Star Wars

[Mr. GOH!]

Did people clap?

[CorgiShinobi]

I'm not going to be seeing the movie till Christmas Eve (family bonding). Came to post to confirm clapping for a movie in America is considered weird. First time I saw it was at LotR: Return of the King. These people two rows ahead of us stood and clapped three times during the finale.

 

Pfft, NERDS!

[deanb]

@Ethan second edit

 

 

I disagree. I think it was much better. He's not Darth Vader and the film goes to pains to portray that. He idolises his granddad and tries to emulate it, but he's only intimidating because he's impulsive and unstable (it's a humorous moment in the film with the stormtroopers, but you'd never see them do that with Vader as you generally know unless you have bad news he's not gonna just go "argh" and lash out at you). Snoke is openly unsure of his allegiance, Rey picks on him for wanting to be like Vader.

He's ultimately some kind of pretty boy and the mask (at least until the end) serves little practical purpose and many folks around him know that but sort of humour him. I think they messed up a bit removing the mask with Rey earlier on but they did kinda need to show his emotions a bit as Rey overpowers him, but definitely had to have him take his mask off for Han. I suspect that scene was written well in advance of Reys interrogation because of how Han is like "you don't need that mask" and the removal would be a bit more impactful if it's the first time we see him and he's not some pale scarred guy but someone who'd be right at home in a clothes catalogue.

 

He's sort of what Anakin should have been portrayed as (sorta). He's someone who is struggling between the call of the lightside and the darkside he wants to follow (though it's left up in the air why he chose the dark side).

 

Also his instability and indecisiveness mean that assuming you don't know ahead of time what's coming that you can think the bridge scene can go either way.

 

 

 

@Atomsk:

My step-dad n I looked at each other confused at RotK cos it's missing like 3 chapters of the ending. Even had it cut in the Extended Edition. (in the book Saruman enslaves the hobbits and has them start rebuilding his army, which also means all the trees get cut down which is why it was poignant Sam is given a seed from Lothlorien.

 

edit:

So for those yet to see it this is a fairly low level spoiler if you're curious and want to keep an eye out for Daniel Craig:

 

"these aren't the droids you're looking for"

 

(I won't be re-watching it for a while and wouldn't purposefully go to check him out)

[Thursday Next]

 

Maps: It's more like being shown a collection of islands than a piece of a continent. Out of context they could be in the outer Hebrides or the Caribbean.

 

Masks: I think Kylo Ren taking his mask off works. It's pretty essential to his character that the "Masked Sith Lord" thing is literally just a costume. I loved how the Moff didn't give a flying one about the guy, and the Stormtroopers ducking round a corner when he was having a tantrum was another display of disrespect. Liked that his name was "Ben".

 

Overall: I liked this. Good mix of light-heartedness while still being sensible enough that impactful moments felt right. I'm also over planet sized super weapons. I had a bit of a Joe Swanson moment when I saw that.

 

 

 

Looking forward to seeing why Ben / Ren turned to the Dark Side in the first place. Implied that being sent away by Han and Leia may have something to do with it. Also get the feeling that Rey is Leia and Han's daughter she was obviously abandoned on Jakku as a kid by someone important.

 

Thought Han was for it when he called to Ben on the bridge. Hadn't been spoiled but I was watching it thinking "no no no no no no" all the way through till the saber fired up.

 

Also, whoever develops these superweapons needs to have a setting where they can fire at less than 100% power. It took out about 5 planetoids at full power. Pretty sure it could make a planet uninhabitable at 90%, I mean it doesn't *have* to be reduced to rubble to kill every living thing on it.

 

 

 

[deanb]

Theories

 

I think she's Lukes. Given how Leia n Han reacted in regards to Ben, if she was their daughter I think they'd have been like "oh gods, it's you, our long lost daughter!". I suspect they're aware, or guess at, her lineage but don't want to be the ones to go "oh yeah you're Lukes kid". She has visions of Lukes hermit home, she had visions upon handling Anakin/Lukes lightsaber, could call it to her where Kylo couldn't and she's shown to be a natural, and powerful, force user (much like Anakin, which could also imply an immaculate conception too). If she was Kylo Rens sister he'd have just as much right to Anakins 'saber as she did but it kind of rejected him.

 

Also I imagine writers will want to have Luke be all "I, am your father".

 

edit: In fact it's totally a riff on this scene and I'd kinda not clicked at first:

 

[TheMightyEthan]

Did people clap?

 

Yes, and cheered, and not just at the beginning and end. Pissed me off. I think I would have enjoyed the movie more if the audience hadn't been so stupid. They also laughed WAY longer and louder than the comic relief justified.

