Uni

Not so. Actually, we'd probably do it very much like what we've got with EOTS here—a chronological ordering of either the film versions or the OST versions (depends on which fan is doing the "producing"), with a second side/disc for the alternates and other business. The musical consideration would be there, it would just be taken in measure with the cinematic considerations.

I don't know that I would go so far as to say his themes are ridiculously predictable. For me, it's mostly in the rest of a score's makeup. Setting aside his truly brilliant works (Star Trek: TMP, Patton, Rudy, among many others--and please, people, we don't need to spin off into a whole side debate on what qualifies as his "brilliant" works), I've found that many of his scores follow a certain paradigm. He always seems to tap into the central dramatic essence of a story and come up with at least one certifiably great cue that sums up that essence beautifully. In Explorers it was "The Construction"; In Medicine Man it was "The Trees"; in First Knight it was "Camelot Lives," and so on. But after seemingly exhausting his genius in that particular cue or two, the rest of the score is padded out with patterned music that just comes across as . . . well, filler. Steadily building progressions, general rhythmical backgrounds, repeating cadences and phrasings--all very recognizable and "Goldsmithy." (Sometimes, however, even his general underscoring business reached a level of erudite glory, in scores like Poltergeist, for example.)
Please don't misunderstand me, folks--I am not saying Goldsmith was a hack. I'm not exaggerating in the least when I apply the word "genius" to the man. I respect and value his work. I love what he did. But one of the standards this thread seems to be using to identify filler music is how often we skip those sorts of tracks. Bottom line for me: I rarely skip tracks in Williams' scores. I do a lot of skipping when it comes to Goldsmith.
- Uni

Very impressive. I'm amazed by the richness of the sound you were able to get from just two instruments.
I also liked the makeup of the video montage. The whole project was well-conceived and executed. Thanks for sharing!
- Uni

ROTFLMAO ROTFLMAO
Funniest thing I've read on the internet in weeks. Nice!

Well . . . there was that scene when E.T. cross-dressed, so you may be onto something there. . . .

Message movies have the inside track this year, so it could be an upset. . . .

Caught the theme from The Mission in a commercial. Actually . . . so far, the Oscar commercials are better than the Super Bowl commercials this year.

Nope. The only RLM I've watched is the Plinkett reviews, and you never get a look at any of them in those. And, in this case, it worked out for the best. Knowing would've spoiled the joke.
My favorite part was when, even as a "fanboy," he slumped down in disappointment as soon as he saw the new Sithsaber. Too funny.

So sad she couldn't pull through. If only it hadn't happened on the plane, she might've been in a hospital earlier, and things might've turned out differently.
 
At nineteen years of age, she played a person of authority with more gusto and pure cajones than most male actors did in those days (and still do, come to think of it). She was always older and smarter than her years. It's unfortunate the toll that her personal issues took on her, but she showed amazing character (and more cajones) by turning her experiences into words that others could share, understand, and relate to. 
 
So glad she got to do one more Star Wars film (and, from what I understand, there's plenty of footage of her for the next one as well). Even so, though, she's going to be missed. I was thinking this is similar in scope to the loss of Leonard Nimoy last year, but really, it's much closer to what losing James Horner was like—unexpected, and far sooner than should have been the case.
 

I did too—though admittedly not because they'd done such a great job in fleshing them out, but through my own emotional extension into their situation. I cared for them the same way I cared for the soldiers in Saving Private Ryan—not as solidly-built character studies, but as character types defined more by their actions and their situation than by their dialogue and backstory. I chose to connect with them, in other words. But I can't fault anyone who couldn't do the same. It's up to the director and writers (even more than the actors) to do that properly, and if other viewers had a hard time filling in the blanks with these people, I'm not going to blame them for that.
 
 
 
As I said in my response to Steef earlier, they apparently destroyed 2 Star Destroyers in Jedi—the same number they knocked off here—so I guess they do kill those huge ships. But I can easily see your point, and don't disagree with it: if it's that simple (in both cases) to take out these super-huge ships, the super-huge ships don't come off nearly so threatening . . . which (ironically) winds up taking away from the power of the opening shot of ANH, among other things.

Yeah, except . . . again, that's always been the case with Star Wars. While watching ANH a couple of weeks ago, at one point my wife—who also grew up with the franchise and is as much a fan as I am—said, "This is like watching a high school play!" Dialogue and acting have never been the highlights of these movies. Kasdan gave them what life they had (the prequels demonstrated how cringeworthy Lucas's efforts are without him), but ultimately even he only did so much. These movies have always represented the top of the 70s sci-fi heap, which is not exactly dramatic cinema at its finest. They're fun popcorn fare. When you try to wring higher purpose and quality out of them, they don't stand much chance of holding up.

I did too—though admittedly not because they'd done such a great job in fleshing them out, but through my own emotional extension into their situation. I cared for them the same way I cared for the soldiers in Saving Private Ryan—not as solidly-built character studies, but as character types defined more by their actions and their situation than by their dialogue and backstory. I chose to connect with them, in other words. But I can't fault anyone who couldn't do the same. It's up to the director and writers (even more than the actors) to do that properly, and if other viewers had a hard time filling in the blanks with these people, I'm not going to blame them for that.
 
 
 
As I said in my response to Steef earlier, they apparently destroyed 2 Star Destroyers in Jedi—the same number they knocked off here—so I guess they do kill those huge ships. But I can easily see your point, and don't disagree with it: if it's that simple (in both cases) to take out these super-huge ships, the super-huge ships don't come off nearly so threatening . . . which (ironically) winds up taking away from the power of the opening shot of ANH, among other things.

I did too—though admittedly not because they'd done such a great job in fleshing them out, but through my own emotional extension into their situation. I cared for them the same way I cared for the soldiers in Saving Private Ryan—not as solidly-built character studies, but as character types defined more by their actions and their situation than by their dialogue and backstory. I chose to connect with them, in other words. But I can't fault anyone who couldn't do the same. It's up to the director and writers (even more than the actors) to do that properly, and if other viewers had a hard time filling in the blanks with these people, I'm not going to blame them for that.
 
 
 
As I said in my response to Steef earlier, they apparently destroyed 2 Star Destroyers in Jedi—the same number they knocked off here—so I guess they do kill those huge ships. But I can easily see your point, and don't disagree with it: if it's that simple (in both cases) to take out these super-huge ships, the super-huge ships don't come off nearly so threatening . . . which (ironically) winds up taking away from the power of the opening shot of ANH, among other things.

Haven't been around much lately (too busy starting a new business), but after seeing R1 last night I knew I'd be back here today to talk about it. (Where else can I go...?)
 
I've read through everyone else's posts, and having seen anything surprising. I figured this one would provoke a lot of diverse reactions (just like TFA did). My reaction? The long and the short of it is that I loved this movie. It was a Star Wars film—in the classic, great sense—which means it was designed to provide a cinematic thrill, and not to stand up as a cinematic masterpiece. While no one would claim it did the latter, I felt it certainly lived up to the former. 
 
Ironically (and without any forethought or intention toward R1), we watched ANH a couple of weeks ago. It was the second time my 9-year-old daughter had seen it. I'm glad we did, because she went into this one with important details fresh in her mind. So did I—though there wasn't much chance I'd forget anything about the OT when it came down to it. I thought they did a great job setting up the story for ANH, and unlike some folks around here, I thought it was a story that deserved to be told. From that point of view, I thought they told it very well, too. This was SW from a very different point of view, not remembered through the gossamer veil of mythology but seen through the eyes of those who were in the trenches, fighting the battles that really made the Rebellion what it was. The dark, gritty nature of it fit the subject matter very well. It's one thing to see the Empire as the dark and evil co-equal of the legendary characters of light and good. It's another thing entirely to see it from the perspective of the common folk living under its relentless thumb. We've never really gotten a good look at that before, and it was about time we did.
 
I can understand why some people are criticizing the lack of deeper characterization here. It would've been nice to know a bit more about Jyn's missing years, why she was a prisoner in an Imperial labor camp, that sort of thing. But to a certain degree all that misses the point. We read biographies and watch documentaries about great historical figures who led the masses in conflicts like the first two World Wars, but we rarely learn much in detail about those who were on the front lines. The generals get the glory, but the grunts get the job done. That's how it's always been, and to shift that paradigm here would've felt somehow out-of-place. This was the Saving Private Ryan of the SW saga. We didn't know a lot about those guys either—hell, they didn't know a lot about each other, as evidenced in their pool to guess what their Captain had done before the war. They were joined by a common purpose, and that was enough both to give them an underpinning of character and elevate that character in our eyes.
 
