just saw the new star wars

[merc]

As other have mentioned, it definitely was a big homage - with the aim of washing away the taste of the terrible prequels one would.

I had hoped for a little more, but the franchise has been re-booted and set up with a solid foundation. I have high hopes the next movie will kick ass. There are some concerns that Disney will change Star Wars from an epic space opera to an action movie to appeal to a mass audience. But I remain optimistic!

*SPOILERS*

One fan theory that was interesting is that Kylo Ren deliberately turned to the dark side in order to get close to Snoke so he could assassinate him. When he asked Han to "help him", Han understood what he was saying and went along with it.

[luv2fly]

It didn't blow my skirt up.

[Nrengle]

*SPOILERS*

One fan theory that was interesting is that Kylo Ren deliberately turned to the dark side in order to get close to Snoke so he could assassinate him. When he asked Han to "help him", Han understood what he was saying and went along with it.

Have you seen the picture floating around that has Snoke side by side with Vader at the end of RoTJ and people drawing the conclusion it could be his force ghost or he finally figured out how to live forever like Darth Plagueis. I don't believe it one bit but the damage to each definitely suggests some kind of force lightning or light saber damage.

[forgop]

Not for Disney. This movie has already surpassed Avatar financially and will make billions and billions. Disney is a money making machine.

I though I just saw within the last couple of days Avatar was still #1 (something like $2.8B vs Star Wars was around $1.5B). It's the fastest to $1B though.

[merc]

Have you seen the picture floating around that has Snoke side by side with Vader at the end of RoTJ and people drawing the conclusion it could be his force ghost or he finally figured out how to live forever like Darth Plagueis. I don't believe it one bit but the damage to each definitely suggests some kind of force lightning or light saber damage.

Some people think that Snoke IS Plagueis. Apparently their theme music is identical or something.

[Nrengle]

Some people think that Snoke IS Plagueis. Apparently their theme music is identical or something.

God I hope not! I do know that the book is now considered legend and not canon besides the name since it was referenced in episode 3. And I doubt it'll be something that simple.

[Ken Gargett]

the original - this is the review from the first one.

amazing to think it opened in a single cinema.

This 1977 review of the original ‘Star Wars’ predicted the future

By Amy Argetsinger December 20

Harrison Ford in the original “Star Wars,” 1977. (Lucasfilm Ltd. via Everett Collection)

[Read a review of the new ‘Star Wars’ movie: ‘The Force Awakens’ gets the nostalgia-novelty mix just right]

A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, “Star Wars” opened in Washington, D.C. on Memorial Day weekend of 1977 — in exactly one theater.

That’s how movies were typically released back then. Instead of storming the multiplexes, they opened small and spread across the country gradually. For the first half of that summer, Cleveland Park’s Uptown Theatre was one of only a couple dozen screens in the U.S. where you could see George Lucas’s new epic. “Susceptible teens from Charlottesville to Gettsyburg would have needed to nag their folks to make weekend pilgrimages,” recalls film critic Gary Arnold.

[From 1977: “Star Wars," the movie that ate Cleveland Park]

With such a slow build, you might forgive a film critic if he didn’t quite get what the big deal was about “Star Wars” — and some critics didn’t. The New Yorker’s Pauline Kael called it “an assemblage of spare parts — it has no emotional grip”; the New Republic found it an “unexceptional” bunch of “corny, solemn comic-book strophes“; New York magazine dismissed it as “a set of giant baubles maniupated by an infant mind.”

But Gary Arnold — the Washington Post’s film critic from 1969 to 1984 — was on the right side of history. He loved “Star Wars” from his early first viewing. He even predicted, correctly, that it would topple “Jaws” as the all-time box office champ, that Harrison Ford would become a major star, and that it would change the way Hollywood did business.

How to talk about ‘Star Wars’ if you know nothing about it

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Fear not, young Padawan. If you are stuck at a party where "Star Wars: The Force Awakens" seems to be the only thing on people's minds, here are a few tips to make it sound like you know a thing or two. (Michael Cavna and Nicki DeMarco/The Washington Post)

Here, we have republished Arnold’s original review — along with a few editor’s notes explaining the references you maybe had to be around in 1977 to understand. Below the review, Arnold shares some of his thoughts looking back on what he wrote.

‘Star Wars': A Spectacular Intergalactic Joyride

By Gary Arnold
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, May 25, 1977

George Lucas’ delightful science-fiction adventure fantasy “Star Wars,” opening today at the Uptown, is a new classic in a rousing movie tradition: a space swashbuckler.

