Special – Star Wars: The Force Awakens
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Star Wars: The Force Awakens premiered this weekend, so of course we decided to do an special episode about it. Like all of our earlier special episodes this one is filled with spoilers, so you probably shouldn’t listen to it or watch it if you haven’t seen the movie yet.
We warned you.
Sadly, circumstances made it so only Nick and Trae were on hand to discuss the much anticipated Episode VII – but they still have a lot of thoughts on the matter. So sit back, buckle up, and enjoy our (slightly over an hour long) review of the film.
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Audio Version:
So I presume spoiler-y comments are allowed on here? Because I’ve got a long thought here and it’d be too long for Mail Bag, but if you wanna delete it because of massive spoilers, go right ahead.
So, on the whole I really liked it. The one thing that’s really bothered me, though, was the apparently nonchalant destruction of the entire New Republic?
So I’ve been talking about this with some other friends. The reason the destruction of Alderaan works from a storytelling perspective in IV is that it’s a MacGuffin we’re introduced to early on – Obi-Wan tells Luke he needs to go to Alderaan, but Luke can only take him as far as Anchorhead, etc. Then they bring it up again in the Mos Eisley Cantina when Obi-Wan charters a flight from Han, then the actual destruction scene, and again when the Falcon arrives in the debris of Alderaan. It’s a good, key plot point. Additionally, Leia acts as a face for the destruction of Alderaan – we sympathize with her, and the film earned the pathos of the destruction of the planet.
But here, we see the destruction of at least 6 planets (which was, I think, Hosnian Prime – they mentioned it literally right before it was destroyed, and it, not Coruscant is the capitol of the New Republic?), but it wasn’t earned. Hell, Abrams did a better job with Vulcan – there again, we have a face for the deaths in Spock and Sarek. Who do we have that represents the loss of the New Republic? No one.
And heck, on that note, why does The Resistance exist? So The New Republic is a thing that exists, has a fleet, and is real (or was – it’s gone now, apparently – why would they keep their entire armada in one system?!). Why wouldn’t they be the main fighting force against The First Order? I don’t get the logic in supporting some guerrilla operation when you have an actual armada. Generally speaking, I’m against exposition scenes, but I really feel like something was left on the cutting floor helping explain the relationship between these three organizations.
There are a few other minor quibbles (why no Lando? frown emoticon Hopefully Maz Kanata survived so we can learn how/when she got Anakin’s lightsaber from Bespin, apparently), but this was my biggest one. But even that aside, I really liked it.