Tag: the force awakens

Who is Snoke? Hint: It’s NOT Mace Windu, Plagueis, or anyone “obvious”

A lot of these fan-theories about the identity of Supreme Leader Snoke try REALLY hard to make connections where they really don’t exist. Or some try to tie in the Prequel Trilogy, even though Disney is more ashamed of that than Song of the South. However, there is one theory that has been lurking in the shadows in the one place that none of the fans have bothered to look because it is the one thing the nostalgia-thirsty fanboys hate more than the Prequel Trilogy: Return of the Jedi.

Remember these guys? You’ve certainly missed them if you’ve slept through Jedi (like the rest of the Star Wars fandom, apparently), but one of them appears again in Rogue One, in a much more open and less shadowy, but still brief, cameo.

These men are Emperor Palpatine’s advisors, dark side users who are not Sith but Force-sensitive agents of the Emperor’s will.

Now since The Force Awakens was quite literally a remake of A New Hope, and since The Last Jedi looks like it will be the same with Empire, in addition to the success of Rogue One, this gives us a glimpse at what Disney has in store for the future of Star Wars: it will be a repetition of the original trilogy. To that end, this theory is the most likely of them: Snoke was one of these advisors, and learned the dark side from the Emperor. This gives us a connection to the big bad from the original trilogy, as well as someone who would have a meaningful amount of command over the Imperial remnant, and would have been able to reform them into the First Order. Most of the advisors featured in Jedi have already been named, but it is quite possible that Snoke is one that did not appear; or, even better, he could have been one that appeared, and survived the destruction of the Second Death Star by his powerful control of the dark side (you will notice the tall, gaunt one looks a little like Snoke).

Second Thoughts on The Force Awakens

First time I saw anything of Star Wars was a shot from Return of the Jedi during the build-up for the ‘97 Special Edition release. It stayed with me until the point when I finally saw Jedi, I knew that I had seen that shot before. The first Star Wars movie I had ever seen fully was A New Hope (so, though I wasn’t around in 1977, I got the similar experience that everyone else had nonetheless). After the first viewing, the prequel trilogy just became boring.

And now we have The Force Awakens.

I know I gave it a positive review, but I was just reeling from “just having watched a movie on a huge screen” jitters. But as those initial feelings died down, I realized that I was more disappointed than happy overall.

The Force Awakens was empty.

Let’s start out with the obvious. People always say that a film’s hero is only as good as the villain. Well, which villain? The faceless CGI-gollum holograph or Kylo Ren (aka. the biggest b*tch in the whole wide universe)?  Honestly, he’s a bigger b*tch than Anakin in the prequel trilogies and I don’t care who knows it.

This film was not original. It was the plot to A New Hope. Apparently that’s what the fans want, no progress or interesting things/places happening, just a boring re-tread of familiar ground (but then again, having spent many years in the metal-scene, I should come to expect this attitude from fans).

Here’s what made the movie work even less. It was like a work of fan-fiction (which, essentially, it is), where some loony liberal takes the story to A New Hope and rewrites it with a female protagonist, a black dude and a non-white pilot as the heroes (oh and kills off one of the characters from the original trilogy, who are only here for fan-service).

And don’t give me your bs explanation for why Rey suddenly has a mastery of the Force without any training. Just don’t! We saw in both the original trilogy and the prequel trilogy when both Luke and Anakin had their first serious lightsaber duel (after having spent three to ten years of training, i might add) they both got their asses handed to them. You all know why she won and it’s a dumb reason.

I honestly wanted to like this movie, but…JJ dropped the ball.

Summary for those too lazy to read: The Force Awakens was a remake of A New Hope with all the politically correct and feminist bullshit we’ve become mired in of late.

catie-does-things:

To be honest, if we’re talking overly powerful Mary-Sue characters in Star Wars, Galen Marek/Starkiller is probably the worst offender.

But at least he had had extensive training to get to that point.

And that’s the real issue with Rey – it’s not that the things she does are particularly impressive, it’s that she acquires new skills as the plot demands with no practice or instruction, and that’s just lazy writing.

that was one of the film’s weakest points