Star Wars Episode 7: A New Hope (Spoilers)

I got around to seeing the new Star Wars. Thoughts and feelings below.



The new design of the storm troopers was sleek. The opening shot with the First Order’s ship eclipsing Jakku was neat. John Boyega’s Finn stole this movie and gives me some hope for the future of this franchise. There were complaints about having a black storm trooper before this movie came out. I never thought storm troopers were one race. I’d assume there were black people in that universe. Eventually, one of them would want to be a storm trooper or be forced into being one.

I know for a fact that J.J. Abrams wanted these new Star Wars films to be more diverse. He mentioned it in interviews before Episode 7 came out. John Boyega as Finn is the good kind of diversity. They made a new character, cast a good actor, and wrote him well. There’s the other kind of diversity where they change old character’s races. An example of this would be Michael B. Jordan cast as Johnny Storm. I prefer making new characters over changing old ones to reflect our current feelings on diversity. I don’t want black Peter Parker, but I’m fine with Miles Morales.

Finn is the real bright spot of this movie. He has lots of flaws. He’s a liar. He’s self-interested. He thinks with his dick. He had several opportunities to leave the story, but he decides to stick around because he thinks Rey is hot. That’s a good flaw. I don’t think he won one fight in this movie. Some random stormtrooper kicked the shit out of him. Kylo Ren slashed him up too. He struggles unlike some other people in this movie. But I’ll get to her later.

I liked the humanization of the storm troopers in this film. There’s a sadness to them now. In the original Star Wars movies, they were faceless mooks. Now they were kidnapped as children and then brainwashed to fight for the Empire. Every storm trooper is a victim now. It’s a shame none of the heroes give a damn about this new backstory. Finn tells his story of being reprogrammed to fight for the Empire. No one hesitates to blow these guys away. Even Finn who hesitates from killing early on in the movie is fine with killing the stormtroopers. This was a contradiction.

I will continue to call the bad guys from this movie, the Empire, through out this post because I don’t know why they decided to rebrand themselves as the First Order. Did Supreme Master Snoke think The Empire was old hat? Did he take a marketing course at Sith Academy? Maybe they were forced to rebrand because all the Empire imagery was banned like how after World War 2 all the Nazi imagery and symbols were banned in Germany.

Luke Skywalker looked cool for the minute we saw of him. Mark Hamill looks great for his age now.

I felt like Harrison Ford cared about his role as Han Solo and put forth some effort. BB-8 had a cool memorable design. I liked the acting by Daisy Ridley as Rey.



Episode 7 is a bad movie.

It’s not prequel bad, but it’s still bad. The prequels are what happens when you give an idea guy complete control of a movie. Lucas wanted to play around with computer graphics and make money. The story and dialogue came second to that. That becomes very apparent once you analyze the prequels. Here’s one example of that. Count Dooku. He’s an all-powerful Jedi who joins the Sith. His betrayal of Jedi is the backbone to the plot of Episode 1: Attack of the Clones. Yet he is nowhere to be found in the predecessor, The Phantom Menace. Not one mention of Count Dooku. It would have helped to see him be good before he was bad. Lucas made the story up as he went. I still have no idea who the Phantom Menace was. Darth Maul? Sidious? The Sith? Nute Gunray?

You can’t fault Lucas too much because of all the money he made off of the prequels. Congrats to him on his success.

Episode 7 is Spider-man 3 bad. It’s bad like Ghostbusters 2. Iron Man 2. Blade Trinity. The Dark Knight Rises. Avengers: Age of Ultron. Thor 2. Matrix:Reloaded.

Do you know what all those movies have in common? There’s no heart in these movies. They don’t do anything new. They are boring. They have story structure and characters. But they fail to innovate or challenge the audience. They are made to not offend lovers of the originals.

The first rule of story-telling is to ask yourself one question; Is this a story worth telling? The answer to that for the prequels was no. It doesn’t matter how Anakin Skywalker becomes Darth Vader. We don’t need to see that. But we were given it. It ruins the impact of Luke rejecting the Emperor’s offer at the end of Return of the Jedi.

He says he’s a Jedi like his father before him. But then we see his father was a child-murdering lunatic in the prequels. Even when he was a Jedi, he was a crappy one. This is not a person who deserves to be redeemed. The prequels take all the weight out of the words that Luke speaks here.

But to get back to this new Star Wars, I wanted to be okay with these new movies. J.J. Abrams’ Star Trek was a good popcorn flick, but no depth lied beneath all the lens flare and action. So I set my expectations low for this film. When I watch a movie like The Transporter, all I expect is a fun time at the theater. I turn my brain off and sit back for an hour and a half. But this movie was putting me to sleep. I wanted to check my phone to see how long was left in the film because it felt like a waste of my time.

This is a retread of A New Hope that we didn’t need. I’m surprised nobody in the movie pointed this out. Old General Leia should have been pissed that all her work in the original trilogy has been undone. Here she is thirty years later still fighting the Empire and a masked guy wielding a lightsaber. It’s like they accomplished nothing in the original trilogy.

