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Star Wars: The Force Awakens

"There was also a hand. Did you bring the hand?"

Best vehicle reveal is either "What about that one?" "That's garbage!" [other ship blows up] "The garbage will do!"

or you have to go all the way back to 1989 for "Get in the car." "Which one?" [roof opens on Batmobile]
 
Since I watched this one again too I need to post my thoughts AGAIN because my thoughts are so important and must always be posted but I'll try to keep it short and break it down to just good and bad.

GOOD

- BB-8
- The first half hour is generally really good! I don't actually mind at all that it starts off similar to A New Hope with a young person on a desert planet finding a droid and being thrust into adventure. The Jakku stuff at least to me doesn't feel like it's just straight copying ANH (that comes later!) and Finn and Rey work really well together (something I missed in TLJ.) When they find the Falcon it really works as an exciting "I remember that!" moment and the escape from Jakku sequence is the best action setpiece of the movie. It's the part that best captures the feeling of adventure from ANH without just ripping it off (yeah it's the Falcon shooting TIE Fighters but it's different enough, okay!)
- Han's "It's true. It's all true." bit gives me chills and Harrison Ford has some great line deliveries throughout.
- The part where Poe shoots all those TIEs while Finn cheers (but we shouldn't have seen that it was Poe until Finn's "one Hell of a pilot!" line.)
- The part where Keylo Ren takes his helmet off and you see he's just an ordinary looking guy and Adam Driver's acting.
- The setting for the Rey/Keylo lightsaber duel looks really cool. It's a scene that's recognisably Star Wars (there's lightsabers) but it's not referencing a specific scene from the original trilogy. There should have been more of that.

BAD

- The Rathtars are worse than any creature from the prequels.
- Han going back to smuggling as an old man makes him seem really immature and he should have been called on it.
- Starkiller Base isn't even alluded to before it suddenly appears an hour into the movie, blowing up four planets that weren't alluded to before either. The movie abruptly changes from being a search for Luke Skywalker to "there's another Death Star and we have to stop it because it happened in ANH!"
- Like I said, I was fine with starting on a desert planet but it soons becomes clear that they're just putting locations in that remind people of the original trilogy. Maz's bar is like the Cantina! Rey's in the Ewok forest! The Resistance Base looks a lot like the Rebel Base! There's snow on Starkiller Base like on Hoth! JUST STOP.
- And Starkiller Base deserves its own segment. It's the worst. That briefing scene ("it's bigger than the Death Star!") feels like something out of Spaceballs. When the X-Wings and TIEs are fighting it's literally just the end of ANH. They even put a trench run in. It just makes the movie feel like a video game that copied stuff from Star Wars or something.
- The Han and Leia bits really should have been better. Maybe it was because they didn't get on as well as Carrie and Hamill did. Or maybe just because they gave Leia dialogue that didn't suit Carrie's acting style at all.)
- Han's death being oddly unemotional. I like the idea of Ben killing him because Han's tempting him back to the light side, but for some reason the actual death doesn't work (I think it's because it's so obvious what's about to happen.)
- Leia hugging some girl she doesn't know instead of Chewie. Yes it's still annoying.
- R2 sleeping until the plot requires him to wake up.
- Basically just the last hour loses all the momentum from the pretty good start and I find it hard to feel anything!

So yeah Phantom Menace was better.
 
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