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Hosted Projects - Standalone => Fate of the Galaxy => Topic started by: CountBuggula on December 18, 2015, 11:33:38 am

Title: <SPOILERS>Official The Force Awakens Thread<SPOILERS>
Post by: CountBuggula on December 18, 2015, 11:33:38 am
Go ahead and discuss the movie here.  I saw it last night but am sleep deprived because it was at the end of a marathon of Episodes 1-7 and I was at the theater for over 24 hours by the time it was over.  So just a few initial thoughts from me:

Title: Re: <SPOILERS>Official The Force Awakens Thread<SPOILERS>
Post by: Dain on December 19, 2015, 07:42:58 am
Ok so if we're in full spoiler territory here...

It was obvious that Han was marked for death as soon as he took on the "old mentor" role. Nevertheless his death was far more impactful than Ben Kenobi's death ever was. Ben was an old man who seemed quite nice and who kept popping up afterwards.

Han is never coming back in any form. Han is an incredibly important character and pop culture icon. And he dies at the hands of his own son. Nasty.

On a similar note, the superweapon, while a bit of a retread, was a bit scarier than the deathstar. In the lead up to the film I was rolling my eyes at the power increase. "Now we can blow up entire star systems!". Seeing it in action was a bit different though. That thing has got range! Felt more like nuclear missiles than a big gun. I think the way it was shot with the citizens seeing the beam coming had a bit more impact than Alderaan blowing up.

Other random thoughts:

- I asked a while back if closing the s-foils would have any function in this mod. Well, Poe closing his to fly through the small gap in the wall was pretty cool.

- In fact all the X-wing action was awesome. The tracking shot of Poe in the sky blowing up one TIE after another was fantastic. Likewise the arrival shot of all the X-wings arriving across the water. Also it felt like all the "ordinary" x-wing pilots were actually very competent as well, as opposed to just being cannon fodder. It was nice to see a decent number of alien and female pilots this time.

- Kylo Ren is what Anakin turning to the dark side *should* have been like, rather than his "M'kay I'm going to go kill some children now".

Title: Re: <SPOILERS>Official The Force Awakens Thread<SPOILERS>
Post by: General Battuta on December 19, 2015, 12:04:18 pm
I didn't like this movie very much. The characters were fantastic but I thought the script and editing let them down. Most of the back half of the movie feels like it's checking off callbacks without providing the connective tissue that made them work.
Title: Re: <SPOILERS>Official The Force Awakens Thread<SPOILERS>
Post by: zookeeper on December 19, 2015, 03:47:34 pm
Well, for sure it was not bad like the prequels. But I probably wouldn't call it good like the OT, either. It did get a lot of things right, though. It was okay.

Basically all my main problems with it have to do with the villains, which were very expectedly the weakest link, because of course one can neither replicate or outdo Vader and the Emperor. I don't mind that Kylo was a bit of a whiny newbie (in fact, in some ways he seemed very much like "Anakin done right" to me), but it was very inconsistent how he was owning everyone in one scene and capable of insane force feats, and then losing to even newbier newbies in a lightsaber fight in another.

And... "Snoke"? Snoke? What the hell kind of a name is "Snoke"? Yo Snoke, wazzup man? Seriously? Besides, what was he supposed to be anyway?

I was a bit confused about the Republic-Resistance-First Order triangle. So the Resistance was fighting the First Order? Why was that different from the Republic? Couldn't the Republic have just wiped the floor with the First Order? What were those planets that got blown up? Where were they? The way it was shown made it look like they were in the same system or something, and only later it was mentioned that the beam was some kind of hyperspace thing. Also, the First Order seemed pretty small, how could they possibly have managed to build something even bigger and badder than what the Empire at its peak was capable of?

Oh, and it was super weird how Rey was able to pull off mind tricks and force pulls without, like... any training at all? How did something like a mind trick even occur to her?

I liked Rey and Finn, the only problems were that Rey got major force powers immediately and Finn had quite a lot of that funny black guy comedy routine.

Surprisingly, BB-8 was not annoying at all. That was a positive surprise.

I figured that Han was the likeliest old character to die, but to me it felt a bit more like they just had to find a way to write him out? I guess it might pay off later.

P.S. The finnish subtitling had a hilarious and consistent mistake: every time, the word "system" was translated as "galaxy", not as "star system". :lol:
Title: Re: <SPOILERS>Official The Force Awakens Thread<SPOILERS>
Post by: Crashdown117 on December 20, 2015, 04:12:08 am
As a huge fan of the OT (and the old EU) I was a bit disappointed by how they decided to continue the whole thing.
But I have to admit, that they've brought some refreshing ideas to the franchise and that the movie was way better than the prequels (which wasn't very hard to achieve in my opinion):
The storytelling was fine and didn't have that strange feeling to it, like some of the previous films had. The less important characters weren't just all useless and it wasn't like the main characters being the only ones to actually achieve something.
The close combat and dueling scenes weren't so over-focused on acrobatics as they were in the prequels, making for an actual fight rather than some jumping around. It's a battlefield, after all - not a circus.
I liked to see the TIEs and X-Wings fighting in atmosphere and actually serving as kind of an air support for the ground forces. And I agree that Kylo Ren is kind of like the missing link between Anakin and Vader in some way. As for the other new characters: Why do I get the feeling, that Rey is Han's and Leia's daughter?

Yet there is some stuff, I have to criticize:
First off, this movie contradicts the established logical construct of Star Wars in quite some points. Rey is just suddenly capable of pulling off mind tricks a la Ben Kenobi and lightsaber combat. Okay, she sure knows how to handle that staff-like weapon, but a lightsaber is quite different from that. The new villain and heir to Darth Vader is some super badass guy in the beginning - he stops a blaster beam in mid-air and breaks the resistance of Poe in seconds with a bit of Force trickery - and in the second half of the movie he steadily seems to...lose power(?) I mean, he's not being beaten by some Luke/Anakin Skywalker kind of guy or a large number of skilled Jedi, but by a renegade stormtrooper and a little girl. In the fight at the end, he's actually the only one who was TRAINED to wield a lightsaber, yet still he does not just finish off the two with his Force powers.
Also, Rey gets to be the new Jedi AND pilot of the Millennium Falcon, so she basically takes over the roles of both Luke and Han from the OT.
Han's death was necessary, but it didn't drive the plot forward enough so far. Maybe Ep8 will get that covered.
Overall there were the "wrong" revelations. We got to know that Kylo Ren is Han's and Leia's lost son and where Luke was in exile. What the film didn't tell us, are (complete) answers to some of the more urging questions at the beginning of this new story arc. What happened in the years after RotJ? How did the First Order arise? What about that shortly mentioned "Republic"? What became of the Rebellion or did it just change its name to "Resistance"? All these things are just there and I hope, that the missing connections will be made clear in the future.
And Luke doesn't say a single frakking word. He's just standing there, looking at Rey and that's it. They could have ended the movie right after the Falcon departing to search for Luke and there would not have been anything lost or gained.

Overall I think that it was some good Sci-Fi, but maybe not good enough for Star Wars. I guess, it would have been better, if they had decided for either a reboot of the OT or a new story with only new characters. But that's just my personal opinion and I know, that complaining is way easier than doing it right yourself.
Title: Re: <SPOILERS>Official The Force Awakens Thread<SPOILERS>
Post by: The E on December 20, 2015, 04:24:03 am
Saw it yesterday. Short review: If this is what Star Wars is like in 2015, bring it on.

Slightly longer:
It was a pretty good movie. About on par with A New Hope as far as I'm concerned, with a workable plot and engaging characters that I want to get to know better. The score is stellar as usual, the FX work and cinematography are very good, dialogue could use a bit of improvement (There's a few scenes in which characters feel the need to tell us what they're doing despite the viewer already knowing why and what they're doing), and the acting is pretty great.
The negatives: Well, for one, this problem has some of the same problems that JJ Abrams' Trek films had. Namely, that Abrams apparently does not understand what scale is and how to deal with it. Remember how in STID, the Enterprise was the only Starfleet vessel in Earth orbit? Or how Earth, Vulcan and Qo'noS seem to be more or less equidistant?
Well, in this film, we are continually confused by the relationship between the Republic, the Resistance and the First Order; When the superweapon fires, is the Republic now materially affected? What about the Republican Fleet? How could this First Order build a superweapon without anyone knowing about it? Finally, a weapon that needs to suck a star dry in order to power it but which is incapable of powered movement seems like a pretty bad idea....

Title: Re: <SPOILERS>Official The Force Awakens Thread<SPOILERS>
Post by: Crashdown117 on December 20, 2015, 06:30:15 am
Finally, a weapon that needs to suck a star dry in order to power it but which is incapable of powered movement seems like a pretty bad idea....
Now that you put it that way, I finally know, what that Starkiller-thing reminded me of: The Star Forge from Knights of the Old Republic. And a masked Dark Jedi/Sith also sounds quite like Revan, doesn't it?

Well, in this film, we are continually confused by the relationship between the Republic, the Resistance and the First Order; When the superweapon fires, is the Republic now materially affected? What about the Republican Fleet? How could this First Order build a superweapon without anyone knowing about it?
I don't think that Abrams himself ever asked a single one these questions. If he had done so, we wouldn't have to do it now.
Title: Re: <SPOILERS>Official The Force Awakens Thread<SPOILERS>
Post by: est1895 on December 20, 2015, 11:21:14 am
I've heard that 3 & 5 were better.
Title: Re: <SPOILERS>Official The Force Awakens Thread<SPOILERS>
Post by: EatThePath on December 20, 2015, 12:47:08 pm
And it's always possible some of these were addressed more directly in the script, but cut for the sake of flow. I'll be interested to see what the deleted scenes are when we get the disks.
Title: Re: <SPOILERS>Official The Force Awakens Thread<SPOILERS>
Post by: Phantom Hoover on December 20, 2015, 12:54:48 pm
i vote lopsided javier bardem as best casting decision 2015, followed closely by 'rhymes with tonal' gleeson
Title: Re: <SPOILERS>Official The Force Awakens Thread<SPOILERS>
Post by: MatthTheGeek on December 20, 2015, 03:31:57 pm
I've just seen it too:

- Gotta echo the part about the Resistance/Republic/First order relationships and powerplay. Being the first movie in a planned trilogy (which ANH wasn't 100%), they missed the occasion to lay down some deeper/more balanced universe-building in there. They did kinda compensate by building the characters quite more deeply than I was expecting. It's possible they're keeping the main trilogy centered on the familly plot, and keeping the universe building for the side movies they plan to do.

- You know how I feel about humans, the fact none of the new main characters and only one of the returning characters is alien (assuming that moncal wasn't ackbar and that sulustean pilot wasn't the one from ROTJ) is disapointing, but not surprising : the last thing they needed was another jar jar. On the opposite end, BB-8 is a good nuR2 and they did well not to shoehorn a 3PO replacement.

- A pilot main(ish) character! This is something SW sorely needed (Wedge's character building in the trilogy was so abysimal he doesn't count) and I hope we'll see more of Poe in the future - probably not a tough thing to hope here, since it's pretty much guaranteed they'll bring back BB-8 and that implies he'll follow suit (on this note, I think something that's really missing here is a few shots of BB-8 actually doing something on the back of the x-wing, like R2 in ANH, or Poe interacting with it from the cockpit)

- Rey vs Ren. I've got mixed feelings about this, it seems obvious that even a newbie, at least partially trained to the force, should easily be able to defeat a trooper and a girl that discovered the force like half an hour ago. The way both Rey and Finn were about to land hits on him strongly diminish him as a villain (I mean, even a random stormtrooper with an electric stick did better than Ren with a lightsaber against Finn). However, I've also got that feeling of Rey being very, very strong in the force, in a way both reminiscent of and superseding Anakin, and that it lays down the terrain for her turning to the dark side (I really got early dark side vibes from her in the lightsaber battle) and Ren coming back to the light in future episodes. Just a crazy theory here.
EDIT: actually, I just remembered Ren took a full wookie crossbow blast to the chest prior to the combat. That would certainly weaken him a bit.

- What were they trying to do with Phasma? Maybe they'll build her up later but she's pretty much on the Boba Fett end of the character building in this episode.

And... "Snoke"? Snoke? What the hell kind of a name is "Snoke"? Yo Snoke, wazzup man? Seriously?
yyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyup :|

And Luke doesn't say a single frakking word. He's just standing there, looking at Rey and that's it. They could have ended the movie right after the Falcon departing to search for Luke and there would not have been anything lost or gained.
My feeling with that is that they set up the meeting here so they can start ep8 several months later, way into Rey's training, without needing to put a flashback to set it up.
Title: Re: <SPOILERS>Official The Force Awakens Thread<SPOILERS>
Post by: swashmebuckle on December 21, 2015, 03:43:19 am
It's definitely watchable, but the whole thing felt pretty thinly strung together to me. The characters have personalities so it's already way better than the prequels, but it's also weak in areas where SW is usually strong. The editing of the climax was especially floppy compared to the stuff it's rehashing, and then the extended coda just didn't work at all for me.

The score seemed pretty uninspired at first audition, with the new themes getting buried and the OT leitmotifs getting all the big moments. The title crawl fanfare was just off. I dunno if it was a bad take or poorly mic'd/mixed or it just really misses the 20th Century Fox fanfare to establish the key or what, but it sounded pretty anemic coming out of the gate.

The cinematography often felt more like a modern comic book movie than the 1930s Buck Rodgers jam that the OT is all about, which I think probably contributed to the awkward editing. I was very aware of the camera in several action scenes.

It's 2015 and the talking CG alien characters are still completely unconvincing and immersion breaking. The alien lady who tries to give Rey the lightsaber and Emperor Snookie were both giving me the Jar Jar vibe. Stop screwing around and give us the muppets we crave!

Anyway it's pretty much what I expected after what Abrams did with Star Trek. I am curious to see where this trilogy goes. We've had a trilogy start at visionary and decline to watchable, we've had one start at abysmal and come up to almost watchable, but we've never had so-so as the starting point. The possibilities are...several!
Title: Re: <SPOILERS>Official The Force Awakens Thread<SPOILERS>
Post by: Phantom Hoover on December 21, 2015, 05:16:33 am
The coda was clearly there for the sole purpose of being able to say Mark Hamill was in the film.
Title: Re: <SPOILERS>Official The Force Awakens Thread<SPOILERS>
Post by: Crashdown117 on December 21, 2015, 05:54:11 am
assuming that moncal wasn't ackbar and that sulustean pilot wasn't the one from ROTJ

Not sure about Ackbar, but the credits clearly mentioned "Nien Nunb", Lando's copilot from ROTJ.
Title: Re: <SPOILERS>Official The Force Awakens Thread<SPOILERS>
Post by: coffeesoft on December 21, 2015, 06:56:27 am

My opinion, the movie was ok, but many things are horrible.


- Han and Leia´s son looks like a stupid child.

- The new Dark Emperor looks like Gollum, not very scary like Palpatine.

- It was not necessary to create another Death Star, specially in the first movie, and how they build it ?

- Why not Chewbacca pilots the Falcon after the death of Solo, and not the girl.

- Maybe it would have been better to die Leia rather than Solo.

- A couple of guys, without any training, can use LightSabers, the Force, even defeat a Dark Lord.

- Why Luke don´t knows anything about  what is happening...

- And many confusing things about resistance, New Order....



The best was the android BB-8   :p
Title: Re: <SPOILERS>Official The Force Awakens Thread<SPOILERS>
Post by: General Battuta on December 21, 2015, 09:27:08 am
It's definitely watchable, but the whole thing felt pretty thinly strung together to me. The characters have personalities so it's already way better than the prequels, but it's also weak in areas where SW is usually strong. The editing of the climax was especially floppy compared to the stuff it's rehashing, and then the extended coda just didn't work at all for me.

The score seemed pretty uninspired at first audition, with the new themes getting buried and the OT leitmotifs getting all the big moments. The title crawl fanfare was just off. I dunno if it was a bad take or poorly mic'd/mixed or it just really misses the 20th Century Fox fanfare to establish the key or what, but it sounded pretty anemic coming out of the gate.

The cinematography often felt more like a modern comic book movie than the 1930s Buck Rodgers jam that the OT is all about, which I think probably contributed to the awkward editing. I was very aware of the camera in several action scenes.

It's 2015 and the talking CG alien characters are still completely unconvincing and immersion breaking. The alien lady who tries to give Rey the lightsaber and Emperor Snookie were both giving me the Jar Jar vibe. Stop screwing around and give us the muppets we crave!

Anyway it's pretty much what I expected after what Abrams did with Star Trek. I am curious to see where this trilogy goes. We've had a trilogy start at visionary and decline to watchable, we've had one start at abysmal and come up to almost watchable, but we've never had so-so as the starting point. The possibilities are...several!

These are all my feelings too, the editing really bugged me.
Title: Re: <SPOILERS>Official The Force Awakens Thread<SPOILERS>
Post by: CountBuggula on December 21, 2015, 09:55:02 am
I agree that the ending was a bit weird.  Probably should've ended sooner than it did.