It was the same here, and for me that served to fill in most of the gaps the shallow characterizations couldn't. That, and another factor that hasn't been mentioned yet, but made a powerful impact on me as the story unfolded: this was a story about rebels. Rebels rebel—not always just against the law, or against tyranny, but (quite often) against social norms, against morality, and against each other. Most of these people weren't just criminals in the eyes of the Empire, but would've been criminals in the days of the Old (or New) Republic as well. The fractured relationships between former military and political figures and the common rabble was made perfectly believable here . . . and I wound up more invested in the characters because they chose to rebel against the Empire and the Rebellion in a final attempt to legitimize themselves, if only in their own eyes. 
 
And frankly, I didn't need a ton of backstory or quirky quirks in order to take pleasure in watching Chirrut and Baze do their thing. I got the gist of it. There were times when the vagueness actually added to the effect. Was Chirrut Force-sensitive? Probably, but (unlike the prequels and most other galumphing failures) the movie doesn't tell us outright. It's much more interesting that we're left to guess, especially when Chirrut walks across the open space to the Master Switch and never gets hit by enemy fire. Luck? Typical stormtrooper's aim? Or . . . was the Force really with him, as he was with it, for those vital few moments? I don't know—and I'm better off not knowing.
 
For all these reasons, I felt for these characters, and was impacted by their deaths. This was a film about the sacrifices necessary to save the galaxy and raise Luke, Han, and Leia to the status of legends. Even if we didn't know everything about each of these people's lives . . . they each had lives, and considered them worth living, and in the end considered them worth giving for a greater cause. You could see it in their eyes, too, especially when they looked at one another. Even if it didn't matter to some members of the audience, it mattered to them, and that was enough for me.
 
Those are some of the big thought behind why I thought the movie worked. Here are some other, randomized inklings:
 
- I know we've come to expect great effects from this franchise, but damn. This may be the best-looking space battle movie of all time. And it was great to get another huge battle of that type in this saga. TFA didn't really come through with that. The Resistance attack on the Starkiller base did its due diligence, but didn't really blaze new ground. This one did, and big time. And there were other fantastic touches, too. Like the Star Destroyer hanging over the city of Jedha—a striking visual representation of the Empire's dominance. Great stuff.
 
- Same goes for the straight-up action sequences. Frankly, that's something they've been trying to get right again almost since the first movie back in '77. This felt like the first SW movie in a long time that I would've loved to play out as a kid on our school playground, particularly everything that happened on the ground (and in the tower) during the last battle sequence. (Anyone else notice how Disney made sure the climactic battle took place in Florida, so they could more easily weave it into the Disneyworld experience. . . ?)
 
- The Death Star used to seem pretty frightening for all its planet-destroying power. But somehow, it became even more frightening as a weapon that could wipe out an area the size of a small continent. Aside from Ben's lament, we couldn't really connect with all the lives lost on Alderaan aside from an abstract understanding. But creating an explosion that tears up that much real estate, sending a good portion of it all the way up into orbit . . . that touches on old nuclear fears, and that makes it more harrowing. All the effects involving the Death Star, from its construction to its appearance around hapless worlds, was masterful as well.
 
- I enjoyed almost every Easter egg they threw in as a connection to the OT. I was okay with the appearance of the cantina duo (though they could've managed something a bit less obvious, I think). I cheered outright at the sight of Red and Gold Leaders, which may have been the most sensible inclusion in the film, given that they're just days away from the attack on the Death Star. (If they could swing that, though, why couldn't they fit Biggs and Wedge in, too?) I also saw the nod-and-wink at the death of Red Five, leaving an opening for Luke to occupy. I knew we'd see C-3PO and R2, but I figured it would be in a much more appropriate place—at the end, aboard the blockade runner, not as a stupid throwaway back at the Yavin base. 
 
- Yes, Vader's scene at the end is pure awesome. I liked both his appearances, actually (and was thanking God that James Earl Jones is still around to give him his voice). Appropriate, without being overdone.
 
- I was fine with the other villain, Krennic. Just like this was a story about the lower class of freedom fighters, we got a somewhat lower class of villain. Not everyone can be a Darth Vader or Palpatine. How ridiculous would the Empire seem if every ranking officer were a supervillain?
 
- I give Gia's score a passing grade overall. He's no Williams, of course . . . but then, who is? He did all right with the Imperialish, militaryish stuff, especially in transitional shots between and in setting up scenes. I was a little confused as to why he didn't just fall back on the original themes more often, though. I mean, it's not like anyone (no one sensible, anyway) is going to charge him with plagiarism for using the Force and Rebel themes in appropriate moments, right? The canvas is already set. We didn't need a brand-new filmography for this one. Just go with what works. 
 
I will say, though, that the greatest musical choice came at the moment when the wreckage of the Star Destroyers hurtled down through the shield gate. When a lot of other composers would've blared a triumphant fanfare, Gia went quiet, almost reverent. It was almost as if it reflected a whisper that said, "We win." Gave me chills.
 
 
Not everything was perfect, of course. Far from it. I had my fair share of nitpicks, too:
 
- I'll side with most everyone when it comes to the first third or so of the movie. I may not need a lot of backstory, but please try to keep the proceedings at least halfway clear. The constant jumping around while juggling at least three separate story threads was very much not in keeping with classic SW style, which favors straightforward and clear storytelling. 
 
- No one else seems to have picked up on a rather obvious connection: Now we know who Supreme Leader Snoke really is. Turns out the shot just before the explosion of the Death Star in ANH is a feint. Grand Moff Tarkin survived, became Force-proficient, and later assumed control of the First Order and took on Kylo Ren as an apprentice. I mean, isn't it obvious? Snoke is just an appropriately older version of Tarkin (probably lost his hair escaping from the Death Star). Aside from that, they look exactly alike. I suppose one could argue that it could be because they're both badly-rendered CGI characters, but . . . I dunno, I'm fairly certain. . . .
 
No, I'm not really that stupid. It's my way of saying the valley called, and they still can't find their can. Tarkin's rendering, while a noble attempt, was still creepily inhuman, and that kind of thing has become too much of a distraction in movies that would do better without them. I could've handled the few seconds of Leia at the end, but tacked on to the Tarkin thing, it just annoyed me further. (On the other hand, I thought they did a much better job rendering Bail Organa. He seemed completely realistic. Completely lifeli—what? Jimmy Smits is still around? Oh. Sorry. Hard to tell anymore.)
 
- And speaking of Leia: yeah, that was another bad moment. The Leia Organa of ANH was a stiff-backed, strong-willed woman, not a grinning little girl. I agree that it's baffling how the movie ended so abruptly, and on such an off-note, when it would've been so easy to have them transmit the data to her ship (headed for a rendezvous with Obi-Wan Kenobi on Tatooine), and then, just before arriving there, as a Star Destroyer comes out of hyperspace on their heels, show her in just as brief a moment furrowing her brow and telling the crew to get ready for battle. Much more in keeping with both this movie and ANH.
 
- And on that note: I could've done with either an abrupt start or finish, but getting them both just made the director look ham-handed. This isn't rocket science.
 
- Forest Whittaker should no longer be allowed to appear in science fiction movies. Ever. He could've done his penance for Battlefield Earth here, but instead just doubled down on the same thing. Bizarre character that had no need to be bizarre, doing bizarre things that didn't need to be done and made no sense. For instance: what was with the scene where that creature "interrogates" the Imperial pilot? Why go through all that rigmarole, talking about how it has the effect of driving people crazy, and then not have it drive the guy crazy? Stupid.
 
 
It looks like my nitpicks outnumber my kudos, but that's really not the case. I spent most of the movie—and especially the last 45 minutes or so—with a fixed smile on my face, reveling in the Star Wars milieu, an activity I will never tire of experiencing, especially when it's done right. Overall, Rogue One did it right. I'm honestly at a toss-up as to whether I liked it better than TFA. It wasn't quite as epic, and didn't quite hit some of the higher notes that J.J. was able to pull off in his version (as he does so well). But it also didn't have any of the patently puerile silliness (like the Rathtars) that J.J. can never seem to resist tossing in, and managed to avoid any overwhelming plot or device dilemmas (like the total inconceivability of the Starkiller base). It was different, and as a different thing, it was in many ways better . . . but it was still different, and as a different thing, couldn't measure up in all the same ways. 
 
