[Galemp]

As Han says, "The Force doesn't work that way!"

[zookeeper]

I'm pretty sure they mention the Sith in Force Awakens do they not? I though evil hologram#2 says that at some point or, someone lists off a bunch of force-users.

Well, I'm not 100% sure because I can't check, but at least Han doesn't, and I don't recall Snokey or Maz doing so either.

A bit of quick googling didn't seem to outright confirm it either way.

[Spoon]

I'm pretty sure they mention the Sith in Force Awakens do they not? I though evil hologram#2 says that at some point or, someone lists off a bunch of force-users.

Well, I'm not 100% sure because I can't check, but at least Han doesn't, and I don't recall Snokey or Maz doing so either.

A bit of quick googling didn't seem to outright confirm it either way.

When Maz lists all the forms evil takes, she mentions the Sith.

[Dragon]

The main point is that not everything is explained by "the force".
If everything is dependent on the force then people cease to matter.

How did Leia resist interrogation? The force
Why did Han come back to save Luke? The force
Why did the Droids find Luke? The force
Why did Porkins have to die? The force

Nothing matters.

Attributing the force to everyone person's success, action or failure is the most dehumanizing philosophy you can have.
Basically the force becomes God's Plan and people cease to have free will.  But people forget that even in the Christian philosophy, people have free will. They're free to choose or reject God. Without that choice, life is meaningless, and similarly without choice in Star Wars, with everything attributed to the force, everything is meaningless there as well.

Also it's explicitly stated multiple times that living beings create the force, not the other way around so it's not even a god-like entity it's more like a  connection between people and each-other and the environment.

No, I'm not forgetting about free will. The Force manipulates people, not forces them to do its bidding. It's powerful, but clearly not omnipotent. There is ambiguity about what "will of the Force" can do, but as evidenced by the existence of the Dark Side, it can't do everything. Yes, it's will is largely God's Plan, except that the "God" is a rather bizarre alien here. Leia could have resisted interrogation by reflexively calling upon the Force, but she wasn't made to do it (however, the Force might have ensured, through unknown means, that she was the one carrying the plans). Porkins' death had nothing to do with neither Sith or Jedi (aside from how he ended up in the battle in first place), so it was a matter of his own skill. On the other hand, Han was probably influenced by the Force when he came back. If he had no conscience, it wouldn't have worked, but he had it.

No, not everything is explained by the Force. Only the contrivances are, and SW is particularly notorious for those. The Force is usually broadly responsible for the plot, but how it unfolds depends on characters themselves. There certainly were characters who defied the Force. Mostly on the dark side, for whatever reason, but it was clearly shown to be possible, if not a very wise thing to do. In fact, it seems to work a lot like Christian philosophy. You can go against God if you really want to, but you better don't. It's just that the Force is more proactive than God about enforcing that (instead of punishing you in the afterlife, it'll sic some of lightsiders on you).

The odd thing about the Force is that it's treated both as "God" and "connection between people/environment". A pantheistic interpretation of the Star Wars universe seems to be almost natural here, but what differs is that people can also, to limited extent, command what the Force does. Also, the Force doesn't seem to be infallible or have a definite morality.

As Han says, "The Force doesn't work that way!"

Said just before things kind of worked out exactly how they wanted. Well, except for Han's encounter with Kylo Ren. What are the odds that the shield generator controls, Rey, Phasma, Kylo Ren and the Starkiller's only weak point were all inside a single building at that precise time? That's the sort of contrivance I'm talking about.

[SkycladGuardian]

Said just before things kind of worked out exactly how they wanted. Well, except for Han's encounter with Kylo Ren. What are the odds that the shield generator controls, Rey, Phasma, Kylo Ren and the Starkiller's only weak point were all inside a single building at that precise time? That's the sort of contrivance I'm talking about.

I'd call it lazy writing....
IMO, trying to explain away weak plot points using in-universe mechanics doesn't work very often. And that also pertains to Ren's characterization. At the beginning I also perceived him as being a quite strong dark jedi, though not fully trained but with a lot of potential. However, his defeat in the end shows him to be rather weak (maybe as strong as Luke at the end of ESB), which also confused me. And I suspect that the writers did not or could not (maybe because of time constraints) care about consistency. They wanted to show off a bad-ass villain, but also needed a victory and happy-end for Rey. And that didn't work out.