Why did this need to be a New Hope again? We have a vibrant universe with thirty years worth of stories to rip off. The Expanded Star Wars Universe had to have something more worthy of the screen than this film. When the movie started off with a guy giving his droid important information that the Empire wanted, I rolled my eyes in the theater. Couldn’t they think of anything else? You can do anything with Star Wars but instead, you rehash the old.

Why do we have to be on a desert planet in the start of this film? Can’t we start in a place we’ve never seen before? With characters, stakes, and situations that are new to Star Wars? Do we need to see the 2015 version of Darth Vader entering the Rebel ship and capturing Leia?

After this opening scene, we are introduced to our main “character”, Rey. I put the word, character, in quotations because Rey is not a character. Characters have flaws. They learn and they change. Someone needs to get in contact with Rian Johnson, the director of Episode 8. We need to get Rey a flaw, just one flaw. So the next one won’t be boring too.

Rey is good at everything. She won a light saber fight with a guy trained by Luke Skywalker and Supreme Master Leader Snoke. She can fly the Millennium Falcon without ever flying it before. She knows more about it than Han Solo. She does not need help when she is attacked by thieves. Luke got attacked by Sand People in A New Hope and needed Ben Kenobi to save his dumb ass. Rey does not need help from anybody. She kicks ass! She’s so cool that Han Solo offers her job on the Millennium Falcon. Chewbacca likes her. Finn falls instantly in love with her because she’s so beautiful.

You can’t be intelligent, hot, a great fighter, a great pilot, a great Force User and loved by everyone. That’s a not a person. Finn is a liar and somewhat of a coward. He fears the Empire. Po, a great pilot like Rey, shows mental weakness when he gives up the location of BB-8. Luke was whiny. Han Solo was selfish. Leia was mean and bossy. Rey is better than everyone at everything.

Rey has one moment of vulnerability in this movie. She runs away after touching Luke’s lightsaber. She wants no part of her destiny. Then she is captured. I thought at this point a flaw was about to show up. She stayed on Jakku because she feared her destiny. But then she with no help from anyone resists same torture that Po succumbed to and then uses a Jedi Mind Trick to escape. Han Solo, Chewie, and Finn are their way to rescue her but she didn’t need their help. She escaped herself because she’s awesome.

Remember how in A New Hope Luke was screaming for C3PO to save them from the trash compactor? If Rey was there, she would have climbed those walls, and then beat Darth Vader in a light saber fight. And then blew up the Death Star with no one’s help. What she accomplishes in this movie took Luke three movies to accomplish. When Luke fights Darth Vader for the first time, Vader is toying with him. He dominates Luke. Luke gets in a few lucky hits but that only pisses Vader off. Luke loses his hand and then decides to jump to his death than join Vader. Only through sheer luck does he survive the events of Empire.


Compare that man to Rey at the end of her first fight. She stands over the injured Kylo Ren, with not a mark on her.

Why should I care about this character? In the end, she finds Luke. It’s implied she is going to be trained by him. But what is there left to teach Rey? I bet in episode 8 she will be teaching him about the force. I hope Rian Johnson will rectify this situation with Rey and make her shitty at one thing. Just one.

Luke exiling himself is a rather strange story development. It leads to us having the teaser ending, but why would he do that? His nephew murdered children so Luke decides to go look for the first Jedi Temple. Why don’t you stop him? Don’t you care about the people being murdered? What’s going to be at the first Jedi Temple that could help? A secret Jedi technique? Do you need that against Kylo Ren? He lost to Rey and she was a Jedi for like two minutes. Surely you, a Jedi Master, can whup his ass and end this conflict? Is the secret Jedi technique for Super Master Commander Snoke?

I don’t even want to get into Supreme Kam Chancellor Snoke. His name is Snoke. I think that says enough.

Why did Luke’s lightsaber call out to Rey? How come when she touched it, it showed her visions? Didn’t do that to Luke. He would have seen visions of the prequels and probably decided the Jedi life was not for him. Where did that orange alien thing get Luke’s lightsaber? I know it will be a story later on, but I want to know now. That’s a more interesting story than the events of this movie. Was the hand still attached? Was it in the back of that chest?

Why did Han Solo and Leia name their kid after Obi-Won’s fake name? I had no idea Ben meant that much to them. Han Solo didn’t seem all that sad when Ben died. Now he names his kid after him. This is not a big deal. It was just something I was wondering. Why not name his kid after his good buddy, Chewbacca? Chewbacca Solo has a nice ring to it.

The Starkiller is bad fanfiction. A bigger badder Death Star that can destroy five planets at once. This was the best they could do? They were writing this script for over a year. I expect better than Death Star except bigger. My five-year-old cousin could have come up with that.

I hate being so down on this film. I wish I could have taken it for the ride it was trying to take me on. But this was a ride I’d been on before.

Episode 7 is going to make lots and lots of money for Disney. It does not matter if it is a good movie or not. It does sadden me because I felt this was a squandered opportunity to do something new with Star Wars after the disappointment of the prequels.