Lucas, the young filmmaker who rose to prominence with “American Graffiti,” spent four years writing, preparing, directing and editing “Star Wars.” He has achieved a witty and exhilarating synthesis of themes and cliches from the Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers comics and serials, plus such related but less expected sources as the western, the pirate melodrama, the aerial combat melodrama and the samurai epic. [NOTE: Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers were sci-fi heroes popular in the 1930s and ’40s; both franchises were briefly revived to cash in on the “Star Wars" craze, the former as a movie, the latter as a TV series.]

The movie’s irresistible stylistic charm derives from the fact that Lucas can draw upon a variety of action-movie sources with unfailing deftness and humor. He is in superlative command of his own movie-nurtured fantasy life.

In “American Graffiti” Lucas created the illusion of compressing a time of life and a period of American social history into a single night.

In “Star Wars” he has refurbished stock scenes, conventions and spare parts acquired from a variety of action movie genres, which assume an affectionately parodistic and miraculously fresh configuration.

The young protagonist, called Luke Skywalker, ingenuous but intrepid and mechanically skillful, pits himself against an evil intergalactic empire. Lucas the filmmaker engineers a kind of intergalactic joyride in a souped-up, customized cinematic hot rod, fueled by an $8-$10 million investment [a lot of money at the time!] and serviced by dozens of talented craftsmen and technicians.

The movie begins with a written prologue which seems to place us in an early episode of a vintage serial. Lucas brings this motif to a spectacular resolution in the climactic scenes, which ricochet from one perilous situation and rip-roaring battle to the next, suggesting the way a typical 12-chapter serial might look if one had the opportunity to cut it down to the action-packed essentials. [Big in the 1930s and ’40s, serials were short, low-budget action-adventure films that ran before the main feature. Lucas and Steven Spielberg later said their “Raiders of the Lost Ark" was inspired by vintage serials.]

“Star Wars” gets off with a bang as the spaceship transporting the heroine, Princess Leia (Carrie Fisher), a rebel conspiring to restore the intergalactic republic, is captured and overrun by the Death Star, an apparently impregnable military space station conceived as the ultimate weapon by the totalitarian empire. Before her guards are defeated and she is taken prisoner, the Princess manages to slip an S.O.S. and secret blueprints of the Death Star into the memory banks of a squat little robot called R2-D2. [“It amuses me to realize that I hadn’t latched on to the term ‘droid’ to describe R2 or 3PO," Arnold says. “I can’t remember if I decided to retire ‘robot’ later on."]

This messenger, which has a “vocabulary” of beeps and whistles, rather like Harpo Marx, and employs them to similar humorous effect, escapes in a capsule with its talking robot sidekick, a lanky, fussy, goldplated machine named C3PO, whose personality suggests an overspecialized cross of Edward Everett Horton with Hal the Computer. [Harpo was the silent, curly-haired member of the Marx Brothers comedy act, big in the 1930s; Horton was a character actor known for playing fussy, dithering second bananas, also big in the 1930s; Hal the Computer you probably know from “2001: A Space Odyssey."] The robots land on the arid planet Tatooine, where they eventually fall into the hands of Luke (Mark Hamill), a farmboy who lives with his aunt and uncle, and the other characters who are destined to rocket to the Princess’s aid.

There’s a wobbly stretch of exposition during which the prattle of C3PO threatens to become a naggy, prissy nuisance. Things begin to perk up again when the marooned robots are captured by hooded, red-eyed little creatures called Jawas, (a gratuitous phonetic joke, one assumes), who seem to run a hijacking and junk salvage business on Tatooine. Luckily for the galaxies, they peddle the robots to Luke’s uncle.

The movie seems a trifle unsure of its tone and bearings until the entrance of Alec Guinness, who portrays a hermit warrior called Ben Kenobe, a former comrade of Luke’s late father and the boy’s mentor.

The Princess has sent her distress signal to Ben, and when Guinness arrives on the scene, one feels no further distress about how the picture may turn out. There’s a humorous serenity about his presence that seems to stabilize the exposition. He supplies emotional equilibrium and authority at a critical moment, when one had begun to fear that Lucas’s ingenuity would become precious and callow.

