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Comment by de_Selby | Hacker News Reader

I was very confused by the good reviews too, it was literally the exact same story as A New Hope.

I don't hold much hope for the next films.

The film had the impossible task of pleasing both old and new viewers of the franchise. It succeeded immensely in that regard, old viewers could recognize the nods to the old trilogy, while new viewers were presented with a very well made film that (in my opinion) surpasses the original trilogy in literally every way. If I had to rate it I would definitely rate it higher than new hope.

I didn't say it wasn't well made, I didn't like the writing. There were so many nods to the old trilogy that my neck started to hurt.

Spoiler alert!

Young adventurer on a desert planet unaware of their Jedi powers?

Resourceful, commanding, brutally competent as well as sexy young princess?

Help from a reluctant rogue with his hairy side kick, on the run from crime lord that he tried to swindle?

A tall masked dark side antagonist, apprentice of a mysterious emperor type guy?

An evil empire vs a rebel alliance?

Secret plans hidden in robot?

Quest to find hermit Jedi master?

Quest to destroy a planet killing Death Star?

The most original part of the writing was merging the adventurer and the princess into one character and making the Vader part an annoying teenager.

I agree with all of the above, but I don't see any of that as a problem. I would not hold "too similar to new hope" as an issue with this film. If anything, it was a good thing in my opinion.

No way that a film as mediocre as that can be comparable to the original trilogy. Saying that it is even better is a complete nonsense.

I love the original trilogy. I really do, my nostalgia towards it is very strong. But if you take off the nostalgia-tinted glasses for a second, you will see that original trilogy(ROTJ especially) has very poor dialogue, the filming and pacing is passable. ESB is the best of the three, but Force Awakens is easily on par with that film, and definitely better than ewok-filled ROTJ.

Rogue One looks somewhat promising - but it is going in a little bit different direction as a stand-alone spinoff, not having to carry the weight of the franchise.

Although I still think any movie called Rogue One should be about Rogue Squadron and Wedge Antilles... But then again, I really fell in love with Star Wars reading the X-Wing novel series.

Imo it is not very surprising, classical hype machine thing to the t. Even if we don't need to be told what to like, it is easier to play along and pretend we enjoyed it, even convince ourselves it was good, than admitting we were lead on and it is pretty bland. Of course, Occam is screaming every time a big budget IP blockbuster is coming, we just prefer not to pay attention. Without hindsight I might add.

The next films will play out the same I have no doubts about them. Emperor's new clothes and all that. Not disrespecting anyone who will genuinely like them of course.

> it is easier to play along and pretend we enjoyed it, even convince ourselves it was good, than admitting we were lead on and it is pretty bland

Even easier than this is to actually enjoy things. I didn't like it myself, but I'm happy to believe that my friends did.

Why do you claim people are pretending to like TFA but not the prequels?

They were never actually excited for the prequels, and/or it's long enough ago that they forgot the buildup to the prequels.

I don't think I have claimed that, but I believe it is more apparent in this case because TFA is the copy/remake/homage

> I don't think I have claimed that

True, but you are claiming that people are pretending to like TFA, and presumably you don't think people are pretending to like the prequels. It's rare to hear anything good about the prequels.

What's the "it" that's more apparent?

I mean the skewing effect of a cult following on the perception of the movie's qualities is more apparent here. I believe when someone is a fan they is already invested and hence incentivized to like/defend a movie/brand/franchise. Which is true for the prequels too btw. However TFA being merely a remake makes it objectively inferior imo, as I think people rate original artistic works higher (at least I do). A fact, which is not really reflected nor in its commercial, neither in its critical success. All that said, I might be just arguing about taste and trying to rationalizing my dislike for TFA.

It sounds like you're saying the effect is more apparent because TFA is bad. But the effect you claim is that people pretend (to themselves or others) to like works that have a brand or franchise or cult following behind them. And you admit that the prequels have that too.

But then we would expect people to either like or pretend to like the prequels. And we don't see that. The prequels are widely disdained. And you haven't explained why the prequels don't get the same pretense as TFA.

Not exactly the same story. It wasn't the plans for Death Star mk.III that were hidden in the cute robot this time.

To be fair, my wife liked it because the protagonist action hero was a girl, which is original in the genre I guess.

I agree but I look at it as palate cleaner after the prequels, that being said in episode 8 Finn better not end up in carbonite.

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