So I feel a bit differently about all the stuff that wasn't answered for us.  Personally, I like the fact that a bunch of that was inserted without bashing us over the head with explanations for everything.  To me, this makes it feel more like it's just a natural part of a much bigger universe, and it leaves a lot of less important details up to the imagination, or to get fleshed out in later movies, or whatever.  For the purposes of the movie, it was only important to establish that those elements were there, not give us a comprehensive exposition detailing the backstory.  It works for me, I guess.

So the lightsaber stuff:
My understanding about lightsaber combat is that it's much more about The Force than it is about physical sword-fighting training.  Being a master fencer wouldn't necessarily make you great with a lightsaber against someone skilled in The Force.  This is made very clear in the original script for Empire Strikes Back, where Luke describes his experience wielding his saber vs the wampa, and that all of a sudden he felt far stronger and more competent than he should have been given his lack of experience.  The Force guides you and gives you insight to your opponents actions, the ability to sense the immediate future, and to an extent can control your actions (how else could they deflect blaster bolts?).  So it's not a stretch to imagine that someone with a very strong connection to The Force would be able to hold their own against another, even untrained.

All that said, yeah, the scene vs the Stormtrooper with the stick that could block lightsabers was kinda dumb.
Title: Re: <SPOILERS>Official The Force Awakens Thread<SPOILERS>
Post by: jr2 on December 21, 2015, 12:04:13 pm
I didn't like this movie very much. The characters were fantastic but I thought the script and editing let them down. Most of the back half of the movie feels like it's checking off callbacks without providing the connective tissue that made them work.

Agreed.
Title: Re: <SPOILERS>Official The Force Awakens Thread<SPOILERS>
Post by: Galemp on December 23, 2015, 09:50:35 am
I'm mainly on board with Zookeeper's comments.

All that said, yeah, the scene vs the Stormtrooper with the stick that could block lightsabers was kinda dumb.

This should have been Captain Phasma. :( I fully expected her to be the 'miniboss' of this movie.

Can we all appreciate how REAL all this felt, though? The actors interacted with their surroundings! They picked things up and moved through space! It surprised me how much of a relief this was after the prequels.
Title: Re: <SPOILERS>Official The Force Awakens Thread<SPOILERS>
Post by: Crashdown117 on December 23, 2015, 10:04:51 am
Can we all appreciate how REAL all this felt, though? The actors interacted with their surroundings! They picked things up and moved through space! It surprised me how much of a relief this was after the prequels.

Jup. No Jar Jar, no Midi-Chlorians, none of all that stupid stuff and the background wasn't just static. This movie had an eye for details and the plot was neither inconsistent nor was it beyond any belief. Just a little bit to similar too the OT in general and ANH in particular, that's all. And I definitely agree on Phasma vs Finn.
Title: Re: <SPOILERS>Official The Force Awakens Thread<SPOILERS>
Post by: MatthTheGeek on December 23, 2015, 10:17:45 am
The similarity was probably just insurance to send the message "this is still star wars, chill out fans". I expect the future episodes to be less constrained on that point now that the ground work has been laid.
Title: Re: <SPOILERS>Official The Force Awakens Thread<SPOILERS>
Post by: Crashdown117 on December 23, 2015, 11:35:05 am
The similarity was probably just insurance to send the message "this is still star wars, chill out fans". I expect the future episodes to be less constrained on that point now that the ground work has been laid.

Amen.
Title: Re: <SPOILERS>Official The Force Awakens Thread<SPOILERS>
Post by: MatthTheGeek on December 23, 2015, 11:39:31 am
I'd agree they overdid it though, and that it diminishes the overall quality of the movie compared to what it could have been without that as constraints, but better safe than sorry. It's a little too bad but I very much understand why they decided to push it that far.
Title: Re: <SPOILERS>Official The Force Awakens Thread<SPOILERS>
Post by: Crashdown117 on December 23, 2015, 01:13:30 pm
But then again not sticking to the OT (and the old EU) close enough was something, that quite some people criticised about the prequels. Guess you can never make everyone happy...
The first half, especially the scenes on Jakku and the big battle on the other planet (forgot how that second one was called) did show, what I guess is to be the style of this new trilogy, and I like that. I think, that this movie might be the one, that will later be considered the weakest of the trilogy, much like some said about Episode V (or VI respectively, depends on whom you ask).
Maybe I'm just one of many fans, that need to get used to this new style of Star Wars. But hey, we've learned to live with the prequels, right?
Title: Re: <SPOILERS>Official The Force Awakens Thread<SPOILERS>
Post by: Aesaar on December 23, 2015, 03:11:19 pm
Repost of what I posted in the GenDisc thread:

Ok, saw this yesterday.  The following is my opinion:

This was not a good movie.

First off, this wasn't Episode VII.  This was Episode IV mk2.  Nothing of what happened in the original trilogy has an impact on the plot.

Empire's still around, but with a new name and the Nazi dialed up to 11 (lol Nuremberg Rally scene).  Wouldn't want to be confused about who the villain is.  Rebel Alliance still around, but with a different name and slightly different X-Wings.  Yeah, they worked real hard on the premise, didn't they?  And don't point me to books.  Books aren't going to justify this film's fundamentally lazy premise. 

Rey (and Finn) beating Kylo Ren didn't feel like a triumph, it felt contrived.  There was no sense of accomplishment.  At no point does it feel like the characters earned that victory (or any of their victories).  Everything just felt like it was handed to them.  Rey jumps in the Millennium Falcon and she can fly it well enough to outfly TIE fighters immediately.  She can use the Force effortlessly 20 minutes after she learns she's Force-sensitive.  She beats the film's main antagonist in a lightsaber duel the very first time she picks one up.

It took Luke three movies to beat Darth Vader in a duel.  That scene had weight because of that.  It had weight because the last time he fought Vader, he got his hand served to him on a platter.  And that was after being trained by Yoda and Obi-Wan. 

Rey?  None of that.  Here, have a lightsaber and a handful of midichlorians, should have no problem beating a dark Jedi.  Yeah, he was shot by Chewie and stabbed by Finn first, but that's not the point.  Making the villain weaker still doesn't make the victory feel earned.  Same thing happened in Star Trek 2009 when Kirk gets command of the Enterprise despite not having graduated from the academy yet. 

It feels like JJ just thinks up cool scenes without caring at all about how those scenes are supposed to tie together and progress in a satisfying manner, because the individual scenes in this movie are actually pretty good on their own.

Han Solo died.  Okay, well, it's really obvious JJ wanted one of the original cast to die because that scene had no point and no emotional impact.  You could remove it from the movie and say a stormtrooper shot him on the way here and I wouldn't really care less.

Starkiller base: Really couldn't try a new plot, could they?  Constant ultimate superweapons was boring in the EU, it hasn't gotten less boring now.  Oh yeah, it blew up a few planets we didn't care about.  That happened but could have been faked for all the impact it had.  Looked good visually though.

Tangentially related: if it sucks up a sun to power itself, why does it need to fire at all?  Removing a star is going to **** up the planets in a system already.


Kinda related: there's no sense of distance or travel in this movie.  Where was the Starkiller Base when it appeared?  Where was it when it exploded?  Where is the rebel base in relation to all the other locations in the movie?  Are they all in different systems or did it move?  What about those planets it killed?

This is a JJ thing because Into Darkness had the same exact issue.  Everything feels right next to everything else.


Kylo Ren: so I'm guessing JJ was a fan of mopy, ansty prequel Anakin, because that's basically who this is.  I completely understand him feeling inadequate compared to Vader because he's a worse character in every way.  Summons none of the personality or sheer cool factor Vader did.  Hell, none of the villains in this movie even manage to be as memorable as Grand Moff Tarkin.

Actually, this kinda reinforces that this is really episode IV mk2.  I find Kylo Ren a much more obvious progression of prequel Anakin than original trilogy Darth Vader ever was.  Replace Luke with Obi-Wan or Yoda, Snoke with Palpatine, and boom, episode IV completely replaced (with a worse movie).

I think this movie tried way to hard to echo ANH, and JJ abrams is a bad, bad director when it comes to plot.

Visually, it looked good.  The dogfight scenes were solid, so was the lightsaber fight at the end.  That frozen blaster bolt at the start looked cool as hell.  I loved the graveyard of Imperial equipment on Jakku even if there's zero explanation for it in the movie, but I'm a sucker for ship graveyards.


Final verdict: worse than Revenge of the Sith.  Possibly worse than Attack of the Clones.  Still better than Jar-Jar.  Immeasurably worse than the Thrawn Trilogy.  I'm hoping it's made better by the next two movies.  Which is entirely possible.
Title: Re: <SPOILERS>Official The Force Awakens Thread<SPOILERS>
Post by: Crashdown117 on December 24, 2015, 06:46:02 am
Final verdict: worse than Revenge of the Sith.  Possibly worse than Attack of the Clones.  Still better than Jar-Jar.  Immeasurably worse than the Thrawn Trilogy.  I'm hoping it's made better by the next two movies.  Which is entirely possible.

Guess that sums everything up, that's to be said on the negative side.
Disney made a fatal mistake in declaring the old EU non-canon and then coming up with something, that's not even on par with Episode III (the only prequel I kinda liked), so now fans are disappointed. As you mentioned, the story set around Thrawn would have been way better and so would have other storylines from the EU.
But we shouldn't forget, that the EU had decades to develop and that many different authors contributed to its canon, whereas Episode VII was put together in the relatively short time of a year or two and had to convince the audiences, that it's not another piece of junk but something, that wants to follow the "tradition" of classical Star Wars.
As for it being Ep.IV Mk.II: This movie is a bit similar to Into Darkness, where Abrams also mixed some new stuff with a bunch of elements that seem familiar, especially from Wrath of Khan. The only difference is, that STID actually mentioned the whole Khan vs. Enterprise thing from TOS and Star Trek II.
In my opinion, the problem is that TFA seemed to be something actually new and then gradually became a remake of what's already been there.
Title: Re: <SPOILERS>Official The Force Awakens Thread<SPOILERS>
Post by: The E on December 24, 2015, 06:57:56 am

Guess that sums everything up, that's to be said on the negative side.
Disney made a fatal mistake in declaring the old EU non-canon and then coming up with something, that's not even on par with Episode III (the only prequel I kinda liked), so now fans are disappointed. As you mentioned, the story set around Thrawn would have been way better and so would have other storylines from the EU.

Pleeeeeaaaasseeee do not generalize all of Star Wars fandom that way. I'm a fan. I've read a good portion of the EU. I'm not disappointed in TFA, and am not even slightly sad they're ignoring the EU. "Fans" aren't disappointed. You are.
Title: Re: <SPOILERS>Official The Force Awakens Thread<SPOILERS>
Post by: MatthTheGeek on December 24, 2015, 07:25:42 am
Agreed. If anything getting rid of the EU was the best decision they made. There was just too much junk and noise in the EU, and it leaves them room to do something new and different. I'm not an optimistic person but I have reasonably good hopes for this new continuity.

Ep7 has issues, everyone agrees with that, a number of them are typical JJ ( remember he won't write or direct the next episodes), and a number could just be potentially foreshadowing plot twists in the next episodes, but overall there's too much good in it imo to just dismiss it because of a few defects and too much nostalgia. As far as I'm concerned, they have the benefit of doubt, for now.
Title: Re: <SPOILERS>Official The Force Awakens Thread<SPOILERS>
Post by: Crashdown117 on December 24, 2015, 11:01:51 am
Whoa, sorry guys. Let me get this straight.
I'm talking about the "fans" I know and these represent a good average of fandom (ranging from "I'd buy me a stormtrooper outfit, if I had the money" to "I'm just here to complain about everything"), at least of fandom in Germany, giving me some insight into fandom in general (in Germany and maybe central Europe). I'm sorry, if you feel put in a category you don't belong to by me or if it seemed like I claimed to be the voice of all Star Wars fans, because I'm most definitely not. What I intended to say is that a bunch of fans of the old EU are disappointed by the movie comparing it to ANH, the OT and the EU. (You could debate, if the mistake isn't in this comparison already)
All I'm saying is that I miss the old EU a bit and that, despite the junk, the apocryphal comics and stories and the contradictions within itself, it felt more consistent and "Star Wars-like" than the new Disney-stuff to me and, again, the fans that I know. But that might just change as soon as the next movie is out.
I agree that getting rid of all of that was the only possible way of bringing in that new storyline that they wanted to establish here and I definitely can see the potential for something great here.
So again: Sorry for overgeneralizing all of fandom a bit here, no offense intended.
Maybe we (and especially I) should wait until Ep.8 before judging the new trilogy.
But we agree, that in general it's "better" (more like the OT and less of that annoying stuff, I-III had) than the prequels, right?
TFA is some great piece of Sci-Fi with awesome parts but also some flaws, that's all I'm gonna say for now.
Title: Re: <SPOILERS>Official The Force Awakens Thread<SPOILERS>
Post by: Akalabeth Angel on December 28, 2015, 01:26:46 am
Wasn't a big fan.
JJ Abrams needs to quit ****ing up Star Trek and Star Wars and go reboot Felicity.  I liked the first Star Trek but after seeing this Abrams is clearly a one-note director where logic goes out the window and he doesn't have the balls to slow down the pace.

I more/less liked the three new characters but needed a better movie
Title: Re: <SPOILERS>Official The Force Awakens Thread<SPOILERS>
Post by: CountBuggula on December 28, 2015, 09:53:27 am
It's been interesting reading people's responses and reactions here.  After giving it some time and much more thought, I have to stand by my first impression that I really liked it.  I'd like to give that some caveats to help explain what might differ between myself and many of the fans here who don't see it favorably.

I haven't liked just about anything official Star Wars related since about the mid-90's.  I grew up in a strange in-between time where I was too young to have seen the OT movies the first time around, but became a huge fan in that dark void of the late 80's into the 90's, when it was decidedly uncool to like Star Wars and there wasn't any Star Wars related merchandise to be had anywhere outside of ridiculously overpriced fare through the Fan Club catalog.  I played X-Wing in DOS on the original floppy disks, squealed with glee when the B-Wing expansion came out, and broke several joysticks just playing the Tie Fighter demo.  I played the 2nd edition West End Star Wars RPG.  When official novels started to come out, fleshing out the EU, I devoured them.

Things started to change around the time I realized the X-Wing novel series wasn't going to be just a trilogy but was going on and on...and it wasn't even very good.  For the first time I started looking with a critical eye at some of the things I had been taking for granted as awesome just because it was Star Wars, and found that a lot of it was really dumb.  I didn't like the Assault Gunboat at all, and the Missile Boat and TIE Defender were even worse.  Almost all of the details in Kevin J Anderson's Jedi Academy trilogy were really ridiculous in hindsight, despite that series being my gateway into finding much better Star Wars novels.  Then came the Special Edition release, which brought some good but an awful lot of bad.  And the prequel movies are so bad that I can't find enough good content in the three of them to warrant not just completely wiping them from canon in my mind and pretending they don't exist.  By then I found that I liked less and less of what I saw in the EU, and so when Disney got hold of the franchise and announced they were effectively wiping the entire sum of existing content out there, I didn't shed many tears.

I can't speak for the entire FotG team, but that perspective does align well with our overall philosophy of basing our mod entirely on the OT movies, with anything and everything from the prequel or EU being fair game for a complete re-imagining or exclusion.  That's the Star Wars that I've chosen to embrace, and so it's with that particular eye and point of view that I judge any new Star Wars content that emerges.  And from that eye, I think JJ did a pretty darn good job.  He stripped away a ton of the crap that's out there and tried to find the core of what makes Star Wars great, and focused on that.  While that means it didn't score high on originality and maybe seemed more like a reboot, it felt distinctly right to me.  JJ ran the risk of further alienating Star Wars fans by going off the rails, and had to establish that this was first and foremost the Star Wars of the OT and not the Prequel Star Wars.  I feel like they've done that, and the overall majority of moviegoers have rated it FAR higher than they did Episodes 1-3.  Personally, I can't see how anyone would rate any of that trilogy higher than this movie, but again, I really disliked those movies and felt like the Star Wars franchise had been heading in the wrong direction entirely during that whole time.

