Star Wars 7 Spoilers Thread: This SPOIL bath is going to feel so good.

Someone should start a spoilerific thread for the movie, maybe?

― Some Pizza Grudge From Twenty Years Ago (Old Lunch), Thursday, December 17, 2015 9:06 AM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Seeing it tonight at 11:55. Will have to come home and go to bed directly after, but I'll join the thread in the coming days.

Spoiler: the first thing you see after the crawl is a full-frontal nude shot of Harrison Ford getting into said oil bath. Callbacks!

Just checking out the etiquette of Spoiler threads here before posting.

Assume you don't need to give any warning in your post as basically you shouldn't be reading this thread if you haven't seen the film yet?

That is a safe assumption.

And, with that, I am out.

Still basking in the afterglow of this but immediate reaction - amazing!! Fights! Chases! Explosions! No parliamentary debates! Just 2 hours of great fun. Boyega and especially isaac were great and I'm quite in love with daisy Ridley. She was fantastic throughout.

Also omfg kylo ren!! I have been assiduously avoiding anything even approaching spoilers for this so I dunno if his identity was already well known but it came as a hell of a surprise to me and made him 100x more interesting as an antagonist. Bridge confrontation and outcome was another bid surprise

Supreme leader dude was pretty cool, an interesting design choice, would've preferred it if they'd shown less of his cgi face I think.

Yeah Supreme Leader CGI was on of the bum notes. Kept thinking he'd popped in from a Peter Jackson movie.

Ridley was fantastic.

Main gripe was that the plot was basically Episode IV all over again complete with beeping droid with secret plans, "orphan" from a desert planet and even the bridge scene with onlookers (as soon as that started I knew what was going to happen).

Still, an amazing, fun filled ride and I'm looking forward to seeing it again in a week or so with my kids.

I just saw this, and it was... okay. First half was definitely better than the second half, mostly because at least it had an original plot, whereas the second half was too much of a rehash of Episode IV, with some elements of VI thrown in (mostly that they had to get on the ground and neutralize the force field before the figher team can attack ). When they started planning on attacking the weak spot of Death Planet with TIE fighters, I was like, "Seriously? Are they really gonna do the same exact plot?". And they did, right down to the older mentor figure getting killed by his kid who had betrayed him (in IV Vader was Obi-Wan's kid figuratively, here Han gets killed by his actual kid). And then the Force prodigy has to go look for Yoda/Luke to become his/her mentor, etc. This was still way better than episodes I to III, but would it really hurt so much to come up with some new plot beats?

Some stray observations:

* Even though the attack against the Death Planet was modelled after the climaxes of IV and VI, it wasn't quite as gripping, and that was mostly because the stakes felt much lower. In the original movies the supporting pilots were nicely fleshed out, and the major characters had to go through some real danger and challenges before victory. But here the pilots, including Dameron Poe, were mere cyphers, and the victory was achieved way too easily. The Millenium Falcon team just magically gets through the planetary shield, waltzes inside the building while knocking a few guard and places their bombs, and the TIE figher guys easily blow up the planet. There was no proper stakes in any of it.

* Seriously, the Death Planet was laughably easy to infiltrate... Shouldn't it have much tighter security? And the whole concept felt like Abrams just wanted to make his superweapon bigger than the superweapon of the original, right down to a scene that literally shows how much bigger it is. It felt like two kids fighting over who's toy is cooler... "My Death Star can blow up a planet with one shot!" "So what, my Death Planet can blow up several planets with one shot!" "My Death Star is as big as moon!" "Well, mine is ten times bigger than yours!" It was just stupid.

* Part of the reason why the stakes in the climax felt lower than in IV or VI was because the villains were so non-scary. I understand that they want to have a character arc for Kylo Ren where he kills his dad and becomes more badass, but he was still the main villain for the movie, and at this point he a total woobie. They really, really shouldn't have had him take of his mask to show his emo face, because that diminished any sense of threat left in him. And they shouldn't have had Rey defeat him even though she was using a lightsaber for the the first time in her life. That made Kylo look like a weakass villain. Preferably, he should have had the upper hand throughout the whole fight, and Rey should've been saved by the earthquake just as Kylo was about to finish her, not the other way around.

* And then there was the other villain... Who apparently is called "Snoke"?! And who looks and acts like a giant Gollum on a throne?! Seriously, it felt like this guy belonged to some kids' cartoon, he was about as scary as Skeletor. I'm really, really hoping that the whole Gollum thing was a just a ruse (as he only appears via a hologram), and he turns something completely different, because as such he was lame as hell.

* On the plus side, the two main characters were much more interesting than the villains, and both actors nailed the roles. I kinda hoped they'd gotten even more focus, and the old fogeys from the original movies would've been just minor supporting characters... Though it's kinda understandable Harrison Ford got as much screentime as he did, given that this was the swan song of Han Solo.

* Han's death scene was about the only really suprising thing in the whole movie. It was to be expected that some of the old crew would kick the bucket at some point, but I don't think most people didn't expect it to happen so soon, I certainly didn't. The death scene was effective, and if they manage to use it to build up Kylo into a cool tragic villain, it was worth killing Han. But that remains to be seen, so far both Kylo and his actor were underwhelming.

* The biggest flaw in the movie, in my opinion, is not even the plot recycling, but the fact that it didn't work as a self-contained work at all. In the end nothing gets solved, pretty much every plot thread is left waiting for the sequels, but it doesn't even end with a whopping cliffhanger like Empire Strikes Back does. Compare that to the IV, which gives you a satisfying resolution while still leaving the plot open enough for sequels, and it seems the writers of VII weren't even good enough at imitating the earlier movies.

* And speaking of unresolved things, they do seem to be hinting that Rey is Luke's daughter, don't they? Even though R2-D2 had the part of the mystery map all along, why didn't it tell the others about it earlier? It seemed that R2 was waiting for Rey to join them, because it was supposed to reveal the map only then, so that she would be the one to go searching for Luke. Combine that with the mystery of Rey's missing parents, and it feels like we're heading towards, "Rey, I am your father". I hope they don't do that, because it would be too convenient for both the main baddie and the main hero to be kids of the previous trilogy's protagonists... I'd much prefer them to have identities of their own instead of just being Han Jr. and Luke Jr. I think it'd be much cooler if she really was just the daughter of poor scavengers, it's such a cliche (not to mention inherently elitist) that every hero needs to be secretly related to Important People.

Agree that this played it way too safe to be truly great but was still fun to watch and now that they've got all the fanservice and plot tropes out of the way the future episodes seem promising esp with how good the new leads were in this

one dud imo was having all the First Order people be younger dudes, they looked more like a bunch of star wars nerds playing out their childhood fantasies than a fearsome organization

also i was ready for luke to break out into 'what a fool believes' when he took off his hood at the end

I liked it, but Finn's incompetence at everything seemed like they were trying really hard to ensure he wouldn't come across as a Mary Sue, despite the fact that he's a total fan surrogate throughout.

The way they handled wiping out an entire star system and obliterating the capital of the New Republic (somewhere other than Coruscant, I assume?) felt rather trite. And the Resistance folks are like "oh shit, that means we're next" as opposed to "omg all of our families have just been murdered" - it seemed like they had to rush to get to the real stakes i.e. patricide

I mean honestly after Finn wakes up they should get him back on sanitation duty as soon as possible, that guy is no good at everything

Also I agree with Tuomas that Kylo is clearly utter shit with a lightsaber. If he would've stuck to massive force pushes and freezing people he'd have saved himself quite a few scars.

also I like how sometime in the 30 years that have passed lightsabers are apparently no longer capable of dismemberment, like I guess all the batteries are wearing out and nobody makes new ones anymore

Mixed feelings. Boyega, Ridley, Isaac, and Driver were very good. The light saber stuff was good. The segment where they first pilot the Falcon was very strong, as were the first few Han segments.

But most of the x-wing stuff and their assault didn't have much gravity. The attack on the death star in A New Hope was more of a nailbiter.

also I like how sometime in the 30 years that have passed lightsabers are apparently no longer capable of dismemberment, like I guess all the batteries are wearing out and nobody makes new ones anymore

Yeah, that was odd. Lightsabering someone's hand/arm off is such an inconic Star Wars motif that it was weird that they didn't include it in this one, given how reverent they were towards the original movies in general. They did have Han saying "I have a bad feeling about this", though.

they looked more like a bunch of star wars nerds playing out their childhood fantasies than a fearsome organization

I kind of feel like this might play out as intentional, eventually -- the imperial fragment that thought they needed a dark side leader has struck a bargain with something they did not anticipate and it's going to backfire

Luke as haunted failed teacher might have some mileage

Greg Grunberg as Porkins 2

one dud imo was having all the First Order people be younger dudes, they looked more like a bunch of star wars nerds playing out their childhood fantasies than a fearsome organization

I think this might've worked if they'd made the First Order into young fanatics, people who idealize the era of the Empire as a time of peace and order, because they're not old enough to remember what the reality of it was like. I guess something like this may still be developed in the later movies, given that Kylo seems to worship Darth Vader, even though he was born after he died. (And he must've learnt from his family and Uncle Luke that Vader eventually turned away from the dark side.) But in this movie we really don't learn anything about the First Order's motives, another flaw in building up it's villains. All we know that they're being lead by shadowy Giant Space Gollum, who's own motives remain equally unclear.

the republic exists but is mostly unseen, as they aren't concerned with this threat on the outer rim and an offshoot willing to keep the fight going is a "resistance"

Rey being attuned to the force from the start, the force finally kicking into balance after Luke runs off and an actual dark force creeps in. beginning the series with an adept who is quickly competent and a present dark apprentice who fumbles versus the Vader/Luke balance being very much the opposite

uh their motive is the empire was great and powerful and democracy sucks imo. fascism is exciting and its own end. it promises all the excitement that consensus rule doesn't iirc

the imperial fragment that thought they needed a dark side leader has struck a bargain with something they did not anticipate and it's going to backfire

Yeah, it seems kinda likely that Snoke is not what they think he is, and that he has other plans than merely becoming Emperor II. His whole ridiculous image, being a giant sitting on a throne of shadows, and the fact we never see him in flesh and blood, makes it seem that it's all an illusion, and in reality he's something unexpected.

Maybe Snoke is Luke?

Nah I bet he's like three feet tall

Snoke is Yoda Jr!

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/c/c1/Watto_EPI_TPM.png

Or this guy, finally getting his revenge on the Skywalker family after all these years!

so that speech Luke gave in the trailer.. what happened to that?!

the snow-y sabre stuff looked absolutely incredible in 3D.

the 3rd best SW movie though no doubt. *flew* by too.

Seriously though, I think it's perfectly possible that Snoke is actually a member of the same race as Yoda. They've thrown everything else from the original movies into the blender, so why not have an Evil Yoda as well?

(xpost)

I thought Kylo Ren removing his helmet was a great move. It brought sexual tension to his conflict with Rey without making it too rapey.

*flew* by too.

It's rare to say this about modern action movies, but I think this one could've benefitted from being a bit longer... If they'd fleshed out the X-Wing pilots a bit and made the infiltration and attack on the Death Planet feel more dangerous, with setbacks and reversals of fortune, it wouldn't have felt so weak compared to the episode IV and VI finales. Okay, the personal drama between Kylo/Han/Rey/Finn was reallly the meat there, and that worked nicely, but in VI they were able to do both personal drama and good space action at the same time, and they kinda failed at the latter in this one.

I thought Kylo Ren removing his helmet was a great move. It brought sexual tension to his conflict with Rey without making it too rapey.

Oh yeah, that one I actually liked. When they kidnapped Rey, and Finn was set on rescuing her, I feared they would go into Damsel in Distress territory, so it was cool that Rey actually saved herself. And there definitely were some intentional abusive vibes in the interrogation scene, so it was a great moment when Rey stood up against Kylo.

But IMO the confrontation with Han, and particularly the final lightsaber fight were the parts where seeing Kylo's emo face diminished him as a villain. I understand that he had to remove his helmet when he saw his dad, but I think it would've worked much better if he'd remained stone-faced throughout the scene instead of all this ACTING! And in the final fight, seeing him look so sad and scared, combined with the fact that he lost to a first-time light-saber user, just made him feel like a weak villain.

Thinking they're trying to say something about the nature of evil here that kinda goes against the prequel trilogy, no?
Adam Driver's Kylo Ren, lashing out at his equipment when the world doesn't fall into place for him seems so much more relatable than the stiff turns of Anakin Skywalker.
You could argue that it's all a bit too much of course but there's something refreshing about the fact that you get a real sense of this guy needing his mask to be truly evil. What we're seeing is him trying out what it would be like to be deliciously evil even without the mask hiding his true face - an internet troll's naked dream - but even with the patricide it feels like his plan doesn't work. He's still too vulnerable and passionate. But he'd prefer a life without the mask.

There's something about the naked quality of Rey's face - it's so open! - that goes into this tension too, I think. Kylo really wants to be like her, only bad.

Yeah, I can see what you're getting at, and like I said I can still imagine them building an interesting character arc for him, but the fact still is that he's the only villain in the movie who does anything important, so he needs to carry its conflict on his shoulders, and it doesn't quite work. If they'd given either Gollum or Tarkin Jr. more screentime, made either of them into the big baddie with Kylo as his right-hand man (like Tarkin/Vader in IV and Emperor/Vader in VI), then him being such a tragic and human character would've worked. But since he's the only significant villain, it fails, because a movie like this needs a proper Threat Personified.

But they want a vulnerable young man to be the face (!) of evil this time around, not an immovable old stone faced bastard. They're going for an Anders Behring Breivik kinda villain, obviously. And Breivik - a huge LOTR fan btw - didn't need a giant gollum to give him orders, outside of the projections of his own mind.

But this is not a realistic terrorist drama - I don't think Anders Behring Breivik works as the villain of an epic space fantasy. Different genres require different kinds of antagonists.

Well, Lucas tried to say something about the nature of evil so it's hardly unprecedented, and right now it's the behring breiviks that are threatening the west from within, not the paternalistic figures of Lucas's youth, so...

Actually I guess why this trilogy will be a synthesis of both the trilogies. It's Anakin revised that is the true innovation, radical enough to make the stabilization of this recognizable universe into a major concern for Abrams.

This was a really fun film. I liked this star wars film. I'm looking forward to another star wars film. STAR WARS!

Saw it last night. Just some scattered thoughts:

- Shooting on film in practical locations was definitely the right call. This film LOOKED terrific, with very few exceptions. After Empire it may be the best-looking of the films.

- My wife, no prequel-hater by a long shot, said, "Wow, I can't believe J.J. Abrams made a Star Wars movie that's more Star Wars-y than George Lucas did. He really seems to understand the universe of the movies a lot better than Lucas."

- Abrams knows who the real star of these movies is, too. The applause on the initial reveal of the Falcon (especially since he cleverly hid it offscreen during the "What about that ship?" exchange) was literally thunderous.

- I honestly thought that, if they were going to kill an OG character, it was going to be Chewbacca, since Mayhew is in his 70s and isn't up for the physicality of the part much longer. Killing Han was a bold choice, but one that satisfies the story beats, the fealty to the OT, and probably Ford's stipulations for agreeing to play the character again.

- Han and Leia naming their son "Ben" makes a lot more sense than naming their younger son "Anakin" in the EU. ("Ben" is Luke Skywalker's son in the EU.)

- My initial supposition that Luke would not show up until the very end of this film, which I posted on the "Shit Talk" thread, was confirmed; although I honestly thought for a second that after Threepio said "It would take a miracle now," he would show up during the Kylo/Rey fight. Not giving him even a single word of dialogue, thought? TROLL LEVEL: EXPERT

- Threepio doing a little lean-in during the Han/Leia reunion got a gigantic laugh. God bless Anthony Daniels.

- Abrams loves that imploding planet effect. RIP, Death Planet, may you and Vulcan meet in another life.

- Daisy Ridley is going to have little girls clamoring for her autograph for the rest of her life.

I could have done without Threepio altogether. I had forgotten that Daniels had been announced and I don't remember him showing up in the trailers. I understand it was a "let's get the gang back together" kinda deal.

I had also thought - going in - that Chewbacca was going to get offed. I had privately hypothesized that as the reason for Han and Leia's sad embrace in the trailer. And when he gets shot early on, I thought Finn would lose him while Rey and Solo are trying to fly the Falcon.

A lot to process, but my main takeaway is that the Abrams team got everything about casting right where the prequels team got it wrong. That made SO MUCH difference when I realized I actually liked, or at the very least wasn't indifferent to, all the people on the screen.

Oh, I didn't finish my thoughts on Threepio. He kinda took me out of it. I loved loved loved the movie, but 100% agree that there were too many throwbacks to the old movies and when he popped out that just kinda did it for me. Han and Chewie were perfect, and Luke's appearance at the end was full of portent. But I didn't really want to be wrapped up in "oh, look who's back!" kinda shit. The new cast had a very vital energy though and I liked the movie better when they were the focus.

Btw, what was that Kylo Ren say to Rey in the interrogation: "imagine an ocean, I am your island" or something like that while he's trying to pick her brain. That line was dope as hell and quickly glossed over, but then you have Luke at the end on an island in an ocean.

I wanted more Poe Dameron too. Yeah, he's a hotshot pilot so it makes sense that most of the time he's out there dogfighting most of the time, but the quick explanation of what happened to him after the tie fighter crash could have been shown, not told. Or told differently or something.

It might have just been me, but I kept thinking about Edna Mode from The Incredibles the whole time Maz Kanata was on the screen.

i liked it but a lot of this felt like it was abrams playing with a toy set lucas gave him and doing his own version of episode iv with the action figures and vehicles rather than coming up with a new movie. the coincidences necessary to drive the plot felt very little-kid-like too which is maybe the point but also prevented me from fully immersing. oh well. i bet if i were 10 i wouldn't care one bit

yeah i agree. when the Death Planet showed up I thought "oh theyre just going to make a reboot of A New Hope then?". too much pandering to the audience and a paucity of imagination. shit, theres tons of good writers who could have done something better surely

The sad thing was that the you couldn't tell from the first half that it was gonna be such a rehash. Sure, Rey's situation and the droid with secret plans were obvious Ep. IV throwbacks, but at that point it still felt like Search for Luke was gonna be the main plot, and I was really excited, because it would've given them a chance to show some more weird planets and cool aliens. And then the Death Planet shows up, and turns out it has secret weak spot, etc etc, and most of my initial enthusiasm died.

Yeah the Search for Luke would have been cool!

so long as Dame Judith Anderson still plays the Vulcan

It might have just been me, but I kept thinking about Edna Mode from The Incredibles the whole time Maz Kanata was on the screen.

― Ⓓⓡ. (Johnny Fever), Friday, December 18, 2015 8:54 AM (32 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

This was exactly my wife's comment!