The movie soars over the top when Luke and Ben go to town to hire a means of intergalactic transportation and encounter the peerless team of Han Solo and Chewbacca, respectively a dashing, albeit mercenary, pilot and his shaggy first mate, a towering, bellyaching monster known generically as a Wookiee. These characters prove wonderfully amusing company in their own right, but their entrances are enhanced by a fantastic, hilarious setting — a futuristic cantina catering to all the human, semi-human and non-human riffraff in the territory.

This dive for monstrosities is an inspired comic fancy, and I assume that production designer John Barry was motivated partly by an inside joke: He was the designer on Stanley Kubrick’s version of “A Clockwork Orange,” which opened in a dive for futuristic delinquents. The Tatooine cantina is the sort of joint the same toughs might frequent several disastrously mutant generations later. The bubble-headed, long-snouted patrons made up by Stuart Freeborn, whose credits include David Lean’s “Oliver Twist,” Kubrick’s “Dr. Strangelove” and “2001” and the Hercule Poirot makeup for Albert Finney in “Murder on the Orient Express,” leave some tantalizing unanswered questions about Tatooine civilization.

Han Solo is the film’s most flamboyant human role, and Harrison Ford, who appeared as the hot rodder who challenged Paul Le Mat in “American Graffiti,” has a splendid time capitalizing on its irresistible style of cynical heroism. It would be professionally criminal to flub such an ingratiating, star-making assignment, and although Ford plays in a relaxed, drawing style, reminiscent of Jack Nicholson at his foxiest, he maintains a firm grip on this golden opportunity. He would have kids and grownups by the millions roaring their approval at defiant sentiments like the following: “Bring ’em on! I prefer a straight fight to all this sneaking around.”

There’s a rapturous moment of whimsy during the cantina sequence in which we briefly glimpse one monster beginning to laugh heartily at another monster’s unheard joke. It’s as if an Edward Koren cartoon had suddenly sprung to life. [Koren is a longtime New Yorker cartoonist, still active, known for his human-like monsters and fuzzy, beaked humans.] From that instant I felt complete confidence and pleasure in Lucas’ directions.

The way the moment is almost but not quite thrown away seems a key to the movie’s wit. Although the look of “Star Wars” has been influenced by Kubrick — many people on the crew have worked with him or been directly influenced by him — the tone and tempo are utterly, happily different from “2001” or “A Clockwork Orange.” Lucas’s film is jaunty rather than portentous. One of the reasons Barry’s cantina seems charged with humor is that Lucas doesn’t linger over it, as Kubrick lingered over the decor of the nightclub in “Clockwork Orange.” New perspectives and monsters keep turning up and moving on with astonishing and amusing rapidity. Lucas’ style of sci-fi prodigality is playfully funny.

One is more or less prepared for the science-fiction sources Lucas borrows, embellishes and satirizes. The borrowings from other action genres are a terrific bonus. For example, Luke’s return to a burnt-out homestead and the Han Solo’s showdown in the cantina with a hired-gun monster are classic Western confrontations (the former appears to be directly inspired by the key motivational scene in “Nevada Smith”) which Lucas has intext. [“Nevada Smith" was a 1966 Western starring Steve McQueen.] One of the most priceless moments is Fisher’s reading of the line, “Good luck,” to Hamill just before they go swinging across a chasm on the Death Star. Lucas creates a romantic triangle between Luke, Han Solo and the haughty, bossy, indomitable Princess that seems perfectly resolved by not being resolved at all.

If the Princess ever chooses to share her favors, poetic justice seems to demand that she favor the heroes equally. Could this mischievous hint of a menage-a-trois in-the-making, which is about as racy as the byplay between Hope, Crosby and Lamour in the “Road” comedies, have been as responsible for the PG rating as the fighting, which is abundant but scarcely realistic? [Another reference you don’t hear a lot anymore. “Road to Singapore," “Road to Morocco" and five other similar titles were wildly popular (in the 1940s) comedies starring Bing Crosby, Bob Hope and Dorothy Lamour.]

If “Logan’s Run” and “King Kong” deserved last year’s Academy Awards for special effects, no honor under the sun is sufficient to recognize the contribution of people like John Dykstra and John Stears to “Star Wars.” One assumes that Steven Spielberg’s “Close Encounters of the third Kind,” scheduled for Christmas release will boast effects of comparable quality. The Academy might do well to revoke last year’s special effects prizes before conferring this year’s. [He was right. “Logan’s Run" was a sci-fi hit in 1976, but by the time “Star Wars" came around a year later, its effects looked painfully amateurish.]