The prequel movies were bad because they were just poorly acted, poorly written, poorly paced, and felt artificial because of the dependence on CGI.  All that had nothing to do with how "Star Wars" they were.  Just from a cinematic perspective, TFA blows them away by not falling into any of those traps.  We can argue or disagree on whether we feel like this is the Star Wars we wanted to see, but at least JJ Abrams made a good and enjoyable movie.  Acting, visuals, and pacing were all solid.  There wasn't anything that made me cringe like I did so often through the entire prequel trilogy.  That's a giant step in the right direction for me.
Title: Re: <SPOILERS>Official The Force Awakens Thread<SPOILERS>
Post by: The E on December 28, 2015, 10:03:07 am
Yeah, the interesting perspective here isn't ours, to be honest; We're invested into this franchise and have seen its highs and lows. The interesting perspective here is that of someone for whom TFA is the entry point into Star Wars and I'd wager that on that front, this film is a rousing success. TFA, for all its faults, is above all way more inspiring than Episode 1 was, and at least as able to sink its hooks into the imagination as ANH was. People come out of TFA wanting to hear more stories about its characters, or wanting to tell their own stories about them, and I think that's absolutely amazing.
Title: Re: <SPOILERS>Official The Force Awakens Thread<SPOILERS>
Post by: Galemp on December 28, 2015, 10:24:24 am
The prequel movies were bad because they were just poorly acted, poorly written, poorly paced, and felt artificial because of the dependence on CGI.  All that had nothing to do with how "Star Wars" they were.  Just from a cinematic perspective, TFA blows them away by not falling into any of those traps.  We can argue or disagree on whether we feel like this is the Star Wars we wanted to see, but at least JJ Abrams made a good and enjoyable movie.  Acting, visuals, and pacing were all solid.  There wasn't anything that made me cringe like I did so often through the entire prequel trilogy.  That's a giant step in the right direction for me.

I couldn't agree more. The Force Awakens is a far better film than any of the prequels. The characters are so much better written, acted, and directed, and just watching the film was so much more fun than the flat "actors walk around in front of a green screen reciting their lines, punctuated by CGI set pieces" from the Prequels.

But as a sequel to Return of the Jedi and a continuation of the Star Wars saga, I was disappointed. It really does feel more like a reboot, as if JJ was doing the same thing here that he did with Star Trek '09. Within the old EU you had your choice of superweapons: the Eclipse, the Galaxy Gun, the Sun Crusher, the World Devastators... no need for another giant planet killer with another shield and another obvious weak point, they could have done something that felt like Star Wars without the note-by-note facsimile. New X-Wings and TIE Fighters, new Stormtroopers and Star Destroyers, new shadowy Sith lord, warmed over and rehashed. The Prequel trilogy was much more creative with their character, creature, and vehicle designs, even if it was overdone.

Then there wasn't any of the connectivity that tied A New Hope together; the Death Star, the plans in Artoo, and Alderaan were all closely related, while the Starkiller, the map to Luke, and... whatever planet that was destroyed, aren't related at all. Nor are we informed as to the relationship between the Republic, the First Order, and the Resistance. By contrast, what the Prequel trilogy did best was world-building and fleshing out the universe only hinted at in Ben Kenobi's reminiscence, showing the fall of the Jedi and rise of the Empire.

I'm looking forward to seeing more of Rey, Finn, Poe, and especially Kylo Ren in the next films. But I feel like they're not so much inheriting the Original Trilogy universe so much as they are rebooting it from Episode IV, like nothing that happened in Episodes I-VI had any consequence. May as well call this movie "Knights of the New Republic" for as much continuity it has with the rest of the series.

But, as The E said, maybe that's the point. This is a new point of entry for Disney's definitive Star Wars canon, and eventually the Lucas movies will be regarded as mere source material, standing apart from the rest as a curiosity and artifact of pioneering special effects.
Title: Re: <SPOILERS>Official The Force Awakens Thread<SPOILERS>
Post by: Crashdown117 on December 28, 2015, 10:44:23 am
I agree on that. TFA provides an interesting and new entry point to the Star Wars universe and it makes all the things better that the prequels f***ed up. I'd really like to know, what the "new" generation of Star Wars fans think about that movie, those that have neither seen the OT nor the prequels before and therefore aren't biased in any way. And I mean both in terms of cinematics and "Star Wars"-likeness.
I think one of the reasons why I disliked this movie so much at first was how awful the prequels were and how...angry I got about them being the Star Wars of the 2000s. Ignoring that somewhat pessimistic view on TFA I have to say that, if well done cinematography gets combined with interesting new stories, I'm really looking forward to Episode VIII.

And "Knights of the New Republic" is a nice thought. If we ever get to know anything about the New Republic, that is.
Title: Re: <SPOILERS>Official The Force Awakens Thread<SPOILERS>
Post by: Cyker on December 28, 2015, 10:57:44 am
OMG, just seen it - Had quite low expectations so I was totally blown away! So goooood! ^_______^

The movie was perfect for what they needed to do; It was essentially the complete opposite of the prequels.

Where the prequels had a new plot but absolutely terrible execution, directing, acting, effects etc., TFA had the laziest plot of all of the Star Wars films (I mean c'mon, seriously, there's lazy and there's not even trying!) but the execution was absolutely incredible and back to the sort of level we want and expect. The actors were all great and everything flowed well and *felt* right. I liked that actions had consequences instead of being handwaved away; This gave me some preparation for the shock part later instead of assuming that some lame speech could change someone's mind just like that, like what happened in the prequels.

So now that we know they can get the execution right, hopefully they'll actually develop the plot a bit; For me the plot was only real weak point - In our group, we were split down the middle over that; One half was very disappointed at how formulaic it was and the total lack of any originality, whereas the other half enjoyed the ride - The got the feel of everything right, with characters that felt like they could have been real people rather than the stiff cardboard cutouts we had previously.

Aside from the plot, the only thing I was annoyed about were the fighter battles - It was great and a lot of fun and all, but X-Wings and TIE Fighters!? Where were the Y-Wings? A-Wings? B-Wings? The TIE Interceptors? TIE Bombers? The TIE Advanced???
I had to go fire up XvT:BoP once I got home (Oh my god I'm so bad at that game now)

I see there's a lot of opinion on Kylo Ren, but I thought it was quite clever - You're expecting some hideously deformed figure, but no, it's just a fairly plain ordinary looking guy. He is clearly nowhere near the same level as most of the protagonist or antagonist jedi that we've seen so far and that's clearly gnawing away at him. He's what I imagine they were trying to go for with Prequel Anakin, but done *right*, rather than an angsy whiny prat.


I think J.J. is a good fit for the Star Wars franchise; I absolutely hated what he did with Star Trek - Star Trek is supposed to be the more cerebral of the two, based around exploration, discovery, moral dilemmas and cool tech, but he turned it into a straight-up action flick. Star Wars OTOH is all about action and adventure, and his style just fits it so much better.
Title: Re: <SPOILERS>Official The Force Awakens Thread<SPOILERS>
Post by: CountBuggula on December 28, 2015, 11:09:29 am
Aside from the plot, the only thing I was annoyed about were the fighter battles - It was great and a lot of fun and all, but X-Wings and TIE Fighters!? Where were the Y-Wings? A-Wings? B-Wings? The TIE Interceptors? TIE Bombers? The TIE Advanced???

My personal belief (and only time will tell) is that this was more of JJ clearly following the patterns set in the OT, where in episode 4 we had a more limited selection of ships shown.  And I think it works in the framework of the world we're shown - where the "resistance" is a smaller part or maybe subset or branch of what has become The Republic (New Republic?  Whatever).  The capital ships and more advanced fighters likely went into the Republic's fleets, while the Resistance is working with a single fighter type due to their limited resources.  It at least makes sense that way.

And I expect we'll be seeing many more of those other ship types in the next two movies.  Just like episode IV was more limited in scope in both planetary and battle size, we'll likely see things expand on a much more galactic scale in 8 and 9.  Because while many Republic planets and bureaucracy may have been destroyed, the fleets themselves must still exist somewhere.

So, that's my thought.  Or maybe my hope.
Title: Re: <SPOILERS>Official The Force Awakens Thread<SPOILERS>
Post by: Akalabeth Angel on December 28, 2015, 11:29:37 am
I think J.J. is a good fit for the Star Wars franchise; I absolutely hated what he did with Star Trek - Star Trek is supposed to be the more cerebral of the two, based around exploration, discovery, moral dilemmas and cool tech, but he turned it into a straight-up action flick. Star Wars OTOH is all about action and adventure, and his style just fits it so much better.

Except he can't even get Star Wars right.
Going to lightspeed inside a hangar?
Bypassing a shield by jumping out of lightspeed behind it?

"Traveling through hyperspace ain't like dusting crops, boy! Without precise calculations we could fly right through a star or bounce too close to a supernova, and that'd end your trip real quick, wouldn't it?"

**** it says Abrams
Now travelling through hyperspace you can go right through a wall. Too bad Han Solo didn't think of that in Return of the Jedi with the shuttle Tyderium. Codes? We don't need codes.
And he still thinks every planet is in sight of every other planet. Republic world no one knows the significance of, or cares about, gets destroyed and just like Spock, Han is close enough to see it.

Did Star Wars really need to be dumbed down? Are modern audience so shallow that they'll get bored if the next shot doesn't jump right into some other action sequence?

Mad Max Fury Road, still the best action/sci fi movie of 2015.
Title: Re: <SPOILERS>Official The Force Awakens Thread<SPOILERS>
Post by: The E on December 28, 2015, 11:54:06 am
Question, was it ever stated as an actual, hard, unbreakable rule that those things can't happen in any of the movies?
Title: Re: <SPOILERS>Official The Force Awakens Thread<SPOILERS>
Post by: Akalabeth Angel on December 28, 2015, 12:16:11 pm
Question, was it ever stated as an actual, hard, unbreakable rule that those things can't happen in any of the movies?

Question, are you serious?
If the Millenium Falcon can go to light speed inside a hangar, let alone through a wall, then Episode IV would be an hour long because they could've just gone to lightspeed from inside the Death Star Hangar. Why worry about going to disable a tractor beam, rescuing the princess, escaping a trash compactor, etcetera. And don't tell me that technology has improved because they're using the same hunk of junk freighter.

Why not go to lightspeed inside the asteroid worm in Episode V? (They didn't test it until clear of the asteriod field)

And if you can bypass an energy shield by dropping out of lightspeed, why don't you just kamikaze a Correllian Corvette into the Power Regulator or whatever it is. Just Kamikaze ships into the regulator until it explodes and blows up the planet.  Doesn't make any sense at all.

If you think about things for two seconds the movie falls apart and it basically walks all over the originals.

JJ Abrams is an idiot quite frankly who doesn't give two ****s about the source material. In some ways he is arguably worse than Lucas because at least the Phantom Menace had some new material and wasn't a straight rehash of Epsiode IV.

The characters and effects were great and the dialogue was solid but the story is trash.


In fact can anyone tell me what the story of the movie actually is? Like what is the driving action?
If it's looking for Luke Skywalker, then it's a story which was dropped half-way through only to be magically resolved in the last five minutes.
If it's about Han and his Son, then why is it focused on Finn and Rey?
If it's about saving the Resistance, then why isn't the resistance defined? Why isn't the First Order defined? I don't have any clue what the political boundaries or situation of the movie is except that it's basically the same as Episode IV except vague.
Title: Re: <SPOILERS>Official The Force Awakens Thread<SPOILERS>
Post by: MatthTheGeek on December 28, 2015, 12:22:16 pm
If you think about things for two seconds the movie falls apart and it basically walks all over the originals.
Well maybe if you think about things for more than two seconds, you'd realize that comparing the falcon's capabilities and han's piloting skills from ANH, to the gazillions of changes the falcon certainly undertook in 20 years and the vast experience han has gathered in that time, puts things in perspective.

But I guess perspective is not something you can appreciate when you think about things for two seconds.

Again, noone here is denying the movie has issues. We just acknowledge them and move on to appreciate the good things and the potential this movie has brought to the new continuity.
Title: Re: <SPOILERS>Official The Force Awakens Thread<SPOILERS>
Post by: Akalabeth Angel on December 28, 2015, 12:27:57 pm
If you think about things for two seconds the movie falls apart and it basically walks all over the originals.
Well maybe if you think about things for more than two seconds, you'd realize that comparing the falcon's capabilities and han's piloting skills from ANH, to the gazillions of changes the falcon certainly undertook in 20 years and the vast experience han has gathered in that time, puts things in perspective.

Gazillions of changes? You mean sitting idle on a desert planet for years after being stolen by one person after another?
After all look at all the tech advances in the empire and "resistance". Still using X-wings with same lasers, same protons, and still using Tie Fighters which have for some reason got doused in ugly sauce.

As for Han, so is breaking the laws of the universe a skill?  Did he have to go to Correllian Community College to learn that?  Yeah, horse****.

Again, noone here is denying the movie has issues. We just acknowledge them and move on to appreciate the good things and the potential this movie has brought to the new continuity.

Except you just spent 5 minutes denying two issues I brought up while simultaneously ignoring the fact I touched upon several positive things.

And what potential exactly? The potential to remake a movie from 1977? This movie hasn't added anything to continuity.
Some twerp wants to be Darth Vader
Luke fancies himself Yoda
New Jedi except she's a girl.
New Mystery hologram bad guy.
Rebellion is now the Resistance
The Senate is destroyed, again
The Empire is pretty much still the empire.

We've already seen desert planet. Forest Planet. Ice Planet.

It's not adding anything. If anything it's trying it's hardest to keep things as they were and start the cycle again.

Next movie we can see a ground battle with some new imperial walkers and Rey getting trained by Luke.  Maybe Luke can turn into a ghost too and give Rey advice from time to time
Title: Re: <SPOILERS>Official The Force Awakens Thread<SPOILERS>
Post by: Crashdown117 on December 28, 2015, 12:43:47 pm
Well maybe if you think about things for more than two seconds, you'd realize that comparing the falcon's capabilities and han's piloting skills from ANH, to the gazillions of changes the falcon certainly undertook in 20 years and the vast experience han has gathered in that time, puts things in perspective.

Surely tech improvement is something that also takes place in the Star Wars universe and 20 years are quite some time but still: How superior must technology be and how much experience must a pilot gain to make impossible things possible? Even those that aren't explicitly stated to be impossible like jumping to Hyperspace within the hangar or passing a shield (and a gravity field for that matter) by jumping past it? I know that Sci-Fi often is a bit about bending the laws of physics (and sometimes those of logic, too), but that seems a bit too much to me.
Title: Re: <SPOILERS>Official The Force Awakens Thread<SPOILERS>
Post by: Galemp on December 28, 2015, 12:55:00 pm
I think it's more about technobabble and handwavium worming its way into Star Wars, and  introducing something that makes previous entries in the canon nonsensical. There are rules, and if the rules are casually ignored, it breaks the willing suspension of disbelief. (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MagicAIsMagicA) If hyperspace can take you from a ship's hangar to a planetary surface, that's not a mode of transportation, that's teleportation, and there's a huge loss of dramatic potential as Akalabeth Angel pointed out. This would have rendered large portions of the OT moot.
Title: Re: <SPOILERS>Official The Force Awakens Thread<SPOILERS>
Post by: Akalabeth Angel on December 28, 2015, 01:13:21 pm
A universe, even a fictional one, needs to have some internal consistency. It doesn't matter what new rules for the universe are introduced, just so long as those rules are followed consistently. This is true even in worlds governed by magic not science.

JJ Abrams basically doesn't care about any rules in either Star Trek or Star Wars or the real world for that matter as he basically ignores whatever he wants whenever he wants.

The movie itself even has huge inconsistencies with itself.
-The crazy monsters on the freighter for example kill everything on sight except when they catch the black guy, in which case the death ball wants to take him somewhere for, no reason.
-Po's X-wing is both disabled and subsequently destroyed by only a few hand blaster hits, yet the Tie Fighter they steal later is shot many more times with no effect. Later on in battle, neither Xwings nor Tie Fighters seem to be more survivable than the other.
-Speaking of the TIe Fighter, when they escape the star destroyer, the ship dispatches guys to find the droids and yet when they take off in the Falcon the destroyer is apparently no where in sight. They know what ship they stole, they know who's on it, yet they're not near the planet to bother catching them despite being completely focused on finding Luke Skywalker. This is the story of the first half of the film and yet their ship is no where to be found.

And as with the Star Trek movies, any sense of scale or time is irrelevant.  The air battle is raging around the power regulator station all the while they're trying to sabotage it and they leave on foot, later the regulator explodes and shatters the surrounding area for probably a couple of kilometres yet the people who are on foot, in the snow, are no where near and have already traveled far away from it to some nebulous area.  Bear in mind that one of them is both shot and bleeding.

Things are taken for granted. The battle on the trader world, the Rebels are attacking the empire forcing them to retreat and yet when they retreat those x-wings are no where to be found! What the rebels didn't target any transports?  You're evacuating in the middle of a battle and you just walk onboard? You have time to carry some girl from deep in the woods to your transport in no time at all? The Rebels are after the data, the don't know where it is, yet they just let the empire go? Don't disable their transports? There's no sense to the battle whatsoever.  Why not destroy the transports on the ground, strand the empire and capture Darth Doofus or at least create some desperate evacuation where the empire is trying to escape or vice versa.

JJ Abrams is only concerned about setting up one sequence of shots to the other. He doesn't seem to give two ****s about creating believable worlds with any sense of time or space.  Just imagine how a geographic-focused movie like Lord of the Rings would have turned out with him at the helm.