Whatever. I've already given it too much thought. I had great fun, and for that, this gets a solid 8 out of 10 from me.
 
 
 
You're wrong. Aside from the Executor slamming into the Death Star, we have seen one destroyed—or the beginning of its destruction, anyway. At the moment when Ackbar is actually telling the pilots to focus their attack on "that Super Star Destroyer," if you look in the background behind him, you'll see another Destroyer starting to explode from its middle section. (I'm surprised that I'm the only one who's mentioned that—and I can't believe I'm the only one who's ever seen it.)
 
 
 
Actually . . . that was one moment that didn't work for me, precisely because it looked exactly like it was made of Legos. It was so white, so sharp, so bright, that it wound up looking completely fake. The Destroyers in the OT always had that same air of slight dinginess that pervaded the whole look of the galaxy, which made them look more realistic. I didn't like the too-"clean" look of the Imperial ships in this movie.
 
 
 
I completely agree. I knew they were going to get the plans, and that they all had to die at the end . . . so why was I wearing out the edge of my seat? At one point, I openly smiled at the thought of how intense it was, and silently acknowledged the filmmakers' skill.
 
 
 
I figured they were aiming for the dish on the tower in order to stop the transmission immediately, knowing that it would also destroy the base collaterally. 
 
 
 
You could stop Vader's lightsaber with those cheekbones.
 
 
 
My wife asked the same thing. I reminded her they'd had enough time to transport the Rebel captives several miles away and keep them imprisoned for awhile—plenty of time for those two to saunter back to their ship and start heading for Tatooine.
 
 

Haven't been around much lately (too busy starting a new business), but after seeing R1 last night I knew I'd be back here today to talk about it. (Where else can I go...?)
 
I've read through everyone else's posts, and having seen anything surprising. I figured this one would provoke a lot of diverse reactions (just like TFA did). My reaction? The long and the short of it is that I loved this movie. It was a Star Wars film—in the classic, great sense—which means it was designed to provide a cinematic thrill, and not to stand up as a cinematic masterpiece. While no one would claim it did the latter, I felt it certainly lived up to the former. 
 
Ironically (and without any forethought or intention toward R1), we watched ANH a couple of weeks ago. It was the second time my 9-year-old daughter had seen it. I'm glad we did, because she went into this one with important details fresh in her mind. So did I—though there wasn't much chance I'd forget anything about the OT when it came down to it. I thought they did a great job setting up the story for ANH, and unlike some folks around here, I thought it was a story that deserved to be told. From that point of view, I thought they told it very well, too. This was SW from a very different point of view, not remembered through the gossamer veil of mythology but seen through the eyes of those who were in the trenches, fighting the battles that really made the Rebellion what it was. The dark, gritty nature of it fit the subject matter very well. It's one thing to see the Empire as the dark and evil co-equal of the legendary characters of light and good. It's another thing entirely to see it from the perspective of the common folk living under its relentless thumb. We've never really gotten a good look at that before, and it was about time we did.
 
I can understand why some people are criticizing the lack of deeper characterization here. It would've been nice to know a bit more about Jyn's missing years, why she was a prisoner in an Imperial labor camp, that sort of thing. But to a certain degree all that misses the point. We read biographies and watch documentaries about great historical figures who led the masses in conflicts like the first two World Wars, but we rarely learn much in detail about those who were on the front lines. The generals get the glory, but the grunts get the job done. That's how it's always been, and to shift that paradigm here would've felt somehow out-of-place. This was the Saving Private Ryan of the SW saga. We didn't know a lot about those guys either—hell, they didn't know a lot about each other, as evidenced in their pool to guess what their Captain had done before the war. They were joined by a common purpose, and that was enough both to give them an underpinning of character and elevate that character in our eyes.
 
It was the same here, and for me that served to fill in most of the gaps the shallow characterizations couldn't. That, and another factor that hasn't been mentioned yet, but made a powerful impact on me as the story unfolded: this was a story about rebels. Rebels rebel—not always just against the law, or against tyranny, but (quite often) against social norms, against morality, and against each other. Most of these people weren't just criminals in the eyes of the Empire, but would've been criminals in the days of the Old (or New) Republic as well. The fractured relationships between former military and political figures and the common rabble was made perfectly believable here . . . and I wound up more invested in the characters because they chose to rebel against the Empire and the Rebellion in a final attempt to legitimize themselves, if only in their own eyes. 
 
And frankly, I didn't need a ton of backstory or quirky quirks in order to take pleasure in watching Chirrut and Baze do their thing. I got the gist of it. There were times when the vagueness actually added to the effect. Was Chirrut Force-sensitive? Probably, but (unlike the prequels and most other galumphing failures) the movie doesn't tell us outright. It's much more interesting that we're left to guess, especially when Chirrut walks across the open space to the Master Switch and never gets hit by enemy fire. Luck? Typical stormtrooper's aim? Or . . . was the Force really with him, as he was with it, for those vital few moments? I don't know—and I'm better off not knowing.
 
For all these reasons, I felt for these characters, and was impacted by their deaths. This was a film about the sacrifices necessary to save the galaxy and raise Luke, Han, and Leia to the status of legends. Even if we didn't know everything about each of these people's lives . . . they each had lives, and considered them worth living, and in the end considered them worth giving for a greater cause. You could see it in their eyes, too, especially when they looked at one another. Even if it didn't matter to some members of the audience, it mattered to them, and that was enough for me.
 
Those are some of the big thought behind why I thought the movie worked. Here are some other, randomized inklings:
 
- I know we've come to expect great effects from this franchise, but damn. This may be the best-looking space battle movie of all time. And it was great to get another huge battle of that type in this saga. TFA didn't really come through with that. The Resistance attack on the Starkiller base did its due diligence, but didn't really blaze new ground. This one did, and big time. And there were other fantastic touches, too. Like the Star Destroyer hanging over the city of Jedha—a striking visual representation of the Empire's dominance. Great stuff.
 
- Same goes for the straight-up action sequences. Frankly, that's something they've been trying to get right again almost since the first movie back in '77. This felt like the first SW movie in a long time that I would've loved to play out as a kid on our school playground, particularly everything that happened on the ground (and in the tower) during the last battle sequence. (Anyone else notice how Disney made sure the climactic battle took place in Florida, so they could more easily weave it into the Disneyworld experience. . . ?)
 
- The Death Star used to seem pretty frightening for all its planet-destroying power. But somehow, it became even more frightening as a weapon that could wipe out an area the size of a small continent. Aside from Ben's lament, we couldn't really connect with all the lives lost on Alderaan aside from an abstract understanding. But creating an explosion that tears up that much real estate, sending a good portion of it all the way up into orbit . . . that touches on old nuclear fears, and that makes it more harrowing. All the effects involving the Death Star, from its construction to its appearance around hapless worlds, was masterful as well.
 
- I enjoyed almost every Easter egg they threw in as a connection to the OT. I was okay with the appearance of the cantina duo (though they could've managed something a bit less obvious, I think). I cheered outright at the sight of Red and Gold Leaders, which may have been the most sensible inclusion in the film, given that they're just days away from the attack on the Death Star. (If they could swing that, though, why couldn't they fit Biggs and Wedge in, too?) I also saw the nod-and-wink at the death of Red Five, leaving an opening for Luke to occupy. I knew we'd see C-3PO and R2, but I figured it would be in a much more appropriate place—at the end, aboard the blockade runner, not as a stupid throwaway back at the Yavin base. 
 
- Yes, Vader's scene at the end is pure awesome. I liked both his appearances, actually (and was thanking God that James Earl Jones is still around to give him his voice). Appropriate, without being overdone.
 
- I was fine with the other villain, Krennic. Just like this was a story about the lower class of freedom fighters, we got a somewhat lower class of villain. Not everyone can be a Darth Vader or Palpatine. How ridiculous would the Empire seem if every ranking officer were a supervillain?
 
- I give Gia's score a passing grade overall. He's no Williams, of course . . . but then, who is? He did all right with the Imperialish, militaryish stuff, especially in transitional shots between and in setting up scenes. I was a little confused as to why he didn't just fall back on the original themes more often, though. I mean, it's not like anyone (no one sensible, anyway) is going to charge him with plagiarism for using the Force and Rebel themes in appropriate moments, right? The canvas is already set. We didn't need a brand-new filmography for this one. Just go with what works. 
 
