time he's done with this, everyone will feel bad for Rian that he had such a mess to try to build from.

[u/determinedSkeleton]

The weird thing is, this part helped me actually like the film MORE than I did before

[u/tns22x]

HOLY SHIT IT’S FINALLY HERE