EDIT
And the biggest problem with this movie, is the fact that the Rebels are still Rebels and the Empire are still Empire. They've been given new names but their roles are the same. Evil stormtroopers and ill-equipped rebels fighting against the odds. Not only that but characters are unchanged as well. Luke is still a loner. Han and Chewie are doing the same **** as ever. Leia is still a rebel leader.  This static dynamic completely invalidates everything in the original trilogy. What the **** were they fighting for?

Even the prequels, which I hate, at least added something to the universe. This movie didn't add anything except a couple of new characters.
Title: Re: <SPOILERS>Official The Force Awakens Thread<SPOILERS>
Post by: Crashdown117 on December 29, 2015, 05:08:17 am
If hyperspace can take you from a ship's hangar to a planetary surface, that's not a mode of transportation, that's teleportation, and there's a huge loss of dramatic potential as Akalabeth Angel pointed out.
On the other hand you could do things with that similar to what they did in nuBSG, where the FTL could literally bring you from location A to location B in virtually zero time (Remember when Galactica was falling through the atmosphere launching her vipers and then departed just before she would have hit the ground). But that wouldn't be a Hyperdrive anymore, as Galemp just said, yet what the Falcon uses to travel is one, and therefor it would not be Star Wars anymore as well.
Imagine that ship overrun by those deadly creatures being torn apart by the Falcon jumping away. Would be pretty JJ, wouldn't it?

A universe, even a fictional one, needs to have some internal consistency. It doesn't matter what new rules for the universe are introduced, just so long as those rules are followed consistently. This is true even in worlds governed by magic not science.
Most definitely. That TFA doesn't follow the rules set up in the previous movies (including even the prequels here) is my biggest and almost my only real problem with this movie.
Title: Re: <SPOILERS>Official The Force Awakens Thread<SPOILERS>
Post by: jr2 on December 29, 2015, 11:07:32 am
Well, if the Falcon's been around for 20+ years, it's possible the old dog was taught new tricks, so to speak.

They may have come out with either better nav computers, better hyperdrives, or both.

Chances of those being a bolt-on replacements in a ship as old as the Falcon... slim to none.

Chances of Han jury-rigging it in anyways... much better.  ;)
Title: Re: <SPOILERS>Official The Force Awakens Thread<SPOILERS>
Post by: Macielos on December 29, 2015, 11:08:41 am
New Star Wars is basically a clone of New Hope. Rebels fighting a huge evil force capable of destroying planets, a desert planet, droid carrying important message, smugglers, hidden rebel base, discovering ancient powers to fight evil... OT atmosphere from beginning until the end. OT fans will find it pretty enjoyable, for sure and that's the goal JJ wanted to achieve.

What was good:
- Main characters. Rey's pretty, has interesting history and complex personality. Well-written character I really liked throughout the whole movie. I also liked Finn, his personality and his sense of humour, although I feel his desertion from FO could have been better motivated.
- Return of old characters in new roles. I liked Han having returned to smuggling and his attitude to Leia.
- OT atmosphere. Nothing to add, I think.
- Space battles and generally special effects - as usually in today's productions.

What was bad:
- Third Death Star - seriously? That was an absurd. And again it's blown up from several X-wing shots.
- Plots from EU present, but too episodic. I truly expected it will be fleets of Mon Calamaris, Nebulons and Corellian Gunships to be the ones beating the First Order in the end (I think it's a Freespace deviation :P). Instead, we see New Republic in one scene, only to be hit by the Third Death Star. And the DS itself is attacked by... X-wings only. No bombers, although we saw Y-wings in a previous battle. Why is the New Republic separated from the Resistance at all? Why is Leia not with the New Republic? I hope we'll see more of it in episodes 8-9.
- Bad guys. Kylo Ren hysterically smashing the imperial destroyer with his lightsaber looked pathetic and childish. Boring redhead imperial-style officer. And Snoke, guy with silly name looking like Uruk-hai.
- Stormtroopers can shoot only in first scene, when they shoot random peasants - but it's also OT classic :P.
- Storyline is utterly predictable. I knew Kylo Ren will kill Han a moment he walked onto that bridge.





Ok, I'll be in a minority here, but I can't see why people hate Prequel Trillogy so much. It's like hating Heroes V just because they are not Heroes III. I like OT, but aside from technical aspects that are obviously better in PT as it's newer, I find PT much more deep and thrilling because:
- There is no such strong black-and-white separation that drives us through the whole OT. We see PT galaxy as evil, cruel place where "good" republic is corrupted and unstable, various groups of interests clash and exploit the weak for their own benefit and beyond Republic's borders slavery and barbarism takes the upper hand over civilization and law.
- Palpatine - IMHO one of the best antagonists in whole SciFi. He hides in the shadow, manipulates others, poses as a good guy, starts a civil war to make peace-keeping Jedi generals, sends them to the frontline, slowly weakens the Jedi Order and diminishes its position within the Republic only to turn the clone army against its Jedi commanders in a crucial moment - for me it's a masterpiece that fighting evil Empire by a group or rebels can't be even compared with. Also the way he manipulates Anakin and risks deconspiration to seduce him to the Dark Side - it was thrilling.
- Bad guys win - watching Jedi making their stand trying to resolve a plot and discover Sith's identity knowing they will ultimately fall was great. Both in prequels itself and the Clone Wars which did a great job expanding PT universe.
- Anakin - a complex character in whom both good and evil are present and clash each other as plot goes forward. His seduction to Dark Side was a result of multiple experiences that struck him and altered his personality and the choices he made under influence of Palpatine.
Title: Re: <SPOILERS>Official The Force Awakens Thread<SPOILERS>
Post by: Akalabeth Angel on December 29, 2015, 11:52:20 am
Ok, I'll be in a minority here, but I can't see why people hate Prequel Trillogy so much. It's like hating Heroes V just because they are not Heroes III. I like OT, but aside from technical aspects that are obviously better in PT as it's newer, I find PT much more deep and thrilling because:
- There is no such strong black-and-white separation that drives us through the whole OT. We see PT galaxy as evil, cruel place where "good" republic is corrupted and unstable, various groups of interests clash and exploit the weak for their own benefit and beyond Republic's borders slavery and barbarism takes the upper hand over civilization and law.
- Palpatine - IMHO one of the best antagonists in whole SciFi. He hides in the shadow, manipulates others, poses as a good guy, starts a civil war to make peace-keeping Jedi generals, sends them to the frontline, slowly weakens the Jedi Order and diminishes its position within the Republic only to turn the clone army against its Jedi commanders in a crucial moment - for me it's a masterpiece that fighting evil Empire by a group or rebels can't be even compared with. Also the way he manipulates Anakin and risks deconspiration to seduce him to the Dark Side - it was thrilling.
- Bad guys win - watching Jedi making their stand trying to resolve a plot and discover Sith's identity knowing they will ultimately fall was great. Both in prequels itself and the Clone Wars which did a great job expanding PT universe.
- Anakin - a complex character in whom both good and evil are present and clash each other as plot goes forward. His seduction to Dark Side was a result of multiple experiences that struck him and altered his personality and the choices he made under influence of Palpatine.

Well one thing I'll say is that, oddly enough the Force Awakens made me appreciate the prequels because at least they added something new to the universe. Except for a couple of characters I don't see what's even changed in TFA. The political dynamics and roles have completely reset. Han is not an old character in a new role, he's an old character in an even older role. So is Leia. Only Luke is arguably doing something new but then it's only new to him, not new to the series, since he's just pulling a obiwan/yoda.

As for the prequels. I hate them because of their execution. While the elements of a good story might exist, the execution is terrible with gag-worthy dialogue, bad story-telling, boring characters, boring battles, etcetera. It's another set of movies where if you stop and actually use your brain for 2 seconds, things don't make much sense at all.

Like do you realize that Padme marries Anakin after he confesses to murdering an entire village? He literally goes and kills like 50 civilians and her only response is "to be angry is to be human". Wtf? Maybe if she were some psychotic murderer herself I could get behind that relationship but she's supposed to be some do-gooder championing peace.

The other problem is that nearly everything that is said in the OT about the past doesn't match up with the PT.  Something simple like Leia's mother dying when she was young is portrayed incorrectly. Taken as a part maybe it's no big deal but when nothing matches up at all, it simply feels wrong. This is exemplified by the fact that Lucas has obviously changed the story in order to appeal to fans and by doing so is also trying to rewrite the original trilogy as well, saying its really "about Darth Vader destroying the Sith" (horse****).

Far as I'm concerned the OT is still 3 movies that exist on their own. I'm  waiting for the blu ray release of the theatrical originals.

Title: Re: <SPOILERS>Official The Force Awakens Thread<SPOILERS>
Post by: Akalabeth Angel on December 29, 2015, 12:08:44 pm
And honestly I think TFA is a just bunch of pandering to fans.
Lucas pandered to the fans by focusing on Vader and Boba Fett.
Abrams is pandering to the fans by using real sets, taking out the clones, putting in lots of OT gags, etcetera.  Puts in a bunch of elements that anti-prequel people will appreciate but at th same time he still cannot tell a new, interesting and tight story.

People are SO desperate for anything not PT and are still riding high on the mediocrity of the MCU that they'll convince themselves this is a great movie despite it being bullet-ridden with plot holes and suspension-breaking changes.  Even Red Letter Media is dumb enough to get caught up in the hype since what I saw of their review seems favourable. The movie doesn't have a story, at least not one which is resolved by its characters.
Title: Re: <SPOILERS>Official The Force Awakens Thread<SPOILERS>
Post by: Macielos on December 29, 2015, 01:21:31 pm
As for the prequels. I hate them because of their execution. While the elements of a good story might exist, the execution is terrible with gag-worthy dialogue, bad story-telling, boring characters, boring battles, etcetera. It's another set of movies where if you stop and actually use your brain for 2 seconds, things don't make much sense at all.
I agree that dialogues are bad at some moments, especially between Anakin and Padme in Episodes II and III, but they never disturbed me much in enjoying the main plot. But anyway, I never found OT dialogues very well either. There are certain phrases that became symbolic, like "May the force be with you" or "I have a bad feeling about that", but besides that, they're quite average.

I don't think PT characters were boring. I find Anakin much more interesting than Luke and Leia combined, eg. because he's not a goody-goody, he's got weaknesses and moments of anger, he's unsure of himself. His motives are much less simple than "fighting to save his friends from evil empire".

Generally I find main characters in prequels rather good. Second- and third-plan ones, agreed, are rather simple. It's because story-line in PT includes much more plots and characters that appear only for a few scenes to play their roles and there is simply no place to make them memorable. It's just size of the story being much bigger than in OT - Jedi knights, politicians, Trade Federation members, Separatists, criminal leaders from Tatooine, people from Naboo, Gungans - they all have their places. OT is much more focused on one main plot - fighting the empire, Luke's Jedi training and his connection with Vader.

Quote
Like do you realize that Padme marries Anakin after he confesses to murdering an entire village? He literally goes and kills like 50 civilians and her only response is "to be angry is to be human". Wtf? Maybe if she were some psychotic murderer herself I could get behind that relationship but she's supposed to be some do-gooder championing peace.
First of all, he slaughters savages who kidnapped and tortured his mother, not only innocents. And he is frustrated with himself being not strong enough to save her. Padme does not justify his actions, she tries to calm down Anakin's extraordinarily high expectations about himself. Perhaps her attitude would be different if she were there and saw with her own eyes what Anakin did.

Quote
The other problem is that nearly everything that is said in the OT about the past doesn't match up with the PT.  Something simple like Leia's mother dying when she was young is portrayed incorrectly. Taken as a part maybe it's no big deal but when nothing matches up at all, it simply feels wrong. This is exemplified by the fact that Lucas has obviously changed the story in order to appeal to fans and by doing so is also trying to rewrite the original trilogy as well, saying its really "about Darth Vader destroying the Sith" (horse****).
Agreed on this one, but can point out more mismatches? Leia's memories about Padme were the only one I noticed watching prequels.
Title: Re: <SPOILERS>Official The Force Awakens Thread<SPOILERS>
Post by: Akalabeth Angel on December 29, 2015, 02:18:29 pm
Like do you realize that Padme marries Anakin after he confesses to murdering an entire village? He literally goes and kills like 50 civilians and her only response is "to be angry is to be human". Wtf? Maybe if she were some psychotic murderer herself I could get behind that relationship but she's supposed to be some do-gooder championing peace.
First of all, he slaughters savages who kidnapped and tortured his mother, not only innocents. And he is frustrated with himself being not strong enough to save her. Padme does not justify his actions, she tries to calm down Anakin's extraordinarily high expectations about himself. Perhaps her attitude would be different if she were there and saw with her own eyes what Anakin did.

So killing children is okay just so long as you kill a bad guy too?
I don't think people think that way.

Quote
The other problem is that nearly everything that is said in the OT about the past doesn't match up with the PT.  Something simple like Leia's mother dying when she was young is portrayed incorrectly. Taken as a part maybe it's no big deal but when nothing matches up at all, it simply feels wrong. This is exemplified by the fact that Lucas has obviously changed the story in order to appeal to fans and by doing so is also trying to rewrite the original trilogy as well, saying its really "about Darth Vader destroying the Sith" (horse****).
Agreed on this one, but can point out more mismatches? Leia's memories about Padme were the only one I noticed watching prequels.

Um, everything?
Imperial General laughing at Vader's "sad devotion to that ancient religion" - Does this seem like something you would say if only 20 years previous the Jedi had a huge temple on Coruscant with hundreds of Jedi, each of which was fighting in the armies?

The empire made up by clones even though all the bridge officers are obviously regular dudes.

Leia saying "years ago you served my father in the clone wars". Did Obi Wan fight for the Alderan guy? Don't think so. He's just a senator. The Jedi were all military leaders in the PT.

The idea of Jedi vs Sith when the OT only talks about Dark vs Light.

Obi Wan saying Uncle Owen was against Anakin following OW on some "damned fool crusade". Did Owen even know Anakin? He met the guy for like 5 hours.  Obi Wan talks as though they grew up together. Aunt Beru talks the same way as well "too much of his father in him", this suggests knowing his spirit.  You don't know a guy from meeting him for a couple hours.

"That's what your uncle told you. He didn't hold with your father's ideals.  Thought he should have stayed here and not gotten involved."

Furthermore does the conflict in the PT mirror a Crusade? Bearing in mind that the Crusades were expeditions to liberate the holy land. Not the defense of a political state.

Obi Wan saying that his father was already a great pilot when he met him. This is wrong for many reasons. First of which, Obi Wan didn't meet Anakin. Anakin wasn't a pilot, he was a pod racer.  Obi Wan doesn't mention he was a 10 year old boy, something that he realistically should have said.  This dialogue is more applicable to Finn meeting Po for example.  Is Anakin even a great pilot during the show? Honesty Han Solo arguably does more interesting things than Anakin ever does.

Obi Wan saying he took it upon himself to train Anakin. Horse**** he did, he trained him because Qui Gon asked him to. Would a guy not mention this?

Obi Wan saying that Anakin helped hunt down the Jedi. No he didn't. The Jedi all got killed by stormtroopers. Assaulting a temple is not "hunting down".

Palpatine calling the Lightsaber a Jedi weapon.  Yet he uses one in the PT.  Is he a Jedi? No. So why is he using a Jedi weapon?

Even the idea of Obi Wan calling Luke's father a "good friend" is a stretch. They goof around in the movies but they don't act much like friends and they complain about each other constantly.


Now most fans would say "If you think about it from this obscure angle, it kinda sorta makes sense".  No it doesn't. 
Title: Re: <SPOILERS>Official The Force Awakens Thread<SPOILERS>
Post by: chief1983 on December 29, 2015, 03:52:40 pm
Well, I liked it.  I get the impression that some of you went into the movie looking for a reason to not like it, or had expectations so high (seriously, why would you do that to yourselves?) that no movie could have possibly met them.  I mean, what would a perfect new trilogy be like for you all?

Seems some also forgot that RotJ was also pretty much a clone (pun intended) of ANH, so it's like there's now a series of 4 chronological movies in which 3 of them follow basically the same overarching plot.  And I don't really care.  I liked RotJ, I liked ANH, and I liked TFA.  If the TFA superweapon was maybe, I dunno, not another giant sphere, that might have helped a bit, but whatever.  Really the entire assault probably could have been done completely differently and still been awesome, but I still enjoyed it.  That's really all that matters.
Title: Re: <SPOILERS>Official The Force Awakens Thread<SPOILERS>
Post by: Akalabeth Angel on December 29, 2015, 04:15:23 pm
Well, I liked it.  I get the impression that some of you went into the movie looking for a reason to not like it, or had expectations so high (seriously, why would you do that to yourselves?) that no movie could have possibly met them.  I mean, what would a perfect new trilogy be like for you all?

How about having a movie where the events of the original trilogy actually mattered?

Seems some also forgot that RotJ was also pretty much a clone (pun intended) of ANH, so it's like there's now a series of 4 chronological movies in which 3 of them follow basically the same overarching plot.

Demonstrate, through comparative example, how the story of RotJ and ANH are the same.
They have a common story element, the death star, but the events surrounding that element and the lasting consequences to the conflict are entirely different.