Also re: the 3-D - STAR DESTROYERS: THEY FLY @ U FACE

Who spotted the Daniel Craig cameo then?

haha, of course ilx is meh. Guys this was great. The main criticism is just how bad it makes the prequels look.

the cgi yoda lady was bad. also, the white guns are so that the kids toys won't look too realistic.

Yeah, I'm only posting my complaints because I'm terrible at remembering like, great lines and jokes and awesome scenes. Because that's when you're in it. It's easier to complain about stuff because that's what pulls me out of it. I had planned on bringing a notepad to write down my favorite shit, but forgot. So much greatness.

-Rey sliding down that sand due.
-Rey laying Finn out in the market
-"stop grabbing my hand!"
-"in that case, let's take the garbage"
-Kylo Ren throwing a fit and the stormtroopers backing away.
-What was the deal with that head that pops out of the ground when BB-8 is fleeing the village? That dude was hiding too, I guess?

dune

Abrams has been faithfully attending his Disney/Marvel/Lucasfilm Whedon classes though, both in Whedoning Han, and in Rey's whole character. (Finn getting knocked out cold, then Rey slapping him awake and him asking her, "Are you OK?" felt like it could've come right out of a Buffy episode.)

Loved Han repeatedly referring to Finn as "Big Deal."

I liked that there was just enough sense of an an entire history now that took place between Jedi and this to fill in all sorts of blanks. There weren't nearly as many exposition dumps regarding what Han, Leia and Luke have been doing for 30 years as there might have been. Just a lot of, "Things have happened, everyone is older, bad shit has gone down," etc. If he isn't a great director, Abrams is at least capable of a certain economy of storytelling.

This is exactly what a Star Wars movie 40 years on should be.

As a parent, I wouldn't mind if this is the first SW movie my kids see. I love the idea of Skywalker and the events of IV-VI as "just" a legend that they can explore further in the future. This is as opposed to always planning to shield them from the prequels.

“That’s not how the Force works.”

really bummed that han and leia couldn't work it out after ben got into death metal. puzzling that out and the relationship between rey and luke (is she his kid? will he turn her into yoda and send her back in time to train jedis?) are the main things i'm geeked for in episode viii. i like that this isn't arcing toward an inevitable tragedy everyone in the audience knows is coming like with 'phantom menace' etc. the return of a sense of possibility rhymes with the sense of cosmic wonder in the spaceways. but! it was hard to buy han's hamminess and the piling up of coincidences. the final conversation he has with his kid doesn't hit as hard as the final conversation between obi wan and darth vader, and if you're gonna bite that, jj, make it count!

man, I'm TOTALLY geeked for episode VIII.
BRING IT ON!

a few hints here and there about Rey, but I am not really seeing her as a Skywalker? could be

- her parents ditched her on jakku
- the only other person relevant to the Jedi on jakku seems familiar with Ren's fall to the dark side, and the Jedi, and also has a piece of the map to Luke

I don't think "Kylo Ren is a really scary villain" is really what the movie was going for. This is the guy we saw have multiple temper tantrums, right? Really bad at funneling his anger

i mean i don't know if it was perfect
but it FELT like a star wars movie, and that's something the last ones never did for one second
i'm happy

This is the first movie in a long time (like decades) that I sat during the credits and wanted to watch again immediately.

I laughed! A lot!

About half an hour in I remember thinking "should I be laughing this much?"

Also... should I be crying this much?

Anyway, my hunch is that if VII is the Han movie, then maybe VIII is the Luke movie and IX is the Leia movie - not least since we've got a female protagonist on our hands.

Sad that the returning characters failed to really adjust to life after wartime, but Han returning to smuggling was a good setup for hijinks

http://io9.gizmodo.com/an-exclusive-look-at-the-never-before-seen-concept-art-1748716406

you have Luke at the end on an island in an ocean.

robot skeleton hand all reaching up to remove his hood.

whole lot of force visions when Rey initially touches the lightsaber, including stuff not in this film!

it was a good misdirection to throw some of those in the trailer

ending i was thinking 'wizard of earthsea' hoping luke would reveal himself as ogion after his long meaningful stare with rey

I realized what bothered me about Snoke is that he's Voldemort.

that was my biggest complaint, the big CGI dude was way too Lord of the Rings for Star Wars

Somebody suggested that maybe that's a false face or illusion. I'll hold onto that hope for now.

I really liked that he was so out of scale to Ren and Hux. Brings to mind the Wizard of Oz.

And I actually hope they get somebody else to "help" John Williams with the score for the next two - I barely registered any of the new character themes and the familiar stuff was used in ways that were a little too familiar to really add to the excitement. Basically the music felt even more mailed in than the scene where they concoct their battle plan for blowing up the base.

Seemd like the audience I watched it with last night saw Han's death coming a mile off. As soon as he and Chewie split up people were like "oh no"

Oh yeah, I knew one of them was going to get it at that point.

going off on your own in an enemy fortress where your fallen-to-dark-side kid is lurking around is trouble

I think in the last twelve hours I've gone from "man that Snoke was kind of a vague bad guy stand-in" to "who the hell is this guy and what is his deal, I really want to know"

just sent this mega-spoiler to a friend:

they reveal the secret of how Darth Vader used the toilet
that is all that survived other than his helmet, the toilet apparatus

guys, the scene where Finn gives BB-8 a thumbs-up and the droid flicks out his little lighter thing

the dumb thing is that he's gonna obviously at least be really small irl like the whole "oz great and terrible" thing which is pretty clunky.

but honestly i'm nitpicking! i loved it. great ship battles, some genuine moments w/han and leia. chewy was great.

one thing i liked and maybe this is my own weird thing but i really liked the casting for finn and poe, both those guys have "70s faces" to me in some way i can't explain but they look like 70s actors to me which added to the vibe

i have no idea why i think that

so did Captain Phasma make it off the planet or was that the shortest appearance for a cool-looking character since Boba Fett

"I can tell you that in this film, she is a Boba Fett-style character, so she’s not at the forefront of the action but she certainly packs a punch."

And I actually hope they get somebody else to "help" John Williams with the score for the next two - I barely registered any of the new character themes and the familiar stuff was used in ways that were a little too familiar to really add to the excitement.

Mostly I agree, but the tune playing during the final island scene, the one with fast-paced violins that sounded like a Celtic folk melody, that was really nice! They repeated it during the credits too. But yeah, that was pretty much the only memorable new composition in the movie.

I liked the pirate hideout music

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Ke-_nKHpDs

I knew it sounded familiar!

Nah, it was alright. Maz's place had a cool vibe. I could have hung out there a lot longer.

When Rey started hearing the voices though, I thought she was going to stumble onto some torture chamber for children. Like some Temple of Doom shit. I was real creeped out.

I didn't think of it at the time, but isn't that the lightsaber Anakin slaughtered a bunch of children with? :(

So much greatness.

-Rey sliding down that sand due.

― how's life, Friday, December 18, 2015 4:02 PM (3 hours ago)

That whole Rey scene was amazing although slightly spoilered by the trailers. Would have been incredible to see that downed Star Destroyer and X-Wing for the first time during the movie.

https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/77/dc/0b/77dc0b990fbcc479c6b1048db1ae789d.jpg

The pirate base space reggae tune was okay in itself, but I didn't like hearing it in the movie for the same reason I hated that stupid ska punk number they added to Return of the Jedi: these movies are supposed to take place in a different galaxy and a different time than ours, everything's supposed to be alien to us! So hearing some contemporary pop music totally breaks the immersion and reminds me this is just a movie! That's why "Jub Nub" is my favourite piece of SW music (and its removal from the special edition a blasphemy), I could totally imagine real aliens jamming to that.

ska punk?

that's one haunted-ass ska punk lightsaber

Sorry, I'm not sure why I said ska punk, I meant this song:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2jzZOgLH4KU

That one's the goddamn worst, but I thought the reggae-ish stuff in Maz's bar was pretty low-key.

oh, we knew which song you meant

I thought the decision to make Kylo an inexperienced, brooding youth that makes strategical mistakes was a wise move. We didn't need another impenetrable villain, First Order is still kind of a new splinter group that's rough around the edges. and they prey on the young. it fits.

I do feel like Carrie Fisher brought things to a screeching halt. the botox robs her of any facial expression, and the "we couldn't have saved him" bit was very forced, ie conflict-by-numbers. I really felt like the movie was at its best in the first hour or so.

I saw this twice in the theatre, and grew from "ok" to "good" on second viewing. I feel like the ease of destroying nu-death star kinda had to happen, I mean if they made it this really uber difficult task then everybody would say "oh it's ep IV again". they're a fledgling terrorist group, not the omnipotent empire. at times they suck dick at what they do.

I did want more of Poe Dameron. the end scene with Luke was chilling. but there is a 30 minute period of wheel-spinning that I can't get past in this movie, yet I can't help but wonder if that's just because it was planting seeds for the other sequels which now will be far better.

also, I liked the laughs that were similar in tone to the original series, but you can totally tell which humor is Abrams humor, in that it makes your eyes roll. The Finn saying "I am a member of the Resistance, this is what we look like" bit were all a bit too goofy for me.

also kind of a dull gripe but I know in the o.g. STar Wars universe there was a lot more slang/intra-universe jargon thrown around, and the English was more direct and school-proper for most people except smugglers like Han, whereas here everybody kinda just talks like millenials (Finn saying he had a "real messed up day"). but it was much better dialogue than the garbage Lucas writes so....

hey it was good enough but it relies way too much on what came before it - the fan services weren't too bad, but occasionally too much.

I hope nobody gets the idea to do an in-between-quel film about "how Kylo went to the dark side" after the two follow-ups are done.

wish I'd liked it more, but face it, Mad Max was my Star Wars

also, had the force been used to read minds in the OG series? (it's been almost ten years since I watched).

I know Darth and Luke communicated telepathically for brief moments but that is all I currently remember.

This was better than Return of the Jedi. Which kind of amazes me.

much better dialogue than the garbage Lucas writes so

Actually I kind of missed a little bit of the old Lucas style - not the pure unadulterated stuff from the prequels, but it makes me a little sad that nothing in this movie approached "I was going to Tosche station to pick up some power converters!" in world-building goofiness

Simon Pegg's character was actually the most disappointing in this vein - he just stares at spaceship parts and pronounces them worth various fractions of portions! Such a missed opportunity.

yeah the world-jargon I definitely missed, but stuff like "only a Sith deals in absolutes" I was glad to be rid of.

they're a fledgling terrorist group, not the omnipotent empire.

They felt pretty established to me, and the amount of manpower and resources required to build and run the Death Planet suggests they are really big too. Not Empire-level big, but certainly not "fledgling".

also, had the force been used to read minds in the OG series?

Yes, in RotJ Vader reads Luke's mind and finds out he has a sister.

Awesome

http://io9.gizmodo.com/oh-so-thats-who-daniel-craig-played-in-the-force-awake-1748678355

They felt pretty established to me, and the amount of manpower and resources required to build and run the Death Planet suggests they are really big too. Not Empire-level big, but certainly not "fledgling".

yep. if there's a "resistance" then whoever it is they're resisting we can assume is fairly well established

also, curious why ben solo isn't questioning giant gollum a little more since some untrained desert planet scrapper bests him repeatedly in force offs

his training... is not complete

Well to be fair, it seems Kylo hadn't faced an opponent with the Force before Rey, so he wasn't prepared for that. But it was still kinda ridiculous, the first scene has him STOPPING A LASER BLAST MIDAIR WITH HIS WILLPOWER, but he still can't handle someone who only discovered she can use the Force literally a half an hour ago.

it's almost as if the entire concept of the Force makes no sense

I thought you were never gonna see this movie?

I haven't and I won't

I have seen enough death stars blown up to last a lifetime

And yet you feel compelled to keep coming into the threads. Don't you have a kid to spend time with?

Go do that.

I have two! I would but I'm at work

and it's a slow day waitin for the office Xmas party to start

Drink at your desk like the rest of us do!

that'll only make me post more, not less!

Anyway, I didn't pay attention to the credits so couldn't figure out if two prominently featured characters were supposed to be Nien Nunb and Admiral Ackbar or just other members of the species.

And to the point about the dialogue being a little too modern and literal to match the tone of Lucas' more grandiose technobabble: "ventral cannons" sounds like a condition as much as it does a weapons system

I figure Kylo has about 4 things going on that make him suck in that fight (I have now seen the movie twice btw)

1. Shot with boltcaster, ow

2. Kinda doesn't actually want to hurt pretty lady

3. Never had to actually swordfight anybody before, being the only person left using one of these things (note that all the accrued institutional knowledge of lightsaber technique is basically completely absent from the galaxy by the time of this movie - talk about "hollowing out")

4. More than a couple loose screws rolling around up there

Nope, that's Nien Nunb and Ackbar, IMDB says so

Can't believe people like this crap

Anyway, I didn't pay attention to the credits so couldn't figure out if two prominently featured characters were supposed to be Nien Nunb and Admiral Ackbar or just other members of the species.

I was wondering about that too! Though I presume the octopus dude at least wasn't Ackbar, because otherwise it seems he'd been demoted. But it'd been nice if the movie had included some dialogue with the names of these characters, so we'd know for sure.

people's main gripe about the prequels was that they had none of the magic, charm of the originals, now people's main gripe (not just on here) is that the new sequel is *too like* the first one. i mean.. poor old JJ can't get a break.

complaining about recycled plot elements (and I count a lot in this thread) goes beyond being "like" the first one

Hmm, I guess they are the same characters, then! If IMDb is to be trusted, they brought back the voice actors and even the puppeteer and body actor who played them in RotJ. That's a nice thing to do, I can't imagine anyone would've noticed if they'd changed actors.

(xxpost)

my main gripe about the prequels is the story as told on screen kind of sucked. my main gripe with this one is the story has some pretty serious plot holes and just didn't feel like a coherent narrative, compared to each of the three originals. but i was way more into this than any of the prequels

people's main gripe about the prequels was that they had none of the magic, charm of the originals, now people's main gripe (not just on here) is that the new sequel is *too like* the first one. i mean.. poor old JJ can't get a break.

You know, it's not inconceivable that someone could do a movie with a similar sensibility (unlike episodes I to III) that still has an original plot (unlike Force Awakens). That's what most good sequels are like, why couldn't we have expected that from this movie?

the "gripes" in this thread are more nit picks, I am pretty sure nobody is anywhere close to "I want my money back!" or "I'll never get those hours back!" whining

Yeah, this was still solid entertainment, I'd give it three stars out five; and like I said upthread, the first half (before the Death Planet plot really kicks in) was mostly really good. But there hasn't been a movie that I've anticipated as much as this one since the first LotR film, so the disappointment with its flaws is kinda proportionate to those expectations, especially since it wouldn't have taken too much tweaking to mend some of those flaws. I still have high hopes that the sequels will improve upon this movie though, especially since most of it was just buildup for the bigger plot.

I do want my money back but that's cos I hate paying for things

I figured it was another guy instead of Nien Nunb but I was pretty sure it was Ackbar and had a moment

nobody's really demoted, they mentioned not having the Republic's resources, I think the Resistance is a group of Republic people who think the Imperial remnant need to be finished off where the Republic's official stance is they're no longer into war

might change now that these First Order clowns fired a superweapon

Yeah I mean just cos they had a super-weapon doesn't make them well organized. When you are treated like a benign threat by the Republic and can mostly fend off severe Resistance interference they can develop the shit in secret.

Yeah they're organized enough where the Resistance takes them seriously but they're not the Empire who had long dissolved the Senate and we're themselves the law of the land.

Mh also otm...Kylos training isn't done. This is directly implied by Snoke's dialogue.

he doesn't have any knights yet!

I'm really stretching for a historical parallel to the situation where the standing democratic government refuses to commit to being "at war" while a separate institution with broad remit to commit espionage and military actions deals with possibly existential threats to said democratic government - oh wait that's us

"The Resistance" = the DoD, but like if we told them to set up shop on a separate planet, because lightspeed

"The Republic" = our political system and civil society, with some alt-history Man In The High Castle type shit baked in bcz eps IV-VI are kinda that

"First Order" = pick your geographically awkward totalitarian gangster state of choice

Actually, the Resistance might have a closer parallel to a kind of NATO / SEATO institution with significantly more autonomy to just run crazy ops as long as it's in places where the Republic doesn't claim exclusive jurisdiction.

Man I'm going to think about this so hard

"First Order" = pick your geographically awkward totalitarian gangster state of choice

Well, they did throw the Nazi arm raise.

In the Uptown 1 last night where I was elbow-to-elbow with highly excitable fans, these are a couple of the specific high points imo

1. Kylo Ren: "I can take whatever I want"
1a. dude to the left: "Rapist?"

2. General Hux: *finishes speech* - Several battalions of First Order troopers: *NAZI SALUTE*
2a. everybody: "uhhhhh"

3. Han Solo: "You head up top, I'll go down below, we'll meet back here"
3a. dude to the left: "Oh no."
3b. everybody: "muuuuhhhhhh"

4. Kylo Ren: *tries to force grab luke's saber* Rey: *force grabs it so hard Kylo has to dodge to avoid losing his teeth*
4a. everybody, especially dude to the left: HOOOOOOOO *APPLAUSE* WOOOOOOO

It was a lot of fun being in a double decker one-screen cinema last night with all the audience reactions and excitement. It was especially interesting contrasting that with the 9AM crowd this morning that included several of my coworkers & employees on a tiny screen that just happens to be near our offices. Seriously we were watching it in the same kind of setting that's usually reserved for art films, theater and audience-size wise.

I have seen enough death stars blown up to last a lifetime

― Οὖτις,

John McCain's line.

oh god how did I forget

0. Finn: "What about that ship?" Rey: "No that's garbage!" *kaboom* "The garbage will do!" *pan left to MF*
0a. everybody even me: YAAAAAHAHAAAAAHAAAAA WOOHOO WHAAAHAHAAA

Grains of salt: not exactly a SW fan, I think I've seen Empire in its entirety but never the rest at once. Kind of confused by the Vader stuff because I that Darth turned good again at the end of ROTJ?

I liked it a lot - it was a wonderful, joy-of-filmmaking action movie. Abrams almost nailed it with the first Star Trek reboot and shit the bed with Into Darkness.

The big negative, which I understand they had to do, was bringing back ALL of the old characters. The movie peaked early when you've met no one but Poe (fantastic in his small amount of screentime, perfect Han Solo substitute for the next couple), Rey, Finn and masked Kylo. Bringing in Han AND Chewie AND Leia AND R2D2 AND C3PO AND the Death Star (and finally Luke) put everything on ice and provided the most annoying superfans orgasming loudly moments.

Loved Rey so much, Daisy Ridley might be the best non-Alec Guinness actor the series has seen.

No one else effing hated Poe Dameron? Just me?

