Random Thoughts on Star Wars: The Force Awakens

I don’t need to mention that there are spoilers aplenty inside this post, do I?

1. Let’s get the politics out of the way first: director J.J. Abrams made openly racist comments about white people, within the context of casting—and that’s okay. He’s free to cast anyone he wishes for any reason. He’s only beholden to Disney Studios. But don’t be surprised there’s a bit of blowback, even exaggerated, when you openly state your desire for a lessened presence of a certain race.

2. Related to the above, in the context of the Star Wars universe, more diversity is very contextually fitting. There are literally “countless” species in the Star Wars galaxy, and some non-human species have races within them. Abrams’ decision, however antagonizing, is artistically and thematically sound.

3. Rey, though a very likable character, is a borderline complete Mary Sue—but this was expected thematically (see #5 below). Though most of her character dev is believable, she falls into “badass girl warrior” trope so hard it blew out the THX sound system in the theater when I witnessed it. Disney pushes this paradigm everywhere, so no surprise on my end.

4. Related to #3, her lightsaber duel with Kylo Ren was more or less believable. Assuming the actors’ heights are also their characters’: Daisy Ridley as Rae is 5’7″, Adam Driver‘s Kylo Ren is nearly 6’3″. They are both physically formidable, but Ren by nature would probably have more upper body strength. The height and upper body differences would favor Ren heavily, but there were huge mitigating factors. Ren is very impetuous and emotion-driven, especially since he had just killed his father semi-willingly just before the duel. And, not to mention he had taken a direct hit to his ribs from a blaster. Rae is more flexible by nature, which gives her a slight advantage in saber-fighting, and her physical condition was primed by a good few decades of climbing and crawling all day in spartan living conditions. At the time of their duel, she had a bit of a confidence boost from finding out she’s a Force wielder, and because the Resistance had their mission just about wrapped up. So it seems they were fairly evenly matched. It ended in more or less a draw, but I think Ren would have won if geology didn’t disrupt things. That Ren beat Finn was expected.

5. Rey will find out she is Luke Skywalker’s daughter. He had abandoned her on Jakku because he wanted to revive the Jedi order, and having an illegitimate daughter would have discredited him. Her illegitimacy was a further reason Luke exiled himself, besides his failure to train Kylo Ren properly. Luke left a piece of the map to his whereabouts, to Lor San Tekka on Jakku, in the hopes that it might fall into the hands of Rae eventually, if she came into the Force. In this sense, Episode VIII is almost a reboot of Episode IV: Rae is the new Luke, who was the Marty Stu of the original trilogy.

Stefan Molyneux has some interesting observations. The Huffington Post points out a bunch of plotholes. Only maybe 2 or 3 items listed might be plotholes. The rest are just unexplained expository elements. Unexplained things aren’t plotholes.