Title: Re: <SPOILERS>Official The Force Awakens Thread<SPOILERS>
Post by: chief1983 on December 29, 2015, 04:39:37 pm
Yeah.  Band of rebels work with someone strong in the force to take down a (spherical) superweapon built by followers of a Sith Lord.
Title: Re: <SPOILERS>Official The Force Awakens Thread<SPOILERS>
Post by: Akalabeth Angel on December 29, 2015, 04:54:33 pm
Yeah.  Band of rebels work with someone strong in the force to take down a (spherical) superweapon built by followers of a Sith Lord.

Where's your examples? I asked for comparative examples and you can't even come up with one. 
And what's a "Sith Lord"?  Watched the original trilogy last week and not once did I hear the word "Sith".  Are you sure you're talking about the same movies?
Title: Re: <SPOILERS>Official The Force Awakens Thread<SPOILERS>
Post by: chief1983 on December 29, 2015, 05:04:33 pm
That is _the_ comparative example.  What do you mean I didn't give you one?  That's the overarching plot, which is exactly what I said earlier.  I'm not trying to defend statements I never made.

Just because the OT didn't mention the term Sith, doesn't mean it's not canon that Vader and Palpatine were Sith.  It is canon, so I'm pretty sure that my statement still stands.  Are you just nitpicking at minor term usage now?
Title: Re: <SPOILERS>Official The Force Awakens Thread<SPOILERS>
Post by: Akalabeth Angel on December 29, 2015, 07:59:53 pm
That is _the_ comparative example.  What do you mean I didn't give you one?  That's the overarching plot, which is exactly what I said earlier.  I'm not trying to defend statements I never made.

Just because the OT didn't mention the term Sith, doesn't mean it's not canon that Vader and Palpatine were Sith.  It is canon, so I'm pretty sure that my statement still stands.  Are you just nitpicking at minor term usage now?

That's not an example, it's simply an elaboration of your previous statement.  A statement which is so far removed from the plot of the movie to be irrelevant.  In Episode IV it describes about 30 minutes of the movie, in Jedi even less.


Return of the Jedi isn't about the Death Star. It's about Luke confronting Vader and the Emperor. 

And unlike in Episode IV where Luke directly destroys the Death Star as well as serving as both retriever and deliverer of critical persons and information, in RotJ he isn't involved at all.
In Episode IV, all of the elements in the movie led to the climactic attack against the station, but in Jedi those elements serve mainly to create and hasten Luke's confrontation with Vader and the Emperor.

Luke saves his friends, proving he's come into his own. He's given information about Leia which is later used against him. The mission requires them to be on Endor, where he turns himself in. The death star battle and Endor serve to make him angry. He attacks, is goaded further into attacking by information about Leia and then wins, surrenders and is saved in turn. All of this would have happened regardless of the outcome of the events outside. The rebellion could have failed to win and both Vader and Palpatine would still be dead.

But you cannot really claim that without Luke present, both Vader and the Emperor would have stayed onboard the Death Star.


So that leads to either two possibilities:
Either Luke vs Vader/Emperor is the main story of the movie in which case the central story line is not the Death Star
OR
Luke vs Vader/Emperor is a sideshow, in which case Luke isn't contributing to the main plot

In either case, your statement is false.


Luke is the main character of all three movies. In ESB the Empire's actions are in direct relation to luke as well, wanting to find the base to find Luke and later capturing Han to bait Luke. So in all cases, the main story line is defined not by the backdrop of the action but through the actions and events surrounding Luke. So unless Luke is doing the same thing in each movie then the plot is not the same because the plot centres on Luke.
Title: Re: <SPOILERS>Official The Force Awakens Thread<SPOILERS>
Post by: NGTM-1R on December 30, 2015, 12:07:16 am
Question, are you serious?

Dead serious. Your argument here is dependent on several things being the way you interpret them (seemingly in accordance with the Expanded Trashcan).

The Falcon did not go to lightspeed inside a hanger in ANH. We do not know why. We only know they didn't. There's obviously a reason, for that time, but we were not told it. Without knowing what that reason was, all your efforts to deny it for TFA are sophistry. You don't even know what you're arguing against. You don't even know what you're arguing for.

You are literally making **** up.
Title: Re: <SPOILERS>Official The Force Awakens Thread<SPOILERS>
Post by: The E on December 30, 2015, 03:11:42 am
Akalabeth Angel's complaints in this regard ultimately stem from the movies not bothering to explain every single detail. Personally, I don't mind this stuff; I don't particularly care why one strategy was used in this film but not used in another. I don't need an in-universe explanation of how every i is dotted and every t crossed because I'm in this for the ride. If I needed or wanted an in-depth explanation of everything, I'd be reading David Weber, not watching Star Wars.
Title: Re: <SPOILERS>Official The Force Awakens Thread<SPOILERS>
Post by: Akalabeth Angel on December 30, 2015, 11:41:01 am
Question, are you serious?
The Falcon did not go to lightspeed inside a hanger in ANH. We do not know why. We only know they didn't. There's obviously a reason, for that time, but we were not told it. Without knowing what that reason was, all your efforts to deny it for TFA are sophistry.

So what are you arguing for exactly?
You're arguing that all of the circumstances surrounding when a ship did and did not enter lightspeed in the previous movies is not explained in full,  so when a ship in the new movie acts completely contrary to that behaviour, all of the circumstance are explained not by logical deduction and observation but by the sudden absence of some third unspoken and not obvious factor?

You know what the third unspoken factor is? A director who knows how to create a believable world.


Akalabeth Angel's complaints in this regard ultimately stem from the movies not bothering to explain every single detail. Personally, I don't mind this stuff; I don't particularly care why one strategy was used in this film but not used in another. I don't need an in-universe explanation of how every i is dotted and every t crossed because I'm in this for the ride. If I needed or wanted an in-depth explanation of everything, I'd be reading David Weber, not watching Star Wars.

No my complaints stem from the movie not making any sense. Not being a believable world. I've said this flat out, why you're choosing to assign a different reason for my compaints can only be taken as a deliberate misrepresentation.

Part of creating a believable world with believable characters is having those characters and that world make sense, for people to act on information, to have them think.  Without giving a character time to think, without giving initiative to their actions they're not a person just an actor reading a script. As someone who's worked for 10 years in animation and studied literature before that I have much keener understanding of story and characters than most of the people here.




Title: Re: <SPOILERS>Official The Force Awakens Thread<SPOILERS>
Post by: MatthTheGeek on December 30, 2015, 11:44:41 am
No my complaints stem from the movie not making any sense. Not being a believable world.
No, it's just not hard sci-fi. SW never was hard sci-fi. You don't have to explain every little detail for it to globally make enough sense to work. It's actually usually best if you don't try, it distracts from the rest of the show.
Title: Re: <SPOILERS>Official The Force Awakens Thread<SPOILERS>
Post by: Akalabeth Angel on December 30, 2015, 11:49:50 am
No my complaints stem from the movie not making any sense. Not being a believable world.
No, it's just not hard sci-fi. SW never was hard sci-fi. You don't have to explain every little detail for it to globally make enough sense to work. It's actually usually best if you don't try, it distracts from the rest of the show.

Crafting a believable world has nothing to do with the accuracy of science. As Galemp has said, it's about consistency.  Having consistent rules applied in a world.

Here's a simple question:
The ball monsters on the ship killed and devoured everyone they came into contact instantly
But when they captured Po, they didn't kill him but carried him off down the hallway

Why?
Title: Re: <SPOILERS>Official The Force Awakens Thread<SPOILERS>
Post by: MatthTheGeek on December 30, 2015, 11:51:38 am
Plot armour. Welcome to Holywood.
Title: Re: <SPOILERS>Official The Force Awakens Thread<SPOILERS>
Post by: Akalabeth Angel on December 30, 2015, 12:03:53 pm
Plot armour. Welcome to Holywood.

You mean welcome to Pinewood right?

Thing is, good directors don't need their fans to make excuses.   And every JJ Abrams film I've seen needs a ton of excuses.  That's the contention.
Title: Re: <SPOILERS>Official The Force Awakens Thread<SPOILERS>
Post by: MatthTheGeek on December 30, 2015, 12:08:00 pm
Great, because I'm not here to be a good fan, I'm here to enjoy SW. Too bad for you that you hate fun.
Title: Re: <SPOILERS>Official The Force Awakens Thread<SPOILERS>
Post by: Erkhyan on December 30, 2015, 12:26:21 pm
As a fan who, for various reasons, won’t be able to see the movie until it comes out in video:

I'll probably have to avoid others’ opinions on it for a while. Spoilers I never minded, they're like the recipe for a meal: nice info, but no replacement for the actual meal.

However, the more I remain online, the more I feel that the movie will come to me like a meal already covered by the spit and bile of people who have experienced it before me. Ugh.
Title: Re: <SPOILERS>Official The Force Awakens Thread<SPOILERS>
Post by: Akalabeth Angel on December 30, 2015, 12:45:07 pm
Great, because I'm not here to be a good fan, I'm here to enjoy SW. Too bad for you that you hate fun.

Nah. I just have fun in other ways. Unlike a baby I need more than movement and pretty lights to enjoy what's going on.   I at least need a couple of numbered dots which when connected, form a picture.
Too bad JJ loves to scribble.

Title: Re: <SPOILERS>Official The Force Awakens Thread<SPOILERS>
Post by: The E on December 30, 2015, 01:01:53 pm
So what are you arguing for exactly?
You're arguing that all of the circumstances surrounding when a ship did and did not enter lightspeed in the previous movies is not explained in full,  so when a ship in the new movie acts completely contrary to that behaviour, all of the circumstance are explained not by logical deduction and observation but by the sudden absence of some third unspoken and not obvious factor?

You're being dense. We are never told the complete set of rules of hyperspace in the Star Wars universe. Your claim that TFA violates the rules is therefore spurious.
Title: Re: <SPOILERS>Official The Force Awakens Thread<SPOILERS>
Post by: Aesaar on December 30, 2015, 01:15:47 pm
The fact that Rey and Finn can fight with a lightsaber without lopping their arms off despite having never touched one before annoys me far more than the hyperspace thing.  Not that the hyperspace thing isn't dumb, but I don't care much about it.
Title: Re: <SPOILERS>Official The Force Awakens Thread<SPOILERS>
Post by: The E on December 30, 2015, 01:20:51 pm
The fact that Luke could fly an X-Wing well enough to survive the Death Star assault despite never having touched one has always annoyed me.


Actually, no, wait, it didn't.
Title: Re: <SPOILERS>Official The Force Awakens Thread<SPOILERS>
Post by: MatthTheGeek on December 30, 2015, 01:24:02 pm
Nah. I just have fun in other ways. Unlike a baby I need more than movement and pretty lights to enjoy what's going on.
Well I'm having fun, you don't. Pretty easy to see who is having the best time here.

This looks like a clear case of "how dare you enjoy what I don't" to me.

The fact that Rey and Finn can fight with a lightsaber without lopping their arms off despite having never touched one before annoys me far more than the hyperspace thing.  Not that the hyperspace thing isn't dumb, but I don't care much about it.
Finn has stormtrooper CQC melee training (see the "traitor!" stormtrooper). As for Rey, she also demonstrates ability with her metal stick at the beginning, and her ability with the Force seems to strongly hint that something else is going on with her.

Also what The_E said. It's certainly not the first time SW has demonstrated innate skills in main characters.
Title: Re: <SPOILERS>Official The Force Awakens Thread<SPOILERS>
Post by: Akalabeth Angel on December 30, 2015, 01:29:30 pm
You're being dense. We are never told the complete set of rules of hyperspace in the Star Wars universe. Your claim that TFA violates the rules is therefore spurious.
Akalabeth Angel's complaints in this regard ultimately stem from the movies not bothering to explain every single detail . . . I don't need an in-universe explanation of how every i is dotted and every t crossed because I'm in this for the ride.

So if you don't need an explanation of how things work why are you criticizing my argument based on a lack of explanation?
Something tells me you don't actually know what you're arguing for you're just being contrary for the sake of being contrary. You like a film but you cannot explain why so you grasp at whatever straw presents itself in the moment no matter how contrary it is to your previous statement.

The fact that Luke could fly an X-Wing well enough to survive the Death Star assault despite never having touched one has always annoyed me.

Actually, no, wait, it didn't.

And do you know why it didn't annoy you?

Nah. I just have fun in other ways. Unlike a baby I need more than movement and pretty lights to enjoy what's going on.
Well I'm having fun, you don't. Pretty easy to see who is having the best time here.

This looks like a clear case of "how dare you enjoy what I don't" to me.

Yeah except that you're replying to me, not the other way around. If you actually contributed to this thread before responding to me I didn't read it.
Thus you're trying to defend the movie from my criticisms, rather than me trying to tear down your enjoyment of it.

Title: Re: <SPOILERS>Official The Force Awakens Thread<SPOILERS>
Post by: MatthTheGeek on December 30, 2015, 01:32:21 pm
Yeah except that you're replying to me, not the other way around.
Yes, yes I am. You're a big boy, you'll figure out why.

If you actually contributed to this thread before responding to me I didn't read it.
Well that's certainly an interesting admission from you.
Title: Re: <SPOILERS>Official The Force Awakens Thread<SPOILERS>
Post by: The E on December 30, 2015, 01:45:41 pm
You're being dense. We are never told the complete set of rules of hyperspace in the Star Wars universe. Your claim that TFA violates the rules is therefore spurious.
Akalabeth Angel's complaints in this regard ultimately stem from the movies not bothering to explain every single detail . . . I don't need an in-universe explanation of how every i is dotted and every t crossed because I'm in this for the ride.

So if you don't need an explanation of how things work why are you criticizing my argument based on a lack of explanation?
Something tells me you don't actually know what you're arguing for you're just being contrary for the sake of being contrary. You like a film but you cannot explain why so you grasp at whatever straw presents itself in the moment no matter how contrary it is to your previous statement.

I don't need an explanation. You apparently do. As far as I can work out, your main complaint is that the film never took the time to explain itself in sufficient detail for you to work it into your conception of what the Star Wars universe is like; Personally, I find this incessant need to have things explained that really do not need explanation a major failing of current nerd culture.

But looking at it from the perspective of someone who wants to know every rule, your criticism that some behaviour doesn't fit into a ruleset you were never completely aware of is rather spurious.

Quote
The fact that Luke could fly an X-Wing well enough to survive the Death Star assault despite never having touched one has always annoyed me.

Actually, no, wait, it didn't.

And do you know why it didn't annoy you?

Yes. Do you know why it doesn't, or why I do not care about what you deem to be plotholes and errors and universe-destroying rule breakings?

(The thing about Rey and Finn knowing how not to chop their limbs of with a light saber? Finn has had some amount of close combat training, we see Rey being quite handy with that stick of hers, and unlike certain prequel Jedi, Kylo Ren is not an unhittable gummy ball jumping around the scenery....)
Title: Re: <SPOILERS>Official The Force Awakens Thread<SPOILERS>
Post by: zookeeper on December 30, 2015, 01:48:27 pm
The hyperspace thing is strangely similar to the limitless Star Trek teleporter. A mode of transportation that previously was clearly limited by some rules, even if we didn't know exactly what the rules were, but in a JJ film the old rules get discarded seemingly very lightly. And at least in the case of Trek, it was apparently made up just to solve one piece of plot and afterwards ignored.
Title: Re: <SPOILERS>Official The Force Awakens Thread<SPOILERS>
Post by: The E on December 30, 2015, 01:57:47 pm
Difference being that (AA's complaints notwithstanding) the changes to the hyperspace rules in TFA do not actually represent a complete invalidation of plot points in previous films (or, in ST's case, TV series).
Title: Re: <SPOILERS>Official The Force Awakens Thread<SPOILERS>
Post by: chief1983 on December 30, 2015, 02:15:27 pm
As someone who has nearly completed watching all of Star Trek, I can say that the teleporter must have been one of the most interesting pieces of technology that a writer could ever have to contend with.  Any time someone is trapped, some explanation has to be given as to why the teleporter isn't feasible at the moment.  In Enterprise though, early on it was mostly 'the teleporter is so new we won't risk using it except in dire emergencies', but the level of emergency where it might be used often seemed to have been reached without considering it as a solution.  It more seemed they forgot to even consider (the writers or the characters, your choice).  But the rules themselves don't really seem to fit across all of Trek.  And since Star Trek and Star Wars are basically reboots of one kind or another, I think we have to give a little wiggle room for this things.  Yes, Star Wars is apparently being considered a 'soft reboot', so I think that while it is attempting to follow the existing plots in this universe, I'm not even entirely sure you have to expect the same universal laws to be followed.  If you really want to tie a movie's worth to how well things agree between movies when directors change, then half the Harry Potters suck because the Hogwarts grounds kept changing from movie to movie.  Apparently the Whomping Willow teleported between movies 2 and 3!  Prisoner must have been a ****ty movie because of that.  Or, we just accept that directors and writers are going to take certain liberties and break a few rules.  If it had been the same writing/directing team that couldn't keep their universe consistent, I might be more upset.  But it's a new generation of creators.
Title: Re: <SPOILERS>Official The Force Awakens Thread<SPOILERS>
Post by: Akalabeth Angel on December 30, 2015, 02:17:20 pm
If you actually contributed to this thread before responding to me I didn't read it.
Well that's certainly an interesting admission from you.