[Akalabeth Angel]

Said just before things kind of worked out exactly how they wanted. Well, except for Han's encounter with Kylo Ren. What are the odds that the shield generator controls, Rey, Phasma, Kylo Ren and the Starkiller's only weak point were all inside a single building at that precise time? That's the sort of contrivance I'm talking about.

I'd call it lazy writing....

+1000

There' s  a lot lacking with the film.
Watched a vid today from the EP Daily guys, one of whom is a huge star wars nerd to the point where he loves everything.  But even he had a lot of criticisms, how Chewbacca for example barely gave a **** after Han got killed. Even when they land on Yaavin Part 2, he walks right by Leia, doesn't stop and give her a hug even though they both have a ton of grief to share. This is the same wookie who cried over c3po. Instead Leia hugs Rey who is a virtual stranger.  They're obviously trying to pass the torch so to say but, the old characters didn't really play the roles that they should have.

And also, what a miserable world they live in. Where love and parenthood fails while fighting and misery endure. 
Genocide. Running or Hiding from your failings. Kids killing their parents. Parents abandoning their kids. Kids abducted from their parents. Poverty. Picking through trash or forced to be a soldier or living on the fringe of society, barely scrapping by and not getting ahead in any way.

What a wonderful world.

In the grim darkness of the ancient past, there was only war.

[Dragon]

Yes, the SW world is surprisingly miserable for such optimistic, fairly tale stories that are usually told in it. The old EU was also an utter crapsack world, with democracies being incompetent, empires being evil, crime being at large and things routinely going to hell, at least until the hero of the day can set them straight... until they go to hell again. Funny thing is, they managed to be grimdark without specifically going for it.

I'd call it lazy writing....
IMO, trying to explain away weak plot points using in-universe mechanics doesn't work very often. And that also pertains to Ren's characterization. At the beginning I also perceived him as being a quite strong dark jedi, though not fully trained but with a lot of potential. However, his defeat in the end shows him to be rather weak (maybe as strong as Luke at the end of ESB), which also confused me. And I suspect that the writers did not or could not (maybe because of time constraints) care about consistency. They wanted to show off a bad-ass villain, but also needed a victory and happy-end for Rey. And that didn't work out.

Generally, I wanted to avoid slipping into Doylist perspective and keep to a purely Watsonian outlook, but if you look at it that way, the real reason we're having this discussion is explaining away lazy writing. The Force is a convenient element that can cover a lot of that up, but I really wish this was more thought-out.

Now that I read some more background stuff, I realized that Kylo Ren is powerful, but in the end, can't use that power all that well. He has a lot of potential and... that's all he has. Rey defeated him (barely) despite not having training, but that's because that despite being powerful, he was a very lousy Dark Jedi. Immature, prone to losing his composition and poorly trained, especially in terms of lightsaber fencing. Notice that his movements were rather crude, turns out that's not how you fight with a claymore (which his lightsaber resembles). I would guess that Luke never got very far with his fencing training and Snoke either neglected it completely or wasn't much of a fencer himself. He has shown off some pretty impressive powers, but a look at supplementary material states that in his first scene this was Force Stasis, a light side power. As far as using the Dark Side goes, his record isn't very good. It may be very interesting to see him grow out of this, though.

[Akalabeth Angel]

Generally, I wanted to avoid slipping into Doylist perspective and keep to a purely Watsonian outlook, but if you look at it that way, the real reason we're having this discussion is explaining away lazy writing. The Force is a convenient element that can cover a lot of that up, but I really wish this was more thought-out.

This explains everything.
Do you ever feel, as a consumer of media, that you shouldn't need to work so hard to like something? And that maybe, just maybe, it's okay to not like it?

[Mongoose]

Watched a vid today from the EP Daily guys, one of whom is a huge star wars nerd to the point where he loves everything.  But even he had a lot of criticisms, how Chewbacca for example barely gave a **** after Han got killed. Even when they land on Yaavin Part 2, he walks right by Leia, doesn't stop and give her a hug even though they both have a ton of grief to share. This is the same wookie who cried over c3po. Instead Leia hugs Rey who is a virtual stranger.  They're obviously trying to pass the torch so to say but, the old characters didn't really play the roles that they should have.

