The Force Awakens
Or, why I’ve learned, once again, not to bother trying to have an opinion on anything art-related. It’ll only make me feel bad.
(spoilers)
Alice: The plot echoes the major beats of the first Star Wars movie too closely. It shadows A New Hope from beginning to end, like the writer is uncertain he can create a good new story so he just copied an old one.
You are clearly showing how inexperienced you are at analyzing narratives. Otherwise, you’d recognize just how potent, legitimate, and frequently-used this “ring composition” technique is, and how George Lucas already did it in the prequels.
Bob: Too many things happen that make no sense. How did Luke’s lightsaber get there? How can Rey understand Chewbacca’s language? Why does R2-D2 wake up at the perfect plot-wise moment?
This isn’t poor Deus ex Machina writing. This is planting hints. It’s laying the groundwork for important revelations in the next two movies. Yes, it would be dumb for these things to “just happen”...so why did you jump to the conclusion that that’s the true explanation?
Clara: Kylo Ren is a poor villain. He’s not a sympathetic character. His motivations aren’t relatable.
That statement says more about how bad you, personally, are at empathizing with other people than about Ren’s characterization or the movie’s writing quality.
Dawn: Rey is a total Mary Sue! She’s an expert mechanic and a mind reader and an excellent fighter and a crack shot under fire. She beats a trained Sith apprentice in a duel one minute after touching a lightsaber for the very first time. It’s bad writing to have a character who just automatically wins at everything for some mystical reason.
You’re just a misogynist who can’t abide the idea of a competent, capable female character.
Edwin: I disagree with Dawn. Rey is not a Mary Sue. There’s clear in-movie (or at least in-genre) justification for everything she does, and she doesn’t always get things right. She can hold her own in a fistfight because she grew up in a rough physical and social environment. She can fix the Falcon because she’s been stripping vehicles for parts all her life. She beat Kylo Ren because he was exhausted and heavily injured - something the film’s director emphasized with multiple deliberate camera shots.
You are also a misogynist. See how you’re scrambling for an explanation for her defeating Ren other than “she’s just better at swordfighting than he is”? Both of you are simply rebelling against the idea that a woman can be better than a man at something.