those are some strong words coming from a guy who had to google search a meme.

I'm part of this generation. I'm simply comparing the two story arcs, since they clearly were supposed to be mirror images of eachother, and I think this was a glaring mistake that goes against all elements of traditional storytelling.

In the 4-5-6 arc, people enjoyed it and wanted to come back because Luke, Han, and Leia were the clear underdogs. Luke watches his mentor die in front of him in episode 4, and wants to get revenge, but is intelligent enough to realize that a battle against vader would be suicide. So he regroups, goes to Yoda to get training, then finds his friends in danger so goes anyways despite knowing deep down that he isn't strong enough (he can't even lift his x-wing out of the water). He indeed does get his ass kicked, almost falls from cloud city, and is saved by his friends (which is of course the work of the force), then goes back for more training, just to find Yoda dying. So he has to go back, and then instead of fighting against the emperor and his father, which would not only be suicide but also "wrong" in the jedi sense, he convinces his father to come back over to the light (against all odds and advice of the people around him, mind you).

In this movie, Rey is supposed to be like Luke and Finn is supposed to be like Han (roughly). Rey is very skilled at certain skills, just like Luke was a skilled pilot. But instead of exposing her inherent weakness, and letting everyone see she is the clear underdog, which would spur us to go out and see the next movies, she just suddenly kicks Kylo Ren's ass, the latter of whom is miraculously saved by a giant trench splitting them apart. So then, what is the point of this series, anyways? The super-strong good guys beat the clumsy, idiotic bad guys? I mean, it just feels pointless. There's no room for character growth, and character growth is what gets you attached to a movie series. The only character who can really grow from this point is Kylo Ren, who everybody inherently hates for killing the coolest character from the original trilogy.

It's not a "grandpa" thing - it's simple storytelling. If you're planning a 3-part series, why on earth would you let the good guys so unequivocally win in the first episode?

I can see where you're coming from, but I don't think I'm overplaying anything. To me, they have formed no attachment to Rey and Finn as characters by the end of this movie. Finn spends 75% of the movie being a scared little boy, and the next 20% being purely reckless (i.e. when he tells everyone he knows how to defeat the shields despite having absolutely no plan for doing so, therefore putting the entire army at risk based on completely false information). Then he gets knocked out and spends the last 5% unconscious. Rey, on the other hand, starts off being very relate-able, right up until she suddenly becomes an expert lightsaber swordsman (again, this being the first time she has ever touched a lightsaber). Luke has a "moment of force" at the end of A New Hope - it let him make a very difficult shot that he potentially could have made anyways (by his self-proclamation that "I used to bullseye womprats in my T-16"). That would be different from if Luke landed on the deathstar and took down Darth Vader with a lightsaber, and he even had hours of training with lightsabers while traveling around on the Mellenium Falcon (e.g. in the whole scene where Han questions the force and calls his block 'beginners luck' and Obi-Wan replies with 'in my experience, there's no such thing as luck'). I'm just not buying this whole idea that the force can suddenly (using zaphodcoolfrood's words) turn somebody into "avatar mode" - it just isn't relate-able.

Also, they are not "two padawans having a slap and tickle" - it's one padawan having a slap and tickle and one totally inexperienced person with no formal training whatsoever who should have been clumsily wielding a brand new weapon for the first time ever. Even if Ren wasn't exactly Sith Master material, he had hell of a lot of an upper hand. Plus, plausibility aside, right now if Rey goes on and battles Ren again, you'll be expecting her to win, because she was the better fighter all along. There's no feeling of overcoming adversity and training hard and taking risk.

It was this same crap that pissed me off about the prequel trilogy. In episode I, you have a little kid accidentally fly a fighter into a huge battle and just happen to blow up a big spaceship and save the day. By episode II, they had nowhere to go with Anakin besides have a big, goofy, unnecessary love story in a desperate attempt to make the audience connect with the character.

I guess the point I'm trying to drive home here is that character growth is what builds a story. It's easy to relate to someone who works hard and builds upon their skills and becomes a better person because of it. It's really hard to relate to someone who starts the story as some magical all-powerful being that can't be stopped.

