Additionally, the TVTropes page on this movie is going to be miles long. I lost count of how many overused tropes were used in just the first 15 minutes.

Have the Tropers linked Rey to their "Mary Sue" page yet?

I'm not going to watch this movie until it comes out on DVD, but I've felt for a while now that the Disney-era will kill Star Wars far more than the prequels ever did because the Disney-era will completely commodify it. At least with the prequels, they were still a passion project of the original creator.

@HarrietTubmanPI that was one of my major complaints with his Star Trek movies. I don't want to give the director any more money. His stuff is beautifully shot but it's empty.

Please don't use that tired Disney cudgel on a franchise that lost its way faster than you could say, "Life Day." Lucas practically invented commodification and the first prequel is one of the most cynical vehicles for toyetic licensing opportunities ever produced.

I was ten when "Star Wars" came out, exactly the demographic that George Lucas was aiming at, and even I got offended at how quickly it turned into a way to exploit children. Even as an idiot child I could see that they were trying to sell every damn thing thet they could trick kids into wanting, and that seemed like a pretty mean thing to do to your fans. Goddamn endless onslaught of Kenner commercials, I remember them all too well.

I'm not saying Lucas wasn't a whore, but he also had a story he wanted to tell. Disney doesn't. They'll tell whatever story people want to hear.

The Disney trilogy (infinity?) will be better movies, but they'll be soulless.

It's Sexy Duck Cop. She gets really mad when people don't like the broadest possible entertainment products.

At this point I knew, before I even saw the movie, that PoETV would hate it because it has a 95% on Rotten Tomatoes. I literally just looked at how many people liked it and immediately thought "Well, I know who the remaining 5% are."

I enjoyed this review from RLM and it made me want to see the movie as an escapist adventure story. I don't think it functions as anything more than that and i don't think Star Wars ever did.

I think all the monomyth bullshit and deep philosophical meaning is simply projection upon an almost blank canvas.

It's a popcorn flick. You can like it for being a popcorn flick. Just don't sperg out over it.

Ok SDC, or you could wise up and talk about it like it's a guilty pleasure, like it's your favorite video game or porn or junk food or some shit, like a grown up would do.

I mean, it's absolutely a matter of pure sentimentality and taste, and no third thing, even for the RT 95% critical consensus.
....almost no critics will dare stick their necks out on movies like this. It's not a good career move. By way of example, look at the metacritic/RT scores for Avatar. The critics LOVED IT. No one gives a FUCK about that movie any more because it's terrible.

The only difference between this episode of SW and Avatar is that SW is deeply fucking entrenched, because they've been shoving it up our asses for 40 fucking years. Disney is right to own it at this point, it's their style.

At its very BEST moments, the moments that fans would cite as great, the franchise has competent acting, flat characterization, some cool bits and lines, great music, and feel-good world-saving, and like 3 average-smarts ideas.
There are 7 movies and like 9 dozen hundred products.
It's not enough.

By my reckoning, there are 2 1/2 feel-good, enjoyable, well-made adolescent fantasies, and 4 1/2 pieces of shit that people jerk off to.

95% of people think they don't suffer from bandwagon effect or choice-supportive bias, or sunk-cost fallacy, post-purchase rationalization, etc etc. which are all fantastic reasons why so many might LOVE it when it first comes out, because even if they're smart enough, they can't admit to themselves that it fucking sucks yet.

I'm kind of reminded of the philosophy at Sanrio behind Hello Kitty's design: she's intentionally left blank and expressionless so that kids can project their emotions on to her and self-identify. This then creates strong feelings of nostalgia as their customer ages.

Hence: Star Wars. A blank philosophical adventure canvas.

Both are then licensed onto metric shit tons of merchandise daily.

That guy: it's possible to enjoy something immensely while understanding it's by no means deep. I'm not about to fault someone for liking "The Force Awakens" because it was constructed to be enjoyable so it's not really a surprising outcome.

Now making like it's some deep statement about the human condition, I will happily call BS on that.

oh my god shut up

It's harder than you think :)

https://youtu.be/-7T98bF0O60

Yes of course but what you're missing is that the movie he has been making over and over is Star Wars so this works perfectly :)

Ezra Klein had an interesting observation. If you were writing comic books and you wanted to revamp Spider-Man's origin for modern audiences, you could simply start fresh, with a proper universe-changing event that lets you hit the reset button. This movie is an attempt to restart the franchise -- beginning with "A New Hope" -- but without the liberty to reset the characters to the beginning. So it's doing the next best thing, by telling a similar story with similar characters in the same universe.