Cringeworthy moments REALLY took me out of it (when they're coming up with the plan to take out the death planet, I mean Lucas's characters had equally silly plans but at least it didn't seem like the actors were in on the joke.)

But then the parent-child scenes hit me like a ton of bricks, more genuine character-driven emotion than the original series.

I liked the opening "here's all the stuff you wanted" into "that's out of the way, here's something actually kinda new".

No one else effing hated Poe Dameron? Just me?

This is the first out of many dozens of Poe Dameron opinions I've seen in many places on the internet that is negative. You are an island.

Ok I saw it a third time and I'm drinking the Kool aid much more now.

Not that I don't still have my reservations above but man...Daisy Ridley rules

Saw it tonight. Seeing again later this week with the little nephew. I liked a lot of it and also thought a lot of it was ... strange. Pacing-wise a bit of a mess. Emotional moments left to feel hollow (not a word about Han once everyone got back to the base? Nope. Let's just rush on to the next bit of plot...). That whole pirate gang and monsters scene was terrible. Like --- cringeworthy. A level of geeky cheesiness not seen in the OT. I'd put this around the same as ROTJ, honestly. Ridley and Boyega made a great team and she's spectacular, yes, but I can't wait to see what the next director does with the series.

Oh yeah --- and Poe Dameron kinda got on my nerves too. "Star Bro".

Abrams framing and choice of angles is often bizarre and unnecessary, too.

Ah --- and Chewie was the third star of the film I think. Ford seemed to slur a good half of his lines.

Has anyone mentioned that it was Daniel Craig playing the stormtrooper guarding Rey?

the helicopter shot of ridley and hamill at the end was really weird. it felt like a clip from a behind the scenes documentary.

Yeah, that was the only thing that seemed particularly UN-Star Wars to me. But considering the content of the scene itself, it's okay with me if they want to go big.

Uncollected:

The line that the RLM guys bring up in their speculation about this was roughly the Lucas quote of "It's like poetry; it rhymes". And shit if this wasn't a full-on synthesis of bits of the trilogy with some interesting inversions thrown in. The local alt-weekly reviewed described this as an awesome Star Wars mixtape. It wasn't just Ep IV, you had Empire pieces and Jedi pieces mixed in.

Hell, we hit a desert planet, a frozen planet, and a forest planet in one movie.

I teared up twice; once during the initial fighter battle and second during the saber grab bit when then music cue hits. Its like Peanuts; this is pop-culture so very close to the core of my development that it can be easy to access the emotion associations. Fuck, I got an aerospace engineering degree for a reason.

They hired JJ to un-fuck the franchise and he did do that.

I wanted more of Poe & the other pilots.

Thought it was a nice trick to actually see what Rey was seeing in her visions than just having the character talk about them. I'm guessing those were bits we'll see in the next one, if they even decide to use them at all.

Some of the expository dialogue was pretty glaring; having characters explicitly state the increasing stakes and ticking clock times seemed really on the nose, but that was in the original, wasn't it.

The First Order were human only, weren't they, whereas the Resistance were multi-species? You actually had both male & female FO officers and stormtroopers.

Disappointed they had Boyego do an American accent.

Wait, was that the New Republic capital they blew up, or just a Republic planet?

Dug how the Resistance command center actually looked more like an underground thrown-together collection of gear than a resistance movement would put together.

I dug how the space pirates they encounter had either the strongest accent of the film or was the dude from the Raid: Redemption.

Carrie Fisher's daughter is in this and I'm guessing the thing is chock full of cameos from friends & family members.

I want to see it again this weekend.

Io9 comment pointed out how Daniel Craig as the guard in the Bond-esque torture room scene where the captive hero(ine) uses their wits to escape restraints and into the enemy's HQ.

-What was the deal with that head that pops out of the ground when BB-8 is fleeing the village? That dude was hiding too, I guess?

Was it this guy?

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Hem_Dazon

http://vignette2.wikia.nocookie.net/starwars/images/1/17/Arcona.png/revision/latest?cb=20130225033736

man i love that outis is posting in this thread also, like, even as someone who is mildly enthusiastic about this movie, i am just ... glad of the existence of haters

The Lord's Work, truly

This was alright. Had a good time seeing it with my brother and nieces.

It looked great, apart from some of the CGI characters.

Plot was kinda half-baked and lazy but I mostly liked the new characters.

Rilo Kiley was an interesting villain.

BB-8 = Robot Lassie (not a criticism)

They had a lot of fun with Chewbacca. Goddamit I love that wookie.

I saw the movie with my ex, who's a big Chewbacca fan, and we both felt really sad for him when Han died. They'd been partners for 40 years or so, what's he gonna do now? :(

<i>Rilo Kiley was an interesting villain.</i>

lol

one dud imo was having all the First Order people be younger dudes, they looked more like a bunch of star wars nerds playing out their childhood fantasies than a fearsome organization

― ciderpress, Thursday, December 17, 2015 11:00 PM (2 days ago) Bookmark

first order being a bunch of goobery kids was one of the only things i liked about this. the other was han solo's death curing R2D2's depression, guess he always hated that guy

I'm pretty sure it was cured by Rey showing up at resistance base. That felt like the biggest clue that Rey might be Luke's daughter.

She might be, and I'd be okay with that, but it's not really how I'd want it to play out.

this was great, I get the little nitpicks kind of, but this was way better than I expected it to be, in fact during the first half I almost couldn't believe how good it was.

Then it went kinda bonkers. The more I think about it the first half feels like the reverential "OK. Let's make a big boy movie" part of Abrams coming at you and then the second half is the "Woohoo! I ate too much candy" part of the film.

Threepio's voice sounded odd.

whatta bunch of whiners

xp: yeah, he must have got a new voice chip or something.

One of my coworkers I watched it with at the 0900 matinee pointed out that this did nothing to resolve the issue of how sci-fi and fantasy just can't help but handle the romance part with elephant feet - I think because he figured the romance is between Rey and Finn.

BUT! I think, after much deliberation, that the romance in this story is actually between Rey and Kylo. She wouldn't let him touch her but he'll be thinking about her for the rest of his life.

"You need a teacher!" probably not the greatest pickup line in the galaxy but his parents had a pretty fucked up courtship so there's that

Daniel Craig's faceless cameo >>>>>>> Simon Pegg's wasted fat suit cameo

Can't believe I missed Thomas Sangster as a First Order officer. That kid really is in everything.

http://www.mtv.com/news/2690893/star-wars-the-force-awakens-cameos/

Kylo Ren was hard to take seriously unmasked after however many seasons of Girls.

I could hear Adam yelling "you need a teacher" at Lena Dunham.

Oh I just associate Adam Driver with yowlping "Outer! ...Space!" in Llewyn Davis so my 99 problems did not include yours

I actually really liked the scenes of him and Daisy Ridley facing off. Those are easily the best pieces of actorcraft in the whole movie, I guess aside from Boyega just being effortlessly hilarious

Hello friends, please welcome me I am one of you now.

Lots of thoughts. Loved it; excited to see where it goes. Rey is a dynamite character and little girls AND boys are going to want to be like her so that's also rad.

<i>- I honestly thought that, if they were going to kill an OG character, it was going to be Chewbacca, since Mayhew is in his 70s and isn't up for the physicality of the part much longer. Killing Han was a bold choice, but one that satisfies the story beats, the fealty to the OT, and probably Ford's stipulations for agreeing to play the character again.
<i>

Bless Mahew but you can put any giant in a rug suit and have chewbacca so he can live forever. I was sad to see Han go because harrison ford seemed vital and alive to me, whereas carrie fisher had the 80's and 90's and 00's of smoking marlboro reds and drinking martinis with her droopy dog and seemed... more immobile. Mark Hamill is a cypher so I'm excited to see what he does.

At first I disliked the "lavalier plugged into a solid state OD pedal" quality of Kylo's mask voice but after mulling it over I think it actually works well as yet another aspect that demonstrates how his character really is a guy with a couple of force powers trying to cosplay Darth Vader. His mask is dented and pitted, his lightsaber blade is all twitchy and hums the wrong note, and his voice changer is basically a lav mike wired into a pawn shop overdrive pedal's guts. And he sucks at fighting anything with his lightsaber unless it's an inanimate object.

Based on all that and the dialogue between Han & Leia I'm guessing Luke took him off to Jedi boarding school when he was about 11 and then it all went to shit once he and a few other dudes discovered Napalm Death (this joke was made upthread by someone already)

A good sign that this movie is excellent (and that I am a sucker for a half-decent spaceship movie) is it's kind of all I've been thinking about since I saw it. I am more stoked for the next one than I was for this one. I will have no reservations about getting my way-in-advance ticket for VIII and getting in line around the block an hour before the previews start so I can stand next to a guy in Knights Of Ren pajamas

Last post for a while I promise - how did Rey not freeze to death? You have two jokes between Chewie and Han about how cold it is on Starkiller Base but nobody notices that Rey (and Finn) are still dressed appropriately for Jakku.

All the people in the Star Wars universe must just smell like distilled urine. Sweating constantly, never changingc clothes, never washing, flying all the way from Hoth to Dagobah without a single pit stop, on and on it goes. I suppose when you share the galaxy with Hutts there's not much point to trying to not stink?

also, I liked the laughs that were similar in tone to the original series, but you can totally tell which humor is Abrams humor, in that it makes your eyes roll. The Finn saying "I am a member of the Resistance, this is what we look like" bit were all a bit too goofy for me

"droid, please"

can't find it up above but someone asked if the next movie was the Han one; no, Episode VIII advances on from this. They are doing 6 new movies, three of this trilogy, and three 'side stories'. the Han movie will be one of those side stories (second or third, dunno; also don't even know if it's really confirmed they are doing that. Next year is the first side movie, Rogue One, which takes place between Sith and Hope)

Kylo is like the worst Star Wars fanboy in the universe

That's what I liked about the character!

I have to say Phasma was pretty pointless after all the buildup, they really just chuck her in the garbage? I think I'll do the same with her action figure (just kidding).

She's the new boba fett

this was the safest movie in human history

Oh yeah that's the other romance - Phasma and Finn

I'm totally serious about all of these theories

iatee's point is valid - I like whatever somebody somewhere said about how the prequels were swinging for the stands but fouled and whiffed - but people also like daft punk and bruce springsteen records so here you go

what

did they explain why 3PO has a red arm now and i missed that?

he lost an arm at some point. jedi? I def have a toy c3p0 that has a red arm and it isn't new. it doesn't make sense that Han wouldn't have known about it though.

unless he never paid any attention to c3p0 which is likely

This was tremendous

Total breakneck speed until we meet Han, and the whole thing screeches to a crawl, but we get back into gear and it's all good again

The Empire / First Order keep their floors SO GODDAMN SHINY!

Poe is NOT the new Han because he's totally committed to the Resistance - Han's whole deal is that is wasn't political, he was only in it for himself. they tried a little of that with Finn - 'the First Order's too strong! forget it! I'm outta here!' but that lasted about 10 minutes, until he realized he was being a dolt.

Many laffs, and many purely action/visual based, like when Finn RUNS to save Rey at the market, arrives to find she's actually handled it, and straightens up in the visual equivalent of starting to whistle when you don't want people to notice you. In fact Rey never needs saving - when Han/Finn/Chewie show up on Deathplanet Starbase or whatever, and they almost blast each other after turning a corner, she doesn't melt or say 'thank God you're here' or anything like that, she just looks sort of confused and annoyed and says 'why are YOU here??'

The three characters I can remember who were CGI - the market trader, Snoke, and the cantina lady - I didn't see any reason they needed to actually be CGI? seems like a weird decision. they were all fairly humanoid. why do that? It's not as if the CGI actually looked real.

The market trader wasn't CGI - that was Simon Pegg in a fat suit

I kind of agree that Andy Serkis himself would have made a more impressive and frightening Big Bad than the Snoke CGI

What I like about Kylo is he is that he's not hellbent on ruling, he truly has admiration for his grandfather and felt like the Rebel Alliance were a bunch of terrorist traitors. More than likely Han and Leia danced around the black sheep of his family tree and Ren started asking questions and met some Empire sympathizers who were all too keen to fill in the blanks with their interpretation. And of course the schools won't teach that mythological Jedi shit.

He has rage issues, gets in trouble, feels kinship with the grandpa he never met, Leia and Han sent him to Luke to straighten him out...and we see how that went.

So he gets upset and feels kinship with the grandpa he never knew, Han and Leia sent

Ignore accidental dupe sentence

Also First Order realizes hiring the Keystone Kops to be Stormtroopers was a bad strategy

These Troopers hit their targets!

where do you think he got grandpa's burned head? did luke or leia just keep that around as a souvenier?

damn Pegg has really let himself go huh

http://www.vox.com/2015/12/18/10513896/star-wars-the-force-awakens-rey-luke/in/5664110

reading this article made me so mad

if Rey turns out to be part of the Skywalker line I'm going to give a very negative, angry shit about this whole universe as long as I live

She's totally Luke's daughter and the biggest clue - beyond the symmetry of her holding the saber out to Luke with the Han/Kylo scene - is Han has the same affection with a thin veneer of gruffness for her that he has for Luke.

it seems obvious to me that they are alluding to that throughout the movie, but I dont' think it'll go in that direction ultimately. for one thing: I don't buy that luke got someone pregnant and then took off; also she remembers her family though we don't see them.

so you'd think she'd remember if her dad was luke, who she seems obsessed with (she basically has a Luke doll in her hut at the beginning)

You know who else had some wrong ideas about who his parents were? But yeah good points hm.

Yeah, it doesn't make any sense for Luke to have his student turn dark and fuck everything up then just ditch his daughter on exactly the kind of shithole he hated growing up on (seemingly selling her to slavers?).

maybe when ben solo started vadering he killed his aunt (rey's mom / luke's slam piece)?

He got grandpa's burned head from the Empire Museum

P sure Skywalker is who they want us to think she is but he'll do a bait and switch.

She's actually Mace Windau's kid. He liked white chicks.

I kind of like Skywalker as deadbeat dad though

"I'm poorly made, Rey..."

Remember the set piece of Rey's home on the side of a fallen AT-AT in the desert? WOW COOL MAN! Going to make that my PC wallpaper ASAP

I loved that. Also loved her eating and throwing on the old fighter helmet

i'm ready to see this again

I kinda want some of that magical 1/4 portion instant bread powder just to see if it's any good
I imagined it tasting like sourdough but with a cornbread texture

I was guessing it tasted like pond scum.

The magic insta-bread-tofu was so good!!!! I laughed out loud in sheer amazement when that happened. My guess is that it's some leftover army surplus, the equiv of MREs. Things like that, and the hover Massey-Ferguson, and spaceships, combined with the grinding poverty and rags people wear, and the ancient, forgotten husks of imperial battles combined to create a powerful sense of an aging civilization after its prime, an imminent Dark Age. Everything was sliding back into sand. In another 100 years nobody would remember how the spaceships worked. And I liked how wasn't just "lived-in tech" it was actual old leather straps and wooden treasure boxes. Luke's old lightsabre wasn't stored in some battered polycarbon flight case, it was in a ye olde treasurebox. And I loved the classic targeting graphics in the spaceships. Also loved Poe ribbing Kylo Ren - 'What, can you speak up? Sorry I can't hear you because of that... apparatus' - I was like, you know what, we're going to be all right

If they want Luke to be Rey's dad, it'd be pretty easy to explain why he left her on Jakku... It's made clear that Luke is this legendary figure throughout the galaxy, the guy who ended the Empire, so he and his family would pretty high on the First Order's target list. So it'd be kinda ironic, even though Luke himself hated living on Tatooine, he now realizes that he must do the same to Rey to protect her. So he gives her to some foster parents, who Rey thinks are his real parents, but at some point these folks have to flee for some reason, and that's your backstory!

Rey being Luke's daughter would also explain why that seemingly random resistance guy played by Max vod Sydow was living on Jakku and had the map leading to Luke... Obviously he was supposed to give it to her when she comes of age. So he was supposed to be Rey's very own Obi-Wan.

So yeah, it all fits, but like I said in my first post, I will still hate it if they'll go for "Rey, I am your father!". I knows it's an ages-old cliche, but I hate the concept that the hero's parents must secretly be important people. So this poor working-class kid can't become the hero because of her own determination and moral integrity, no, turns out it was in her blood all along. It's such classist bullshit.

we never see any other troopers without masks, are we to believe that some of them are still clones or were they just stolen as children from somewhere?

was hoping to see phasma without helmet at some point. I think that character was really the one wasted opportunity here.

This was good. The first hour or so on Jakku was great. The big Star Destroyer hulks buried in the desert were the best visual in the movie, and I loved the brief glimpses we got on Rey's life on this planet. Rey is a great character and performance. She even got through the movie with her mystique still intact.

It lost me a little when Harrison showed up, and I'd have liked something more original than another Death Star, but all in all, fun stuff.

One thing I didn't buy was Captain Phasma dropping the shields because they were pointing a blaster on her. Isn't she a loyal First Order captain who should probably be willing to die instead? It also seemed unnecessary to the plot, since we have Rey running around with Jedi mind control powers, and also Finn who, until a minute ago, we thought knew how to work the shields anyway. Why not make him able to do it?

If you think of this film as a weird kind of reboot, and the previous films as the new alluded-to backstory (a la the alluded-to backstory in Ep 4), some of the weaknesses are pretty forgiveable. The game here seems to be getting new people to jump on, while making the old fans happy for a moment by tying up some things from the old films. I could see a situation in Ep 9 where nobody from the original films are present or talked about. Ep 8 could be flashback-mad or exposition-crazy with people telling stories of Kylo's misspent youth or whatever. Or they might just blow it off and decide that the audience knows all they need to know with the few sentences they got in this film.

I had a great time watching this! The only thing I felt went wrong was the Han death seemed kind of unearned (kind of how Ben's death felt a little unearned in Ep 4), and the final X-wing battle felt totally thrillless and had the least excitement of all the Death Star battles. It's very hard to judge it because there are SO MANY echoes to the earlier films: young orphan leaves miserable home and discovers they're a magical space prince(ess), elderly mentor is ruthlessly struck down, etc etc.

There was no way the final battle was going to be balls put exciting cos unlike Lucas in 77, he knows he has two more films coming and has to leave somewhere to go.

If Lucas knew for sure he'd get three films to tell his story the death star only would have been hinted at in ep 4 but not seen.

Then why didn't this movie do the same, only hint at the Death Planet? Instead of making it feel 5 times lamer as the Death Star even though it was supposed to be 10 times stronger?

There was no way the final battle was going to be balls put exciting cos unlike Lucas in 77, he knows he has two more films coming and has to leave somewhere to go.

Oh absolutely agreed. I had wanted to say above that some of the lameness I can accept (Poe) because I know they'll get somewhere with these things down the line. You're totally right to point out that this is Ep 4 *with the awareness of sequels*.