You mean the same shot where they show Chewie just sitting there, obviously lost in grief?  Just because it wasn't explicit sobbing doesn't mean he wasn't really feeling it.

[Akalabeth Angel]

Watched a vid today from the EP Daily guys, one of whom is a huge star wars nerd to the point where he loves everything.  But even he had a lot of criticisms, how Chewbacca for example barely gave a **** after Han got killed. Even when they land on Yaavin Part 2, he walks right by Leia, doesn't stop and give her a hug even though they both have a ton of grief to share. This is the same wookie who cried over c3po. Instead Leia hugs Rey who is a virtual stranger.  They're obviously trying to pass the torch so to say but, the old characters didn't really play the roles that they should have.

You mean the same shot where they show Chewie just sitting there, obviously lost in grief?  Just because it wasn't explicit sobbing doesn't mean he wasn't really feeling it.

Dunno, just mentioning what he mentioned. He said Chewie was just hanging around in the background.
I wasn't too invested in those shots personally.

Mentions it at around the 6 minute mark.
Incidentally, this youtube tag. Why doesn't it allow time stamps?

[Dragon]

This explains everything.
Do you ever feel, as a consumer of media, that you shouldn't need to work so hard to like something? And that maybe, just maybe, it's okay to not like it?

As far as I've seen, it's you who are trying, very hard, to find a reason not to like it. Also, you presumably don't like OT, either, because the Force is used in a similar way there. Sure, it's a bit more deliberate in the OT, but fundamentally, a lot of things still happen "coincidently". You should mind that it's very, very hard to avoid an unusual number of lucky coincidences happening over the course of a story, especially if you're making a movie (which has a very limited runtime). Star Wars made a point out of it, which I think worked out pretty well. It's a perfect explanation of contrivances and my advise is: roll with it. If you spend the movie looking for a "hole in the whole" (as goes a surprisingly well translatable Polish saying), you're only spoiling your own fun.

In a way, the massive amount of lucky coincidences plays well into the theme of the movie. The Force Awakens. You can see it start doing stuff, much more actively than before. It literally saves Kylo Ren's life (and Rey's souls as well, she was falling headfirst into the Dark Side during their fight) in the end. I think it's actually kind of fitting that it manifests everywhere, for example leading Rey on her patch. It's obvious that she's the new "Chosen One", much like Anakin was. Now, it's true that it is a bit too obvious. I wouldn't say the movie is as good as ANH. I am, however, willing to say it was a good movie.

The particular instance I was talking about (everyone and everything important on Starkiller being in a single building on an entire planet) was about the only thing that raised my eyebrow as "lazy" there. Really, they should've taken a train or something, perhaps to the central compound (you know, the one with the view of the big gun) and found Rey there, as opposed to her being in the oscillator building along with everything else. Though this might be less "lazy" and more "Abrams' utter lack of sense of scale", which wouldn't even be the first time in this movie. In fact, my biggest complaints about the movie could be summed up neatly as "No sense of scale whatsoever". From Starkiller base firing, which is somehow seen across the galaxy (nevermind the speed of light), to it exploding and turning into a star (nevermind the actual requirements for self-sustained fusion, conservation of mass, or whatever).

In the end, you were complaining about things relatively easy to explain using the actual canon (and supplementary material, in a few cases), while ignoring the obvious physics goof with an official "explanation" that raises more questions than it answers. No, the movie wasn't perfect, but it was good. The plot does hold up to an analysis (not only mine, TVTropes people seem to have reached similar conclusions) and the characters definitely have potential.

[Crashdown117]

Your main explanation is that the force or lightspeed is not completely explained.
That's not an explanation. That's simply avoiding the issue.

Correct me if I'm wrong but as far as I know neither the Force nor Hyperdrive are sufficiently explained through any canon material (talking about the new canon here, not the old EU where everything was explained twice in seven different ways). So "avoiding the issue" is basically what the movies and the animated series do, too, right? And maybe that's because a good portion of the audience doesn't even care about it so much? So the only "explanation" we can give for things that are not fully explained in the movies or the animated series is nothing but guesswork and yours is just as good as mine or anyone's.