Oh yeah, mind blowing isn't it?
The fact I don't care to read two pages of people's opinions before giving my own? It's almost as if I was . . . thinking for myself! That's some crazy **** huh?

The only thing truly peculiar is that while skimming the first couple of posts before replying I found my opinion was not much different from Battuta's.  Now that IS interesting.



I don't need an explanation. You apparently do.

Dude, I know how hyperspace works.  It's made clear from the previous movies and the choices that characters make in specific circumstances within those movies. In fact Han Solo even tells you how it works in the original movie, requiring precise calculations and requiring the avoidance of objects. It's even clear from the visual effect that the ship accelerates in normal space before entering a different state.

So either you don't get it, or you're deluding yourself.

Take Star Trek 2009. I know that things in that movie don't make sense. I know that they're broken, particularly in terms of Star Trek but I enjoy it so I give them a pass.  I don't make up reasons for why it may or may not be different I just accept that overall, I enjoy the movie, but that certain elements are stupid.

Force Awakens doesn't get a pas, because overall I can't enjoy the movie. The faults of the movie outweigh its positives.


The fact that Luke could fly an X-Wing well enough to survive the Death Star assault despite never having touched one has always annoyed me.

Actually, no, wait, it didn't.
And do you know why it didn't annoy you?
Yes. Do you know why it doesn't, or why I do not care about what you deem to be plotholes and errors and universe-destroying rule breakings?

Oh I know why it doesn't annoy me, just wondering if you knew why it didn't annoy you, so far the jury is still out as to whether you know or not.


Difference being that (AA's complaints notwithstanding) the changes to the hyperspace rules in TFA do not actually represent a complete invalidation of plot points in previous films (or, in ST's case, TV series).

What hyper space rules? You said you don't know the rules. What are the rules of hyperspace? How about you list out the rules and we can apply those rules to each situation.

The biggest problem in Star Trek 2009 and Into Darkness is not the teleporters. The problem is the Warp Drive. It's again, a teleportation device.
Title: Re: <SPOILERS>Official The Force Awakens Thread<SPOILERS>
Post by: The E on December 30, 2015, 02:41:03 pm
Dude, I know how hyperspace works.  It's made clear from the previous movies and the choices that characters make in specific circumstances within those movies. In fact Han Solo even tells you how it works in the original movie, requiring precise calculations and requiring the avoidance of objects. It's even clear from the visual effect that the ship accelerates in normal space before entering a different state.

Han Solo is not exactly a reliable source of information. The original trilogy, at several points, makes it very clear that he is in fact pretty full of **** a lot of the time :P

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Take Star Trek 2009. I know that things in that movie don't make sense. I know that they're broken, particularly in terms of Star Trek but I enjoy it so I give them a pass.  I don't make up reasons for why it may or may not be different I just accept that overall, I enjoy the movie, but that certain elements are stupid.

Force Awakens doesn't get a pas, because overall I can't enjoy the movie. The faults of the movie outweigh its positives.

Okay, fair enough.

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Oh I know why it doesn't annoy me, just wondering if you knew why it didn't annoy you, so far the jury is still out as to whether you know or not.

Wasn't what I asked, but no matter.

Yes, I do know why Luke's prowess with the X-Wing (and Rey's and Finn's ability to handle a light saber) doesn't bother me. It's set up early on that Luke considers himself to be an able pilot (even though you'd have to go back to deleted scenes or the novelization to get the full setup); it's also implied that he might have inherited some natural ability from his father (As for Rey and Finn: We see Rey having some skill with a quarterstaff, and we must assume that Finn has had some close combat training at some point).

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What hyper space rules? You said you don't know the rules. What are the rules of hyperspace? How about you list out the rules and we can apply those rules to each situation.

The biggest problem in Star Trek 2009 and Into Darkness is not the teleporters. The problem is the Warp Drive. It's again, a teleportation device.

Hyperspace is a form of FTL travel that requires specialized equipment. That's the only firm rule we know of. We do not know the absolute speed attainable (Han says ".5 past light speed" in the OT, but it's not like that allows us to extrapolate anything), we do not know what conditions must be met for a hyperspace jump to be possible (but it's reasonable to assume that large objects like Planets inhibit travel), however we do know that a ship can jump from within another ship (although we do not know what happens to the ship that is jumped out of). We also have little information about the conditions for successful hyperspace exit; the only firm rule seems to be that exiting within another solid body is probably not a good idea.

That's all we know of hyperspace and how it works, after now 7 films.
Title: Re: <SPOILERS>Official The Force Awakens Thread<SPOILERS>
Post by: MatthTheGeek on December 30, 2015, 03:34:44 pm
There's also the handwavium part where the Falcon can go from Hoth to Bespin without a hyperdrive. Have fun explaining that.

Ep7 has issues, but OT has its fair share of inconsistencies as well.
Title: Re: <SPOILERS>Official The Force Awakens Thread<SPOILERS>
Post by: Akalabeth Angel on December 30, 2015, 03:49:26 pm
Hyperspace is a form of FTL travel that requires specialized equipment. That's the only firm rule we know of. We do not know the absolute speed attainable (Han says ".5 past light speed" in the OT, but it's not like that allows us to extrapolate anything), we do not know what conditions must be met for a hyperspace jump to be possible (but it's reasonable to assume that large objects like Planets inhibit travel), however we do know that a ship can jump from within another ship (although we do not know what happens to the ship that is jumped out of). We also have little information about the conditions for successful hyperspace exit; the only firm rule seems to be that exiting within another solid body is probably not a good idea.

So if we know that a ship can jump to light speed from within another ship (from TFA), why didn't they go to hyperspace from within the death star which has an open hangar in Episode IV?

And where do you get the idea that exiting light speed within a solid body is not a good idea? Where is this shown in the movie? You said Han is not a reliable source of information so what onscreen evidence do you have to support that claim?


There's also the handwavium part where the Falcon can go from Hoth to Bespin without a hyperdrive. Have fun explaining that.

Ep7 has issues, but OT has its fair share of inconsistencies as well.

The Falcon doesn't go from Hoth to Bespin.
It goes from Hoth to Anoat to Bespin.

The question is, how is that inconsistent?
Is there any other point in the original trilogy where the Falcon's "sublight" speed has been defined through events?

What event or line of dialogue, suggests that the Falcon cannot reach a nearby system through the use of its normal drive system?
Title: Re: <SPOILERS>Official The Force Awakens Thread<SPOILERS>
Post by: The E on December 30, 2015, 04:00:22 pm
So if we know that a ship can jump to light speed from within another ship (from TFA), why didn't they go to hyperspace from within the death star which has an open hangar in Episode IV?

We do know that the Falcon had to break atmosphere before jumping away from Tatooine. We also know the same was true of the Naboo royal transport and the transports from ESB. That let's us extrapolate that being in a gravity well at the very least degrades, of not outright inhibits, hyperspace entry. We also know that the first Death Star is a massive machine, maybe massive enough to disrupt hyperspace entry.


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And where do you get the idea that exiting light speed within a solid body is not a good idea? Where is this shown in the movie? You said Han is not a reliable source of information so what onscreen evidence do you have to support that claim?

I do believe Han when he says that not running into a planet or sun is a bad idea. Also, he seems awfully keen on avoiding colliding with the planet in TFA....
Title: Re: <SPOILERS>Official The Force Awakens Thread<SPOILERS>
Post by: Akalabeth Angel on December 30, 2015, 04:14:26 pm
So if we know that a ship can jump to light speed from within another ship (from TFA), why didn't they go to hyperspace from within the death star which has an open hangar in Episode IV?

We do know that the Falcon had to break atmosphere before jumping away from Tatooine. We also know the same was true of the Naboo royal transport and the transports from ESB. That let's us extrapolate that being in a gravity well at the very least degrades, of not outright inhibits, hyperspace entry. We also know that the first Death Star is a massive machine, maybe massive enough to disrupt hyperspace entry.

Who says the Falcon had to break atmosphere before jumping? Maybe they just chose to. After all, no one told you that they need to leave the atmosphere.

I mean in Return of the Jedi, the rebel fighters flew to the front of the fleet before the entire fleet jumped to hyperspace in sequence from front to back, but clearly they chose to do that, because it would look cool right?
It's never explicitly stated that an X-Wing couldn't just jump to lightspeed through a Mon Calamari or vice versa, so just because we don't see it happen doesn't mean it's not possible.  You can argue that a Mon Cal would have too much gravity for a ship to jump out of but you cannot say that a Mon Cal could not jump through its own fighters because surely they don't have enough gravity to "disrupt hyperspace entry".



Title: Re: <SPOILERS>Official The Force Awakens Thread<SPOILERS>
Post by: The E on December 30, 2015, 04:25:19 pm
Who says the Falcon had to break atmosphere before jumping? Maybe they just chose to. After all, no one told you that they need to leave the atmosphere.

If that wasn't the case, why did the Naboo royal transport and the transports at Hoth break atmosphere before jumping? In both cases, the planet they fled from was under blockade; If they could have jumped sooner, why didn't they? The assumption that a ship needs to be out of atmo, or at least a certain distance away from the planet before going to hyper is a natural one to make (Not to mention that, without such a limitation, blockades would not be practical at all). As far as we can tell from the films, this seems to be a very firm rule.

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I mean in Return of the Jedi, the rebel fighters flew to the front of the fleet before the entire fleet jumped to hyperspace in sequence from front to back, but clearly they chose to do that, because it would look cool right?
It's never explicitly stated that an X-Wing couldn't just jump to lightspeed through a Mon Calamari or vice versa, so just because we don't see it happen doesn't mean it's not possible.  You can argue that a Mon Cal would have too much gravity for a ship to jump out of but you cannot say that a Mon Cal could not jump through its own fighters because surely they don't have enough gravity.

Maybe it makes tactical sense to have a bunch of fighters be the spearhead? Maybe jumping through something adds complications best avoided before launching a huge offensive? Not that this digression matters.
Title: Re: <SPOILERS>Official The Force Awakens Thread<SPOILERS>
Post by: Akalabeth Angel on December 30, 2015, 04:39:59 pm
Who says the Falcon had to break atmosphere before jumping? Maybe they just chose to. After all, no one told you that they need to leave the atmosphere.

If that wasn't the case, why did the Naboo royal transport and the transports at Hoth break atmosphere before jumping? In both cases, the planet they fled from was under blockade; If they could have jumped sooner, why didn't they? The assumption that a ship needs to be out of atmo, or at least a certain distance away from the planet before going to hyper is a natural one to make (Not to mention that, without such a limitation, blockades would not be practical at all). As far as we can tell from the films, this seems to be a very firm rule.

Oh hey, speaking of blockades. Do you remember the opening crawl from the Phantom Menace?
"Hoping to resolve the matter with a blockade of deadly battleships, the greedy Trade Federation has stopped all shipping to the small planet of Naboo"

Now, if as you suggest hyperspace entry is prohibited by large things like planets, but hyperspace exit is not then what use is the blockade?  In the Force Awaken Han exits hyperspace in atmosphere and at a very low altitude (not to mention passing through a shield). He's a smuggler, other people are smugglers or blockade runners and could do the same for a ton of Naboo cash.  The blockade around Naboo is further a fair distance out from the planet which would allow ships to jump in at a much safer distance than Han does in TFA.

So explain how a blockade prevents shipping to a planet if ships can jump out of hyperspace inside the blockade perimeter?

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I mean in Return of the Jedi, the rebel fighters flew to the front of the fleet before the entire fleet jumped to hyperspace in sequence from front to back, but clearly they chose to do that, because it would look cool right?
It's never explicitly stated that an X-Wing couldn't just jump to lightspeed through a Mon Calamari or vice versa, so just because we don't see it happen doesn't mean it's not possible.  You can argue that a Mon Cal would have too much gravity for a ship to jump out of but you cannot say that a Mon Cal could not jump through its own fighters because surely they don't have enough gravity.

Maybe it makes tactical sense to have a bunch of fighters be the spearhead? Maybe jumping through something adds complications best avoided before launching a huge offensive? Not that this digression matters.

What complications? You mean like dying? Like having your ship horribly explode in a ball of fire because your mothership just ran your ass over?
You're not beyond making assumptions based on on-screen evidence, so why in this instance do you look for the complicated answer instead of the obvious one?

And similarly,  in Empire Strikes Back why did the Falcon exit the asteroid field before trying to go to lightspeed? While the rock he landed on is fairly big it's apparent from the movie that the asteroid field is large and he could've gotten distance from the one he landed on and then entered hyperspace before exiting the field entirely.
Title: Re: <SPOILERS>Official The Force Awakens Thread<SPOILERS>
Post by: AdmiralRalwood on December 30, 2015, 07:49:42 pm
Wow, you seem to be making the assumption that just because the Falcon survived the jump under the shield, that this means that jumping into a planetary atmosphere is in any way safe or reliable. Han specifically refuses to tell Leia his idea because she won't like it; presumably, wouldn't like it to the point of refusing to allow him to go through with it at all. How do you know it isn't a split-second timing differential between ending up on the outside of the shield (and splattering all over it) or jumping too close to the planet's surface (and splattering all over it)?
Title: Re: <SPOILERS>Official The Force Awakens Thread<SPOILERS>
Post by: Akalabeth Angel on December 30, 2015, 08:17:22 pm
Wow, you seem to be making the assumption that just because the Falcon survived the jump under the shield, that this means that jumping into a planetary atmosphere is in any way safe or reliable. Han specifically refuses to tell Leia his idea because she won't like it; presumably, wouldn't like it to the point of refusing to allow him to go through with it at all. How do you know it isn't a split-second timing differential between ending up on the outside of the shield (and splattering all over it) or jumping too close to the planet's surface (and splattering all over it)?

Why would you think running a blockade was safe? People don't run blockades because it's safe, they do it because it's either necessary or profitable.

Regardless the Trade Federation Ships aren't IN the atmosphere.  A ship need only be far enough from the Trade Federation ships to survive any reprisal before reaching the planet so the margin for error is consequently higher. This doesn't even account for the time needed for the Trade Federation to target an incoming vessel and destroy it.

So the question is how can a fleet of ships blockade a planet if a ship coming out of hyperspace is not required to travel past them at sublight speed?

Title: Re: <SPOILERS>Official The Force Awakens Thread<SPOILERS>
Post by: Tnadz on December 30, 2015, 10:11:32 pm
I agree with everyone's points on Episode VII: A Newer Hope.  It was fun to see Harrison Solo come back to break his foot and fall to his death while Leia Fisher's face was stretched by Disney so much she couldn't open her mouth to talk.  And their kids Jacen and Jaina finally got some screen time with Beer Belly Luke!

My question is, where is the surveillance in the SW future?  Not one camera on the Death Star 3 to see a Wookie and two dudes with a sack break in and plant dozens of bombs?

And of the future things, we've come 60+ years from leather strap helmets to still open face helmets that do nothing for the pilots?

Come now, JJ.  Where's your smoke monster now?
Title: Re: <SPOILERS>Official The Force Awakens Thread<SPOILERS>
Post by: Aesaar on December 31, 2015, 03:31:46 am
while Leia Fisher's face was stretched by Disney so much she couldn't open her mouth to talk.
How dare Carrie Fisher get old?  Women aren't allowed to do that!

This is a really stupid complaint.


The fact that Luke could fly an X-Wing well enough to survive the Death Star assault despite never having touched one has always annoyed me.


Actually, no, wait, it didn't.
Right, because those were totally treated the same way.  It's not like it took Luke two movies to actually fight with a lightsaber (a fight he lost).  Nope, it's exactly the same.  Because Luke could fly an X-Wing, it's perfectly ok for someone to have instant Jedi skills the moment they pick up a lightsaber.  Doesn't cheapen Luke's arc at all.  Nope.

He wasted his time going to see Yoda, didn't he?  Becoming a Jedi is obviously really easy.
Title: Re: <SPOILERS>Official The Force Awakens Thread<SPOILERS>
Post by: The E on December 31, 2015, 04:40:17 am
Right, because those were totally treated the same way.  It's not like it took Luke two movies to actually fight with a lightsaber (a fight he lost).  Nope, it's exactly the same.  Because Luke could fly an X-Wing, it's perfectly ok for someone to have instant Jedi skills the moment they pick up a lightsaber.  Doesn't cheapen Luke's arc at all.  Nope.

He wasted his time going to see Yoda, didn't he?  Becoming a Jedi is obviously really easy.


You're comparing Luke's evolution as a swordfighter with Reys, but that's not the comparison I was making.