I will say, though, that the greatest musical choice came at the moment when the wreckage of the Star Destroyers hurtled down through the shield gate. When a lot of other composers would've blared a triumphant fanfare, Gia went quiet, almost reverent. It was almost as if it reflected a whisper that said, "We win." Gave me chills.
 
 
Not everything was perfect, of course. Far from it. I had my fair share of nitpicks, too:
 
- I'll side with most everyone when it comes to the first third or so of the movie. I may not need a lot of backstory, but please try to keep the proceedings at least halfway clear. The constant jumping around while juggling at least three separate story threads was very much not in keeping with classic SW style, which favors straightforward and clear storytelling. 
 
- No one else seems to have picked up on a rather obvious connection: Now we know who Supreme Leader Snoke really is. Turns out the shot just before the explosion of the Death Star in ANH is a feint. Grand Moff Tarkin survived, became Force-proficient, and later assumed control of the First Order and took on Kylo Ren as an apprentice. I mean, isn't it obvious? Snoke is just an appropriately older version of Tarkin (probably lost his hair escaping from the Death Star). Aside from that, they look exactly alike. I suppose one could argue that it could be because they're both badly-rendered CGI characters, but . . . I dunno, I'm fairly certain. . . .
 
No, I'm not really that stupid. It's my way of saying the valley called, and they still can't find their can. Tarkin's rendering, while a noble attempt, was still creepily inhuman, and that kind of thing has become too much of a distraction in movies that would do better without them. I could've handled the few seconds of Leia at the end, but tacked on to the Tarkin thing, it just annoyed me further. (On the other hand, I thought they did a much better job rendering Bail Organa. He seemed completely realistic. Completely lifeli—what? Jimmy Smits is still around? Oh. Sorry. Hard to tell anymore.)
 
- And speaking of Leia: yeah, that was another bad moment. The Leia Organa of ANH was a stiff-backed, strong-willed woman, not a grinning little girl. I agree that it's baffling how the movie ended so abruptly, and on such an off-note, when it would've been so easy to have them transmit the data to her ship (headed for a rendezvous with Obi-Wan Kenobi on Tatooine), and then, just before arriving there, as a Star Destroyer comes out of hyperspace on their heels, show her in just as brief a moment furrowing her brow and telling the crew to get ready for battle. Much more in keeping with both this movie and ANH.
 
- And on that note: I could've done with either an abrupt start or finish, but getting them both just made the director look ham-handed. This isn't rocket science.
 
- Forest Whittaker should no longer be allowed to appear in science fiction movies. Ever. He could've done his penance for Battlefield Earth here, but instead just doubled down on the same thing. Bizarre character that had no need to be bizarre, doing bizarre things that didn't need to be done and made no sense. For instance: what was with the scene where that creature "interrogates" the Imperial pilot? Why go through all that rigmarole, talking about how it has the effect of driving people crazy, and then not have it drive the guy crazy? Stupid.
 
 
It looks like my nitpicks outnumber my kudos, but that's really not the case. I spent most of the movie—and especially the last 45 minutes or so—with a fixed smile on my face, reveling in the Star Wars milieu, an activity I will never tire of experiencing, especially when it's done right. Overall, Rogue One did it right. I'm honestly at a toss-up as to whether I liked it better than TFA. It wasn't quite as epic, and didn't quite hit some of the higher notes that J.J. was able to pull off in his version (as he does so well). But it also didn't have any of the patently puerile silliness (like the Rathtars) that J.J. can never seem to resist tossing in, and managed to avoid any overwhelming plot or device dilemmas (like the total inconceivability of the Starkiller base). It was different, and as a different thing, it was in many ways better . . . but it was still different, and as a different thing, couldn't measure up in all the same ways. 
 
Whatever. I've already given it too much thought. I had great fun, and for that, this gets a solid 8 out of 10 from me.
 
 
 
You're wrong. Aside from the Executor slamming into the Death Star, we have seen one destroyed—or the beginning of its destruction, anyway. At the moment when Ackbar is actually telling the pilots to focus their attack on "that Super Star Destroyer," if you look in the background behind him, you'll see another Destroyer starting to explode from its middle section. (I'm surprised that I'm the only one who's mentioned that—and I can't believe I'm the only one who's ever seen it.)
 
 
 
Actually . . . that was one moment that didn't work for me, precisely because it looked exactly like it was made of Legos. It was so white, so sharp, so bright, that it wound up looking completely fake. The Destroyers in the OT always had that same air of slight dinginess that pervaded the whole look of the galaxy, which made them look more realistic. I didn't like the too-"clean" look of the Imperial ships in this movie.
 
 
 
I completely agree. I knew they were going to get the plans, and that they all had to die at the end . . . so why was I wearing out the edge of my seat? At one point, I openly smiled at the thought of how intense it was, and silently acknowledged the filmmakers' skill.
 
 
 
I figured they were aiming for the dish on the tower in order to stop the transmission immediately, knowing that it would also destroy the base collaterally. 
 
 
 
You could stop Vader's lightsaber with those cheekbones.
 
 
 
My wife asked the same thing. I reminded her they'd had enough time to transport the Rebel captives several miles away and keep them imprisoned for awhile—plenty of time for those two to saunter back to their ship and start heading for Tatooine.
 
 

1) Because he's hilarious.
2) Because his analysis is actually quite brilliant. In this review, for instance, the way he uses the ending of A New Hope as a prophetic device that foreshadows Lucas's own fall from his early ideals is like a final, unerring condemnation of everything the prequels represent.
I could do without the extra "Nadine" story garbage (thankfully there's a lot less in this one than the last), but the rest of it is gold. His perspective on character and story alone could be used to teach seminars on the most effective way to write and direct movies.
- Uni

It's been nearly a year since the 2015 tribute. People wanted more time to think through their choices, and they got it. 15 more people added their votes this time around, and some folks amended their lists. I included the lists from people who submitted last year but didn't resubmit this year (assuming they were just leaving things the way they were--I didn't change my list either). 
 
The list itself, however, did change, and in some significant and interesting ways. I'll point some of these features out, but first, let's get to the main event. Here it is, folks, the Official (Updated) JWFan James Horner Top 10 list:
 
1. Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan
2. The Land Before Time
3. The Rocketeer
4. Willow
5. Apollo 13
6. Braveheart
7. Titanic
8. Legends of the Fall
9. Krull
10. Star Trek III: The Search for Spock
 
The runners up:
 
11. Cocoon
12. Brainstorm
13. Sneakers
14. Aliens
15. The Mask of Zorro
16. Glory
17. Field of Dreams
18. An American Tail
19. Avatar
20. The Perfect Storm
 
And rounding off the top 25 are The New World, The Name of the Rose, The Legend of Zorro, A Beautiful Mind, and Balto.
 
Only four titles in the top 20 stayed fixed in place; not surprisingly, the biggest placeholder was Star Trek II, which took first again by an even larger margin than last time around. I doubt it'll ever get knocked from the top spot, even if we do this again 10 or 20 years down the line. 
 
So what about those changes? The most notable, I think, is that during the same year that it finally received a long-awaited, complete 2-CD release, Braveheart fell four places, from 2nd to 6th. The Land Before Time, which I considered a big sleeper last year, proved that it wasn't a sleeper at all by taking William Wallace's place. The Rocketeer did just as well, jumping four spots to knock Apollo 13 out of place . . . and it didn't need the help of its expanded set, either. Nearly all the votes were in before the new release hit the net (it also got the most total votes--30 in all). Willow took another step up as a Horner classic, and Titanic solidified its place by climbing three spots out of 10th place. Perhaps the biggest surprise is the newest member of the Top 10 list: Star Trek III, which replaced Cocoon. 
 
Ultimately, though, while there was some shuffling going on (especially on the 11-20 list), 24 of the top 25 titles were here last year. The Legend of Zorro got a boost to #23 (replacing The Spitfire Grill), but otherwise everything else is the same. I think the most honorable mention mentionable is The Pagemaster, which wound up being the beneficiary of the biggest change in fortunes. It earned only a single 10th-place vote last year for a measly 1 point; this year, it nearly made the list of 25, coming in just two points behind Balto (a 22-point improvement).
 
I'll post more specific metrics later.  

Oh . . . all right. It's only been up for a year. But then, I'm pretty busy right now, and I don't know if I can get this done before midnight here, so. . . .
 
Whatever the case, Steef needs to submit his votes. He's one of the ones we extended this poll for in the first place.
 
 
 
It is a good score, but I don't think the rules allow for voting up a score two times. (I suppose I could combine the two for a score of 7 . . . but then, why not just put it in 4th place?)