Hm, didn't mean to say Ben's death and Han's death are roughly equivalent and equally weak. I saw Han being killed a mile away and it was completely unshocking and seemed to have no consequences (Chewie recovered pretty damn quick for someone who'd spent his whole life with him). Ben's death serves Luke by pushing him out into the world and forcing him to rely on himself, Han's death served Kylo by burning all his bridges behind him so he could focus on being even more evil, or something. So hard to judge because I'm watching Ep 4 again, only this time looking at it through the eyes of an adult.

Dude it sucked an entire sun into itself, let's see the original death star do that!!

xpost

On the callback tip, as soon as I saw people running around with those orange flightsuits I was like 'ok last big battle comin up!'

I wish the movie had been clearer as to what is actually happening in this war between the First Order and the Resistance. How big and powerful is the First Order? Is the Republic on the verge of being overthrown? It seemed like we were seeing battles without a sense of the larger picture. And then when those planets were blown up, the movie doesn't treat is as very consequential.

They wasted an opportunity with the Raid guys. Why put amazing martial arts actors in a movie and not have them do any martial arts? (Chekhov's gun fu)

That was truly weird. For them to show up and just get eaten? Or is this a plant to tie them into the Han spinoff movie?

So I'm waiting in line to get in, all excited, and this guy walks by, coming out of the theatre, and says "too bad Han Solo dies at the end" to no one, so I'm pretty sure he was just getting off on spoilering things for other people. Douche. Made me angry but I didn't give in to the dark side and call him an asshole because it would have just made me more angry somehow.

I hope they're really close to filming the Han spinoff, because Ford already seems too old to be playing that character. (Even as grizzled old Han it wasn't always a comfortable sight.)

https://media.giphy.com/media/xTk9ZYSlG6U6lPLcOs/giphy.gif

xp classic Homer move

I really enjoyed this.

Took me a while at first. I was bummed that I had seen so much of Rey's world in the trailers, it took me a little bit to get settled in & immersed.

Rey was wonderful, a really fully-realized hero, they really built on all the cool shit Leia did in the first 3. And I wont hear a FUCKING WORD against Fisher in this, jerks. Botox shmotox - let the woman have her vanity ffs. Her moments with Han, and her moment with Rey reduced me to tears, she was great.

Kylo Ren was way more interesting than I expected. Loved his tantrums, and his shaky hold on the Force. The spluttery overly-showy lightsaber made a lot more sense in the context of his character. And his moments without the mask were really good, the contrast between hardened masked villain & rebellious youth was neat. Yay Adam Driver!

Was really glad Chewie played such a big role, he was fantastic. Han Solo twist was kinda shocking, was not ready for *that* even though the setup telegraphed it like crazy

Poe Dameron <3 ughhhh god so hot

Anyway, this was a fine followup to the original trilogy. yes it was frontloaded with fanservice but I do get it, they felt that there was a lot of goodwill that needed to be restored. They may have overdone it, but nothing was ruined or cheesed out too badly I dont think. It got a bit exhausting but it all was at least used kinda effectively within the story.

(PS I half expected Luke's hand to be in the mystery box, lol)

(PS I half expected Luke's hand to be in the mystery box, lol)

It would've been close to wherever the light saber was found, wouldn't it? Somebody's got it lol.

I am 100% okay with it being a rehash of A New Hope primarily for the reasons VG alludes to..."there was a lot of goodwill that needed to be restored." Someone upthread mentioned that there was never a moment in this film that didn't feel like a STAR WARS MOVIE, something that happened very rarely if ever in the three prequels.

yep!

also we got back to "old beaters flying around space" which is something i loved from the first movie

The spluttery overly-showy lightsaber made a lot more sense in the context of his character.

Ha, great point! He and General Hux were great, junior fascists trying really hard to be Vader and Tarkin.

Hux is a bitch ass tattletale.

.

i honestly thought this was kinda bad. am I crazy...

Hitler

i honestly thought this was kinda bad. am I crazy...

You aren't the only one, but it's a pretty exclusive club.

yr crazy but that's not why

:D

Listening to https://www.theincomparable.com/theincomparable/277/index.php now in which it's said that the film had to do a lot of jobs/serve a lot of different purposes
- rekindle interest in the franchise so that Disney has a hope of making the Lucasfilm deal profitable long-term
- hold the hands of the older fans so they felt served
- bring a whole bunch of new people on board
- set up the two sequels
this seems like a great point and i'm sure the list could be longer. I think they largely succceeded in all their various aims. I am surprised they decided to go the route of echoing/retelling Ep 4 so closely, but maybe that was a deliberate choice to stay consistent because by now, everything Star Wars is 25-35% callbacks.

One thing I was thinking earlier is that while Lucas' SW is a mashup of his various influences (grand prix motorsport, WWII dogfights, The Hidden Fortress, etc), Abrams' influences are ... Star Wars. So it may get a little weird down the line - but his handing off the director's chair to other people might bring some new elements in

I love the decision to keep Teedo in frame as he very slowly lumbered away.

I see the parallels with IV as purposely generational. You've the original movie characters, now with children...and you've got the original theatergoers bringing theirs. So the public now really has a chance for their own progeny to see something very close to what they experienced 35 years ago. I took my son, who is only six but I bet he'll remember this...the same way I remember seeing Jedi with my dad.

I also think it's very cool (and somehow American?) that this time around you've got a minority and a woman as the leads.

The fan-servicey parts of TFA can also be taken as respect for the world that Lucas so painstakingly built

Whatever mistakes he made with the prequels, I feel like JJ deliberately went out of his way not to spit in George's eye, and I really like that.

I kinda hope George sees it and recognizes the part he played. And that the pissed off fans can finally forgive the old nerd for over-nerding.

There was a family of five in front on me, the youngest was 2. He got so scared during the Giant Voldemort scenes that his mom had to leave with him. Poor little guy - he was too little for that kinda dark scaryness. ( no shade on the parents)

One of my fears was that while the original seemed like such a huge break from the past and was more intense than other films, the new SW7 would feel too much like 'another blockbuster SF film' and would do nobody any harm. Glad to hear it's terrifying small children, seriously

:/

Ahhh hah you know what I mean. 2 is way too young for just about any film, really

yeah true

the pissed off fans can finally forgive the old nerd for over-nerding.

I can forgive some things, but breaking the ability to tap into the force down to the concentration of microscopic organisms in your blood cells is unforgivable. The force could've been anything/everything/nothing, but making it that is unforgivable and I get mad all over again when I remember he did that.

That's not how the Force works!

If someone can explain midi-chlorians to me in a way that will make me less angry, I'm all ears.

lol

is there some explanation of how some people in the Star Wars universe end up with British accents?

The sun never sets on the British Empire!

I would just like some consistency

how does random desert girl who is probably Luke's daughter or something have a British accent

is there some explanation of how some people in the Star Wars universe end up with British accents?

they did a bunch of casting for the first one in england ~

i mean, there's no explanation of how other people in the star wars universe end up with american accents, which is obviously far more of a challenge to anyone's suspension of disbelief

umm all the original trilogy studio filming was done in emgland.

They deliberately cast Americans as rebels and Brits as Imperials(but not the Stormtrooper ADR which I'm guessing was done in California). Even Denis Lawson as Wedge sure as shit doesn't have a Scottish accent.

There's some bit of trivia on IMDB or wherever that the original screenings in the UK flipped the accents, with Imperials now sounding American.

_LOTS_ of thing pointing to Rey being a Skywalker, aside from her doing Luke's beginning. The homemade rebellion pilot doll and her just idly wearing a helmet while munching on rations were hints.

Unless its all headfake

Of course, if she is Skywalker blood, that makes the scenes with Ren all incesty. Which again is an echo of the darth character torturing the white-dressed heroine and neither knowing they share blood. It's like poetry, it rhymes.

Watched this RLM vid again and was amused how much they got accurate from just speculating from trailers, cultural osmosis, and operating from the POV of money-grubby producers making the absolute safest thing possible(as mentioned above).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oifhpT0HZ7Q

Their mention of Lucas' "poetry" bit bounced in my head like a delay pedal during the entire film:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bxU2eqZtYmc

Still, I'm hoping ta God we got the majority of the nostalgic bits & callbacks out of the way this time. I know there will be some next time out, but please let the overwhelming pressure to do so have been greatly relieved by that time.

Also, the Jurassic World dude is directing EP IX? Who all is writing it?

i pretty much agree with tuomas's first post in this thread, pretty underwhelmed by this but there were good bits

also other than han solo dying i'm not sure if there was really a plot point in this whole thing that could be told to someone who hasn't seen the film and be thought of as a "spoiler"

lightsaber battles were pretty weak too, and kylo den's cross lightsaber ranks pretty squarely behind maul's double lightsaber as far as lightsaber gimmicks go

really wasn't a fan of the dialog either. seemed like everything was either too jokey (i cringed especially at poe's "so are you gonna talk first or am i" when he was confronted by kylo ren) or trite (most of leia/han)

also ugh snoke, what a lame looking harry potter ass cgi character

probably won't see this for like a month but there's really no way in hell Rian Johnson's movie won't be better

It will have less work to do, certainly.

I really enjoyed this in a small 2D cinema - will try and get to it in 3D IMAX in the next week while.

I think the key with the lightsaber battle is that these were supposed to be amateur, or at best had limited training, and that the experienced one was injured.

we never see any other troopers without masks, are we to believe that some of them are still clones or were they just stolen as children from somewhere?

Hux specifically says that Snoke will replace the troopers with clones if they're not up to the job

kevin i respectfully disagree about poe's joke to kylo ren. it was great for these reasons:

- it was perfectly timed to release the tension of the previous scenes
- it demonstrated the ethics of the resistance: no one is so great they cannot be ribbed or taken down a notch, i.e. get over yourself kylo ren
- it demonstrated to the audience, i.e. me, that this movie is not going to be, er po-faced portent for the 120 minutes it is going to be pretty fun

anybody read these?
http://www.alibris.com/Star-Wars-the-Force-Awakens-Before-the-Awakening-Disney-Book-Group/book/33366116?utm_source=home&utm_medium=banner&utm_campaign=hero&utm_term=starwars3

lightsaber battles were pretty weak too, and kylo den's cross lightsaber ranks pretty squarely behind maul's double lightsaber as far as lightsaber gimmicks go

― k3vin k., Sunday, December 20, 2015 12:44 AM (7 hours ago) Bookmark

again the lightsaber fights were one of the things they got right. the first good lightsaber fight in the series since 1983

the sound effects for the lightsabers were CHUNKY. there was a solidity to the clashes, a bass note, that i don't remember being there before.

I don't think "Kylo Ren is a really scary villain" is really what the movie was going for. This is the guy we saw have multiple temper tantrums, right? Really bad at funneling his anger

― μpright mammal (mh), Friday, December 18, 2015 11:49 AM (2 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i really liked ren's struggle with emotion -- it was a nice reflection of the lability of his grandfather (whom he idolizes), but flipped -- anakin struggled with the dark side, while ren fights to keep out the light. that said i do think it's possible to have a villain who's both very scary AND emotionally complex and i'm not sure they quite nailed it.

I saw his temper tantrums as 'giving in to the dark side', i.e. allowing his anger to channel his actions

They deliberately cast Americans as rebels and Brits as Imperials(but not the Stormtrooper ADR which I'm guessing was done in California).

All the Imperial officers accompanying Vader at the beginning of ANH are American! As is Admiral Motti, the guy who he chokes on the Death Star; and Tarkin's aide who asks him near the end if he wants to evacuate. The "Imperial = British" thing didn't seem to solidify until Empire, and even then the guy who calls Han "You rebel scum" in Jedi is American.

all i know is boyega's american accent made him sound like chris morris. domnhall gleeson's big hitler speech made me feel like i was watching a Brass Eye bit too

Amongst many other things hope Rey dresses like ROTJ Luke in the next one.

can we linger for a moment on what a good baddie domnhall gleeson makes??

Almost as hateable as he was in Frank.

Yeah, I generally agree with Tuomas, but he's weirdly prescriptive itt as regards wanting Kylo to be Vader - the entire point of the character is that he isn't, that he doesn't wear the mask because he has to, he wears it to get power from anonymity - it's a bit hokey to say that this generation evil comes as 4chan, but it's in the right direction.

There was a big laugh in the cinema the first time that a general had to report failure to Kylo (the laugh was me).

I can imagine Max von Sydow as being the last person in the world who doesn't hasn't seen Star Wars. "Yes, this seems like it would be fun for an afternoon - I have my own cassock if you want?"

Then why didn't this movie do the same, only hint at the Death Planet? Instead of making it feel 5 times lamer as the Death Star even though it was supposed to be 10 times stronger?

― Tuomas, Saturday, December 19, 2015 11:58 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Because I get the feeling that "Resistance defeats superweapon, holds off First Order forever" isn't the point of *this* trilogy.

To begin, we have no idea who Snoke is or even if he gives a shit about the First Order at all. As said upthread, the First Order are a bunch of young admirers of the old Empire, but they're flawed in a way the Empire never was.

I apologize for making everybody think of the prequels, but taking them at face value, the Empire didn't come through some violent coup, it snuck up on the galaxy from right under their noses, through political gamesmanship and deft manipulation. by the time everybody realized they'd been duped, the Empire had a stranglehold on the galaxy, no active Jedi to protect the 'balance in the force', and no real resistance or Rebel Alliance to speak of. In a way, the positions were reversed - the Rebel Alliance would be this imperfect, new group whereas the Empire was an established, well-oiled machine that took years to break down.

We're meant to take this First Order was a slowly organizing group of young Empire-sympathizers who are probably a little too cocksure in their abilities, don't have the perspective of having been around during the first clash, and are struggling with the typical conflicts that young adults do. Their superweapon has a weak spot well, because Hux trained his soldiers from birth to be killers. He expects they can hold their ground.

Meanwhile, Kylo probably feels like he'll obtain the map and destroy Skywalker fairly quickly. They were probably sitting down with the R&D team who talked about how awesome it was that they'd have the ultimate weapon ready early, but warned Hux "well, your 'need by' date is requiring us to cut some corners, and that exposes you to some risk - can we have an extension to implement some much-needed enhancements to the design and beta test..." and Hux is all like "NO, FUCK DAT, WE GOT BIG GUN AND WE MUST SHOOT". He wanted to drop the bomb early and show their might.

the point of the film (which wasn't as clear to me on first view but now that I"ve seen it four times, lol, it makes sense) isn't "ok here's the final battle between good and evil", it's "let's follow these new characters and see how they fit into the OG Star Wars universe", there's a final battle, yes, but it shows you more how evenly matched the Resistance and First Order are.

I"ve grown to really like this movie now. B+, maybe A-, dunno. it's not perfect. many of the flaws hinted at ITT (even yours, Tuomas!) are valid - and no, it wasn't 100% the movie I wanted.

but I really like it now. the movie opened up a lot more for me when I stopped viewing Ren as Vader 2.0 and started viewing him as "wannabe Vader who committed to choices he now isn't sure of".

the Empire didn't come through some violent coup,

well ok, it did, because it always has to, but much of their development was in plain sight through political gamesmanship which made the actual physical battle to usurp power much easier

I also love how Oscar Isaac has co-stars from both Inside Llewyn Davis and Ex Machina in this movie.

This movie was a lot like the last Crazy Horse album Psychedelic Pill like it definitely wasn't perfect and there was some pretty goofy stuff but the highs were really high and it just captured a vibe of Neil and Crazy Horse that I love and it was a vibe I hadn't gotten from anything Neil had done for years so it made me happy.

think that's the analogy George Lucas used

Wow snope sucked

Wish there was more rubber mask aliens and less cgi aliens

what's weird is that the CGI wasn't even necessary. it's not like Snoke had some undulating prismatic set of 800 eyes that changed shape when he spoke or something

the fact that he was some kind of projection gives me hope that there's some kinda wizard of oz reveal down the line

some kind
some kind
ugh

Yeah, I generally agree with Tuomas, but he's weirdly prescriptive itt as regards wanting Kylo to be Vader - the entire point of the character is that he isn't, that he doesn't wear the mask because he has to, he wears it to get power from anonymity - it's a bit hokey to say that this generation evil comes as 4chan, but it's in the right direction.

Like I said upthread, I wouldn't have minded Kylo getting the treatment he got if he wasn't the biggest villain of the movie, if he was depicted as Snoke's right-hand man, and Snoke was given more focus. But as it was, Snoke was pretty much a non-entity (the heroes don't even seem to know about him), so Kylo had to carry the symbolic weight of being the main antagonist in this movie. And if your main villain comes across as the loser, then that doesn't exactly make the conflict feel super exciting. Now, things might get better in the next two movies, when Kylo will get his extra training and we will see more of Snoke, but this movie didn't exactly manage to sell its villains.

Meanwhile, Kylo probably feels like he'll obtain the map and destroy Skywalker fairly quickly. They were probably sitting down with the R&D team who talked about how awesome it was that they'd have the ultimate weapon ready early, but warned Hux "well, your 'need by' date is requiring us to cut some corners, and that exposes you to some risk - can we have an extension to implement some much-needed enhancements to the design and beta test..." and Hux is all like "NO, FUCK DAT, WE GOT BIG GUN AND WE MUST SHOOT". He wanted to drop the bomb early and show their might.

Now, this would've been a good way of explaining why the Resistance won so easily, if all that you say had been mentioned or implied in the movie. But it wasn't, so it's just fanon, something you as a viewer come up with to justify the flaws in the movie... But that doesn't mean the flaws still aren't there.

'I can imagine Max von Sydow as being the last person in the world who doesn't hasn't seen Star Wars. "Yes, this seems like it would be fun for an afternoon - I have my own cassock if you want?"'

Oh, I'm fairly certain MvS was well-aware of Star Wars even back then

http://s623.photobucket.com/user/godzillavsdracula/media/flashgordon5.jpg

I think my ideal version of this movie would have taken place entirely on and around Jakku, and been more tightly focused on Rey, both her efforts to eke out a livelihood on the planet and her attempts to escape once the First Order was after her. That was the stuff that was really working. I'd have liked more emphasis on how difficult it is to escape from a planet when you don't have a working ship. Casablanca in space, basically; that would have been cool.

the fact that he was some kind of projection gives me hope that there's some kinda wizard of oz reveal down the line

I joked to friends he's going to be Gollum-sized. He might still be.

Coming out of this I felt two things: one, I wanted to see it again, and two, I wanted to see the next part. Other than Leia's outfits :( I really really enjoyed it.

what's weird is that the CGI wasn't even necessary. it's not like Snoke had some undulating prismatic set of 800 eyes that changed shape when he spoke or something

― illegal economic migration (Tracer Hand), Sunday, December 20, 2015 1:40 PM (42 minutes ago) Bookmark

Yeah

also the alien who sold food for parts, no need for that dude to be cgi. or lupita!