The aerial dogfight Dykstra and Stears have helped Lucas perfect as his climactic piece de resistance looks more exciting than its antecedents in live-action war movies. It’s the most gorgeous stylized combat sequence since the underwater battle at the end of “Thunderball,” a project that won an Oscar for Stears. The final combustive image is particularly inspired: One’s melodramatic apprehensions for the good guys are dissolved in a lyrical shower of stars.

Parents who suffered dutifully through “Logan’s Run” in quest of a decent attraction for juveniles may now claim their reward. George Lucas has made the kind of sci-fi adventure movie you dream about finding, for your own pleasure as well as your kids’ pleasure.

Stockholders in 20th Century-Fox may be coming into another sort of reward. “Star Wars” is virtually certain of overwhelming popular and critical success. It has a real shot at approaching the phenomenal popularity of “Jaws,” and I wouldn’t be surprised to discover “Star Wars” in the runner-up position among modern hits before the year is out.

I know two market-playing movie nuts who placed orders with their brokers minutes after seeing the film. More and more the studios are riding on the ability of a handful of talented young filmmakers to deliver them from banality or bankruptcy in the clutch. In “Star Wars” George Lucas has supplied 20th Century-Fox with a new lease on life.

* * *

Arnold left The Washington Post in 1985; he wrote for The Washington Times from 1989 to 2009. In a 2005 retrospective, he named “Star Wars” one of the best movies of his reviewing career. So he stands by that rave, huh?

“It’s clearly what is known in the trade (or was) as a selling notice,” he says, “but I don’t believe I oversold the nature of the fun to be had.”

All those Old Hollywood influences he detected in this modern epic? No surprise they resonated with Arnold, a native Californian. “Lucas is a year younger than I, and I doubt if there was much difference between his boyhood moviegoing in Modesto and mine in Alameda and San Leandro.” He was glad to look back and see that he credited Alec Guinness with lending heft to the film; he regrets he didn’t cite the dynamic score by John Williams or the design work by illustrator Ralph McQuarrie. He hasn’t seen the new “Star Wars” yet “but plan to do so at the Uptown.”

[MIKA27]

I really enjoyed the Force awakens..

Yes its very similar to the first three episodes but then again, Episode V and VI were very similar to episode IV.

One thing for sure, as much as I love the originals, Lucas always added "corny" dialogue and characters, I mean Ewoks? Then in the prequels, Jar Jar binks. At least Abrhams strayed away from those...

As for the force awakens, if people think it's similar, to me, that's a great thing as from a fans perspective, that's what I've been hoping for, some continuity.

The new movies are/will lead up to bigger things. Kylo Ren is just the beginning, he will evolve and become a pretty formidable force. I do very much prefer Vader any day and always hoped they'd somehow make a movie based on just he and show a little more of his powers and what made him so feared. Episode IV started off strong, Vader entering the ship where the rebel alliance was, people fearing for their lives from this tall black masked figure. Ever wondered why? That's what I'd love to see more of.

Kylo Ren is a ***** IMO but I do know that the next couple movies will build him to a greater force. I also knew he was Hans son as I've followed alot of the books and sub plots in comics etc.

I suspect Rey is Lukes daughter (Not a spolier if no one surely knows)

On another thought, I'd love to see a prequel to Episode I, perhaps more on the Sith enigma, that would be brilliant.

[Ken Gargett]

I really enjoyed the Force awakens..

Yes its very similar to the first three episodes but then again, Episode V and VI were very similar to episode IV.

One thing for sure, as much as I love the originals, Lucas always added "corny" dialogue and characters, I mean Ewoks? Then in the prequels, Jar Jar binks. At least Abrhams strayed away from those...

As for the force awakens, if people think it's similar, to me, that's a great thing as from a fans perspective, that's what I've been hoping for, some continuity.

The new movies are/will lead up to bigger things. Kylo Ren is just the beginning, he will evolve and become a pretty formidable force. I do very much prefer Vader any day and always hoped they'd somehow make a movie based on just he and show a little more of his powers and what made him so feared. Episode IV started off strong, Vader entering the ship where the rebel alliance was, people fearing for their lives from this tall black masked figure. Ever wondered why? That's what I'd love to see more of.

Kylo Ren is a ***** IMO but I do know that the next couple movies will build him to a greater force. I also knew he was Hans son as I've followed alot of the books and sub plots in comics etc.