Saddened to hear this. Even more ticked that it seems to have been the result of a serious design flaw in the vehicle's transmission.
 
 
I dunno. The moment when Kirk tells him to put on a red shirt . . . and the his harrowed, silent reaction . . . that might prove to be a strange, even awkward, moment to sit through.

Well, that didn't last long....
 
Less than 24 hours to log your final votes, people. The final results of the final poll will be posted tomorrow--and I don't want to hear ANY whining from anyone that they didn't have enough time to finish their homework.

True, that. (Especially the latter bit.) I gotta say, though, that I'm a little worried myself. BB was a big personality around here. Made me smile a lot. Hate to think he might not be around anymore. . . .

I was thinking the same thing. BB's out for a little more than a week, they call in Tommy Lee Jones and his Marshals to look for him. Uni's gone three months, and it's, "Um . . . who did you say you were again. . . ?"

Film music.
Seriously. Any day of the week, pretty much any time of day. Which film music? Any of it. I don't subscribe to any notions of requisite moods or settings—although the right choice can sometimes enhance both of those elements, to be sure. But I can't imagine expending mental effort on making so specific a choice. I let the music take me where it's going, not the other way around.
Of course, even that gets its stimulation from variety. I don't think there's any single score I could listen to every single day for years and not eventually tire of it. (That's really what did in the Star Wars main title for me. Too many hearings dulled it for me, so that it's become probably my most-avoided piece of JW music over the last 10 or 15 years.) There are some that have shown remarkable durability—Superman, for instance—but I need a break from even the best of themes and scores after a while.
That's what made the advent of playlists and the shuffle option so magnificent. I used to have a set of 3x5 cards with lists of all my scores printed on them (this is back in the day when my collection was still solidly encamped in 2-figure totals). I knew most of the music so well that I could "play" it in my head at will. I would carry those cards and set of dice with me. I had a whole system set up to determine what results led to which scores. At odd moments, when I needed to occupy my mind with something, I would roll the dice to randomly select a score, and I would choose a piece to start replaying in my head. It was the closest thing I had back in those Stone-Age days to a shuffle option. I could put together randomly assembled lists on cassette or (eventually) CD, of course, but I was the one putting it together so I knew what the order would be, and eventually I'd learn the order anyway and it wouldn't work any more. I dreamed of a time when technology would do it for me. And like flight, space travel, and measles vaccination, one day my dreams became reality.
I do have certain playlists for certain activities or arenas—you can't write to distracting action music, and each major composer has his own collection of best-ofs—but for the most part, I let the collection go where it will and enjoy not knowing what's coming next. And it never gets old for me.

All right, folks. Strap yourselves in. I've been warming up for this for days. . . .
Some of you have seen me uncork some long posts here in the past; I believe this may be my longest ever. Since seeing the movie on Saturday, I’ve been processing it, and I’ve been writing this as I go. Bear in mind I’d put most of it this down before starting to read other people’s reactions in this thread and other places, so it’ll no doubt repeat some points others have made before. It’s also a self-contained assessment of the movie, and not done in response to anything I’ve read from anyone else. (That will come later. . . .)
Like so many others, I’ve been waiting for this movie in the high hopes that it would return the franchise to the place it belongs—a cinematic mythology, complete with larger-than-life (and often hard-to-swallow) characters and actions. People talk about the “magic” of Star Wars, and however you quantify or define that, there’s no question it existed in the OT . . . and no question it was completely lacking in the PT. Most of us just wanted that back. We’d take whatever else came along with it, warts and all, but just give us a whiff of that elusive quality that gave us so much joy as kids.
I had real faith in J.J.’s ability to pull it off. I enjoyed his Star Trek reboots—yes, warts and all—even if I don’t really give it anywhere near the credibility of the previously-established ST canon. The man knows how to make a good, fun movie, and that’s what Star Wars has always been, more than anything else. I figured he was the guy who could make this happen.
And y’know what? I was right.
TFA is just about everything I hoped it would be, and probably a little bit more. It’s one of those movies where there’s so much to like about it that the shortcomings (and there are indeed several) don’t make enough of an impact to turn things in a significantly negative direction. I know that with what follows I’m opening myself fully to the label of “fanboy” (an epithet I detest), but I see no reason to pretend I liked the movie less than I did just to stroke the egos of folks who hold themselves “above all that.”
There’s so much I want to touch on, and as usual I find it easier to lay them out as separate points rather than trying to fit them all into a smoothly-transitioning narrative essay. So this isn’t a review. It’s a stream-of-consciousness reflection.
Let’s kick it off with the positive or generally interesting stuff:
-  One of the biggest questions, naturally, was about the new cast. Could they bring some of that magic back? That’s a solid yes. I was able to buy into this story because of the skill the actors showed in portraying their characters. I wanted to know more about these people, and I wanted to see what was going to happen to them. That’s the entire point, isn’t it?

A few specifics on the new frontliners:
- John Boyega wound up winning me over. I was ambivalent about the character based on what I’d seen (in the couple of trailers I allowed myself to watch), but his desperation, his nervous energy, his willingness to let out a heartfelt whoop when things were going his way, all made him very likeable. I had the tiniest smidgen of a problem with the idea of a man who had been “programmed from birth” to be a soldier under a very specific regime suddenly growing a conscience and doing such a sudden turnabout, and then blossoming into the person he so quickly became. Again, I liked that person, but it’s a little hard to buy that someone in that situation would go from brainwashed Nazi to goofy, fidgety post-teen in so short a time.
- I really liked what we saw of Poe, though I wish we could’ve seen more. His line near the beginning, when facing his interrogator—“Do I talk first? Do you talk first? How does this work?”—sold me instantly. So did the buddy chemistry between him and Finn during their escape. When they saw each other again and felt the compulsion to embrace later in the film, it was a completely believable moment, even though in practical terms they’d only known each other in person for about half an hour. I can see how his disappearance for a fair length of time was necessary to the story (it was important for Finn’s character arc to think the man who’d engineered his escape had died in the attempt), and I’m satisfying myself that we’re going to get more of him in the next two films.
- I have yet to read a poor review of Daisy Ridley’s performance, and I hardly intend to break the streak. My biggest fear for her is that she’ll be marked by this franchise and have a hard time getting work after this, but that kind of thing is less likely in this day and age than it was back in the days of the OT. She makes the most of every moment she’s given, as the gangly, innocent youth too small for an X-Wing pilot’s helmet, as the excitable gal caught up in a new adventure, as the lonely, confused young woman waiting in vain for a return that’s never coming, as the frightened visionary shown a power she doesn’t understand, and as the courageous heroine who makes a conscious choice to take hold of that power and use it for the benefit of herself and her friends. It’s a breakout performance.

Also, I did as much spoiler-avoidance as possible heading into this, because I love seeing movies blind. I didn’t even watch all of the trailers, because I know how my mind works, and I knew I wouldn’t have been able to resist speculation. This happened to some degree anyway, and I now feel a sense of gratitude toward the promotional team for understanding how people like me think and deliberately throwing in some misdirection. I’d seen the shot of Finn holding the lightsaber, so I just naturally figured he was going to be the new Jedi-dude in this one. I hadn’t allowed my brain to even move in the direction of Rey being the one who was strong with the Force, so as the movie progressed and more hints of this were revealed, I was very pleasantly surprised to find that she, not Finn, would be The One. Her gradual evolution toward an understanding of her gifts was done very well, and added a level of enjoyment I hadn’t expected at all.