Casablanca in space, basically; that would have been cool.

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51T193JWVWL.jpg

Also [extremely nerd voice] light sabers generate heat? wtf that is not CANON!!! well now it is

the true fan service was having the neckbeard seth rogen type be an xwing pilot

also the new xwings are just z95 headhunters with s foils

him and the dude from Lost really took me out it

Saw this last night, lots of OTM comments above - Abrams playing with Star Wars toys, the mix tape concept, disliked cgi snoke as being too Harry Potter/LOTR, too much one-to-one references to the originals, etc. I also didn't like the Aliens homage happening on Han's ship for some reason.

I really liked Kylo Ren as a pissy goth kid who hates his parents and isn't as good or scary as he wants to be. Like his cruddy lightsaber blade being all crackly and uneven compared to Luke's smooth one, but the cross hilt made it seem like he's trying to be all scary but comes off as a Juggalo or something. Like yeah maybe he's on meth and might actually stab you, but look how ridiculous he is.

I loved the lightsaber stuff, especially some of the side effects that you know were things people have been wondering about for years and was never really detailed in the originals (probably due to lack of cgi) - like the cutting of trees, smoldering holes when people get hit, etc.

Loved Rey, loved that she was not a damsel in distress and so capable on her own, and that her backstory is still open. I can't imagine she's not related to Luke in someway but kind of hope it isn't that cut and dried. The bit with her flying the falcon was the first bit that dropped my stomach a bit and made me feel like a kid.

I'm kind of indifferent to Poe, but they didn't really have a lot of him in here which makes sense for future movies I guess. I think I caught a Wilhelm Scream during the first escape in the Tie fighter which made me laugh more than it should have.

And I still don't really get a lot of the practicalities and motivations - if the Republic is running things, why do they have an offshoot called the Resistance? Is the entire Republic now wiped out in one shot of the giant gun? Why was everyone so seemingly unfazed by the destruction of several planets that possibly housed their entire government? How does the First Order get the funding to build such massive infrastructure? Why do they repeatedly build these giant structures with weak spots and convenient channels leading right to them, but obviously know that these are weak enough that they have to explicitly put cannons there to shoot down the inevitable x-wing attacks? Why is the outer surface of the Falcon so covered in pipes and hoses that are obviously unimportant because they're constantly getting busted off in crashes?

I wish there were more ships other than the x-wings/tie fighters (tie fighters require two pilots now because they have rotating guns? TIE bombers need two pilots not the fighters)

the first order = nazis was way too on the nose. teh salute! blah

I believe the Republic is in an uneasy truce with the First Order. The Resistance is a semi-official organisation set up by Leia in case they get belligerent

Less chrome overall would have been good too. a chrome storm trooper!

Starkiller felt like a Kevin J Andersen invention

All the people in the Star Wars universe must just smell like distilled urine. Sweating constantly, never changingc clothes, never washing, flying all the way from Hoth to Dagobah without a single pit stop, on and on it goes. I suppose when you share the galaxy with Hutts there's not much point to trying to not stink?

― El Tomboto, Saturday, December 19, 2015 1:33 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark

It always bothered me in the original how they swam in freaking garbage water and then were clean and dry the next scene

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did they explain why 3PO has a red arm now and i missed that?

― reggie (qualmsley), Saturday, December 19, 2015 3:36 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark

he had a silver leg in ESB i think they just use whatever replacement part is available and convenient

all the characters are like the original ones just split up and recombulated - Finn is a lil bit luke ANH ingenue but also han ANH b/c he only cares about one thing and it's not fighting - Rey is the new Luke obv, total unknown from desert planet wrapped in normcore cream

Poe is idk cocky Wedge?

both death star runs were in this movie (going throught the star destroyer was ROTJ and then poe's run at the end was ANH) and the one at the end kind of sucked

I remember reading a star wars porn parody that was probably first published on USENET called STAR WHORES when i was like 11 and one of the lines in there was "man your lightsaber doens't even bend right"

that was p much adam driver's lightsaber

Now, this would've been a good way of explaining why the Resistance won so easily, if all that you say had been mentioned or implied in the movie. But it wasn't, so it's just fanon, something you as a viewer come up with to justify the flaws in the movie... But that doesn't mean the flaws still aren't there.

Movies...don't have to spoonfeed every single motivation.

Like they were implied...considering after my first watch I was criticizing the same things as you and on repeat view had diff interpretation

I think the Xwing/Tie Fighter simplification was a good representation of what the entire film was doing. Distilling _everything_ down to its core elements; no Awings, no tie bombers(which I missed), no skipray blastboats, only a single star destroyer as a capital ship. Core (iconic?) images: the Falcon, some Xwings, some Tie Fighters, and a special wing-folding ride for the kid really wanting to be Darth Vader

There weren't any skipray blastboats in the original were there?

the Kylo firebird sucked because the wings never did anything remember how cool it was when the lambda shuttle wings unfolded

No, not really. That was just some EU stuff that made its way into the Xwing games.

btw I love that the EU is now just 'legends' and doesn't count anymore

like goodbye Jacen and JAina and who was the third? maggie? It's Kylo now

i saw everyone talking abt EU yesterday

first thought: euros? wtf?

second: oh wait maybe it means ewoks

finally: ohhhh expanded universe ok

no sensible people care about all that EU shit

lol

The Clone Wars and Star Wars Rebels animated TV series are both decent (the former is actually better than the movies it's based on, but considering that were talking about episodes I-III here, it's not that hard to top them) and worth a watch, but yeah, the other spinoff material that I've come across has done nothing to me.

Since Rebels is an ongoing series at the moment, I'm wondering if they'll try to do some tie-in with the new movies... It takes place a few years before episode IV, so there probably won't be too much connections to eps VII-IX, but it might share some characters with the Han Solo movie (which according to Wikipedia takes place in Han's youth, so before IV).

the alien who sold food for parts, no need for that dude to be cgi

He wasn't!!! Again, that is a wasted Simon Pegg in a space fat suit. Jeezus, people

I also got the feeling Snoke knew the Resistance would destroy the Starkiller shortly after they fired it. Hux even seemed like he might be in on it, not at all emotional that his coolest toy was about to implode, just like "yup sir the planetary collapse is happenin' right on schedule" like blowing up the Republic's capital ("Hosnian Prime!") was basically like hitting the popcorn button on some grander plan.

the face wasn't CGI?? xpost

Going to go see this again today, probably. I'm going to try to catch more of the vision sequence, like the number of voices/locations layered in, etc

McGregor, Guinness, and Frank Oz are all in there apparently

I am Snoke

So say we all

turbo lasers

That face was definitely cgi

I don't like all the invented cannons like a ventral cannon, that's just a proton torpedo my guy

we are all snoke. snoke lives matter.

that base is relaly called Starkiller? LIke Luke and Darth's original names?

the mouth on Pegg's thing looked CGI

Ford could pass for Hamill's dad

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CUnMlBmWIAIuGC9.jpg

has anyone linked the new RLM review? it's OTM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AvsiJppCdmk

Snoke was pretty much a non-entity (the heroes don't even seem to know about him)

This isn't true by the way. Leia mentions him.

It felt odd that there was no attempt to evacuate the resistance base when they learned they were the next starkiller target. C3PO going "it'll be ready in ten minutes!" then "it's going to fire in two minutes!" and everyone just standing round going "well that's a bugger". c/w the evacuations n of the Hoth base for example.

good:
* New death star as the MIRV to the original's Hiroshima.
* Strong cast. Driver in particular is terrific.
* Looked good, impressive sense of set design and space.
* Last shot was superb.

not sure:
* New score. Doesn't feel iconic but could grow on me.
* Boyega's in some kind of Nat Turner story arc that will end with him leading a storm trooper insurrection.
* Snoke, Rey's backstory etc. I appreciate the mystery but any resolution here will almost certainly disappoint.
* broken plot mechanics but who cares it's Star Wars

bad:
* Action scenes underwhelming. Final set piece was stale.
* Carrie Fisher doesn't want to be here.
* Movie sputters and falls to the ground with every callback.
* Made me feel really tired and old.

Timothy Zahn's Heir to the Empire books are the best EU stuff

Truth

Which honestly they should have just done those instead of the prequels and we wouldn't even be having this discussion

ehhhh no

There are enough dumb things in those already building on EU garbage. And their main cast is the original cast, which could be transposed, but not well. Plus, are you forgetting the slave race that keeps calling Leia "Lady Vader" and Luuke, mentally deficient clone?

The main plot beats were fine but wtf

i really liked kylo hitting his crowbow wound over and over again, felt like adam driver doing method improv in a good way

yeah i liked that too

I dug this little face meld thing that LA comic Dani Fernandez did back in November:

http://i.imgur.com/pBq4zxp.jpg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o3QPN0sSFLw

Most are obvious, but some of the bits I'd missed, esp about the Ralph McQuarrie art

Rey = Luke
Finn = Threepio
BB8 = Artoo
Poe = Han
Ren = Darth
Han = Kenobi
Leia = That general guy with the beard

Rey and Ren and brother and sister, no? My mate Jon said something about Han and Leia having two kids in one of the EU books or something. Luke's not gonna have kids; he's a monk, he doesn't do pleasures of the flesh.

That's pretty lazy - for a start, Rey is Luke and Han and Leia, in different aspects.

(xp)

Oh yeah, it's reductive as hell. But in more cynical moments it's been my takeaway. Need to see it again.

Also, Finn working in sanitation is totally a nod to Clerks, right?

.... why?

Why has it been my takeaway in more cynical moments? Because I felt that TFA was SO close to ANH in so many ways - as outlined above - that it made me feel a little guilty for watching it and enjoying it. (This is of one viewing, having not seen ANH in years.) It barely does anything new or different, just lines up similar character archetypes in similar situations. Which isn't necessarily 'bad' - I enjoyed it after all - but it's a little bit irksome. Like it was focus-grouped to hell, only the focus group was actually the production team. Which is better than Lucas making boring films that don't look or feel like Star Wars.

Another minor gripe: I feel like when they had to bypass the Falcon's compressor and target the Starkiller's oscillator, they weren't reaching very hard for fancy technical - sounding words.

Ah no, I meant why would it have anything to do with Clerks.

I think it's threading a needle between "Show that you can make a Star Wars movie" and doing some very interesting things with those building blocks - but there's been a lot of words on that already in the thread.

(I'd also suggest that people who think the film does nothing new or different would probably tend to be white boys who don't see race or gender.)

have you seen this film? rey and ren are cousins - rey is luke's daughter

Boy, the RLM guys have really ridden those prequel-hating videos a long way, huh? Like, we're all supposed to treat them as the go-to source for SW talk and movie analysis generally or something?

I have seen the film, I haven't seen the bit where Rey is Luke's daughter as that isn't in the film.

(okay, it's hinted at, but so is the idea that she's Han and Leia's daughter - Kylo's taunting of her that Han is the father she never had is probably my favourite of those. There's big problems with all of these theories, and they're probably just misdirection)

Rey is Khan.

I hadn't looked at the track listing for the score prior to the movie to avoid spoilers (like a repeat of the infamous "Qui-Gon's Noble End/Qui-Gon's Funeral" thing with Episode I), but it seems like Disney really had a clamp on this. There's arguably not a single spoiler in any of these cue names:

Main Title and The Attack on the Jakku Village – 6:25
The Scavenger – 3:39
I Can Fly Anything – 3:11
Rey Meets BB-8 – 1:31
Follow Me - 2:54
Rey's Theme – 3:11
The Falcon – 3:32
That Girl with the Staff - 1:58
The Rathtars! - 4:05
Finn's Confession - 2:08
Maz's Counsel - 3:07
The Starkiller - 1:51
Kylo Ren Arrives at the Battle - 2:01
The Abduction - 2:25
Han and Leia - 4:41
March of the Resistance - 2:35
Snoke - 2:03
On the Inside - 2:05
Torn Apart - 4:19
The Ways of the Force - 3:15
Scherzo for X-Wings - 2:32
Farewell and The Trip - 4:55
The Jedi Steps and Finale - 8:51

Yes, it does obviously do quite startlingly different things with race and gender, which is great, but if anything that makes it feel even weirder that they then don't do anything particularly new with the actual plot.

But re: the Clerks thing, Clerks famously features a conversation about Star Wars and manual labourers / contractors on the Death Star, referencing the fact that the Rebel Alliance must have killed a load of innocent construction workers because you wouldn't get Storm Troopers installing toilets. And then what does Finn do? Announce that he worked in sanitation.

Randal Graves: [talking about the second Death Star] A construction job of that magnitude would require a helluva lot more manpower than the Imperial army had to offer. I'll bet there were independent contractors working on that thing: plumbers, aluminum siders, roofers.

Dante Hicks: Not just Imperials, is what you're getting at...

Randal Graves: Exactly. In order to get it built quickly and quietly they'd hire anybody who could do the job. Do you think the average storm trooper knows how to install a toilet main? All they know is killing and white uniforms.

Dante Hicks: All right, so even if independent contractors are working on the Death Star, why are you uneasy with its destruction?

Randal Graves: All those innocent contractors hired to do a job were killed - casualties of a war they had nothing to do with.
[notices Dante's confusion]

Randal Graves: All right, look-you're a roofer, and some juicy government contract comes your way; you got the wife and kids and the two-story in suburbia - this is a government contract, which means all sorts of benefits. All of a sudden these left-wing militants blast you with lasers and wipe out everyone within a three-mile radius. You didn't ask for that. You have no personal politics. You're just trying to scrape out a living.

The Scavenger – 3:39

I really liked this piece.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q3YcCLaTnBE

what about the ending suggested that rey might possibly be waiting to cry "uncle luke!" following the final wipe and what about any of han and leia's interaction with rey suggested that this might be their long lost daughter while they hyperventilate over the son who grew up with them til he wigged out?

I have seen the film, I haven't seen the bit where Rey is Luke's daughter as that isn't in the film.

(okay, it's hinted at, but so is the idea that she's Han and Leia's daughter - Kylo's taunting of her that Han is the father she never had is probably my favourite of those. There's big problems with all of these theories, and they're probably just misdirection)

I really, really would like to believe Rey is not Luke's kid, but I can't think of any other way to explain all of the hints in the movie. I'll try to list them from the beginning to the end:

* Unlike with the other human characters, Rey's last name isn't mentioned in the promotional materials, the movie itself, nor the end credits. (Finn's last name isn't mentioned either, but that's because he doesn't have one.) This would imply her last name is a spoiler.

* Max von Sydow has a map that leads to Luke, and he's living on random remote planet. On this same planet there lives a young woman who turns out to be extremely strong in Force. Either this all is a huge conincidence, or he was on that planet for a reason. What else could that reason be, than to watch over Rey and give him the map when she was ready to meet Luke? This movie loves to mirror the events and characters of the original Star Wars movie, but with a twist. So it would make total sense that Von Sydow was supposed to be Rey's own Obi-Wan, and the twist is that he died before he had the chance to tell Rey who she truly is.

* Rey is revealed to be a technological prodigy. So was Anakin, who built his own droid at an early age, and Luke had that too, though to a lesser degree.

* Rey's parents left her on a remote desert planet for reasons she does not know. The same happened to Luke. Also, Rey's flashback to her parents leaving does not show them in person, which suggests the viewers might recognize them, or at least draw some conclusions if they saw them onscreen.

* While in the pirate fortress, Rey is supernaturally drawn to a box that contains the lighsaber previously owned by Anakin and Luke. When she grabs the lightsaber, she is bombarded by visions of Luke and other things. Now, it's perfectly possible the same would've happened to anyone strong in Force, but Maz Kanata's speech implies it was Rey specifically who was meant to find the saber. And the scene with Maz is another example of mirroring Episode IV, but with a twist: like Obi-Wan did with Luke, Maz wants Rey to have the lightsaber, but unlike Luke, Rey refuses to take it.

* Finn brings the map to the Resistance base, but turns out it's only partial, and they don't have the rest of the map. In the base there's R2-D2, who's been in Sleep Mode ever since Luke disappeared.

* When Kylo interrogates Rey, there's a creepy sexual element to the scene, and it could be interpreted that he's attracted to her. In the original movies Luke and Leia were attracted to each other before finding out they're siblings, so this would be another example of mirroring, except with cousins instead.

* In the climactic fight, the lightsaber is in the snow, out of Rey's reach, so she uses the Force to grab it. Just like Luke did in the wampa's cave in Empire Strikes Back.

* After the final battle, Rey comes to the Resistance base, and R2 immediately wakes up, revealing that it had the missing part of the map all along. Why didn't R2 reveal this earlier, when Finn brought the partial map to the base? Obviously it was because R2 was ordered to wait until the person who was supposed to go after Luke was found. But how did R2 know Rey was that person? AFAIK droids aren't Force sensitive, so it couldn't have been because R2 sensed Rey was strong in Force. But if Rey is Luke's daughter, Luke could've programmed it to recognize her.

* In the final scene, Luke is dressed in robes and has a beard, just like Obi-Wan, and it's implied Rey will become his disciple. So it's yet another mirror: Luke is this movie's Obi-Wan, and Rey is Luke.

Admittedly some of these hints would also work with theory that Rey is Han and Leia's kid... But why don't Kylo, Han, and Leia recognize her then? The only explanation would be that she was taken away from her family as a small child. But if that was the case, in the scene where they talk about losing their son, wouldn't they mention losing a daughter too? Also, since Leia's is shown to have at least some Force sensitivity (she can feel Han's death, even though it happens in another star system), wouldn't she sense Rey is her kid?

Of course they could still reveal Rey is simply a random kid whom Luke recognized would grow up to become a strong in Force, and whom he decided to hide on Jakku for some reason. This would be my preferred explanation, but in that case all those hints suggesting a relation between Rey and Luke would be mere viewer misdirection, and that's kinda stupid too.

But re: the Clerks thing, Clerks famously features a conversation about Star Wars and manual labourers / contractors on the Death Star, referencing the fact that the Rebel Alliance must have killed a load of innocent construction workers because you wouldn't get Storm Troopers installing toilets. And then what does Finn do? Announce that he worked in sanitation.

But Finn explicitly explains the Stormtroopers were kids who were taken away from their families by the First Order, and it seems the Resistance knows this too. Also, Finn worked in Death Planet sanitation before he was assigned to battlefield, i.e. before he had to kill any innocent people. So unlike with Death Star, where we couldn't be sure whether it had any manual labourers onboard (maybe all that was handled by droids?), with the Death Planet we know for certain that there were some innocent brainwashed toilet cleaners living there. Not to mention that, unlike the Death Star, the Death Planet is real planet with fauna and flora. So yeah, in this movie the heroes are unquestionably mass killers.

No one's suggesting they're not, I don't think. All I mean is that Finn having worked in sanitation seems like a direct reference to the existence of that pop cultural reference to RotJ.

