 I'm Ryan, we're here from So Is It Any Good, we're here today to talk about everything Star Wars, The Force Awakens. This is going to be a spoiler heavy video, so if you haven't seen the movie, check out now. We're here with a huge panel of guests, I'm Ryan. Jared. Scott. Nick. We're all writers from the website and we're just going to delve into the movie, talk about everything we thought we liked and we hated. So first off, So Is It Any Good? Jared. Yes, a resounding yes. That's exactly how I'd say it as well. Alright, what were the flaws? I felt it was a little lazy on the storytelling side. They're fine words, they are fine words. I feel like at one point they just kind of, you know what, we've done enough, it's Star Wars, everyone will get it. Let's just get on with the action and that's not what it's supposed to be about. And then it felt super rushed after that, everything was happening all over the place. It didn't have that kind of, it didn't feel as grand as it should, even though they're destroying planets and blowing shit up, it still didn't have that grand feeling that the originals did. It felt small and rushed. But look at the size comparison, it's clearly bigger and better. Technically, yes. In case you didn't get it. But yeah, I don't know. I mean that's just one of the reasons as well that it's very similar to, you know, the, do we call them the originals? What's the phrasing for it? The only other three films. And I actually wrote a list of the comparisons that I think most people have picked up on. And even watching the originals again after watching the new one, the first 15 minutes of A New Hope, I'm thinking, ah, so it's an old lightsaber out of a box routine. Oh, it's, you know, similarities throughout, you know, being stuck on a desert planet, you know. There's lists and lists. Yeah, it references everything and basically re-does the plot, but I don't care. No, and that's it. I don't give a shit. I just don't give a shit. It's done well. All of the new characters are really interesting. The action scenes are really good and easy to understand. They don't go into Michael Bay territory where everything is just everywhere. You can follow people. You actually care about the fighter pilots at the end. Yeah, I just didn't give a shit that it was the same. No, and that's it because they took things you loved, like having, you know, she lives in an atat for God's sake. Yeah. It's like, okay, cool. And there's a chase scene through one of the Imperial Star Wars. Star Wars. Yeah. Yeah, all that little fanboy stuff is brilliant. Well, I saw it again. I've seen it twice now. And a lot of the flaws I thought were, I thought the resistance won the battles too easily. And they just kind of came out of nowhere and took over the joint. But on second viewing, I thought that most of that was actually just because I was sitting there going, Star Wars, I'm missing out on most of the actual plot. What did you think about Kylo Ren? He was like a huge character coming into the trailers. And there was a lot of fan excitement about him. Did he live up to it? Did he bring it down? I feel like... So I hated him again. Did you just hate him? No, no, no. I didn't hate him. I just hate him. And I think he's going to be an interesting character that's definitely going to play a big part. Right. And I'm curious to see which way he goes because they're definitely showing that he wants to go to the good, but he also mainly wants to go bad. And he's sort of stuck. And it feels like it's not even, I don't know, anyway. But I feel like a lot of people got his tattoo very prematurely. Yeah. Yeah. It's just like I've seen a lot of people make Captain Phasma costumes and our spent on that. Who? Captain Phasma. Were you even in it? Yeah. Yeah. Captain Phasma was the chrome trooper that showed up for about two and a half minutes throughout the entire film. And then got apparently dumped in a goer shoot. Yeah. Quite apparently. Yeah. And she's quite dead. Yeah. Well, they've got to bring her back because that's just... It's just no point to her otherwise. So branding as well. Yeah. They did that at the start of it. They'd call each other by the name. Oh, BB-8. They somewhat said that about 50 times in the first 10 minutes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Until yesterday I thought this was a storm trooper. Then I realized, oh wait, it doesn't have that circle thing here. It's Captain Phasma and I look like an idiot because it's clear the character there was nothing. And it looks cool though. She looks great and everything. But yeah, they don't do anything with it. And essentially she's like a school mom. You know, she's looking after the naughty little storm troopers and my name is Rebellion. Do you remember they cut out some scenes? They must have. They must have. Who do you think Max Von Cider was playing? Because it seemed like he was a character from a previous movie. Ruro is supposed to be some character from a previous movie. Yeah. Previous movie. Right. Well, the character's name was Lawsanteca. Tika. How do you pronounce it? It's got a look at you for pronunciation. You're the guy that's reading everything in between the movies. Yeah, shut up. You'd be more... Well, to