[On that note, however . . . I desperately hope she is NOT related to anyone we already know. If she turns out to be a daughter of Han and Leia or (worse still) Luke, I’ll be sorely disappointed. We already have enough family fun going on in the galaxy. The thing with Ben Solo worked, but another iteration would severely cross the line into cliché, especially in this universe.]
- Adam Driver hit just about all the right notes as well, given that he was handed what could be the most difficult task in the movie—creating a movie villain somewhat along the lines of a Darth Vader without being Darth Vader. And the result was excellent. Instead of the huge, dark, overbearingly evil presence of Vader we got used to in ANH and TESB, we get a smaller, darkish, somewhat evil presence who certainly possesses strength and power but brings other elements along with it. Petulance. Conflict. Instability—not because he’s insane, but simply because he’s still a child in many ways. This is Anakin as he never was, and, in a sense, Vader as we never saw him, too. The idea that the character of Anakin, with all his fits and whining starts, could seamlessly transition into the stolid and immovable form of Vader was one of the least believable aspects of the PT. Here we get the missing piece filled in, and I found it fascinating . . . and funny, and compelling, and understandable, too. And the idea of a character being tempted to the light side is even more interesting. The pull always seems to be going the other way, doesn’t it? (And not just in Star Wars.) I knew Kylo Ren would be someone significant to the classic story; as long as it didn’t turn out to be Luke (or Jar-Jar, of course), I was okay with that. I wasn’t expecting it to be Han and Leia’s boy, but it was a great choice and made for a much more believable situation—maybe one that you’d have to be a parent to fully understand.
- As for those returning from the OT, the character reveals—all but one, that is—were pretty awesome across the board. My favorite was the Falcon, something I honestly didn’t see coming in that moment. (If Rey had said “That one’s a piece of junk!” we would’ve known too soon. Again, J.J. knows how to play these things.) Han’s and Chewie’s was spoiled a bit by the trailer, but it still was fun. Threepio did his usual thing, without making us sit through an entire movie of it, and that was nice. Leia’s fell just a little flat . . . but then, so did she, at least for me. But I was expecting that to some degree. The years have not been kind to Carrie Fisher, and I went in with pretty low expectations. I think J.J. found a way to get the best he could from her, and there were a couple of nice glimpses of the Alderaanian princess in there, but I don’t personally think she could’ve done much more than she did. (I loved her “And don’t say the Death Star!” line.)
- On that subject: The one prediction I allowed myself for this movie was that Luke wouldn’t be revealed until the end, or near the end. I thought he might intercede at some point, maybe during the lightsaber battle, but more likely he would suddenly show up at Resistance HQ with some dire report of a new darkness arising somewhere in the galaxy. I wasn’t expecting the way it actually turned out, but it worked. It’s just this side of a cliffhanger, because it leaves you desperate to know what happens in the conversation that follows. (Hamill must’ve had a ball at the read-through, huh?)
- The effects were simply amazing. There were only a few noticeable cracks throughout (more on those later). But they weren’t just great in their realization, they were great in their application. J.J. understood that the advances in technology would allow him to do things that the OT simply couldn’t pull off, and I loved how he layered them into the setting and story so seamlessly. A few instances: Rey pushing the Falcon over belly-up so Finn could take out the TIE Fighter. The effect of repulsorlifts on water. The aerial battles made to look like real dogfights, not just video games. TIE Fighers emerging from the flames of a setting sun (soooooo cool). Lots of others as well.
And one more thing I’ve really grown to like about J.J.: his love of scale. We knew, on a cerebral level, that the Death Star was the size of a “small moon,” but aside from a shot or two (such as the Falcon pulling into the docking bay), we never really got a sense of what that meant. That the “forest moon” of Endor dwarfed the second Death Star—which was allegedly bigger than the first—made things even more confusing. I’d seen the shot of the Starkiller (the name’s another nice nod to the story’s legacy that preceded ALL of the movies) in the promotional material, so I knew there was some sort of new superbig-planet-destroyer in the works, but I had no idea at the start of the scene when the armies of the First Order are gathered on the surface of that snowy planet that they were actually standing on the Starkiller itself. And then to see them turn and watch the primary weapon lighting up the horizon . . . that was just pure cool. It was really the first time we got the sense of how big these things are. I think J.J. delights in the hugeness of all this (which, no doubt, was originally inspired by things like Star Destroyers and the Death Star), and being a fan of this kind of hugeness myself, I never mind joining in his delight and wonder along the way.
- There are so many things J.J. got right that Lucas missed altogether in his prequelistic attempts, but two stand tall above everything else. First, J.J. understands one of the shortest, but most important, rules about storytelling: Show, don’t tell. At every opportunity, use the actors’ performances and details of setting and timing to explain what we need to know. Do NOT use exposition if it can be avoided by any means fair or foul. The PT was an excruciating workshop in immersive exposition because Lucas didn’t trust his audience to be able to read even the simplest of subtleties, and therefore felt it necessary to have every character say every damn thing that came to mind concerning their current situation, the history of their situation, the meaning behind their situation, why their situation was good or bad or bewildering, what might happen in their situation if they took steps to change their situation, ad nauseam until we were all overwhelmed with nauseam.
A good director knows better, and J.J. is a good director. Take, for instance, the scene in which Kylo Ren tries to extract the information out of Rey’s mind. J.J.’s already set up the scene by having him do the same to Poe earlier, demonstrating that it’s a fairly easy process given Ren’s skills. This time, though, it’s not so easy . . . but instead of the running commentary we would’ve been subjected to under Lucas’s direction, these two go at it for a good couple of minutes without saying a word—and yet you can see every beat of the conflict as it happens: the growing resistance in Rey’s face, the increasing struggle in Ren’s, and the point when the flow reverses, even though we still had no confirmation at that point of Rey’s gifting in the Force. It’s a moment of revelation for the audience—and it’s beautifully accomplished, because J.J. invited us simply to sit in and learn everything for ourselves, rather than having a narrator whisper the significance of everything into our ears.
This worked on the larger level as well, concerning the current state of the galaxy, and some of its characters. J.J. spends almost no time explaining anything about the First Order (aside from the obligatory mention in the opening crawl), the demeanor of the New Republic, the genesis of the Resistance, or people like Snoke and the FO Admiral (don’t remember his name right off) and others who are now on the scene. He sticks to the ANH approach of starting things off in the middle of the story without succumbing to the temptation of having characters talk to one another about stuff they’re all aware of already just so we can catch up (the textbook definition of “exposition”). It’s been 30 years since the victory at Endor. Stuff has happened. We knew it would. We don’t need to hear about all of it. I actually enjoyed that J.J. stuck small details in—Threepio’s red arm, for instance—without expounding on how it all got there. It’s a simple and very effective way of showing, not telling that a lot of water has passed under the bridge since we last visited this galaxy far, far away, and we don’t have to know the story behind every story to know some story has happened.
- The second—and even more important (in my mind)—way that J.J. outdid Lucas boils down to a single word: passion. It’s amazing what we in the audience can be made to believe once we’re convinced the characters we’re watching believe it, right down to their core. Intensity of performance can cover a multitude of sins, and draw us into a story we might otherwise view with a fair amount of skepticism. The PT was altogether bereft of authentic passion; what little they attempted to summon at times was so badly misplayed that it undermined the weak effort to begin with. I could list a thousand examples, but one is just as good as any other: When Anakin informs Mace Windu that he believes Palpatine is a Sith Lord, Windu responds (in the same wooden delivery Jackson favored throughout), “A. Sith. Lord?” “Yup.” “Then we must move quickly if the Jedi Order is to survive.” He says this in the same tone he might’ve used if he were informing Anakin that he’s just made the switch to decaffeinated coffee . . . and then the two of them “move quickly” off the screen at a slow walking pace. The Jedi Order is facing extinction. The fate of the galaxy hangs in the balance. Yet for all their stated rush and resolve, they head off like they’re going to check their email. There was never any sense of urgency in these films, and they suffered horribly as a result.
Not so here. The intensity, urgency, and passion the characters portray are unmistakable. Think of Finn and Poe in the TIE Fighter, Finn and Rey in the Falcon, Finn watching Poe flying his X-Wing during the battle on [whatever planet that was], Rey reacting to . . . pretty much everything, and even Kylo Ren struggling against the temptation to come back to the light. These people didn’t discuss their passion with one another, as Anakin did with Padme, to no good end for any of us. They put it out there on screen with palpable intensity, and it made you root for them as a result.
That translated directly into the action in several places, perhaps most notably in the lightsaber duels. I had a very brief issue with someone (Finn) who wasn’t trained in the Force being able to face off against various enemies using a lightsaber. Then I realized how short-sighted I was being. A lightsaber is a weapon, in the end not really all that different than any other. Someone who’s able to tap into a mystical power that aids their actions might demonstrate a stronger ability with it, but a trained soldier can pick up a sword and hold his own in a normal hack-and-slash battle. It’s likely he could even do fairly well against someone with that mystical power, at least for a few minutes, parrying and swinging the way he’d been taught with a regular weapon. So I was able to buy into the duels here, in part because of that train of thought, but even more because they were alive with passion. All the players fought with a mix of visible anger, desperation, and vengeance. No overchoreographed dances, lacking any sign of feelings, here. These engagements recalled Luke’s outburst against Vader in ROTJ, and were gripping to watch as a result.
- I thought they inserted just enough cute OT references to make things fun without becoming an annoyance, and for the most part they were a lot of fun. It’s kind of an obligatory thing with a movie like this, so it’s inevitable, but they can be done in a bad way and eventually become a headache. They all worked well enough here, I think. The one that might have crossed the line just barely was Finn’s discovery of the remote in the Falcon. Not that he found it—that would’ve been fine, and just as fun—but his reaction to it. Why that look? It wasn’t necessary, and didn’t make sense (it’s just one more piece of junk on an old freighter). 
- Then, of course, there’s the score. I won’t say much on this, because it’ll be handled in more depth and much better in other places, but it worked better for me than the PT scores did, for two reasons. First, the latter works were dragged down by the material that inspired them, and to which they were inevitably linked. Also, though, I don’t think I realized back in those days that the new scores weren’t just competing against the quality of the OT scores; they were competing against their familiarity. The new just didn’t quite sound like the old, which wasn’t very fair to the new, because what could? This time I was prepared for that, and the music made a much better impression. The frequent (and well-placed) references to the OT material didn’t hurt, but I enjoyed the new stuff as well—particularly Rey’s theme, which is the best JW’s given us in years. It beautifully summarizes all the varied elements of the heroine’s character. It’s the theme of a tinkerer, but also of a wonderer, and an adventurer, and—in the end—of a Jedi in the making. Great stuff.
- I think it’s time to talk about what will no doubt be a central point of discussion (particularly here): the way this movie pretty much pulls a redo of the original Star Wars movie (with a few elements of TESB and ROTJ thrown in for good measure). Lessee here: it starts with a droid with secret intelligence joining up with a Force-gifted hero on a desert planet before heading into space on a certain Corellian freighter in order to join up with the revolution against a domineering dictatorship bent on absolute control that uses an ultimate weapon that destroys planets but contains a small design flaw that allows someone flying a single fighter to destroy it and win the day. If you blinked during the movie, you might miss the subtle parallels hidden in there, but yeah . . . this was as close to a reboot as you could get without actually restarting the computer. Thing is, I found myself not minding so much as I was watching it. Which was a little bewildering. My left brain was saying, You do realize this is exactly what you’ve seen before, right? My right brain answered, Shut up. This is fun! It wasn’t quite that simple though, and it made for an interesting puzzle . . . one I had fortunately solved by the end of the movie to the satisfaction of both sides of my brain.
I think the reason the movie was such a blast, that it was able to bring that magic back so easily, is precisely because it reflected the story of the earlier films so precisely. But it wasn’t just a rehash of the same material; in a way, it was a translation of it. It was as if J.J. was putting the original story through a process that effectively updated it and turned it into what Star Wars would’ve been like if it had first been made in today’s Hollywood, like giving us a straight-up “that was then, this is now” comparison of the same story. He was able to recreate the feel of the OT while giving it the look and pacing of a contemporary sci-fi action flick. There’s no way to know now, of course, but I honestly think if they’d gone in a completely different direction with this that it would’ve felt more like the PT: a story in a different place and time that happened to have X-Wings and TIE Fighters in it, but that wasn’t really and truly a Star Wars movie. In a very real sense, this movie isn’t much more than a prelude to the other two. It’s just setting everything up, giving us the “Our Story So Far” introduction to the larger epic to come. It did it in a great, engaging, involving way, but that’s all it really is—and, ultimately, that’s all ANH ever was, too. It was a very simple story that introduced us to a setting and characters that would be realized on a much broader and more dramatic level in the movies that followed. Nothing complicated . . . but a whole lotta fun to watch.
So I made my peace with that, and let it be—with one caveat: that grace extends to precisely one film. We’ve had our translation, we understand where we are compared to where we were, and now it’s time to move onward and upward. If the next movie shows us Luke taking Rey to a swampier area of the Jedi Temple world in order to train her in the Force while Finn and Chewie attempt to escape the vengeance First Order by flying the Falcon into an asteroid field, I will not be so forgiving. I honestly have no worries about that at this point, though. And a lot of that comes from knowing J.J. won’t be directing any more movies. I think he did a great job with what he was given . . . but just as it worked so well for the OT, I think multiple directors and approaches will benefit this trilogy as well.
 