80% of that is "this film has scenes quite like the original Star Wars film" - this isn't news, but is it's own thing.

She is definitely on some version of Luke's journey, but "Luke is this movie's Obi-Wan, and Rey is Luke", for example, indicates that Luke is a friend/teacher of Rey's father - and that's if you accept your odd "These are similar so they are supposed to be even more similar".

let's wait and see how it plays out

Oh come now, that will never work.

god knows if there is anything to add to this discussion but i saw it. it was enjoyable. lots of fun. though also predictably playing it somewhat safe. and as is typical of abrams, no new brave direction to speak of, just a good salvage job. he is the king of making shit franchises refreshingly... adequate. thought parts of it were far funnier than i expected (eg adam driver having a light saber tantrum when he gets told some bad news, though i guess this is in line with his character being a sort of brat of the dark side, and hearing him say 'youre SO right' in that millenials-speak sort of way to oscar isaac. also just weird though when he took his mask off - im not sure i buy him not playing an oddball.

the cameos from the original cast were all pretty pointless, the exchanges between solo and leia could not have been more forced or more perfunctory (the second was a slight improvement, but it felt completely hollow). ford did get some good lines as the film went on, but he and carrie fisher both looked like they were just about in character. and mark hamill trying to exude gravitas at the end = LOL. other than that, i liked it. it is very much a Young Adult star wars, just right for the current market i think. everyone looks young or feels like they are still in drama school. which is how it should be - a film for a new generation, not filled with old cast cameos to inspire lazy nostalgia in those in middle age (who perhaps should know better by now).

i liked how it looked a lot - esp all the old aircrafts and machines lying dormant in the sand, and the action sequences. and the old fashioned look was great. you could tell it was shot on film. but the biggest disappointment was just how deja vu it was if you have seen episode IV. how many story ideas and sequences did they rehash?! that felt pretty lazy. not so much A Force Awakens, as A Force Recycles. a tragic case of playing it safe. but as a well made, enjoyable, sci fi fantasy adventure for kids, on that thankfully doesnt try and have 'edge', its quite nicely done. but the quest to find luke should have actually been achieved in this film, im tired of this cliffhanger/movie universe sort of approach - i want films to link together but also be self contained, not all end on something i have to wait 5 years to see conclude. its not TV where i can see the answer in a week.

and mark hamill trying to exude gravitas at the end = LOL.

I don't think he was supposed to exude gravitas rather than portray this kind of knowing sadness; like, he knew that Rey would one day come to him, but when that happens he still feels sad, because he knows what kind of dark places this decision will take her. Kinda like the scene in The Fellowship of the Ring, where Frodo is at the meeting at Elrond's and shouts "I'll take the ring!", and Gandalf closes his eyes in sorrow, except that Jackson and McKellen were much better at portraying this than Abrams and Hamill are. (That scene is pretty much favourite scene in all of the LotR movies, Frodo's and Gandalf's entire arcs are masterfully distilled into few heavy seconds.)

exude knowing sadness then. i didnt buy it. i dont care how long he spent growing that beard. the highlands-ish setting made me think of LOTR too.

I liked that adam driver's struggle was with the draw of the light side rather than the usual unresistable allure of the dark side and he has to fight to stay true to it

but the quest to find luke should have actually been achieved in this film

Er, it was??

The last shot of the film, she finds Luke. Maybe you left before that, I don't know.

lol no i stayed til the end, and obv it ends just as they meet, but it doesnt show you what happens when they meet. but then i suppose the big reveal was simply seeing an older, beardier luke, rather than anything they might discuss.

maybe just seeing an older, wizened luke skywalker is enough for everyone!

Anything further would have been a let-down. I don't need to see them play Connect 4 together in his stone hut or whatever.

It's interesting how consensus is coalescing around Han, Luke and Leia being the worst things about this new movie

i think thats mainly because the new cast (esp. ridley) was so good that you don't want to see the focus pulled off of them for callbacks

Nah, Han + Chewie 4 lyfe.

thats cos all three of them have prob been trying to escape SW for years and did not look like they seemed partic pleased to be back in the fold. i doubt any older viewers would have cared that much if they werent there, if say, you still had stuff like the falcon in there. its not like the film doesnt have enough references or imagery from the older films already...

Also Daisy Ridley does a great job, but once I realised that her pulled-back hair and large forehead gave her a resemblance to Hugo Weaving, this caused some dissonance over the course of the film.

there was a funny the late show skit with harrison meeting j.j. to discuss the new movie (star wars)

xxp I don't really think anyone was holding a gun to their heads, though.

once I realised that her pulled-back hair and large forehead gave her a resemblance to Hugo Weaving

that's a very unfortunate thing to have happened to you

Han shooting the stormtrooper behind him without looking was the most uncool thing in the movie.

And then he's suddenly super enthusiastic about Chewie's bowcaster which Chewie has had for decades.

it was quite an effective confrontation overall, but harrison ford did look to me like he was trying really hard to care in that bridge scene....

no not then suddenly - he had a go of it earlier on when they were trying to escape from the freighter and seemed impressed at that point

Senile innit

And then he's suddenly super enthusiastic about Chewie's bowcaster which Chewie has had for decades.

― jmm, Monday, December 21, 2015 11:56 AM (13 minutes ago) Bookmark

yeah this bothered me too

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rN0T5tyJlo8

This was almost exactly the film it should have been and it ruled, but Chewy and the droids are the only original characters I'm bothered about seeing again.

Allowing the audience a good hour or so to get acquainted with the new generation (and actually care about them) was a smart move.

I thought C-3PO was the nadir of the film.

3P0 except for his initial interruption was bleh, as if they didn't have anything to do other than give exposition(which was true in parts of Jedi, too).

Harrison Ford was great and looked like he fucking cared for the first time in decades. He served in certain aspects of the Obi-Wan role, but _seriously_ evoked the old coot/world-weary gunslinger Western character for me. He even digs out a shooter for Rey and Finn. I kinda was hoping for a quick tin-can-pea-shoot scene with him & Rey, but that would have been cut.

Listening to other reaction podcasts, I heard the point that Han & Leia stand in for us in a certain way; they've/we've seen this all before and have decades of history with this shit, and are there watching and helping a new generation get involved in the adventures.

Also, video game semiotics permeate all aspects of narrative culture like other media did before it; you have to blast away at the glowing orange target. That's the bad guy's weak spot.

I laughed at Poe's video game instructions during the TIE fighter escape. "We have to destroy as many of these cannons as we can."

Ford looked like he wanted to care, but had forgotten how to make his care muscles work

So Grunberg's character was apparently introduced in the novel that came out a few months ago: http://io9.gizmodo.com/we-now-know-the-backstory-of-greg-grunbergs-star-wars-c-1749061357

http://i.imgur.com/gcbs8SS.png

ah here's the neckbeard x-wing pilot

http://i.imgur.com/NrsbiWd.jpg

there also wouldn't be gravity on the Millennium Falcon, buzzkill Neil

R2 didnt wake up because he sensed the Force

http://www.ew.com/article/2015/12/20/jj-abrams-answers-burning-question-about-r2-d2-star-wars-force-awakens

Welcome to JJ-town

Btw I enjoy all the focus on plotholes when entire think pieces could be written about how shitty the Empires upper management is to let the princess be rescued simply by pretending their earpiece didn't work

going into this it was easy for me to avoid spoilers, since i didn't care enough to watch trailers or read about it. just figured i'd go and it would be fun. so, i was truly surprised to be 'ambushed by unexpected emotion' more times than i'd care to say. i wasn't asking for this, but apparently watching the original trilogy on VHS & Betamax (taped off tv, i think?) on repeat as a kid lodged them in there more deeply than i knew. and the meticulously reverse-engineered tone of this movie, along with old man Han and a few other elements, dislodged those memories & emotions very effectively.

definitely teared up more than a few times

I honestly thought my wife was going to have a stroke when Han walked out on the bridge. She obviously knew what was coming, as did everyone, but she reached over and grabbed my hand so hard she left marks.

I did really fear for a moment that Kylo Ren was going to get Darth Maul-ed at the end.

I enjoy Driver's delivery.

Darth had a menace to him but he was direct and didn't waste time

Kylo somewhat enjoys the cat and mouse, enjoys toying with his victims, as if he's not in a hurry because he's assured he will succeed, why not enjoy the ride. Whereas Darth was task-oriented

The more I think about it, the more him stopping Poe's blaster bolt in mid-air and letting it hang there the entire time is one of the most badass Force-power things I've ever seen anyone do.

yeah that was dope

How they got Alec Guinness to say "Rey!" in the flashback scene:

http://www.ew.com/article/2015/12/20/jj-abrams-reveals-obi-wan-and-yoda-are-star-wars-force-awakens

Feel like Han's death was slightly bungled? He's probably older than Alec Guinness was when he stepped out onto that platform so probably not really up for a full-on light-sabre fight (and it would be wrong for Solo to use one anyway), but the sense of vertigo you got from looking at that bridge in 3D wasn't really maximised, nor was the emotional impact. Like, this is HAN SOLO DYING but actually the bit that really hit home was Chewy's reaction. Adam Driver seemed poorly cast as well.

All the other leads were great. Think there would have been two big things running through JJ Abrams' head throughout:

1. Do not fuck this up. Do not fuck this up. Do not fuck this up. Do not fuck this up.
2. Create a new generation of characters that people actually care about, and can continue to carry things on their own.

Success on both counts. Essentially there's not much stopping them from churning out Star Wars movies forever now.

Wow, Harrison Ford is a full decade older than Guinness was when Star Wars came out!

Was surprised/relieved the new group didn't include a token nerd though.

Essentially there's not much stopping them from churning out Star Wars movies forever now.

foregone conclusion since the Disney buyout

there was a Wired article about that, that basically said that if you are old enough to have seen Ep IV in the theater, you won't live to see the last one

Did they ever announce that they were planning to make three more, or has it always been open-ended?

Lucas said this in 1980

"So, I took the screenplay and divided it into three stories, and rewrote the first one. As I was writing, I came up with some ideas for a film about robots, with no humans in it. When I got to working on the Wookiee, I thought of a film just about Wookiees, nothing else. So, for a time, I had a couple of odd movies with just those characters. Then, I had the other two films, which were essentially split into three parts each, two trilogies. When the smoke cleared, I said, 'This is really great. I'll do another trilogy that takes place after this. I had three trilogies of nine films, and then another couple of odd films. Essentially, there were twelve films."

He then added that he had:

"…eliminated the odd movies, because they really don't have anything to do with the Star Wars saga. ... I'm just going to keep it pure. It's a nine-part saga that has a beginning, a middle and an end. It progresses over a period of about fifty or sixty years with about twenty years between trilogies, each trilogy taking about six or seven years."

but of course the new trilogy has nothing to do with what he came up with back then (if he was even telling the truth) and the only thing we know about future films is that there will be at least three spin-off movies as well as the main ones

Ah, OK. I've answered my own question with the magic of Wikipedia.

There are only episodes planned up to IX. Other films (like Han Solo origin story) are not in that sequence.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Wars#Sequel_trilogy

xpost

c'mon, they aren't going to stop at IX when there's money to be made

my understanding was that there's 3 more films in the 'main storyline' of star wars i.e. the story of the skywalker family, and after that my guess is they'll probably marvel-ize it and split into a bunch of separate character-based storylines that occasionally converge

It's funny that Lucas said that in 1980. By 2008 he had changed his tune:

"I get asked all the time, 'What happens after "Return of the Jedi"?,' and there really is no answer for that," he said. "The movies were the story of Anakin Skywalker and Luke Skywalker, and when Luke saves the galaxy and redeems his father, that's where that story ends."

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/la-et-lucas7-2008may07-story.html

Although, I guess in 1980 he could have meant that there were six prequels.

We never got to see the Jar Jar Binks origin story.

Was surprised/relieved the new group didn't include a token nerd though.

Rey geeking over starship technology doesn't count? I've seen some geek girls comment that one of the reasons they loved her was because she was written to be the "tech expert" instead of the "heart", like most women characters in sci-fi are.

Although, I guess in 1980 he could have meant that there were six prequels.

Scratch that: 1980 was when Star Wars got branded as episode IV.

poet / experimental writing bigwig Seth Abramson's top plot holes (that still don't ruin the movie) ~

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/seth-abramson/40-unforgivable-plot-holes-in-star-wars-the-force-awakens_b_8850324.html

To blow up the 120-km "Death Star" in Star Wars, the rebels needed detailed plans for the base and a full-scale invasion force -- as well as the supernatural targeting skills of the most powerful Force-user in the galaxy. To destroy the exponentially larger and better-protected "Starkiller Base" in The Force Awakens, all that was needed was a janitor with no special skills, a few run-of-the-mill handheld explosives, a couple not very difficult X-wing blaster strikes, and some moxie. It also helped that the Millennium Falcon was able to "fly low."

The wily Han Solo loses track of his most prized possession, the Millennium Falcon, for more than a dozen years. He has no idea where it is -- in the entire Galaxy. When you lose something in your house, that's bad; when you lose something on your planet, you kiss it goodbye but pray for a miracle; when you lose something in the entire Galaxy, you just get on with your life. And yet, less than a minute after Rey begins piloting the Millennium Falcon, Han looks out the window of his freighter and says, "Oh, there it is."

Just minutes before Starkiller Base explodes, Supreme Leader Snoke tells Hux to go get Kylo Ren and take him off the planet. Unfortunately, Ren had recently (unbeknownst to Hux) run into the woods like a lunatic, leaving no information about his whereabouts. It's no problem, though, because Hux apparently has special Kylo Ren GPS and (one assumes) goes right to the spot in the middle of the forest where Ren is bleeding to death; otherwise, Ren would have died on the planet along with everybody else from the First Order.

Rey, who has never left her home planet since she was a child, can speak Wookie. Nobody can speak Wookie -- it's a running joke in the Star Wars universe. But Rey being able to speak Wookie surprises neither her, Han Solo, nor Chewbacca himself.

It's okay that Poe survived a Tie Fighter crash; after all, so did Finn. But has any film ever cared less about (a) giving the false impression a character has died, and then (b) having that character show up later with no one being surprised by it? Even Finn doesn't seem to care very much what the explanation is.

What is all this nonsense about the First Order only wanting to destroy the Republic because the Republic is supporting the Resistance? First of all, isn't the Resistance part of the Republic, not a separate operation? And if it is separate, why has the First Order only just now discovered the not-very-well-hidden fact that the Republic is supporting the Resistance? And if the Resistance is in fact a part of the Republic, why didn't Starkiller Base destroy the Republic's planets and moons much, much earlier? In other words, what is the status of the war between the Republic and the First Order at the beginning of The Force Awakens, such that this precise moment is when General Hux decides to simply press a button and destroy the Republic?

For that matter, why is it made to seem like the entire Republic is centered in just one star system? Let alone one whose planets and moons are all visible to one another with the naked eye? Isn't the Republic intergalactic? And why did the First Order choose to destroy all the planets and moons visible from Maz Kanata's home-world, but then initiate a conventional invasion of the latter planet? Why not just fire one more planet-killing beam and destroy Kanata's planet too? Because not doing that leads to a significant military defeat for the First Order that was totally avoidable. And another thing: if the Republic is in power, why is the Resistance the "Resistance"? What are they resisting? Isn't the First Order the "Resistance," as they're resisting the hegemony of the Republic? It's like someone on-set said "the Rebels need a new name," without realizing that the political situation in the Galaxy had totally changed since the events of the previous films.

Kylo Ren is the head of the Knights of Ren, but there are no other Knights of Ren in the movie.

Captain Phasma is supposed to be a big-deal character in The Force Awakens, if the merchandising and casting are any indication, and yet (a) how bad of a commanding officer do you have to be, how thoroughly inept in military tactics and strategy, to command the worst-trained fighting force in the Galaxy (the Stormtroopers hit even less with their blasters in The Force Awakens than in any preceding Star Wars film); (b) she's only in three scenes, in one of which she relays an order from Kylo Ren to initiate a massacre of innocents (hardcore!) and in another of which she immediately surrenders to Han, Rey, and Finn as soon as they encounter her and then does exactly everything they ask of her (pathetic!), making her character incomprehensible; and (c) in her third scene she effectively reveals that Finn's character is incomprehensible, as she notes that he has in fact been trained since birth to obey all orders, and has never in his life disobeyed even a single order until the day he decides to act like he's never been trained, indoctrinated, or dehumanized at all.

Let's be clear: Han's son joins the First Order, and Luke's attempts to train new Jedis goes horribly wrong, and both men respond to these setbacks by, well, abandoning the Resistance to be utterly slaughtered by the First Order. Luke chills on an island, and Han on a smuggler's freighter, while untold thousands or millions of innocents are killed by the Order. Can we even comprehend how pissed Leia would be at both of them, and how cowardly Leia (at least the Leia we see in the first three films) would consider them both? And yet she seems only mildly peeved at Luke, and, despite Han implying otherwise, is almost entirely happy to see him when he turns up at the Resistance stronghold.

How pissy is it of Luke to (a) abandon the Resistance, and then (b) leave an obnoxiously coy trail of bread-crumbs to sort of (but not really) help people find him (at some unspecified time)? Why did he leave multiple maps out there in the ether, anyway, given that him having done so allows the First Order to find one of them?

Kylo Ren has such a Force-enabled sense of where his father is in the Galaxy that when his father lands on Starkiller Base, Ren immediately exclaims to himself, "Solo!" Yet a few minutes later, when Ren is just twenty feet from Solo, he can't detect him -- and actually starts searching for him in the wrong direction.

How lame is Han's attempt to convert his son? Han knows Ren (Ben) has just participated in the genocide of literally billions of people on multiple planets and moons, and he basically says to him, "Hey, this just isn't you, buddy..." Of course his son kills him! What else was going to happen?

Why do Rey and Finn just stand by watching as Ren murders Han? They didn't know Ren was Han's son, so the drama on the catwalk must have looked absolutely bizarre to them. Why didn't they think to fire even a single blaster shot down at Ren (given that he was just standing there on the catwalk) until -- from their vantage-point, with the knowledge they had at the time, entirely predictably -- Ren killed Han?

Rey says that the Millennium Falcon is "garbage" and hasn't been flown in many, many years. Indeed, it's such junk, in her view, that she won't even board it when she's about to be ripped to pieces by twenty Tie Fighters. Then she gets on board and it basically flies perfectly. So much so that it's not at all clear why no one has been flying it, let alone why its owner (Unkar Plutt) hasn't tried to sell it at any point over the past dozen years -- despite the fact that Plutt appears to live in a hovel.

Why does Plutt offer Rey 250 times her usual pay for BB-8 and then, when she says "no," simply tell some of his heavies to just steal it? If Plutt is enough of a baddie to order it stolen at all, why not just steal it from the outset instead of first offering some random urchin the biggest financial windfall she's ever seen?