And in a late response to whether "The Old Republic" (that Star Wars MMO) is canon or not or maybe:
It actually doesn't matter that much if the game's story (and that of both "Knights of the Old Republic" games which it is more or less based on) is still canon or not since all this is said to take place (IIRC) millennia before the movies. Doesn't Yoda (or was it Mace Windu) say something about the Sith not being seen since God knows when? That might approximately be the time in which these games are set up, maybe he's even referring to more recent events.

[Wobble73]

The particular instance I was talking about (everyone and everything important on Starkiller being in a single building on an entire planet) was about the only thing that raised my eyebrow as "lazy" there. Really, they should've taken a train or something, perhaps to the central compound (you know, the one with the view of the big gun) and found Rey there, as opposed to her being in the oscillator building along with everything else. 

Where does the idea that the shield generator and the main capacitor type thing that needs to be destroyed to destroy the weapon come from? They are definitely in seperate buildings, granted close to one another, but there is a scene in which after they shut down the shields and rescue/meet back up with Rey, that Chewy hands Han his coat as they enter a lift to the surface, the same coat that Han then takes off again when they enter the builduing to set the charges. I kinda got this as the joke earlier as Han said to Chewy "You're cold!" being that Chewy has his own thick fur coat, when they first land (Crash!).

[NGTM-1R]

The Star Wars movies have a history of lightspeed operations which follow consistent behaviour. Situations in the movies (like the Death Star Escape or the blockade in Episode I) implicitly set limitations on its use.

Which, given that we lack all the necessary ground and facts, could be literally anything.

The only actual supporting detail for this, which makes anything explicit, is Expanded Trashcan, and indeed, your argument here is easily defused even if we accept that.

The Falcon is shown, earlier in ANH, as needing to make calculations, pre-jump. In the Death Star, considering the Death Star itself is in motion (and has possibly hyperspaced) and the Falcon has a relatively small window on the universe it is probably unable to maintain an updated solution. They need to buy time for a hyperspace calculation before they jump; hence the tractor beam. Dogfighting the TIEs and combat maneuvers probably complicate this as well and the ship's entry point to hyperspace changes. The Death Star itself is also sufficiently massive that even if we accept your EU-derived shenanigans this doesn't necessarily mean a ship would be able to hyperspace near it.

Aboard the freighter: A: the Falcon has a marginally better view as it's closer to the docking bay entrance, B: the freighter is a friendly vessel and could easily be rigged to downlink its sensor feed or its own calculations to the Falcon and there is time where we are not observing Chewie and Han for them to do this, C: not sufficiently massive to prevent a hyperspace jump if we accept that as a limitation (it's never been said to be one, but if we're going to accept that your EU-derived hard statement is true, it must be pointed out that small ships hyperspace in close proximity to large ones all the time by that measure).

All of which allow the movie to work, regardless of your "because they couldn't"s. You just want it to be wrong. That's all it is here.

[Akalabeth Angel]

The Star Wars movies have a history of lightspeed operations which follow consistent behaviour. Situations in the movies (like the Death Star Escape or the blockade in Episode I) implicitly set limitations on its use.

Which, given that we lack all the necessary ground and facts, could be literally anything.

The only actual supporting detail for this, which makes anything explicit, is Expanded Trashcan, and indeed, your argument here is easily defused even if we accept that.

The Falcon is shown, earlier in ANH, as needing to make calculations, pre-jump. In the Death Star, considering the Death Star itself is in motion (and has possibly hyperspaced) and the Falcon has a relatively small window on the universe it is probably unable to maintain an updated solution. They need to buy time for a hyperspace calculation before they jump; hence the tractor beam. Dogfighting the TIEs and combat maneuvers probably complicate this as well and the ship's entry point to hyperspace changes. The Death Star itself is also sufficiently massive that even if we accept your EU-derived shenanigans this doesn't necessarily mean a ship would be able to hyperspace near it.