Maybe the next one will be good. Rian Johnson is a good writer. His work on Breaking Bad’s Ozymandias shows that he’s a competent director. Maybe he’ll turn this whole ship around and set us on a course for good storytelling.


If not, oh well. We’ll always have the originals.


Ants underrepresented in the media, says new study.

According to a new study released by some educational institution, ants are the most underrepresented group in all forms of media.

Ants account for the same amount of biomass on the planet as humans do, but they make up less than 1 percent of all biomass seen on film. Cars Tomuk, ant expert and the lead researcher for the survey, was disturbed by the findings.

“Even in the few films that ants are in, they are the butt of a joke. Most ants in films and television shows are killed by terminators for laughs. This is very problematic. Ants deserve to be treated with respect like any other species.” said Mr. Tomuk.

Of the 350 films included in the study, only one featured ants in a prominent role. But according to Mr. Tomuk, Marvel’s Ant-Man also has many problems.

“Marvel had a chance to go out and get an ant for the lead role but instead they went with the safe choice, Paul Rudd. Paul Rudd is not an ant. He does not know what it is like to be a pupae or how to live in an ant colony serving your queen every day. The daily life of an ant can be demanding. Does Rudd know anything about that? No. We need more films about the genuine ant experience. ”

The findings of this survey came as no surprise to the ant community. We reached out to a prominent worker ant of an molehill in Antrim, New Hampshire for comment.

“It’s about time America woke up! It’s 2015! There are trillions of ants living in this country and they should be able to watch television shows about their lives and their experiences. ” said Colony Ant of Molehill MSXVMXXX.

“Millions of ants live in the white house right now! They live right under it! But no ant has ever been elected president! This is supposed to be the land of the free! But the only freedom ants have is the freedom to be stepped on by the boot of oppression. Billions of ants will be crushed this year. But does any one care? Will the government do anything to stop it? The senseless slaughter of ants is encouraged by the current regime. And it will not stop until ants stop fighting over sugar cubes and start working together for a better future for ants everywhere. ”

Progress may be coming for ants in Hollywood. Film studios have responded positively to the survey. Disney and Sony are the ones taking major steps towards species diversity. Sony has announced an all ants version of Ghostbusters coming to theaters and garbage cans this summer. Disney is re-releasing A Bug’s Life on Blu-Ray with a special documentary on how the film changed bug cinema forever.


Microsoft’s E3 Press Conference

I don’t own an Xbox 360, but I always watch Microsoft’s press conference to see if it is worth buying. They have never impressed me before. I went in this year with low expectations and they were failed to meet them.

The presentation started with a preview of the upcoming Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3. This will probably be the biggest game of the year for the industry. It showed some diving and placing of explosives then some basic shooting on the boat.

I haven’t played Call of Duty since the first Modern Warfare and I barely played that at all. This looked the exact same to me. I didn’t find it impressive and I was quite bored watching the game. If you’re a Call of Duty Fan then you’ll probably end up buying it. If not, this doesn’t look like it’s for you.

I missed some of the presentation because it got really boring so I went to go eat Lunch. I hear Mass Effect 3 was showcased. I don’t know much about that franchise as I have never played it.

The next thing I saw was a new Tom Clancy Ghost Recon game. I realized that this generation of consoles has way too many shooters and they’re all very similar. This was a third person shooter yet it shared the same visuals as Call of Duty so it’s clearly being marketed toward the same crowd.

They showed a Kinect feature for this game that was interesting. You could customize your gun using your voice and motion sensing. I’m not a big fan of motion controls so it didn’t appeal to me. I’ve never seen a game that motion sensing made better.

Next Microsoft spoke about how Xbox live is about more than games. They were going to be adding bing and youtube to Xbox live as well as Minecraft.

Kinect games were featured and they looked terrible. Holy shit. I have never seen shittier games in my life. From the Disneyland Adventure game with the horrible child actors to the Star Wars game, these game were fucking terrible. None of them were good at all. If you own an xbox 360 and don’t like Kinect, sell it. Microsoft doesn’t care about you.

The Star Wars game saddened me because I realized there will never be a new Jedi Knight game.

Gears of War 3 was shown. It seemed similar to the earlier games. It was another shooter so I was bored. Ice-T came out and that was kinda cool.

Halo 4 was their ending game. They showed a small trailer of Master Chief waking up. They also announced that it was the first in a part of a new trilogy on the 360. So if you like Halo, You’ve got 4 new games to get in the future as they announced a remake of Halo 1 due out this November.

E3 Grade: F Minus (See me after class)

What I liked: Nothing

What I didn’t like: Everything. It was bad. I wouldn’t sit through it again. I’m saddened that people were cheering in the crowd for the Kinect garbage. Microsoft milks it franchises until they bleed. We’re on Gears of War 3, Fable 4, and Halo 4 with two more follow ups guaranteed. When are people going to get tired of the same old shit?

I know Kinect is new but it’s also shit. Is it that hard to make good games? I guess when your core market would rather play the same game over and over, there’s no point.