Maz Kanata is a friend to the Resistance. So why is she hiding Luke's light saber from them? Wouldn't she give them anything she could to help them find Luke, and doesn't it in fact turn out (as anyone could have supposed) that Luke's light saber is indeed helpful in tracking the last Jedi down?

Why does Kylo Ren assign just a single Stormtrooper to guard Rey, the most valuable prisoner in the history of the First Order?

Why do the Rathtars immediately kill every human they encounter -- except Finn, who is randomly dragged off just long enough to be rescued?

If basically everyone in the Galaxy knows the Force is not a myth -- for instance, every single Stormtrooper in the First Order, who has seen Kylo Ren use it or heard tell of him using it; every single person in the Resistance, who knows the Resistance is looking for Luke Skywalker; every single person in the Republic, which was first established in part by the heroism of the Jedis -- how is the existence of the Force a total shock to Rey? Jakku is sheltered, but as we know from the film (cf. Lor San Tekka) there are many people on Jakku who either have seen the Force first-hand or heard first-hand accounts of it from visitors to the planet.

Why would the First Order spend untold quadrillions of [insert unit of money here] to build the Starkiller Base, when a similar concept and design plan had twice before been destroyed with minimal difficulty by the rebels? And doesn't the recurrence of this tactical error for the third time in the (relatively) brief history of the Empire/First Order suggest that everyone in the First Order who was involved in the construction of Starkiller Base, at every level of management and authority, should be instantly shot in the head? (Of course, it's too late for that by the end of the film, but still.) How positively brain-dead is Snoke to have learned literally nothing from history? And for those who say that clearly a solar-powered Death Star is way better than a non-solar-powered Death Star, well, clearly not!

yeah, rey looking all self-satisfied when she successfully 'bypassed the compressor' on the falcon was a total nerd-out moment. if there's a 'token nerd' then it's her

ugh Seth Abramson. i don't feel like i was super observant while watching this, but they at least made attempts to explain most of this stuff:

The wily Han Solo loses track of his most prized possession, the Millennium Falcon, for more than a dozen years. He has no idea where it is -- in the entire Galaxy. When you lose something in your house, that's bad; when you lose something on your planet, you kiss it goodbye but pray for a miracle; when you lose something in the entire Galaxy, you just get on with your life. And yet, less than a minute after Rey begins piloting the Millennium Falcon, Han looks out the window of his freighter and says, "Oh, there it is."

he mentions that he had a method for tracking it and says something like "you don't think it's a coincidence that we found you so soon, right?" maybe it had to be moving or in space to track it?

How pissy is it of Luke to (a) abandon the Resistance, and then (b) leave an obnoxiously coy trail of bread-crumbs to sort of (but not really) help people find him (at some unspecified time)? Why did he leave multiple maps out there in the ether, anyway, given that him having done so allows the First Order to find one of them?

i thought that all they knew was that he was going to find the 'first jedi temple', and the maps were to the temple, not specifically to him.

Rey, who has never left her home planet since she was a child, can speak Wookie. Nobody can speak Wookie -- it's a running joke in the Star Wars universe. But Rey being able to speak Wookie surprises neither her, Han Solo, nor Chewbacca himself.

seems like lots of weirdos from other planets pass through that planet, presumably she knew some wookies?

btw i went to the bathroom and missed the big speech and destruction of the planets (apparently). :/

she also understood BB-8, i think she's just supposed to be a savant at everything

if this were KOTOR all her force points were probably allocated to something tech related

loving the nitpicks there, they're fun to think about.

the answer to basically all of them is "because filmmaking"

yeah star wars is space fantasy, not hard sci-fi. almost none of those nitpicks actually matter to the storytelling

"There were these things that were discussed that don’t get explained. George [Lucas] dropped you into a story and respected you to infer everything necessary to understand what you need to know.”

shaaaaaaaaaade

and in another of which [Phasma] immediately surrenders to Han, Rey, and Finn as soon as they encounter her and then does exactly everything they ask of her (pathetic!)

This bothered me, not so much as a plot-hole but more because it seemed like too easy a solution to the shield problem. The attack on the shield generator in Return of the Jedi was most of the movie.

Essentially there's not much stopping them from churning out Star Wars movies forever now.

I'm okay with this - even if some are shitty it will be obvious and they can be avoided. The best thing about Star Trek is the universe that can encompass Kirk and Picard and a shitty little rusty space station that explores ethnic cleansing and colonialism. The Man In The High Castle is okay, but I'm distracted by the world-building that sets the stage for a bunch of stories that are more interesting than story they're actually telling.

For me the biggest theme of the OG trilogy was friendship, and being loyal to your friends, and I hope that carries on as a sort of spine to these movies.

yeah I like the rey-finn stuff and sort of hope it's developed as non-romantic but whatever my real hope is that finn is just some bloke and isn't revealed to be the son of anyone ~significant~

he's the everyman we need imo

Very cool bit about the Alec Guinness / McGregor voice mashup in the EW article above

Hey, what did I miss?

Anyway, this was fine, like an extended version of the Spock cameo in the Star Trek reboot, but I was a little surprised by the near total absence of tension and suspense. Less surprised by the total lack of surprises. Like, even the attack on the Big Round Death Ball felt totally afterthought-y, almost as if they felt duty-bound to blow something up. Also, as usual any and all totally CGI characters (Evil Villain esp.) were distracting. I guess I didn't have many big problems, but mostly because the whole thing felt pretty weirdly perfunctory and passionless, not unlike the way Rilo Kiley was "revealed" to be Han's son. Are we supposed to be on the edge of our seat about Rey's bloodline?

Did like the otherwise inexplicable decision to reintroduce Chewbacca with the personality of a 10 year old boy. Also liked the missed feeling of experience something that's part of the monoculture.

Things I was surprised by in this movie:

- The magic bread-portions
- Rey sledding on sand
- The 'garbage' ship being the Millennium Falcon
- Finn being an actual stormtrooper
- Han Solo having more than a cameo
- Rey's force-dream
- etc etc etc

I guess the Force Dream was a surprise, as was every other accelerated step of her spontaneous learning curve.

Would have been cool if Bad Guy referred to Vader as Darth Grandvader.

Maybe you've heard the expression 'the force is strong in this one?' The force is waaaaaay strong in this one. Hope that clears it up.

Darth Opa

well this explains a lot

Isaac says he had been summoned to Paris for what he suspected might be a role in The Force Awakens. Sure enough, earlier that day, he had met with Abrams, screenwriter Lawrence Kasdan, and Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy, and Abrams had pitched him the character of Poe Dameron, a badass fighter pilot battling against the remnants of the Empire.

“He’s amazing!” said Abrams.

“Sounds good!” thought Isaac, whose first experience in a movie theater had been seeing The Empire Strikes Back.

“He opens the whole movie!” said Abrams.

“Sounds great!” thought Isaac.

“And then,” Abrams went on. “He dies.”

“Oh,” thought Isaac.

http://www.gq.com/story/star-wars-the-force-awakens-character-death

I liked the way he just showed up, without any drawn out thing. "I ejected too! Couldn't find you, thanks so much for getting the droid here, you're awesome!"

That's what I meant by the weird lack of tension. Obviously he is a name actor and whatnot, but for the life of me I don't recall for a minute wondering if he was really dead, or being shocked, or wondering if he would come back. He was just gone, and then he was back. Just like there was a Death Planet, and then it was gone. There was the dreaded Captain Plasma, and then she gets jumped. There was RIlo Kiley left on the blowing up Death Planet, and then Supreme Leader Gollum is all, oh, pick him up on your way out.

These aren't criticisms, per se: Abrams' charge was to right the ship, and he basically did that. Just conveying my reaction that the whole thing was oddly inert. Find it encouraging that Ridley and Boyega were the high points for me.

xpost

it's like when ted thinks bill is dead but actually he's still alive cos he fell out of his armour when he hit the floor

Josh remember this is Good Star Wars, where things happen and they are great and then something else happens and it is great

in Empire they flew into a giant space eel's mouth, and then they just flew out of it, nobody obsessed about What It Meant.

Actually there were a couple of 'what does it all mean' moments between Leia and Han and they were shit

Han and Leia's expository dialogue about Kylo/Snoke was a serious low point

Poe and Finn's initial escape from the First Order in that stolen tie fighter was thaaaa fffuuuuccking shiiiiiiiiiit I was like damn dog this is what I came for

Gotta say, movie didn't feel smug or anything, which hampered the Trek reboots. So good on them. Indeed, it's definitely more remix than reboot, anyway, and it seems to have a great deal of respect for the mythology (which may be why my 8-year old wasn't into it, but my 11-year old was) .

I kept thinking he was Emperor Snope, and I kept thinking of the website.

When they just stole the ship and tried to take off I was like oh, you're seriously going to just do this, no jamming the signals or waiting until the time is right, just GO GO GO alright

And then you're going to turn the tie fighter's guns back on the base ok strong move FUUUUUUCK

I liked that escape a lot, plus Ridley's escape. It was the Death Ball assault that was weirdly eh.

Oh, btw, Guardians of the Galaxy >>> Force Awakens, but it had the advantage of surprise.

re: the Millennium Falcon and why people thought it was junk when actually it still 'has it', this ship has a history of being underestimated by everybody, it's a totemic example of not judging a book by its cover, it's got secret souped-up hotrod shit inside that nobody except true gearheads would ever know about. Remember in the first Star Wars when it hits lightspeed and everybody on the Star Destroyer has to just watch it go? They weren't expecting that.

you came in that thing you're braver than I thought

Though obviously in this movie lots of people know about the MF, so it shouldn't be so shocking.

maybe they hadn't rewatched the original movies recently enough to remember what it looks like

don't the younglings have to watch loops of MF doing the kessel run in school

it is kind of strange that the millenium falcon is named after a bird that probably has never existed on any other planet apart from earth, and if it did, it would most likely not be called a falcon anyway

lol speaking of the kessel run I was basically cheering along when Han/the script DOUBLES THE FUCK DOWN on 'parsec' as a measurement of time instead of space

don't the younglings have to watch loops of MF doing the kessel run in school

Only in Jedi school, all Jedi schools now closed after 10% of intake becoming fascist megalomaniac psychopaths.

Han Solo: She'll make point five past lightspeed. She may not look like much, but she's got it where it counts, kid. I've made a lot of special modifications myself.

After Luke's first disbelieving line of "what a piece of junk!"

So like father, like daughter

Even then the myth has moved in a more pedestrian direction - 14 instead of 12 parsecs

xps: I remember some kind of bird in the background of one of the forest scenes.

Nerd quibble but the MF is built out of a standard model freighter, of which there were probably countless of across thousands of junkyard. Shit is modded & overclocked all to hell which makes it special.

I was amused when the sniveling FO officer(Sangster?) had to play the role of Force-choked bearer of bad news and actually said something akin to "Coreillian YT-class freighter", which is shit first written up in a TSR sourcebook in 1989 for the SW role-playing game.

There were birds everywhere; Dagobah, Maz's forest planet, and even a wasteland toucan/vulture on Jakku

Can't get snippy about names; x-wings and y-wings are named after Roman letters that do not exist in the SW alphabet

http://i.stack.imgur.com/ZdgxM.png

lol

When they took the Millennium into space after the Jakku chase I had a momentary "Fuck CAN it go into space anymore?" & then they gunned the old v8 engine & off she flew

I was half expecting it to crap out & fall back to eatth

I can't imagine being someone like that Abramson dude upthread, paying money to see this, then pulling out a notebook when the Lucasfilm logo comes up, scribbling out "Plot Holes" and saying to myself, "HERE WE GO."

xp Rey doing a vertical stall so Finn could use the jammed belly cannon to nail the last TIE was awesome. Also, lampshading how hard those guns appeared to be to use in ANH.

http://i.imgur.com/u6ILlhS.jpg

I liked this but the starkiller base made no sense!

how do you aim it? doesn't reducing the sun's mass alter its orbit (and eventually send it hurtling off into space)? must the same side always face the sun, to be powered? how far away was the system it fired on? how did the beam travel there so quickly? WHY WAS THE DESTRUCTION VISIBLE FROM ANOTHER SYSTEM? star wars solved this by making a weapon that could travel around the galaxy, point its laser at planets, and shoot at them. and not everyone on tatooine was able to watch. the hosnian system appeared larger than our neighboring planets do to us, and it's supposed to be elsewhere in the galaxy!

this is the second movie where jj abrams has done this (spock watching vulcan implode from some other star system), demonstrating I dunno a lack of understanding of space?

it's weird because this problem is unnecessary if you just make up a traveling weapon and concede that the destruction won't be visible to other systems

unless I'm missing an obvious explanation

was darth vader's helmet destroyed on starkiller base by the way?

Red Letter Media's typically perceptive but surprisingly low-key review pointed out how much better it would have been had they not ended this movie with the Star Ball's destruction and instead kept it around temporarily disabled as a threat for future films. Would have fixed a few lingering issues with the story.

Just got out of this.

Everyone is right - but as a skeptic I have to say that "acceptable" is still better than I was expecting. Ridley and Driver were the standouts for me. I like Boyega a lot but they gave him a few too many "THIS is the plan?!" bits.

My main issue was that this movie destroyed an entire system, presumably containing untold millions or even billions, and there wasn't even a tiny beat to acknowledge it. That was really off-putting.

Like, for a movie that got a surprisng number of smaller character moments right, several elements like that were weirdly tone-deaf.

yeah that was bizarre

also, chewie bounced back from han's death like immediately

this was basically the same as episode 4

I did notice that Chewie had a little bit of grey to his fur, which really undercut his otherwise weirdly youthful disposition. There were a few things that made me chuckle, but Chewbacca's one-sided grunting with the medic was really the best, like a kid at the doctor for shots. "Oh, I bet it does hurt, hmm-mm. Wow, you sure did have some adventures! Now hold still ..."

And xpost The moment in the first Star Wars, when Obi-Wan senses the destruction of the planet ... it needed a beat like that, something with some weight to it, similar to what Leah feels when Han dies.

why would han solo go back to smuggling. he's a major war hero

enhhh I was OK with that, old habits etc.

also everyone upthread who complained about the Han/Leia dialogue otm. woooof.

My main issue was that this movie destroyed an entire system, presumably containing untold millions or even billions, and there wasn't even a tiny beat to acknowledge it. That was really off-putting.

What makes it weirder is that there's an analogous situation at the start of the film, when the stormtroopers slaughter everyone in a village, and the emotional response conveyed just through Finn's body language is exactly right. It doesn't feel cheap in that case, since we see how it has a radical effect on this one character. Then later in the film, there's this similar horror on a far vaster scale, and it's like the film only half-processes what just happened.

why would han solo go back to smuggling. he's a major war hero

Trauma over what happened to their son. He effectively says as much.

I think the oscillator bit was a nod to the original plan for the end of ANH, which changed after the model kept separating and leaving a gap.

They realized it was better to do a trench run than just dudes making bombing runs on a spot.

xpost Not much of the current status quo - from Han smuggling to what exactly the Resistance is - makes a ton of sense to me. Rebels won after Jedi - where did the Resistance come from? And why are they off on some secret base? Lead by Leah, of all hugely important people? And the Supreme Lord Gollum, what's his deal? He looks old and wrinkled; where's he been? Even Finn - he says he was a janitor, but he had a uniform and a gun and was sent on (what he said was his first?) mission, which he chickened out of?

None of this "matters," because there is a lot of wiggle room for them to answer questions in the future sequels. Or totally fuck it up.

I woulda liked to have some long finn's life story plotline instead of just seeing him look sad one time and decide to not kill people. like watching him growing up in some fascist stormtrooper world would be interesting. I don't think any of the characters got enough time to develop properly. but I guess it's an action movie and they didn't want it to be 3h.

Still don't get how he could be a fascist stormtrooper in armor with a weapon sent on killing missions and also a janitor. But whatevs.

Rebels won after Jedi - where did the Resistance come from? And why are they off on some secret base?

Apparently the Resistance is an insurgent army in First Order-occupied space which is supported by the Republic. They have a secret base because they aren't the official Republic army. It's unclear whether the Republic and First Order are openly at war at the start of the film.

http://www.vox.com/2015/12/21/10634568/star-wars-the-force-awakens-spoilers-republic-first-order

I don't know why they didn't explain this dynamic in the title crawl. It's a cool idea, more interesting than the original rebellion.

when did Red Letter Media start being just dudes sitting around talking & why the fuck would anyone watch *them*

bleh

i liked the old recaps but that review video was basically unwatchable

Seth Abramson must have really loved the prequels because that is exactly what you get when you try make movies that over-explain every last stupid detail. TFA works because it doesn't bother trying to make everything important and portentous, instead shit just happens, which is a much better way to make entertaining movies.

I'd love to know how Lucas feels about TFA vs. the prequels.

going to see this again tomorrow night :D

dunno if it's "canon" anymore but in the EU Wookies live for hundreds of years

Chinavision, I assumed that the planet was able to travel to stars, then suck out all the fuel from them, before moving on to another.

dunno if it's "canon" anymore but in the EU Wookies live for hundreds of years

and cameron wants us to pull out! crazy.

Yeah, if they can turn the core of a planet into a gun they can presumably also use it to move the planet around a bit.

But you know, I'm not a PhD in exoplanets so what do I know.

when did Red Letter Media start being just dudes sitting around talking & why the fuck would anyone watch *them*

bleh

i liked the old recaps but that review video was basically unwatchable

I've only seen their Episode I−III reviews, but when they did those the movies were already out on home video, so they could use the actual footage from the movies. Whereas this review was done immediately after the premiere of the movie, so obviously they could only use the footage from the trailers plus some publicity shots. What else could they have done?

Feel like Han's death was slightly bungled? He's probably older than Alec Guinness was when he stepped out onto that platform so probably not really up for a full-on light-sabre fight (and it would be wrong for Solo to use one anyway), but the sense of vertigo you got from looking at that bridge in 3D wasn't really maximised, nor was the emotional impact. Like, this is HAN SOLO DYING but actually the bit that really hit home was Chewy's reaction. Adam Driver seemed poorly cast as well.

I only saw it in 2D, but the actual shot where he steps out looked great there, with the shafts of light and smoke - it looked like a Ralph McQuarrie painting brought to life.

Not sure I agree about the impact though, I thought it worked, but a criticism would be that it already worked, as it's Ben's death again - facing up to something he's been running from for years. I thought Harrison Ford sold it well - he could go, he could just walk away, but the opportunity is there (and he's just seen the result of his actions on the love of his life) so he should take it. If you want, it's another echo of Star Wars, with Han as Han :)

Didn't Chewbacca appear in the prequel trilogy too, or am I misremembering? If Wookiees live for hundreds of years, he could appear in Episodes X−XXII too, if they're ever made. Would love to see an grumpy (well, grumpier than he already is) old gray-furred Chewie as a mentor figure.

yeah he's in Revenge of the Sith

I thought the sun going out in the Kylo/Han scene was pretty cool

Was the sun going out then not just 10% too heavy on the pathetic fallacy?