I might’ve missed a few things, but that’s an overall impression of what I thought worked in the movie. I did not view it through a rainbow-colored lens with a completely uncritical mind, though. And there were a few things that not only didn’t work well, but didn’t work at all for me. For the sake of balance:
- Easily the worst, most misplayed and unforced error on the parts of J.J. and his crew was the jaw-dropping awfulness of Snoke. Starting with that name—I know SW carries a reputation for weird and slightly off-kilter names, but could they possibly have found a less menacing moniker than this?—and following all the way through the execution and “performance” of the character, this was a galactic failure (pun intended). In a movie that boasted a return to practical effects, and did so well pulling it off, a completely CGI character comes off in much the same way a theremin solo in every piece of the score would’ve. He looked nothing so much as a half-assed guest appearance from a Pixar movie. And having an animated character shown only through a hologram doubled down on the silliness. (On that note . . . how is it he was able to “hide” his face in the shadows of the room for dramatic effect if he’s a projection? Dumb. Just dumb.) After the presence of Palpatine, this is such a poor substitute that I can only marvel at J.J.’s misfire here. What’s the point? Why not just have the bad guys in this movie refer to the Supreme Leader who’s out there somewhere, and keep us guessing as to how terrible His Terribleness must be? Of course, that would’ve been a buildup that this character never would’ve lived up to in his present state, but it could be hoped that they would come to their senses before the release of Ep. VIII. It’s just too bad they didn’t find wisdom before now.
- The Rathtars. That’s the single FX sequence too far, the square peg, the one thing that didn’t fit into this movie at all. They were badly rendered, groan-inducing, and unnecessary to story. Han and Chewie were following up on a lead in their search for the Falcon, which is why they were “coincidentally” in the Jakku system. They had a freighter that apparently had a tractor beam, so they could grab their ship once they found it. Even their run-in with the other pirates who’d been pursuing them was all right (Han’s hesitation, followed by the line, “What was the second time?” was subtly one of his funniest moments in the movie). But the creature-feature that followed fell on its face. It would’ve been so much better to see the characters outsmart their adversaries in this scene and escape in a more conventional way.
- I said earlier that most every OT character reveal was awesome, except one. That “one” was R2-D2. What a baffling waste. The initial moment of reveal was so random as to disappoint right from the start. BB-8 just rolls up and pulls the blanket off of him. Why? No reason given. He just does it because it has to be done. It’s a (badly) scripted moment. (How much better would it have been, for instance, if BB-8 catches a glint of metal as he passes a dark closet, stops, rolls back, and finds Artoo sitting neglected in a corner? Makes much more sense, and gives us a better feel for his latent state than the idea that his friends threw a blanket over him.) And he serves no other purpose in the movie than to wake up suddenly at the end—again, for no good reason whatsoever—and provide the detail they’ve been missing through the whole story. It’s not quite a deus ex machina, but when the machina randomly activates itself solely to show everyone where their ex-deus is, it pretty much amounts to the same thing, doesn’t it?
- I mentioned earlier that I appreciate J.J.’s sense of scale. However, it does go a bit too far at times. The boy sure does like showing us planets being destroyed from the perspective of those standing on nearby planets, doesn’t he? This is a problem in this case for a couple of reasons. First, it’s a retread from ST (and this time it’s not a good one). Second . . . it requires that the world they’re on, where they find Maz and the lightsaber ‘n’ all, is not only in the same system as Coruscant, but must also be one of its moons. That’s the only way they’d be close enough to see the destruction. But the shot doesn’t just pulverize Coruscant, it takes out several other planets/moons in the vicinity as well. So why didn’t Maz’s planet/moon get the same treatment? Again, if they’re close enough to see from ground level, they’re not much further away than our own moon—and there’s no reason to think the First Order would’ve been so discriminating when doling out that kind of destruction. Maz’s planet would’ve been in the same region as the other worlds that got taken out, and would’ve suffered the same fate.
- So just before Rey can deliver the killing blow to Ren, the ground just happens to break apart in a line perpendicular to the way they’re facing each other, and then collapses in on itself and pulls apart violently without upheaving the ground they’re each standing on, so that they’re now separated but able to see each other across this new divide? Really? C’mooooonnnnn. . . .
 