Aboard the freighter: A: the Falcon has a marginally better view as it's closer to the docking bay entrance, B: the freighter is a friendly vessel and could easily be rigged to downlink its sensor feed or its own calculations to the Falcon and there is time where we are not observing Chewie and Han for them to do this, C: not sufficiently massive to prevent a hyperspace jump if we accept that as a limitation (it's never been said to be one, but if we're going to accept that your EU-derived hard statement is true, it must be pointed out that small ships hyperspace in close proximity to large ones all the time by that measure).

All of which allow the movie to work, regardless of your "because they couldn't"s. You just want it to be wrong. That's all it is here.

Occam's Razor strikes again Among competing hypotheses, the one with the fewest assumptions should be selected.

My hypothese with the Death Star: They couldn't

Yours? I don't even want to count you make SO MANY ASSUMPTIONS.

Which do you think is more likely? The one with an a ton of assumptions? Or the one with the obvious answer.
This is my answer to any and all detractors. If you can't explain it simpler than "they couldn't" then don't bother trying because frankly what you're saying is less likely than what I'm saying as demonstrated by the simply logic of occam's razor.


By the way I don't give two hoots about EU. I read the Jedi Academy trilogy and played the X-wings/TieFighter games and . . half of KOTOR1 and that's it.  Never read any dumb comic books, novelizations, Thrawn trilogy, etcetera. My judgement is based on observations within the movie not some fan-fiction explanation in a Timothy Zhan novel. You're the guy arguing that Darth Vader absorbed Han's blaster shots which is as stated by some other guy, clearly EU.

[Erkhyan]

For what it’s worth, gravity having an effect on hyperspace is not EU speculation.

The Immobilizer-class Interdictor, as depicted in the canon novel Tarkin and the canon TV show Rebels, is explicitly stated to prohibit hyperspace travel by generating a massive gravity shadow around itself.

[Akalabeth Angel]

For what it’s worth, gravity having an effect on hyperspace is not EU speculation.

The Immobilizer-class Interdictor, as depicted in the canon novel Tarkin and the canon TV show Rebels, is explicitly stated to prohibit hyperspace travel by generating a massive gravity shadow around itself.

Define prohibit. 
Prohibit someone from entering hyperspace? Or prohibit someone from using hyperspace? Can a ship with entry and exit points not near the Interdictor transit past the ship while in hyperspace?

From a bit of searching, it seems that a ship is pulled out of hyperspace by the Interdictor:

So the question then is, a gravity well automatically cancels hyperspace then in the Force Awakens, why can Han choose when to exit inside a gravity well?

Incidentally Rebels Spoilers:
But in terms of Rebels canon, a B-Wing can one-shot an Imperial Cruiser:

Which, as much as I love the B-wing, seems pretty dumb. Especially in light of the X-wings effectiveness in TFA. I mean it's cartoon, so whatever, but clearly the tech in that video doesn't translate to the movies.  People in the comments already dismiss it as being a "prototype" and whatnot to try and make it fit.

So take "new canon" for what it is: A marketing tool designed to detract from the existing second-hand market.

[Erkhyan]

In that episode, the Interdictor is used once to pull a ship out of hyperspace (in the prologue), and to prevent a ship from entering hyperspace (in the climax). Incidentally, it’s the same ship both times.

What actually forces a ship to drop out of hyperspace has never been stated directly in canon.
Speculation is that massive real-space bodies have enough of an influence on hyperspace that hitting one of said “hyperspace shadows” is just as well as hitting the body itself, which is why hyperdrives are equipped with a fail-safe that automatically keeps them from functioning in presence of a large enough gravity well. In which case we could just speculate that Han bypassed or even deactivated said fail-safes in order to make that jump, which would explain why it’s considered an incredibly risky maneuver that you can only use with a ship and a crew you really, really trust.

Note that, again, canon has established some rules, but not an entire air-tight set of them. What we saw in TFA technically breaks no rules established anywhere, it just breaks the expectations we had because we interpolated from what we saw before.

[CountBuggula]

Ok.  I'm sorry to have to do this, but we've passed the threshold of where I believe this can continue being constructive conversation.  Despite repeated warnings, certain participants have continued to use personal attacks, and as I said last time, I will now lock the thread.  Go argue about the new movie somewhere else.  If you want to talk about Fate of the Galaxy, or how something from the new movie might affect our mod, start a new thread about it.