ANH tells us that Luke is a gifted pilot. It doesn't show us, mind you, it alludes to the fact by having Luke play with some toy and have Obi Wan point out that his father was remarkably gifted in that area. There are deleted scenes where Luke talks about wanting to join the imperial Academy to become a pilot, but that's all there is to it. If we apply the same standards you're using to judge Rey's ability to fight with swords, then the fact that Luke gets his own X-Wing and manages to survive in a rather hostile environment, then we see that he too seems to be "instantly skilled the moment he grabs the flight stick".

Now, TFA actually takes the time to show that Rey is capable in close quarters fighting. At the moment she grabs the saber, her abilities as a fighter are better established than Luke's piloting skill when the battle for Yavin starts, and yet you take offence at Rey? I find that a bit disingenuous, really.
Title: Re: <SPOILERS>Official The Force Awakens Thread<SPOILERS>
Post by: zookeeper on December 31, 2015, 04:57:31 am
Maybe everyone who wants to intentionally antagonize other posters and generally be an unpleasant person, could do it in the GenDisc thread and not here? Thanks, that'd be great.

ANH tells us that Luke is a gifted pilot. It doesn't show us, mind you, it alludes to the fact by having Luke play with some toy and have Obi Wan point out that his father was remarkably gifted in that area. There are deleted scenes where Luke talks about wanting to join the imperial Academy to become a pilot, but that's all there is to it.

Huh? Obi-wan says that he's heard Luke's a good pilot, Luke claims he is to Han in the cantina, and even Biggs assures that he can handle the X-wing because he's the best bush pilot (not in the original release). Whether it's realistic or not, it's repeated plenty of times.
Title: Re: <SPOILERS>Official The Force Awakens Thread<SPOILERS>
Post by: The E on December 31, 2015, 05:48:38 am
Right, I forgot about that. Still though, it is not until the Battle of Yavin that his abilities are actually shown to the viewer.
Title: Re: <SPOILERS>Official The Force Awakens Thread<SPOILERS>
Post by: Crashdown117 on December 31, 2015, 06:03:55 am
Obi-wan says that he's heard Luke's a good pilot, Luke claims he is to Han in the cantina, and even Biggs assures that he can handle the X-wing because he's the best bush pilot (not in the original release). Whether it's realistic or not, it's repeated plenty of times.

And also: Luke never has to survive in a dogfight against any Imperial pilot in ANH. The only time he really could get in trouble is when he does the trench run. But then Han comes in with the Falcon to save his ass, so all he really has to do is fly his X-Wing to some specific location and then drop a bomb with the help of a targetting computer (yeah, he uses the Force here, but the targetting computer would've been a fine option for any non-sensitive pilot). So he doesn't need to be the galaxy's best pilot at all, some decent skill would be enough.

Still though, it is not until the Battle of Yavin that his abilities are actually shown to the viewer.

What sense would it make to show it earlier in ANH? (Just asking, not complaining) Why should he be flying anything earlier during ANH when there's no need to? Han would definitely not let him fly the Falcon just because he says he's good at it (remember Luke's just a boy from a Tatooine farm) and he's always present to fly his ship.
Title: Re: <SPOILERS>Official The Force Awakens Thread<SPOILERS>
Post by: The E on December 31, 2015, 06:12:56 am
Because "show don't tell" is a pretty good rule to follow in storytelling? It's generally easier to get the audience to go along with a given characterization if they can make that characterization themselves, instead of having the narrative tell us about it.
Title: Re: <SPOILERS>Official The Force Awakens Thread<SPOILERS>
Post by: zookeeper on December 31, 2015, 08:08:26 am
Because "show don't tell" is a pretty good rule to follow in storytelling? It's generally easier to get the audience to go along with a given characterization if they can make that characterization themselves, instead of having the narrative tell us about it.

Yes, but it matters what context you show or tell in. If you tell throughout the movie that Luke is a good pilot and only show it in the end, there's no problem because clearly the intent was all along that he's a good pilot. If you never say anything about him being a good pilot and then only show him suddenly being a good pilot in the end, that feels like a cop-out which came out of nowhere. You have to establish that he's a good pilot either by showing or telling early on, when he's still being actively characterized.

And I'd definitely argue that in the case of ANH, it's much better that it's only being told, not shown, because then the showing acts as a payoff for all that telling. If his speeder on Tatooine had been a fighter and he'd have been pulling off crazy stunts in the canyons, there wouldn't be any tension or doubt about whether he can handle the X-wing and live up to what's been told.

To compare with for example Rey's lightsaber skills, sure, she's good with her staff. Is that clear enough characterization to justify her being able to handle a lightsaber ok'ish later? I guess for someone it is, for someone else it isn't. But I'm pretty sure that if in addition to the pilot helmet, she had been shown playing with a broken lightsaber having a little imaginary lightsaber fight (which would have been silly for other reasons), then that would have been enough for almost anyone; it'd have established that she knows what kind of weapon it is and has thought about how they would be used and has had lots of mental practise. Or if she had been shown being generally good with improvised melee weapons or something once or twice.

P.S. The real problem in ANH is why Red leader would name the newbie to lead the last attack run and to "take" two veterans as his wingmen. :lol:
Title: Re: <SPOILERS>Official The Force Awakens Thread<SPOILERS>
Post by: Phantom Hoover on December 31, 2015, 08:12:55 am
That makes sense I guess, they were using targeting computers to make the shot so sending a rookie to take it and having veterans make sure he gets there is probably better than the other way round.
Title: Re: <SPOILERS>Official The Force Awakens Thread<SPOILERS>
Post by: Macielos on December 31, 2015, 09:44:11 am
So killing children is okay just so long as you kill a bad guy too?
I don't think people think that way.
I didn't say it was okay. I said Anakin had reasons to feel anger for Tuskens.

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Imperial General laughing at Vader's "sad devotion to that ancient religion" - Does this seem like something you would say if only 20 years previous the Jedi had a huge temple on Coruscant with hundreds of Jedi, each of which was fighting in the armies?
In the light of what we saw in Episode III, the world "ancient" could've been used sarcastically, to diminish significance of the Force. "Ancient" means here something we regard obsolete, worse, what we despise. Remember all these officers have been brainwashed by propaganda for the past twenty years. Not every quotation from OT must be took literally.

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The empire made up by clones even though all the bridge officers are obviously regular dudes.
What's so strange in that? The Empire has no clones in OT. Stormtroopers are not clones. Among officers non-clones were present even during the Clone Wars - eg. Admiral Yularen and Captain Tarkin. Clones have been in Empire's regular service only for a short time after Jedi Purge as Kaminoans began to resist.

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Leia saying "years ago you served my father in the clone wars". Did Obi Wan fight for the Alderan guy? Don't think so. He's just a senator. The Jedi were all military leaders in the PT.
I never thought "My father" refers to Bail Organa. I guess Organa told her that she is adopted, her father fought in the Clone Wars and he also mentioned Obi-wan - that's why Leia tries to call Obi-wan for help in the first place.

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The idea of Jedi vs Sith when the OT only talks about Dark vs Light.
What's the problem with that? In OT Luke discovers only snippets of knowledge about the Force Jedi had in PT. It's simply forgotten as there are almost no old Jedi left.

What I love about PT is how they presented the Force and how it affects the entire galaxy.

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Obi Wan saying Uncle Owen was against Anakin following OW on some "damned fool crusade". Did Owen even know Anakin? He met the guy for like 5 hours.  Obi Wan talks as though they grew up together. Aunt Beru talks the same way as well "too much of his father in him", this suggests knowing his spirit.  You don't know a guy from meeting him for a couple hours.
They saw him rushing to save his mother, then returning with her body, then crying on her tomb. Enough to know he is impulsive and emotional.

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Furthermore does the conflict in the PT mirror a Crusade? Bearing in mind that the Crusades were expeditions to liberate the holy land. Not the defense of a political state.
How can I even comment that? It's just a term. It's origins can be totally different as we are in alternate universe.

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Obi Wan saying that his father was already a great pilot when he met him. This is wrong for many reasons. First of which, Obi Wan didn't meet Anakin. Anakin wasn't a pilot, he was a pod racer.  Obi Wan doesn't mention he was a 10 year old boy, something that he realistically should have said.  This dialogue is more applicable to Finn meeting Po for example.  Is Anakin even a great pilot during the show? Honesty Han Solo arguably does more interesting things than Anakin ever does.
He had a natural talent for flying and technology. He quickly adapted to new situations involving driving air or space ships. Apart from the pod race, he was thrown into the middle of space battle in a fighter he never flied and we has able to survive, regain control, penetrate the station's defences and destroy it from inside. In EII he manoeuvrers among the numerous shuttles on Coruscant, in EIII takes part in a huge space battle. Is that not enough?

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Obi Wan saying he took it upon himself to train Anakin. Horse**** he did, he trained him because Qui Gon asked him to. Would a guy not mention this?
Maybe, maybe not. "What-if" is not a proper argument in a discussion.

Well, following your argumentation, R2-D2 could have told Luke that Vader is his father :P.

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Obi Wan saying that Anakin helped hunt down the Jedi. No he didn't. The Jedi all got killed by stormtroopers. Assaulting a temple is not "hunting down".
What? Did you even watched/read/played anything between EIII and EIV? Anakin was leading the clone assault on the temple, himself killed a bunch of younglings and probably some Jedi too. Then, as Vader, he was hunting Jedi for many years. It'd be strange if PT showed events that took place after PT :P. But the other SW-universe productions mention that. Ever played The Force Unleashed?

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Palpatine calling the Lightsaber a Jedi weapon.  Yet he uses one in the PT.  Is he a Jedi? No. So why is he using a Jedi weapon?
Agreed, this one could be a mismatch. I assume he called THIS (green) lightsaber a Jedi weapon. Sith all have red.

EDIT: Vader also uses a lightsaber in OT. If it's a mismatch, it is a OT mismatch in the first place.

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Even the idea of Obi Wan calling Luke's father a "good friend" is a stretch. They goof around in the movies but they don't act much like friends and they complain about each other constantly.
This one defends itself. Fact they're arguing doesn't imply after all these years Obi-wan cannot mention good moments with Anakin. Besides, in EIII Anakin is a knight, not a padawan, he's almost equal to Obi-wan, he only has not master title. At some point Obi-wan tells Anakin "You became a greater Jedi than I ever thought".

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Now most fans would say "If you think about it from this obscure angle, it kinda sorta makes sense".  No it doesn't.
I can only laugh at how OT fans will find and complain on even the most insignificant mismatches in PT, but are absolutely tolerant on OT.
Title: Re: <SPOILERS>Official The Force Awakens Thread<SPOILERS>
Post by: Crashdown117 on December 31, 2015, 10:16:09 am
And I'd definitely argue that in the case of ANH, it's much better that it's only being told, not shown, because then the showing acts as a payoff for all that telling. If his speeder on Tatooine had been a fighter and he'd have been pulling off crazy stunts in the canyons, there wouldn't be any tension or doubt about whether he can handle the X-wing and live up to what's been told.

To compare with for example Rey's lightsaber skills, sure, she's good with her staff. Is that clear enough characterization to justify her being able to handle a lightsaber ok'ish later? I guess for someone it is, for someone else it isn't. But I'm pretty sure that if in addition to the pilot helmet, she had been shown playing with a broken lightsaber having a little imaginary lightsaber fight (which would have been silly for other reasons), then that would have been enough for almost anyone; it'd have established that she knows what kind of weapon it is and has thought about how they would be used and has had lots of mental practise. Or if she had been shown being generally good with improvised melee weapons or something once or twice.

P.S. The real problem in ANH is why Red leader would name the newbie to lead the last attack run and to "take" two veterans as his wingmen. :lol:

That's pretty much my point. As for "show don't tell": I agree, that it's generally easier for both the storyteller to present and the audience to understand. But what I was about was that if there's no need for the scene that does the showing in the context of the story, then it's better to leave that scene out and do some telling instead. Unless it's just another stupid action movie, of course.
Title: Re: <SPOILERS>Official The Force Awakens Thread<SPOILERS>
Post by: Akalabeth Angel on December 31, 2015, 01:13:37 pm
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Furthermore does the conflict in the PT mirror a Crusade? Bearing in mind that the Crusades were expeditions to liberate the holy land. Not the defense of a political state.
How can I even comment that? It's just a term. It's origins can be totally different as we are in alternate universe.

#1 We're not in an alternate universe. We're in a Galaxy Far Far Away
#2 If this is your mentality in this discussion then there's really no point in having it. If you're going to wantonly disregard the meaning of a word then you're going to wantonly disregard anything you see as not concrete in order to maintain your own opinion.

For example:
I never thought "My father" refers to Bail Organa. I guess Organa told her that she is adopted, her father fought in the Clone Wars and he also mentioned Obi-wan - that's why Leia tries to call Obi-wan for help in the first place.

Critical analysis require a little more reliance on reality, and a lot less reliance on your own imagination.
Title: Re: <SPOILERS>Official The Force Awakens Thread<SPOILERS>
Post by: CountBuggula on December 31, 2015, 03:21:09 pm
While I understand that Star Wars is an emotional topic for many of us, and I'm all for having spirited debates about it, I need everyone to do a better job of being civil.  I'd really rather not have to delete anybody's posts here, but if I see any further personal attacks (or anything even resembling it) I will do so.  Consider yourselves warned.

Now...carry on, and may the force be with you.
Title: Re: <SPOILERS>Official The Force Awakens Thread<SPOILERS>
Post by: Akalabeth Angel on December 31, 2015, 07:55:28 pm
What? Did you even watched/read/played anything between EIII and EIV? Anakin was leading the clone assault on the temple, himself killed a bunch of younglings and probably some Jedi too. Then, as Vader, he was hunting Jedi for many years. It'd be strange if PT showed events that took place after PT :P. But the other SW-universe productions mention that. Ever played The Force Unleashed?

Incidentally, but just for your information, the Force Unleashed isn't canon.
Nothing is canon except for the 7 movies, the animated movie, the Clone Wars and Star Wars Rebels. Plus any materials released after 2014
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Wars_canon

Thus, robot-legs Maul is canon. Blue man Thrawn is not.

And no. Haven't played the force unleashed. Looks more like Prototype then Star Wars
Title: Re: <SPOILERS>Official The Force Awakens Thread<SPOILERS>
Post by: Macielos on January 01, 2016, 09:59:44 am
Quote from: CountBuggula
While I understand that Star Wars is an emotional topic for many of us, and I'm all for having spirited debates about it, I need everyone to do a better job of being civil.  I'd really rather not have to delete anybody's posts here, but if I see any further personal attacks (or anything even resembling it) I will do so.  Consider yourselves warned.

Now...carry on, and may the force be with you.
Ok, sorry. We'll restrain ourselves not to use ad personam arguments.

#1 We're not in an alternate universe. We're in a Galaxy Far Far Away
#2 If this is your mentality in this discussion then there's really no point in having it. If you're going to wantonly disregard the meaning of a word then you're going to wantonly disregard anything you see as not concrete in order to maintain your own opinion.
A "galaxy far far away" is a galaxy developing independently from ours, not a future of the Milky Way, therefore words used in SW could've been originated from very different forms than ours. So the argument that the word "crusade" used in this context does not match its historical meaning is invalid.

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Critical analysis require a little more reliance on reality, and a lot less reliance on your own imagination.
The problem is some facts are simply not stated clearly in SW films, therefore there is much room for individual viewer's imagination. Leia's plot is a good example, as it is not explained clearly in NH if she knew she was adopted. When in RotJ Luke asks Leia about her mother, her memories may refer her foster mother, Queen Breha of Alderaan, not Padme, as Luke tells her he's her brother a few moments later. If she didn't know that before, "you served my father" is a mismatch, but "do you remember your mother" is not. If she knew, it's the opposite.

As it was said a few posts earlier, films rarely explain things as clearly as you would want.

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Incidentally, but just for your information, the Force Unleashed isn't canon.
Nothing is canon except for the 7 movies, the animated movie, the Clone Wars and Star Wars Rebels. Plus any materials released after 2014
Ok, let's take fully canonical SW: Rebels which includes the Empire and Vader hunting down the last Jedi. I think there is a consensus in all, both canon and non-canon SW stories and films that Jedi hunt took place EIII and EIV and that Vader, emperor's right hand, was one of its top executors.

You argued that Vader was not murdering Jedi in RotS apart from Jedi temple assault. He did it between RotS and NH, throughout the 18 years from turning to dark side to NH. It would be strange if PT included event that took place after PT :P. There is no conflict between PT and OT here.
Title: Re: <SPOILERS>Official The Force Awakens Thread<SPOILERS>
Post by: Akalabeth Angel on January 01, 2016, 02:10:21 pm
A "galaxy far far away" is a galaxy developing independently from ours, not a future of the Milky Way, therefore words used in SW could've been originated from very different forms than ours. So the argument that the word "crusade" used in this context does not match its historical meaning is invalid.

You're grasping at straws you realize right?
Regardless of what language we're speaking, the person who wrote the script spoke english and they chose that word for a specific reason.  It's arrogant for a viewer to assume that he knows the author's intent better than the author does. And yes I realize the irony of that statement but we're not exploring author intent we're exploring how concrete information of the past in OT has been portrayed in the PT.