be honest, I haven't seen him in anything. So I've read most of the Kenan books and the comic books, but leading up the Journey to the Force Awakens. And you would think that he would appear in one of those, but he hasn't appeared in anything. So he was just straight up and started the movie, wiped out, gone away, played by a really big name actor. So he had some connection to Kylo Ren because they knew each other. Yeah. And there was some feeling behind that strike down. Yeah, I feel like maybe he knew Luke. Yes. And maybe he had some sort of force connection, but I don't think he was a Jedi. Well, maybe he was helping Luke with the Jedi training or whatever. Right. Or he's just his sat-nav. I've got a map to where he is. He's just staying there forever. Or he's obviously some trusted confidant, because he had that piece. Who do you think Snoke is? Whatever you want to call him, Gollum. Any CGI character, Snoke. It reminds me of Voldemort on the back of the head in the first Force of the Stone or Sorcerer's Stone, depending where you're coming from. My theory is that he's Plagueis. I don't know if anyone knows who Plagueis is. He was Darth Sidious's trainer. He was his master. So Darth Sidious was a power team. And in that scene in Episode 3, he talks about how Plagueis had worked out a way to use the Force to create life. He taught that power to Palpatine, and then Palpatine killed him in his sleep. Or that's what Palpatine says. He killed him in his sleep. So he should be dead. However, if you look at Darth Plagueis, there's a novel called Darth Plagueis or Plagueis. The image on the front of it is quite literally the same shot as what's in Episode 7 of Snoke. I think it's Plagueis. There's giant being and Sidious sitting down the bottom, kind of like bowing to him. And there's really dark and blackened room. And Plagueis is sort of like a human-esque looking character in novels. But he also is like a... His species is a moon or a mun, which kind of has an elongated head, which was similar to what I thought that character looked like. So that's my theory. I think he's Plagueis. And it would make him more powerful than Palpatine and would also have him in that same kind of lineage of Sith Lords and stuff like that. What's the deal with the lightsabers? And everyone's only knowing how to use them proficiently enough to take on everyone. So what's the question? I can answer this one. I know I can. I've heard stories that only someone who's strong with the Force can operate a lightsaber. Correct. But I think people who don't have the Force can use it. They're just not any good. So they won't have the reflexes to deflate. But Finn, on picking up one of these lightsabers, can actually take on Wren in a fight. Very well. He got his ass kicked. But he did pretty well for a good five minutes or so. And the same with Rey. You don't think Finn, not Finn, Kylo Ren was almost toying with him? The looks he was giving him and when the scene where he was pushed up against the tree and pressing that edge of his saber into his shoulder, you don't think he was just kind of like, Oh God, mate. Ain't got no time for you. For someone who's a janitor and all respect to Palpatine and everyone in that field, but I'm not sure a sanitation worker could actually pick up a sword and straight away be able to do something like that. He's definitely trained in Stormtrooper things. And you've also seen a Stormtrooper with the right gear that has the baton. So why wouldn't he be trained in that? Not to battle you, but... No, no, no. Please battle away. Because then I suddenly saw him take on the Stormtrooper with, you probably know the name for it, the big taser-like gun thing. Yeah, taser-baton. Yeah, taser-baton. That's an official title. Official title. But straight away just, Oh look, there's a lightsaber. Look, let me just, you know, use that. But he also got his ass kicked by him, too. It was only because of Han with Chewie's... Bowcaster. Bowcaster. But he won that battle. He lost both times. But if you gave me a sword and I went up against someone with one of those things, I wouldn't last half as long as that. And I just think it felt like it was, it made it look easy, whereas you look at Luke in A New Hope and he's like spending ages trying to learn how to use it, it just felt too easy for all these guys. And unless there is a bit of a force in him, I don't know. It could be. The only thing I have to say towards that is that they're all trained, like to say the Stormtroopers are trained from the same day of birth kind of thing, all the way up. That's where it comes into play. Yeah, Poe is clearly quite, not Poe, but Finn is quite clearly good with blasters and whatever he kind of picks up. Maybe he's quite good with weaponry and that guy might not be very good with blasters. That's why he has the baton thing, because he's rubbish at everything else. Like every Stormtrooper ever. It comes from a long lineage of shooty, fiery Stormtroopers. No, that does kind of make sense. His final was probably the one that battled his head. Yeah, that does make sense if they're trained to something similar, like stun, baton or anything. And I had the same sort of problem with Rey, the way everyone else, it takes ages