You make some great points, but I'm still skeptical. To be fair, I got off on the wrong foot, since I was very upset to see a massive battle full of explosions and characters (whose names you don't even know) dying in the first ten minutes of the film, which also felt way too much like episode I. From there forward I was playing catch-up, and some small things like that just kept tipping me back in the wrong direction. I also totally hated the fact that they just happened to find the millenium falcon, and then outflew and outshot fully trained first order pilots in modern spaceships, and that Rey just happens to know the circuitry of every spaceship ever created and can open/close doors on command, and the whole "TR-8R" portion (where Finn fights a fully armed storm-trooper using a lightsaber, surrounded by plenty of other people on both sides with blasters, and it turns into a two minute slash fest against some ridiculous electrified baton that has never been featured in any other part of the story just because it looks cool). Plus I was always part of the school of "why on earth does Ren's lightsaber look like that?" The whole movie just felt a lot more like Episode I than anything else, and it felt like they made a lot of the same mistakes. I personally think the whole Rey-Ren fight is a glaring plothole and defending it by "oh they may say in a subsequent movie that Ren is actually totally unskilled and Rey may have had some secret underground lightsaber fighting experience" is giving too much credit to a story that seems like it would have been panned in the late 1990s.

He wasn't too inured to throw her 30 feet across the forest into a tree about 12 seconds before the fight happened. And we know he trained with Luke, plus that lord Snoke considers him his most powerful asset. The only fighting she ever did was small time crap - she's never had any military experience, and was going up against essentially the most powerful living sith master. Then suddenly she closes her eyes and turns around and kicks his ass with like no effort. Do we forget all the training Luke had to go through just to get his ass kicked by Vader at the end of Empire because he didn't "complete his training" with Yoda first? There is no indication through the original trilogy that the force just "comes to you," and that's part of what I always liked about it. I'm sick of the pandering to this generation's need for instant gratification - I much better like the story of "work hard and concentrate and you can become stronger with great effort" than "close your eyes and hope and suddenly you'll be overcome with inexplicable strength."

Not even close to being a sith master, jedi apprentice who was corrupted to the dark side. Still used jedi force tricks like the freeze and sleep. He didnt really use lethal force powers.
Kylo is very strong with the force, but he had never faced a enemy as strong as him in the force and so because his reckless attitude, fear and being injured made him panicked and hasty, most likely losing blood and exhausiting himself with just pushing for the attack. Wich was his downfall. Kylo couldnt controll his anger so he just lashes out without a stradegy.
But rey wasnt helpless either she had fighting skills, she was atleast somewhat able to defend herself and her being very strong in the force cancelled out kylos force tricks. Even tho kylo got a cheap shot throwing her to the tree before the battle.

I'm part of this generation. I'm simply comparing the two story arcs, since they clearly were supposed to be mirror images of eachother, and I think this was a glaring mistake that goes against all elements of traditional storytelling.

In the 4-5-6 arc, people enjoyed it and wanted to come back because Luke, Han, and Leia were the clear underdogs. Luke watches his mentor die in front of him in episode 4, and wants to get revenge, but is intelligent enough to realize that a battle against vader would be suicide. So he regroups, goes to Yoda to get training, then finds his friends in danger so goes anyways despite knowing deep down that he isn't strong enough (he can't even lift his x-wing out of the water). He indeed does get his ass kicked, almost falls from cloud city, and is saved by his friends (which is of course the work of the force), then goes back for more training, just to find Yoda dying. So he has to go back, and then instead of fighting against the emperor and his father, which would not only be suicide but also "wrong" in the jedi sense, he convinces his father to come back over to the light (against all odds and advice of the people around him, mind you).

In this movie, Rey is supposed to be like Luke and Finn is supposed to be like Han (roughly). Rey is very skilled at certain skills, just like Luke was a skilled pilot. But instead of exposing her inherent weakness, and letting everyone see she is the clear underdog, which would spur us to go out and see the next movies, she just suddenly kicks Kylo Ren's ass, the latter of whom is miraculously saved by a giant trench splitting them apart. So then, what is the point of this series, anyways? The super-strong good guys beat the clumsy, idiotic bad guys? I mean, it just feels pointless. There's no room for character growth, and character growth is what gets you attached to a movie series. The only character who can really grow from this point is Kylo Ren, who everybody inherently hates for killing the coolest character from the original trilogy.