[TheMightyEthan]

 

Maps:  Okay, sure, it's like islands, but even in that situation I'm sure a cartographer could figure it out with a little effort, not to mention a damn computer.  Surely they have navigational computers capable of taking a star plot and figuring out where it is.  Not to mention they even say in the movie "It doesn't match any known systems" implying that they are using some kind of comparison method that just fails to place a giant chuck of the galaxy for no apparent reason.  It's really stupid.  All they would have had to do to make it less stupid is to make it some kind of code, and you can't decode it without the whole thing.  It could even have been a visual code so the whole capturing Rey because she'd seen it would still have worked.

 

Masks:  After having read what dean said about the mask I agree that it needed to happen (driving home from the theater I said they should have saved it for the second movie), but that it would have been much better to not have it in the seen with Rey's interrogation but instead in the scene with Han on the bridge.  Would have been more impactful in that context.

 

I thought the comic relief was over-done, and too far into goofy humor at times (I had similar complaints about Abrams' Star Trek), but it was still WAY better than the prequels in that regard, and it didn't ruin the tone of the movie.

 

 

Also, I agree with Dean's theory, that's what I was thinking too.  Although

 

 

Wasn't Anakin's lightsaber dropped into the bottomless pit at Cloud City along with Luke's hand?  That's why Luke had to build a new one for RotJ.  So how is it now on this random planet?

 

 

And one final semi-complaint:

 

 

It was kind of weird apparently the entire Resistance fleet consisted of like 20 X-Wings.  I mean, the fucking Rebel Alliance was better equipped than that at the Battle of Yavin, and this Resistance has the backing of an actual galactic government.  And the reason I say that was apparently the entire fleet was because at one point during the battle somebody says how many have been shot down and another goes "That's half our fleet!"

 

[deanb]

 

I think given they have an entire galaxy of planets to pick from it's reasonable to not know all of the planets. Especially bear in mind in prequels Kamino wasn't shown on the Jedi maps and their archive was pretty damn extensive. I'd say in universe it would be reasonable that the newly formed Republic wouldn't have access to extensive star charts. Even in on the relatively small mapping of earth there's still chunks missing (heh, as noted trying to get a streetview look of the Beehive huts mentioned on previous page).

I'd say from a film perspective it's stupid that they even implied they thought R2 had the full map, but never bothered to wake him up to check. And that he coincidentally turned back on near the end to pop out the map. I think yeah would be more sense if it was treasure map style, with just showing a handful of systems maybe and needed the full thing to overlay on top or something so you could figure out the final destination (I think someone was attempted along the line since there was a clear yellow route going through the galaxy map that ended on a point)

 

Lightsaber wise apparently a lot of Maz was cut out of the film, and that segment did seem notably rushed. And she would explain that she stole it from Ren, who had it from someone else, who'd got it from someone else, who found it in the Bespin mines. Instead it became "a good question for another time". (Bespin was a mining colony, Cloud City was a floating/flying/super tall city high above the surface)

 

The way it was covered at the opening crawl is the Resistance was a semi-sanctioned strike force of sorts. Sorta SAS style I'd guess. Not their official army or any thing. Sort of kept those upstarts Leia and Akbar occupied and away from actual government and only limited tools to go play at armies. Apparently one of the new canon books for the in-between bits remarks that the Republic massively scaled down the army to pre-clone army levels (hence the destruction of the senate seat and surrounding fleet being a big deal since that's the official army mostly gone too, leadership as well). Which I guess makes sense, Clone Wars, and then the following military might of Empire will have shaken folks. Being all "look we're kinda peaceful, let's just do trade negotiations" would make folks more comfortable with the new government. Likely individual systems with their own armies/mercenaries mind.

I imagine it'll play a bit into VIII.

 

 

[TheMightyEthan]

 

I would agree with you if it had been a map of just one system it would be plausible that system wasn't in their records.  What I find implausible is that it was actually a giant fucking chunk of the galaxy, and they apparently didn't have enough data on ANY of the billions of systems that would be contained within that volume (or even the dozens that were visible on screen) to match it to where it fits in the galaxy.

 

[deanb]

 

I imagine if you put it in a computer it'd be able to give you a few options eventually. Galaxies are pretty fucking huge (there's an estimated 400billion stars in the Milky Way, let alone planets to those) and implication is that there's "only" a maybe a few hundred tops of major systems that are populated and named.

 

 

Anywho might slow down pace a bit on this or we'll have written more than the complete novelization for the film n be nice for folks to not be intimidated.

[TCP]

I decided I couldn't wait, so I moved the wife and I's tickets up from 9:45pm to 3:15pm today. 8 more hours to go. I'm simultaneously excited for the movie but also scared shitless of the internet. Most movies I'm excited for are comic book movies and I've spoiled myself by either following the leaks or knowing the comic storylines. Assuming I can avoid spoilers for the rest of the day, this will be the first time I've gone to a movie in ages completely blind.     

[TheMightyEthan]

I wish our theater had had a matinee today, that's the one I would have gone to.

[Thursday Next]

 

All I'm saying is, I think of all the disbelief suspensions required for the Star Wars Universe to work that the map being incomplete was a pretty minor one.