I suspect Rey is Lukes daughter (Not a spolier if no one surely knows)

On another thought, I'd love to see a prequel to Episode I, perhaps more on the Sith enigma, that would be brilliant.

i agree that it was a very enjoyable movie.

i would argue that V and VI were genuine sequels to IV (loved V and not so much VI), rather than 'similar'.

but to me, this was not 'similar'. it was a direct copy. even that, i could easily have copped without a problem if there had been some originality thrown in. if i was george lucas, i'd be suing.

how hard to throw in a few curves and new plot lines? your basic sitcom manages it. these guys could not. i have long been a fan of jj abrams but this feels like he phoned it in. sure, great fun but...

it feels a bit like they put so much into every aspect of this film to make it fabulous, except the plot. i'll see it again when it hits tv. and the next one? i'd need to be convinced it was very much improved in the plot or it can wait for tv.

oh, and in the ist of plot lines copied from IV, i forgot - we first find han and chewy trying to avoid bounty hunters/debt collectors so they can get back the millenium falcon and escape.

i'm sure if i thought about it more, there'd be others.

[Bill Hayes]

love your optimism in them focusing "on the new heroin".

more seriously, pretty much agreed.

i actually thought rey was the star by a mile (finn was seriously wishy washy - jar jar binks made human) but she has lived as a scavanger all her life and suddenly decides she has the force and can tell stormtroopers what to do? where did that come from? even luke had to train for ages. thought that a bit weak.

i gather that the stormtrooper who did drop his gun was daniel craig, who was doing bond next door and thought that this would be fun.

I think they held back why Rey has power because that may be the story behind the next film. Could she be related to Obi Wan Kanobie or Luke perhaps? She was waiting for her parents to return. We never found out who they were or what happened to them. But yes, her power seemed to come out of nowhere. It seems this film was a way to kick start a new story. Now, to see the film I've been waiting for - The Revenant. Hopefully next week.

[MIKA27]

I think they held back why Rey has power because that may be the story behind the next film. Could she be related to Obi Wan Kanobie or Luke perhaps? She was waiting for her parents to return. We never found out who they were or what happened to them. But yes, her power seemed to come out of nowhere. It seems this film was a way to kick start a new story. Now, to see the film I've been waiting for - The Revenant. Hopefully next week.

If memory serves me well,Han and Leia also have a daughter so the plot thickens. Rey could be Hans and Leias, Obi Wans and or Luke Skywalkers daughter... There you go Ken, a possible twist

[JackFNQ]

If memory serves me well,Han and Leia also have a daughter so the plot thickens. Rey could be Hans and Leias, Obi Wans and or Luke Skywalkers daughter... There you go Ken, a possible twist

Didn't you notice that her ears were pinned back behind her hair, yoda comes into play.

Covering makeup alot of she did, yet glowed tinge green in the night dark scenes, me thinks.

[Ken Gargett]

If memory serves me well,Han and Leia also have a daughter so the plot thickens. Rey could be Hans and Leias, Obi Wans and or Luke Skywalkers daughter... There you go Ken, a possible twist

seriously, this galaxy is worse than tasmania. everyone is related to everyone else.

i'm expecting burt reynolds in a canoe, next film.

[MIKA27]

seriously, this galaxy is worse than tasmania. everyone is related to everyone else.

i'm expecting burt reynolds in a canoe, next film.

I think Burt Reynolds will be one of the Jim Henson puppets, have you seen him lately!?

[Nrengle]

If memory serves me well,Han and Leia also have a daughter so the plot thickens. Rey could be Hans and Leias, Obi Wans and or Luke Skywalkers daughter... There you go Ken, a possible twist

In the expanded universe that is now considered Legends instead of canon they did have a daughter but she was the twin to their son Jacen Solo and her name was Jaina. They also had another son named Anakin too. And Luke and Mara Jade had a son named Ben.... Yes I've read all the books..... ?

[Hunter1974]

(Kylo) Ren is "Vader-lite".

Rey is the Luke stand-in girl.

I had the same initial reaction as you regarding what we might charitably call "excessive homage", but it cooled a bit. I need to see it another time to figure out if I accept it or not.

Agree with third best, overall.

I attribute its box office success with the favorable comparison to Lucas's second trilogy. People have been waiting 30 years for a good Star Wars sequel.

You mean Vader Ulta-lite ! Good movie was hoping for more.

[Diamondog]

Just saw it...if you asked me if I wanted my money back, I'd say, ya...