It's not a "grandpa" thing - it's simple storytelling. If you're planning a 3-part series, why on earth would you let the good guys so unequivocally win in the first episode?

I can see where you're coming from, but I don't think I'm overplaying anything. To me, they have formed no attachment to Rey and Finn as characters by the end of this movie. Finn spends 75% of the movie being a scared little boy, and the next 20% being purely reckless (i.e. when he tells everyone he knows how to defeat the shields despite having absolutely no plan for doing so, therefore putting the entire army at risk based on completely false information). Then he gets knocked out and spends the last 5% unconscious. Rey, on the other hand, starts off being very relate-able, right up until she suddenly becomes an expert lightsaber swordsman (again, this being the first time she has ever touched a lightsaber). Luke has a "moment of force" at the end of A New Hope - it let him make a very difficult shot that he potentially could have made anyways (by his self-proclamation that "I used to bullseye womprats in my T-16"). That would be different from if Luke landed on the deathstar and took down Darth Vader with a lightsaber, and he even had hours of training with lightsabers while traveling around on the Mellenium Falcon (e.g. in the whole scene where Han questions the force and calls his block 'beginners luck' and Obi-Wan replies with 'in my experience, there's no such thing as luck'). I'm just not buying this whole idea that the force can suddenly (using zaphodcoolfrood's words) turn somebody into "avatar mode" - it just isn't relate-able.

Also, they are not "two padawans having a slap and tickle" - it's one padawan having a slap and tickle and one totally inexperienced person with no formal training whatsoever who should have been clumsily wielding a brand new weapon for the first time ever. Even if Ren wasn't exactly Sith Master material, he had hell of a lot of an upper hand. Plus, plausibility aside, right now if Rey goes on and battles Ren again, you'll be expecting her to win, because she was the better fighter all along. There's no feeling of overcoming adversity and training hard and taking risk.

It was this same crap that pissed me off about the prequel trilogy. In episode I, you have a little kid accidentally fly a fighter into a huge battle and just happen to blow up a big spaceship and save the day. By episode II, they had nowhere to go with Anakin besides have a big, goofy, unnecessary love story in a desperate attempt to make the audience connect with the character.

I guess the point I'm trying to drive home here is that character growth is what builds a story. It's easy to relate to someone who works hard and builds upon their skills and becomes a better person because of it. It's really hard to relate to someone who starts the story as some magical all-powerful being that can't be stopped.

You make some great points, but I'm still skeptical. To be fair, I got off on the wrong foot, since I was very upset to see a massive battle full of explosions and characters (whose names you don't even know) dying in the first ten minutes of the film, which also felt way too much like episode I. From there forward I was playing catch-up, and some small things like that just kept tipping me back in the wrong direction. I also totally hated the fact that they just happened to find the millenium falcon, and then outflew and outshot fully trained first order pilots in modern spaceships, and that Rey just happens to know the circuitry of every spaceship ever created and can open/close doors on command, and the whole "TR-8R" portion (where Finn fights a fully armed storm-trooper using a lightsaber, surrounded by plenty of other people on both sides with blasters, and it turns into a two minute slash fest against some ridiculous electrified baton that has never been featured in any other part of the story just because it looks cool). Plus I was always part of the school of "why on earth does Ren's lightsaber look like that?" The whole movie just felt a lot more like Episode I than anything else, and it felt like they made a lot of the same mistakes. I personally think the whole Rey-Ren fight is a glaring plothole and defending it by "oh they may say in a subsequent movie that Ren is actually totally unskilled and Rey may have had some secret underground lightsaber fighting experience" is giving too much credit to a story that seems like it would have been panned in the late 1990s.

Can you prove me wrong? No? Shut the fuck up SJW

you made a claim.
thus the burden of proof is on YOU
so unless you can prove your claim, YOU shut the fuck up.

Just observe my friend so 'You SHUT the FUCK up' faggot. thumb me down more please.

it's a thumb not a dick, don't take it so hard.

oh so spicy. gimme more red thumbs pls

It's something I've considered doing in my off time since I really like movies and the work doesn't sound stressing in comparison to what I do - aka the other type of theatre - aka live production.

Sure it's nothing special and as you would say doesn't pay a whole lot but I also don't ask for a whole lot so it works out in the end.