 

I mean, they had a weaponised planet (or planet sized weapon), that transferred all the mass and energy in a sun into its core, without collapsing, and then used that energy to fire a faster than light laser which at the last minute split up to hit a planet and half a dozen satellite bodies. There are some people who can "speak" droid and wookie. The baddies can track the Falcon everywhere, but never got to Jakku. Someone, somehow, stole the Falcon from Han frickin' Solo and he never got it back.

 

I was thinking that she was Luke's kid, but then there was no mention of Mrs Skywalker and he's kind of a monk and stuff so I can't see him banging anyone. But on reflection it would make sense if she was Luke's daughter and as part of Kylo Ren's betrayal he killed Mrs Skywalker and Luke whisked her off to a shithole desert world cos that's how Skywalkers roll. Could still be Han and Leia's though and either Han didn't know and Leia kept it secret cos that's how Skywalkers roll (less likely the more I think about it though) or they both knew but wanted to keep it secret till the right time because of the murderous sibling.

 

 

 

[TheMightyEthan]

 

I think the map thing is a different kind of suspension of disbelief though.  All those other things can be explained by "its Star Wars, they have ridiculous technology, so they can do ridiculous things".  The map, OTOH, is a thing they can't do that it seems like they should be able to easily, and no explanation is given as to why not.  It's harder to get past because it doesn't make sense in the context.  It would have made infinitely more sense if it were a code that allowed them to unlock a map they already had, and it wouldn't have required any change in the plot.

 

[Thursday Next]

 

I don't get why you are struggling with it. If I gave you a map of my town with my house marked on it and you had an atlas with a couple of pages missing it would take a long time to match the two up so you could come see me even. You could narrow it down to towns with a river running through them, and a couple of other features, but at best you'd have a list of candidates. The BB-8 map is no different. It looked like one solar system. In a whole galaxy. So yeah, you could start to narrow it down to systems with 4 planets, two of which have rings, one of which has water, etc etc etc and you'd end up with a list of thousands out of the tens of billions of solar systems in a galaxy.

It feels like you aren't taking into account how big galaxies are. It's only because R2's map has a known origin point and a path that they are able to find Luke so easily at the end of the fillm.

As for R2's deus ex machina at the end of the film, I'm happy to hand wave that with some mumbo jumbo Force stuff, or detecting the lightsaber or some such.

 

[TheMightyEthan]

 

I already said if it had been just one system I would totally be able to buy it, one system is easy to lose in the galaxy, but there are clearly dozens of stars visible in the chunk BB-8 has, and when R2 projects a map of the entire galaxy BB-8's piece takes up like 1/8 of the whole thing, so I'm assuming the stars shown are the major/important ones (because there should be billions in an area that size).  I wish I had screenshots I could post.  It is a MASSIVE piece of the galaxy that they're unable to identify, and that is stupid.

 

*Edit - If you can suspend your disbelief about it that's fine, I have no beef with that, and I wish I could, but it's just too far outside the realm of plausibility for me, in a way that doesn't fit with the rest of the setting.

 

Edited December 18, 2015 by TheMightyEthan

[Thursday Next]

 

I thought it was a single solar system in a section of the galaxy, not 1/8 of the galaxy.

 

[TCP]

GAAAHHH I WANT TO KNOW WHAT YOU GUYS ARE SAYING. This hype is killing me. 

QUICKLY, rank The Force Awakens among the rest of the Star Wars movies. 

[Thursday Next]

It's at 1 or 2 for me. Maybe 1. Ranking is:

 

1 TFA

1 TESB

3 ANH

4 ROTJ

4 ROTS

6 AOTC

9 TPM

[TCP]

AHHH THURSDAY YOU'RE KILLING ME!!!

[TheMightyEthan]

1. 5

2. 6

3. 7

4. 4

5. 3

6. 2

7. 1

[deanb]

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

[Mr. GOH!]

You think 8 hours is bad, my tickets are not until Sunday afternoon, TCP. 

 

I won't be going in completely blind. I've looked at leaked art book stuff and read theories based on snippets of spoilers. But I ain't clicking on any spoiler tags in this thread until Sunday evening.

 

I should have gotten Friday night tickets, in retrospect. Or Saturday morning tickets. Oh well.

 

Edit: I do have one question, though, for those who have seen it; does the blending of practical and CGI effects work? I've been told there are some all-CGI characters, and of course any external dogfighting shots will be CGI. Does it all look good together? 

Edited December 18, 2015 by Mr. GOH!

[TheMightyEthan]

It all works extremely well, with the exception of one all-CG character who does look obviously CG, but still doesn't look bad considering.  Think Gollum from the Hobbit trilogy (which if you haven't seen it was better than Gollum from LotR).

[deanb]

I'm pretty sure Peggs guy was CG too which was surprising given there's shots of him in suit. But yeah two major characters are CG but fine enough for it.