to learn how to use these things and then Rey suddenly could pick one up and use it as well as everyone else and shorty strong in the force and maybe it's a new type of skill that comes with someone being that good in the force. I can just do this straight away. But it felt like in the original movies there was so much discipline and training and learning. Training with the odor, etc. or all that over one. More about learning skill. Hey, you can now do that. Yeah, this is what that does. Okay, cool. For me, that just felt a little bit too easy. Same with the Falcon. But maybe that's a tiny issue. She took over the Falcon and she was suddenly amazing at flying. See, that I can understand more because that's her background and she's trained and all that sort of stuff. And I guess she's also trained in using that staff thing. So I think it's just her. Yeah, she could handle herself before that. And that was one of the funny... and this movie is funny as well. But one of the funny moments is where she's getting beaten up by the guys trying to take BB-8 and Finn's running in like a hero and then he just stops and it's like, I guess she's fine. Fair enough. All right, so the last thing I want to ask is the biggest spoiler of the movie. How do you all feel about Han dying? I'm glad. Oh, you are the like, you're just cracking out things that are unexpected scots. What do you call you unexpected Scotty? I like it. Someone needed to die. And it had to be Han. It had to be Han. Who else was it going to be? Oh, they killed that. They definitely killed a top lip. And if... Oh, sorry. Was that CGI under her eyes? Occasionally she looked really soft on its CGI to imagine. That was the Vaseline on the lens. I mean, a bum. Yeah. But also, I can see that it needed to be done. Yeah. And it was done well. They didn't stuff it up at all. It was like a... It was an emotional ending. It was a half-assed Luke Invader moment. If you're going to kill your father or have a fight with your dad, you might as well do it on a big catwalk with a big drop below. No safety rails. I think that's a prurik, is it? Why did they not put safety rails on any of these things? It's not the Death Star. It's the same issue. It is crazy. They don't have any time. They don't call it a safety star. It's not the budget. It's not the budget. How are they going to kill all the characters? But yeah, for me, luckily, I don't know how I managed to forget that there was talk about this being his last movie and all that sort of stuff. So if I had have had that in front of mine, that would have really annoyed me. But yeah, it was still... I wanted Wren to actually turn to the good. But I was still really optimistic. And some people, it was just like an obvious he's going to die because he's not doing any more movies. He said he'd come back for this one. Whereas for me, I was sort of almost a bit optimistic. I'm like, oh, look at good. And then he's like, yeah, yeah. Let go of the lightsaber, mate. You're almost there. Kill one. And then for me, the weirdest part about that was I'd actually kind of lost track, to be fair, of why they were planting these bombs and what Finn and Rey were doing up the top and how everyone had like this kind of lovely little view of what was going on. And then why they needed to go up there for whatever. That's just me not paying attention, I'm sure. But then... They were pulling out fuses and then suddenly they were outside. Yeah, so... It all felt very... They were there for that specific reason. So all in all, are you excited about episode 8? Episode 8, will you see it? And will you see it at 12 o'clock in the night session? Of course. No. I'm still very excited, but I don't think... What was the reason why? Sorry. Oh, I like to sleep. You don't hate the movie at all. You just want to sleep. Fair enough. Sorry, Neil. I'm excited, but I don't think anyone could be as excited as they were for this time. No. I mean, unless they release an incredible trailer. The thing is we probably answered a lot of the questions in this one, like if you show the character from The Force, they'll be like, oh, well, I know who that is. There's no mystery there. Yeah, yeah, that's right. Unless Captain Phasma comes back, or her and Poe probably have like a separate thing together where, you know, I mean, I feel like that's how it's in itself. Yeah. Because they went in that movie. That's right. Yeah, they had an adventure in that missing hour. Yeah. It's just like a spin-off TV series. Yeah. Yeah. A couple. But no, I'm looking forward to, I think, because I think I'll take my kids to see that one the first time I watch it this time around. Right. Because I'm going to watch it with them again and see their reactions. I'm pretty excited. I don't think Ryan Johnson has the same sort of chops that JJ Abrams does, but I'm a huge JJ Abrams fan, so that's probably me just geeking out. But, all in all, I think it's going to be really good. Yeah. I think Ryan Johnson will pull it off. Yeah, yeah, definitely. Definitely. So that's it for today. If you want to check us out more, head to the website, www.SalesAnyGood.com, or head to our Facebook and give us a like on www.Facebook.com, salesanygood. That's us. We're here. We're home.