That's what I meant by the weird lack of tension. Obviously he is a name actor and whatnot, but for the life of me I don't recall for a minute wondering if he was really dead, or being shocked, or wondering if he would come back. He was just gone, and then he was back.

That's because it was completely obvious he wasn't dead.

I thought Harrison Ford sold it well - he could go, he could just walk away, but the opportunity is there (and he's just seen the result of his actions on the love of his life) so he should take it.

Yeah, after the talk with Leia, it was obvious Han couldn' turn away from Ben again, even though he knew it'd probably lead to his death. I think Han's whole arc was very nicely done: right from the first movie, he's introduced as this pragmatist character who'd rather run than fight, if the former was an option. Sure, in the original trilogy he does feel the sting of morality and ends up helping the Rebels, but that doesn't mean his basic personality simply vanishes after that.

The way Episode VII handles Han and Leia's characters was pretty interesting, and more realistic than you'd expect from a movie like this. Faced with the shameful, devastating act of their son, both of them act they way you would expect based on their initial Episode IV characterization. Leia bites the bullet and toughens her heart, going to war even though her son is on the other side. But Han can't deal with it, can't make a choice like that, so he regresses back to his "rogue" personality and goes back to his pre-Rebellion ways. It's only after seeing Leia again that he realizes he can't run away from this shit no more, he has to accept his responsibility and face Kylo.

So yeah, I think Han's whole arc throughout the four movies was well done, and this was a good way for it to end.

Was the sun going out then not just 10% too heavy on the pathetic fallacy?

― Hey Bob (Scik Mouthy), Tuesday, December 22, 2015 9:32 AM (11 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

It was definitely verging on it but I still dug it ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Leia is also the princess of a world that doesn't exist any more - it makes sense that she'd stay fixated on eradicating the remnants of Empire.

Basically the entire movie is a condemnation of the PTSD support offered by the Republic. Star Wars: First Blood, more like.

This is probably nitpicking, but do they ever say that the student who kills everyone at the Jedi Academy is actually Kylo Ren?

I don't think they did, actually.

If you want a flashback to reading Aintitcoolnews in 1998, here's a compilation of leaks and rumors that earlier versions of the film was going to take:

(Possible spoiler bits?)
http://makingstarwars.net/2015/05/a-compiled-synopsis-of-star-wars-the-force-awakens/

Apparently they cut much of Maz's screentime and some plot bits were held back to be used in VIII. There's a reason we see a shot of her handing the lightsaber to Leia in the trailer but not in the final film. Rumor has it they were rewriting bits of the film while they shot it, which explains why those early rumors were that the lightsaber was the macguffin and not a map.

I remember reading JJ talking about how the 6-month delay from Ford's accident was a good thing, since it forced them to take stock and look again what they were making and change some.

It didn't occur to me that in the vision sequence we were seeing was all history except for the snow; there is a glimpse of Ren and his Kinghts standing in a rainsoaked field of corpses(Kurosawa anyone?), so I'm guessing that was the Jedi slaughter. The dude in the hat who gets iced in the vision intrigued me, so I went wandering over to Reddit's Ep VII board.

Hey, wait, that's something: we know Luke has hid shit inside R2 to be used at the right time before, what if the trigger to wake the droid up was his own daughter and/or saber arriving?

i've honestly no idea how you guys can suss out what was going on in such detail after one screening. i was basically overwhelmed and can still barely get my head around most of it.

I saw it a second time last night and was trying to listen out for the Obi-Wan stuff, but was so overwhelmed by the scene I missed it again.

Hey, wait, that's something: we know Luke has hid shit inside R2 to be used at the right time before, what if the trigger to wake the droid up was his own daughter and/or saber arriving?

(not sure if you're joking but) That's one of the stronger arguments for Rey as his daughter - according to Abrams though it's just BB-8 that wakes up R2.

Yeah, that clue has been mentioned several times in this thread already. Also, I wouldn't trust Abrams on this: if he wants Rey and Luke's relationship to come as a twist in Episode VIII, of course he would lie when asked why R2 woke up the moment he did. Especially since BB-8 already "talked" to R2 earlier in the movie, yet it did nothing then.

That's what he's saying - that the conversation with BB-8 started waking up R2, but he's an old robot.

And now is not the time for you to start claiming that Abrams is being duplicitous about this thing you're already invested in over-reading :)

Well, if you were Abrams and the Luke/Rey relationship is a big spoiler for your next movie, what would you do when someone asked that question? You can't answer it truthfully, but if you refuse to anwer, that would also confirm the fan theories. So your only option is to come up with some bullshit answer.

Also, I'm not really buying this "R2 took some time to wake up" explanation. If that's what he wanted to convey, why didn't he show it onscreen? After the first meeting with BB8, you could have shown R2's lights starting to flicker or something, and by the next meeting he turns fully on.

The spoiler isn't necessarily even that Rey is Luke's daughter, it could just be that Luke knew what Rey would grow up to be (possibly he's the one who decided Rey should be hid on Jakku), and that's why he programmed R2 to recognize her.

You appear to be in danger of turning into something of a Truther on this...

You seem to be simultaneously demanding literalism (why didn't he show that onscreen) and digging deep into coded messages?

Remember, this is the same guy who said that *SPOILER* wouldn't be in Star Trek Into Darkness. Compared to that, lying about the R2 thing would be pretty minor.

(xxpost)

digging deep into coded messages

Doesn't really take much digging if every other fan has noticed those same hints?

Really wanted this to end on a shot of Rey kicking Luke straight in the nads because the Jedi and their stupid caste system can seriously go fuck themselves. Their training and oversight over the Force is about as reliable as a space shuttle flight only with billions and billions of people dying when someone goes dark. In Episode VIII, Rey visualizes a maybe logic interpretation of the Force and creates a new school in a galaxy even further away, maybe Chewie can go with her. Too bad it won't happen because Joseph Campbell, generational fan-service nostalgia.

Jakku half of movie genuinely compelling - would have loved it if the movie was mostly just Rey looting Star Destroyer wreckage, while fighting off increasingly higher-echelon annoyances from both the Resistance and the First Order with a rapidly developing (and scary) ability in the Force. The rest of it just felt like another Star Wars movie.

^^^ ET with my favorite take on this film yet except I didn't think any parts of it were genuinely compelling. It was ok.

Should also note that for the first time in Star Wars a star is used for war.

Alec Guinness doesn't count?

The idea that Rey = Luke's daughter would be a "twist" gets the definition of "twist" precisely wrong. The twist would be (& will be, mark my words) that she's not.

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MetaTwist

Irresistible force, meet immovable object.

Watched the first hour of the Lego Movie again last night, and it struck me that Kylo Ren reminds me of Bad Cop. Temper tantrums, crappy interrogator, parent issues, minions fleeing when he smashes stuff up.

was darth vader's helmet destroyed on starkiller base by the way?

I think that was on the Star Destroyer ("The Finalizer!") rather than the base.

my other big main beef was that there weren't any cool new ships and the retreads of the old ones looked bad and tired

can't add much but i did mostly enjoy this. find it very odd that people have such problems with ambiguity that Rey's ability to understand different languages is a plot hole rather than, you know, a *mystery* to be solved later.

adam driver was fantastic. i think that character is the best thing about this. basically, all the new characters were so interesting/fun/charismatic that it felt unnecessary to have any of the old guard around at all. also strongly agree with the RLM guys that Chewie looks way too groomed.

with ESB you got the EXECUTOR and it was supremely badass

here it's just a normal star dsetroy with shit bolted on

Chewie discovered The Wet Brush.

do a barrel roll
http://i.imgur.com/MVhkmQa.gif

I thought the sun going out in the Kylo/Han scene was pretty cool

Get it? The sun going out, turning cold and black?

The idea that Rey = Luke's daughter would be a "twist" gets the definition of "twist" precisely wrong. The twist would be (& will be, mark my words) that she's not.

Just watch, she'll be Snope's daughter.

second viewing main takeaway: i underestimated the acting first time around, especially carrie fisher. i was maybe expecting the animation i'd seen in her interviews with gary at her side but it's not like she was *bad* as general organa, just a little botox-stiff. still wanna know why the millennium falcon *just so happens* to be on jakku, supposedly unusable, at that, and oh look! but as said upthread rather than a lapse this could be a clue say that snokes' daughter is just THAT POWERFUL, a trust fundie deliberately slumming / hiding out as a heavy metal scavenger with a credit card suddenly available to pay for a tour van

or rather that Jakku has the qualities of that one alley or stairwell where all the people with something to hide have figured out it's a good spot, but the cops haven't quite caught on. So word gets around it's a great place to lay low, thus Lor San Tekka, the MF, and Girl Moses are all there, right up until Poe Dameron completely fucks it up for everyone.

Were there any obvious prequel references in this movie? Apparently Kylo said something about clones which I don't remember, and Ewan is present in the flashback. Probably not enough to maintain the ring structure.

If his life-or-death mission was to get the BB droid, why does Poe leave the planet when he wakes up after crashing the tie fighter? And how did he leave?

IT'S SNOKE'S NOT "SNOPE" JFC

The only reference I could see at all is one of those CGI scavenger dudes that look a bit like Dark Crystal creatures, iirc they were in one of the prequels. One was in line at the Jakku barter shop.

Always a bit irked in the Star Wars universe that there seemed to be only one of every creature, bar Jawas and Pig Guards and Ewoks. There were two Sand People, right? Like they're not actually species or races, just random galactic mutations.

I'm going to call the bad guy Snoop.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m_C3LOg1w6s

Did anybody scrutinize the OG flicks like this? Not that the observations aren't valid but there are holes you could drive a truck through in the OG series.

Ie how easy it was for Han to hide off radar by parking the Falc on the Empire ship.

Or how R2 just willy nilly reactivated the hyperdrive after two hours of nobody being able to get it working. Or the aforementioned weekend Dagobah training

I want to say no one was really tuned into the idea of the OG trilogy as a) serialized and b) spinning an elaborate mythology. Not until they were through, at least. If anything I think that's further damage done by the prequels, the idea of shoehorning in new story that attempts to fit. Really outs the focus on chronology and mythology. If the prequels (and Trek reboots) didn't exist I suspect people would be even more down with this one than they already are.

episode iv isn't a reboot; episode vii is basically episode iv part ii, so it's almost like they're daring us to meta-scrutizine. episode iv also had a way tighter narrative / quest arc -- save the princess, blow up the death star. what are these newbies up to? returning BB8 to the resistance? looking for luke? blowing up the death star starkiller planet? it's kind of confusing in a way episode iv part i isn't

xp

and to be fair the entire story of star wars exists because a bunch of wealthy super-powered dudes found Jedi Jesus and, despite the smartest among them predicting it could make him Jedi Lucifer, didn't spend the coin/use the superpowers it would take to get Shmi off Tatooine and keep him on the straight and narrow.

plot holes are canon, is what i'm meaning to say

two things people brought up that I think are fairly easy to rationalize

1) Finn being a stormtrooper and a sanitation worker is actually pretty standard for military careers. Marines and Army all train as rifleman/infantry respectively, followed by MOS training, usually as some kind of technician. Finn's sanitation training probably involved memorizing lots of checklists and knowing how to conduct relatively detailed inspections of spacecraft interiors. He also would have been trusted with janitor keys during his duty hours, so he'd know the layout of the base.

2) Poe leaving instead of hanging around looking for BB-8 is presumably because he figured out that the First Order had already blown up half of the nearest settlement and he needed to get some help and a new plan before strolling into enemy territory a second time.

2B) The two heavies who come after Rey & BB-8 in town make it clear that the First Order has posted a public bounty on the latter, so if they've heard of it, Poe probably realizes the safest place to be right now is "wherever BB-8 is not."

3) Oscar Isaac needed more time for offscreen sex in so he asked to be in less scenes

The Finn one is otm. I was surprised people pointed that one out.

Adam Driver walks like he has hemorrhoids

Also re: lightSaber losing limb-severing ability, it always seemed random when a Saber cut off limbs and didnt.

In ROTJ yesterday I noticed Luke killed like 5 people in the Sarlaac battle with his Saber and none of them lost appendages.

But nobody used them to impale like Finn did either.

Also Darth had to use actual devices for mind probing in the OG series where Kylo is like telepathic

There are many possible explanations for how/why Po left Jakku. This isn't really a plot hole. A plot hole isn't just something that isn't explicitly explained.

A lot of the supposed plot holes of this movie is stuff that could be explained away pretty easily if they had made a movie which was half an hour longer.

No, I wasn't joking upthread, I think it just finally clicked into my own head that the hidden shit in R2 was both callback/echo _and_ a deliberate act.

Mentioned elsewhere, but a dig diff between this & Ep 4 is that back then they had no clue if they'd get a sequel or not, and were hedging bets on the success. Here they had full knowledge going in they get a full three episodes, so stomach-melting acute existential angst on filmmakers' part that this very well was _it_.

Alan Dean Foster's Splinter In the Mind's Eye in 1978 is a deliberately scaled-down treatment for a sequel(no big ass space battles, no non-contract-secured Harrison Ford, set on a planet with lots of fog like a Nintendo 64 game to reduce scenery needs, etc)

Anyway, I enjoyed this quite a bit. My only real problem is that it all seemed way too easy, both the blowing up of the death star and the learning how to use Force powers.

Heroic space janitor fight: Finn vs. Roger Wilco in Space Quest.

xpost I don't think this movie is as rife with plot holes as most blockbusters, tbh. It's pretty tight, in part because they play it so safe and there is so little they really bother to explain. I'd honestly rather have Poe disappear and come back with no fanfare than be given an escape scene or whatever. I do agree with RLM guys that now that the story has been reset/righted, the worst thing they can do is pile on too much complicated mythology and fan service the next time out, a la Star Trek Into Darkness. They've introduced a couple of great new characters - give them some good adventures that are more than just continuations/repetitions of past Luke/Han/Leia adventures.

Conversely: just keep blowing up Death Balls.

don't you mean Space Balls

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YouIga_Vku8

Nobody got impaled in the OT because it's a shitload easier to film a severed limb in 1982 than do the optical effect of a blade thru a torso.

Also, Finn as sanitation dude reminded me of Roger Wilco from the Space Quest games.

http://www.hardcoregaming101.net/spacequest/sq5.jpg

First cut of this film was 3 hours, right? I'm actually looking forward to an expanded LOTR-type version

^^^ me too

I want to say no one was really tuned into the idea of the OG trilogy as a) serialized and b) spinning an elaborate mythology.

didn't this start happening when empire became episode V and lucas then said he was planning nine movies?

Another synthesis of OT monsters:

Rathgars:

-Name taken from an emotion like Rancor
-Sucks on Falcon's cockpit like Mynocks
-Tentacles dragging our young hero away in the middle of the film like a Dianogah
-Endless mouth & teeth & belches like the Sarlacc

Mix it all together and you have your hypercharged Space Lovecraft Monster 3000

Concept art selections are coming out to promote the art book:

http://io9.gizmodo.com/a-gallery-of-jaw-dropping-concept-art-from-star-wars-t-1749287357

http://www.buzzfeed.com/jarrylee/the-art-of-star-wars-the-force-awakens#.tyzJvmdkG2

http://www.wired.com/2015/12/art-of-the-force-awakens-exclusive

I hope that Scottish actor from The Last Kingdom ("Bala-Tik!") shows up again. There's no reason for him to but the character's still alive, surely they can find an excuse to have him pronounce "droid" and "first order" a few more times

The only story telling in which plot holes do not exist is non-fiction

Sit back, relax and enjoy, dudes

I think the originals were poured over and speculated upon, only in different forms, in fanzines and lettercols and the likes

Plus, you had _three years_ between films, and a lot less other genre entertainment coming out on a weekly basis.

R2 was able to reactivate the hyperdrive after Bespin crews fixed it and Imperials deactivated it. Lando & Vader state both. C3p0 originally bitches him out while he was figuring this out during the escape.

Also, remember, R2 wasn't on the ship for those two hours and 3P0 can't fix shit.

it's probably been noted elsewhere already (or even on this thread) but i really liked how Rylo Ken embodied the anxieties of the filmmakers in terms of living up to a legend ("you're afraid of not being as powerful as darth vader") and still getting the hang of the Force. and the search for Luke following a similar pattern, particularly in the the implicit pleading of the final shot, "did we do it? did you like it?" i think it's essentially for these films to recreate the feeling of the originals, so to make them something like a contemporary response to them seems really smart to me.

essentially impossible. one day i'll get the hang of typing.

also "Kylo Ren," goddamn star wards names.

Rilo Kiley

the sad part is ive been mixing that up for months.

Kylo Renogue

sKYwalker
soLO

whoa.

Dash RENdar

REYf FIeNnes

Maz Coombes

http://www.ew.com/article/2015/12/22/star-wars-force-awakens-jj-abrams-deleted-scenes

Talkin' with JJ about cut shit

ryan yeah definitely felt some Grant Morrison shit going on there and agreed, it worked

"Finn being a stormtrooper and a sanitation worker is actually pretty standard for military careers"

of course they made the black guy a janitor

Do Empire sympathizers see color

Did the stormtroopers no longer being Maori clones get explained somewhere? I thought they had been identical and brainwashed from birth/creation or similar.
I thought that was set up in an earlier film which could mean that it had ceased to be true somewhere if this is 30 years after the most recent chronological events.
I haven't watched much of the non film Sw media so could have missed it.

Did watch a bit of the Holiday Special and was stuck with images from it every time Chewie showed emotion.

I hadnt been sure if this was a trilogy part or not. Not been reading the hype. But was thinking plot parts suggested it as they happened.
Was wondering if Rey was just about to find out she was Leia's daughter when they hugged. But looks like it might be niece.

I think the clone thing has been quietly swept away, and since they age at a rapid rate, maybe they all died off quickly. Stormtroopers in Ep IV are not clones, for example.

Plus, with Palpy in control of the Empire, they could just use conscripts or incentivize recruiting since the Senate didn't call the shots anymore and he could build all the armies he wanted without anyone of real power around to say shit.

They talk about Hux's stormtroopers being an alternative to clones, don't they? Less expensive to steal kids than to run breeding farms, I would guess, since you have to pay for their upbringing either way.

I thought in most things that mention clones they sped up the growth so childhood/adolescence wasa couple of years presumably largely spent training. But not sure what story would be in Star Wars.

Am I the only one who thought the Leia/Rey hug was a bit odd, since they hadn't even met before? But I guess, since Leia is Force sensitive too, she could read who Rey was and that she was there when Han died.