There were probably a few other issues, but none of these were enough to detract from the overall experience of the movie. And that’s what made it so great, the thing that made the OT movies so great in their own time: they were an experience. Not necessarily great plots executed with sizzling deftness, or marvels of cinematography and screenwriting. They were phenomenal experiences, and that’s what this movie was. It felt like a Star Wars movie, and that’s really all I was hoping for.
I have one more subject to discuss (more like process aloud) here. It’s the most important element in the movie, a huge part of what made it work and what made it so deeply affecting for me personally: Harrison Ford as Han Solo. Let’s start back a good 20 years ago, long before KOTCS and the prequels were visited upon us. Ford did a T.V. interview in which he was asked whether he would ever consider reprising his role as Han Solo. He made a diplomatically sour face and said it wasn’t likely, because “there isn’t much character there.” That made sense to me; by the time ROTJ rolled around, he was forced to mold the smuggler character into a happier, campier, responsible-leader role, and you can tell by his overacting and forced line readings it didn’t suit him well. He was then asked whether he’d go back to being Indy. His immediate response: “In a New York minute.” He said they were just waiting for everyone’s schedules to line up so they could do another one.
Fast forward ten years or so. Everyone’s schedules lined up, and they did another one. And you know what the results were. Ironically, Ford’s performance in KOTCS wound up being just as stilted and forced as it had been in ROTJ. Sadly, and in his own words, there just wasn’t much character there. It didn’t help that the story—provided by our old buddy George Lucas!—sucked big time, but it wasn’t just that. His age was so noticeable, and so . . . uncomfortable. It just wasn’t the same any more, and it was awkward and discouraging to have to watch the result.
So fast forward another ten years or so. Now Ford’s finally been talked into reprising the role he spurned for so long. He’s another ten years older, which should make it that much more uncomfortable, right? Which leads to the real miracle here, one we probably could only realize through having to endure KOTCS, the PT, and everything else in the years between: Harrison Ford is remarkable in this movie. His age here somehow isn’t the handicap it was in KOTCS, even though the nerfherder is that much scruffier now than he would’ve been a decade ago.  He manages to overcome what was his biggest undermining factor in KOTCS by proving himself wrong: there IS character here after all. Ford brings that character back and uncannily plays exactly the way he did in the first film and TESB, so effectively that you know he’s Han Solo. I mean, really, Ford is not a wide-range kind of actor; he’s always playing some subtle variation of himself onscreen, so that even his “stretches” (as in, say, Regarding Henry) are only a small step further away from his own personality. But he staked his claim on his career with Han before he became Indy, and the two are different enough to distinguish as onscreen personas. Now he’s now come full circle by successfully reprising the part he used to sneer at, after coming up short in the role he tended to favor. Interesting how life works sometimes. . . .
And it’s how he re-established Solo as a vital character that I loved most. I was thinking he would be something of a relic in this movie, occupying space as a callback to the OT but not making a big difference in the bigger picture. But not only did he play a significant part in the unfolding story, he became its anchor and identity to a larger degree than I would’ve dreamed. I didn’t just see a guy collecting a paycheck by giving the audience his scruffy mug one last time. I saw (and recognized) the man who started so long ago as a cynical, atheistic rogue, who eventually learned to value things that didn’t benefit himself alone, who grew into a reluctant leader in love with another leader, whose life at one point was nearly taken away but returned by the friends he came to respect and admire more than himself. We last saw him as he prepared to enter the new life he’d earned after all his efforts. We now find him on the run from that life, escaping back into the territory that was once so familiar and comfortable to him (but with only marginal success). As much as he wants to hide in the past because the present has become so painful, however, he’s a different man than the one who used to hang out in the cantina on Tatooine. He’s not quite as cynical, and he doesn’t even attempt to remain the atheist. He’s seen firsthand what the Force can do—the good, and the very, very bad—and he can’t deny the truth of it. He can avoid Leia, because he thinks she doesn’t want to see him; but when he learns Luke might be in trouble, he can’t walk away.
He shows that Han Solo had more faces than perhaps any of us thought, and after a lifetime he’s able to interchange them now with relative, if reluctant, ease: the wisecracking smuggler, the dashing but improvising hero, the charming heartbreaker, the responsible leader, and so on. He even adds a couple more for good measure, the space-savvy mentor and the devastated but still-loving father. There’s plenty of character here indeed, and Ford throws it all out there in one more unabashed turn in the role that made him a megastar. It was a great thing to watch, and as I said, it gave the film the centerpiece it needed to stay on course.
At one point a while back, I considered it a very good possibility that he would be killed off in this movie, possibly even very early in the going. It was another interview that made me think otherwise. He told USAToday last week that he used to always believe his character would die in ROTJ, since a bold sacrifice on his part would bring an end to a fantastically dramatic arc, considering where Solo began. I figured he wouldn’t be talking that way if he were on the chopping block in this movie. It would be giving too much away, right? I don’t know if that was another deliberate attempt at misdirection, but I felt reasonably secure that he would make it at least through TFA.
When he saw his son, and called out his name (“Ben”—no greater proof that he had long since come to believe in the power and importance of the Force), then headed out onto the walkway, I thought, No. Really? They’re gonna do it? I figured maybe this was yet ANOTHER bit of misdirection. There was a good chance he was about to join Luke in the Lost Appendage Club, but I still thought he’d walk away from this. In the end, my spoiler avoidance combined with my inherent naiveté allowed me to experience what came next with at least some sense of surprise (though still not that much, unfortunately). But I was at least able to comprehend the shock they wanted me to feel, and that was enough. Chewie’s howl pierced me. The moment when he reached up and touched his son’s face—almost grateful, in a sense, to be released from all of this—was moving as well. Like I said, it wasn’t completely unexpected, but it wasn’t easy to watch.
What did surprise me is how it lingered with me after the movie was over. I’ve written extensively in the past on this board about my experience seeing Empire Strikes Back for the first time during its opening weekend. As an boy of a mere eight years, I really struggled with the bittersweetness of the thing. I mean, the movie was friggin’ awesome, but it introduced me to things I’d never experienced before. In my mind, it was unheard of for an epic adventure movie like that to end without complete resolution. To have witnessed the amputation of Luke’s hand, the revelation of his relationship with the galaxy’s biggest villain, and to see another bad guy get away with another one of my heroes in his grip was entirely new ground to me. I couldn’t quite wrap my head around it.
But hey, that was 35 years ago. I was eight then. Now I’m . . . older (stop calculating in your mind, dammit), and I’ve seen a lot more epic dramas with many more difficult resolutions to cope with than what TESB gave us. Why should this have so profound an effect on me?
It took me a while, but I finally hit on it: just like that eight-year-old in the theater, I was dealing with something I’ve never experienced before.
I first saw SW when I was 5. So it’s literally one of the earliest cinematic experiences of my life (that I can still remember, anyway). The story’s been with me all that time . . . and so have the characters. When we used to play Star Wars on the school playground (on that perfect wooden representation of the interior of the Death Star!), we all fought over the chance to be Han. We liked Luke ‘n’ all, but it was one thing to be the boyish hero; it was something else altogether to get to be the cool guy. Han was where it was at, and even at that age, everyone knew it. We wanted to save the princess, have a Wookie for a partner, and fly the Millenium Falcon off to the far corners of the galaxy.
So this is literally the first time I’ve witnessed the screen death of a hero that’s been in my lexicon literally my entire life. It was an odd thing to deal with emotionally, but it only gave me that much more appreciation for the tapestry this mythology has woven in our modern culture.
Now, that’s not to say I’m battling depression now or anything. It was an effective screen death that meant something to me beyond just this movie. And again, it’s a completely unique event brought to me by J.J. and friends, and one more thing that made this movie something special.
So I’m giving it a full five stars. It’s the first SW movie to exceed in quality one of the OT films (ROTJ, which was incredible when I was eleven but has diminished in the years since). Even with its flaws, this is an authentically great movie.
Why? One more thing I remember from those early moviegoing days: Star Wars was always best as a Saturday matinee, seen during the afternoon so you could spend the rest of the day and evening dreaming of adventures in distant galaxies. And I still recall how it felt, every time, like I’d literally left this planet for a couple of hours and visited the far end of the universe. I always left the theater feeling like I’d been through something, and life was just a little bit different on the other side. It lingered with me. For all the nice things I can say about Star Wars: The Force Awakens, this is the highest praise I can think to offer: it lingered with me. I felt like I’d left Earth for a couple of hours. Life was just a little different on the other side.
So does that make me a “fanboy?”
Maybe.
If this is the payoff, I think can live with that.

Bullshit. You can be mine!