The problem is some facts are simply not stated clearly in SW films, therefore there is much room for individual viewer's imagination. Leia's plot is a good example, as it is not explained clearly in NH if she knew she was adopted. When in RotJ Luke asks Leia about her mother, her memories may refer her foster mother, Queen Breha of Alderaan, not Padme, as Luke tells her he's her brother a few moments later. If she didn't know that before, "you served my father" is a mismatch, but "do you remember your mother" is not. If she knew, it's the opposite.

Leia isn't adopted.  In RotJ it's clearly implied that she knew her mother as a small child.   That makes Organa at best her step-father. There's nothing to indicate in the films whatsoever that she believes her father is anything but her father.

If she knew Organa was not her father, she would have stated his name not her relationship to him.


As it was said a few posts earlier, films rarely explain things as clearly as you would want.

Only if you're looking for ambiguity. If you take things at face value and believe the characters intent then there's no ambiguity at all.
Films are written to convey information to the audience with the least amount of time possible.  Ambiguous information is self-defeating. No person who watched Star Wars for the first time would have any reason to doubt Leia's words about her father.  You're frankly viewing that sentence in the context of the prequels which is simply incorrect.

When Leia says her father. You can view it in one of three ways and in a specific order:
1. In the context of Episode IV alone
2. In the context of Episode IV + Return of the Jedi where Luke reveals Vader is her father
3. In the context of the previous two plus Revenge of the Sith

There's zero indication in 1 or 2 that Leia believes she's adopted. And #3 is the problem which is the whole contention.


Ok, let's take fully canonical SW: Rebels which includes the Empire and Vader hunting down the last Jedi. I think there is a consensus in all, both canon and non-canon SW stories and films that Jedi hunt took place EIII and EIV and that Vader, emperor's right hand, was one of its top executors.

You argued that Vader was not murdering Jedi in RotS apart from Jedi temple assault. He did it between RotS and NH, throughout the 18 years from turning to dark side to NH. It would be strange if PT included event that took place after PT :P. There is no conflict between PT and OT here.

You do realize how paradoxical your statement is?
There's no conflict between OT and the PT because of things not in the PT? No.
And for one, howabout the fact the Obi Wan is on Tatooine and not aware of what's happening to the other Jedi? Both he and Yoda hermitted up.

Regardless it's par for the course for other media to try and explain the failings of Lucas's PT work. That's standard fare. Undoubtedly the clone wars tries to portray Obi Wan and Anakin more as friends as well to make up for the failings of Attack of the Clones. 

Personally I believe the movies should stand on their own. Other media should provide supplementary material, not necessary material.  If outside information is necessary that means the movie has a problem.

Title: Re: <SPOILERS>Official The Force Awakens Thread<SPOILERS>
Post by: Aesaar on January 01, 2016, 09:31:40 pm
Right, because those were totally treated the same way.  It's not like it took Luke two movies to actually fight with a lightsaber (a fight he lost).  Nope, it's exactly the same.  Because Luke could fly an X-Wing, it's perfectly ok for someone to have instant Jedi skills the moment they pick up a lightsaber.  Doesn't cheapen Luke's arc at all.  Nope.

He wasted his time going to see Yoda, didn't he?  Becoming a Jedi is obviously really easy.


You're comparing Luke's evolution as a swordfighter with Reys, but that's not the comparison I was making.

ANH tells us that Luke is a gifted pilot. It doesn't show us, mind you, it alludes to the fact by having Luke play with some toy and have Obi Wan point out that his father was remarkably gifted in that area. There are deleted scenes where Luke talks about wanting to join the imperial Academy to become a pilot, but that's all there is to it. If we apply the same standards you're using to judge Rey's ability to fight with swords, then the fact that Luke gets his own X-Wing and manages to survive in a rather hostile environment, then we see that he too seems to be "instantly skilled the moment he grabs the flight stick".

Now, TFA actually takes the time to show that Rey is capable in close quarters fighting. At the moment she grabs the saber, her abilities as a fighter are better established than Luke's piloting skill when the battle for Yavin starts, and yet you take offence at Rey? I find that a bit disingenuous, really.
Flying an air/spacecraft doesn't seem to be a terribly special thing in the Star Wars universe.  It's treated like driving a car.  Even Luke, a somewhat poor farmer of a ****hole planet owned one of these (http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/T-16_Skyhopper).  Sure, moving instantly from flying that to flying a main-line starfighter might be a bit of a stretch, but it isn't that much of a leap since, as mentioned before, Luke's skills are talked up a lot.  It isn't a terribly special skill, and Luke was also flying with a droid specifically meant to assist in flying and maintaining fighters in combat conditions, and he never actually goes up against any enemy pilots one on one in ANH (unlike Rey flying the Falcon in this movie).

Lightsabers were always treated as being special.  Again, Luke doesn't use one in real combat until the end of ESB (after he's been trained by both Obi-Wan and Yoda).  It's never been a weapon you just pick up and use, yet Finn and Rey manage to put up a good fight the very first time they pick one up.  Same goes with the Force and Rey's instantaneous mastery of force persuasion (something Luke didn't use until ROTJ).

And that's why this whole thing annoys me.  In the span of one movie, Rey does pretty much everything Luke does over the course of the original trilogy.  She's an ace pilot with the Falcon (outflying two TIE fighters the first time she was at the controls), she learns to use the force and a lightsaber hours after she learns they exist, and she then wins against a Dark Jedi.  It just completely cheapens Luke's character arc and makes her feel like a bit of a Mary Sue.  Which is a shame because she'd be a great character if the script didn't dictate that she must win at everything.
Title: Re: <SPOILERS>Official The Force Awakens Thread<SPOILERS>
Post by: Mongoose on January 01, 2016, 11:37:49 pm
The problem I have with people saying "Scrubs like Finn and Rey shouldn't stand a chance against a fully-trained Dark Jedi" is that it glosses over what's actually going on in that scene.  First off, Kylo is in seriously bad shape even at the start of that fight.  He's just suffered a massive wound, and  even more pressingly, he's no doubt in all sorts of emotional turmoil given the confrontation that just happened.  The only times we see Kylo, or really any Jedi, pull off notable feats is when they're emotionally focused, whether in calmness or anger.  Kylo's nowhere near that state, so expecting him to do the likes of freeze a blaster bolt (so badass) isn't gonna happen.  And the fight itself?  Sure, Finn holds his own for a minute or two, no doubt drawing on his own combat training, but he gets royally ****ed up and nearly killed in short order.  And Rey?  I wouldn't call most of what she was doing "fighting" so much as "running the hell away."  She's constantly backpedaling, flailing away, putting more effort into getting some distance from Kylo than actually striking at him.  It isn't until that final moment where she instinctively calls on the Force that she can be said to have the upper hand.  Before that, I don't think she was really making out much better than Luke did against Vader in Cloud City, and that's keeping in mind that Vader was a far stronger Jedi than Kylo.

As for the broader point, it's made apparent early on that Rey has a powerful natural affinity for the Force, to the point where simply touching Luke's lightsaber provokes an intense vision in her.  Whether you choose to interpret her piloting skill in light of that, or just as an inbuilt talent, is up to you, though keep in mind that the only reason she shook those TIEs at the beginning is because she had an intimate grasp of the local terrain.  Also keep in mind that Rey apparently grew up hearing stories about Jedi in general, and Luke in particular.  Her fending off Kylo's mental probing (that scene just made me feel dirty) was pure instinct, but after she had a chance to stop and think, she must have remembered tales of "Jedi mind tricks" and started to put two and two together.  Untrained or not, a powerful Force user being able to overwhelm a weak mind hardly seems that far-fetched.  I mean I guess you can follow that up with the thought that Rey being that naturally strong with the Force makes her a Sue anyway, but at that point you'd have to level the same complaint at Luke being able to pull off a physics-defying torpedo shot that was impossible even for a targeting computer with no formal training whatsoever himself.  Plus, given Rey's heavily-implied lineage (whichever way you lean with it), she's just picking up the family business.
Title: Re: <SPOILERS>Official The Force Awakens Thread<SPOILERS>
Post by: Akalabeth Angel on January 02, 2016, 12:08:24 am
And that's why this whole thing annoys me.  In the span of one movie, Rey does pretty much everything Luke does over the course of the original trilogy. 

The movie is basically a bunch of references

Death Star: Check
Death Star Trench Run: Check
Deactivate Tractor Beam before encounter / Shield Sabotage Team: Check
"I sense someone" & "I Am your father": Check
Desert World, Yaavin World, Coruscant, Artic World: Check
"My Love Just got Kidnapped": Check
Obi Wan / Yoda: Check
Millenium Captured, Fending off Tie Fighters & Flying in Tight Spaces: Check
"There is a threat in their attack" Officer: Check
Spooky Jedi Cave Vision: Check
Mos Eisley Cantina: Check
People After Han for debts: Check
Analying Data & Briefing: Check
Hidding in the Millenium Floor before being boarded: Check
Droid with Sought-After, Secret Data: Check
Alderan Go Boom & Yaavin under threat: Check
End movie on cliff Hangar: Check
Mystery Hologram Boss with circular broadcast platform: Check
Go save my sith apprentice who just got his ass kicked: Check

Then in addition you've got out-of-Star Wars stuff:
Nazi Address
Vulcan implosion planet from Star Trek 2009
Hiroshima / Sheridan's wife screaming

etcetera

This is so little in this movie that isn't directly taken from the other star wars movies, even the prequels.
Title: Re: <SPOILERS>Official The Force Awakens Thread<SPOILERS>
Post by: swashmebuckle on January 02, 2016, 01:02:18 am
SW has always been very much pieced together from other movies, and I think that whatever directors follow on with these are going to have to find some more diverse source material, as that was the big strength of the original. You really lose the spark when it's reduced to self reference as opposed to ideas from truly different worlds being combined.

I kinda doubt that Disney will hire a director capable of doing that seeing as how they're making billions treading this very conservative path, but maybe after enough meh SW movies have come out (they're doing one every year!) their returns will decline to the point where they will be forced to try different things to squeeze more money out of it. That's my new hope.
Title: Re: <SPOILERS>Official The Force Awakens Thread<SPOILERS>
Post by: Aesaar on January 02, 2016, 01:47:48 am
The problem I have with people saying "Scrubs like Finn and Rey shouldn't stand a chance against a fully-trained Dark Jedi" is that it glosses over what's actually going on in that scene.  First off, Kylo is in seriously bad shape even at the start of that fight.  He's just suffered a massive wound, and  even more pressingly, he's no doubt in all sorts of emotional turmoil given the confrontation that just happened.  The only times we see Kylo, or really any Jedi, pull off notable feats is when they're emotionally focused, whether in calmness or anger.  Kylo's nowhere near that state, so expecting him to do the likes of freeze a blaster bolt (so badass) isn't gonna happen.  And the fight itself?  Sure, Finn holds his own for a minute or two, no doubt drawing on his own combat training, but he gets royally ****ed up and nearly killed in short order.  And Rey?  I wouldn't call most of what she was doing "fighting" so much as "running the hell away."  She's constantly backpedaling, flailing away, putting more effort into getting some distance from Kylo than actually striking at him.  It isn't until that final moment where she instinctively calls on the Force that she can be said to have the upper hand.  Before that, I don't think she was really making out much better than Luke did against Vader in Cloud City, and that's keeping in mind that Vader was a far stronger Jedi than Kylo.
The issue isn't that it makes sense for her to beat him.  You can come up with a dozen handwaves for why that could happen, but it doesn't make it any better.  If a TIE fighter got shot down and crashed on Kylo Ren during the fight and killed him instantly, it would still make perfect sense in-universe. 

She shouldn't win that fight, and she shouldn't be fighting with a lightsaber proficiently because she hasn't earned these things.  Luke did.  Luke went through two movies before he could fight with a lightsaber competently.  He worked for that, and that's what made the first Luke-Vader duel so good: it shows you how far Luke's come.  Flying a fighter was never treated as a significant step.  Being a pilot isn't the end-state of Luke's character arc, and it stops mattering the moment ANH ends because of the very action that ends the movie: he uses the Force for the first time.  That was the significant step, not him being a pro pilot (how many TIEs did he kill in that battle anyway?  One?).  And the next movie pretty much revolves around his gradual shift from his blaster pistol to his lightsaber as his go-to weapon.

Rey gets none of that.  Her wielding a lightsaber, or using force persuasion, or beating Kylo Ren aren't victories she earned.  They were just handed to her by plot contrivance, and in doing so, those achievements were stripped of value.  And that weakens Luke's arc.  You can't just handwave that away by saying she's special, or Ren was wounded or he's a ****ty duelist. 

This isn't a plot issue.  It's a story issue.

Title: Re: <SPOILERS>Official The Force Awakens Thread<SPOILERS>
Post by: Crashdown117 on January 02, 2016, 03:54:17 am
She shouldn't win that fight, and she shouldn't be fighting with a lightsaber proficiently because she hasn't earned these things.  Luke did.  Luke went through two movies before he could fight with a lightsaber competently.  He worked for that, and that's what made the first Luke-Vader duel so good: it shows you how far Luke's come.  Flying a fighter was never treated as a significant step.  Being a pilot isn't the end-state of Luke's character arc, and it stops mattering the moment ANH ends because of the very action that ends the movie: he uses the Force for the first time.  That was the significant step, not him being a pro pilot (how many TIEs did he kill in that battle anyway?  One?).  And the next movie pretty much revolves around his gradual shift from his blaster pistol to his lightsaber as his go-to weapon.

Thank you for that one. Just thank you.
Title: Re: <SPOILERS>Official The Force Awakens Thread<SPOILERS>
Post by: Dragon on January 02, 2016, 03:01:34 pm
Just saw it. Not a bad movie, if a bit disjointed. Regarding Rey vs. Kylo Ren, I actually feel this had worked, though obvious chosen one is obvious. :) It might have been better if her "destiny" was a bit less hamfisted. That said, apart from the first scene, I got a feeling that Kylo Ren was actually a very crappy "Dark Jedi". He wasn't well trained at all, he just thought he was. Aside from the scene with the blaster bolt, he's not seen doing anything that would hint he's anywhere near OT Jedi. Indeed, quite the opposite, and it's shown he knows it. Kylo Ren was not a proper Dark Jedi. He was a very angry wannabe who had some basic training, nothing more. Notice how he's tearing up everything around him, wasting his energy on trashing his own base. Vader, on the other hand, was the epitome of tranquil fury, killing people for failure, but otherwise showing emotion only in extreme situations, or to use the Dark Side powers. When we see experienced Dark Jedi (Dooku, Vader, Palpatine), they're quite collected, saving their fury for the times they use their powers. It is very clear that Kylo Ren has barely any control over himself, thus probably preventing him from being a truly effective darksider, as opposed to pulling an odd telekinetic trick when he's still reasonably collected. I'd expect anyone with actual experience, force powers and fencing experience to be able to wipe the floor with Rey, despite her quaterstaff training.

As for what Millennium Falcon did, I think it was actually quite well done. Both exiting the hangar directly into hyperspace and going through the shield are treated like utterly crazy things to do. From what it looked like, they might have actually started to exit right outside the atmosphere (maybe even outside the shield, given that he said they were going to go through at lightspeed) and got into it during the deceleration phase. Remember, Earth's atmosphere is pretty thin at 100km already and 400km is high enough for ISS to fly. In space terms, 100km isn't a lot, and they definitely were going straight down. Of course, that's exactly why it was such a risky maneuver, but come on, it's friggin' Han Solo. Probably the only pilot good enough to pull this of and the only one mad enough to even think about trying it. The in-universe reaction among the pilot community would've probably been similar as on this forum. :) I just hope nobody thinks to make it a regularly used trick later on.

Other than that, ANH rehashed. Lazy plot, but "The Hidden Fortress" is not a story that gets boring after being told once. I liked the new characters and especially the new stormtroopers. The TIE fighters were a bit odd (dunno what was the big idea behind having a gunner in one of those dinky things), but I suppose it did work out. Seeing one of them piloted by the main characters was a welcome change. They also did a better job of making First Order look like an Evil Empire, something which the Galactic Empire didn't really convey all that well. You could actually root for the Empire (Vader and Tarkin could be pretty much directly blamed on the evil stuff we see it do), but I'd imagine the Order isn't going to have quite as many fans.

One thing I'm hoping they'll do in ep. 8 would be giving Rey a double-bladed lightsaber. Going to it from the quaterstaff (which with she's quite handy already) seems like a logical transition. For some reason, I just "see" her using this kind of weapon.
Title: Re: <SPOILERS>Official The Force Awakens Thread<SPOILERS>
Post by: deathspeed on January 02, 2016, 08:15:40 pm
I had been avoiding this thread but I just saw this movie.  I went there hoping for an enjoyable experience, and I was not disappointed!

I got the "soft-reboot of ANH" vibe, which didn't really bother me.  I did wonder a bit about Rey's piloting and light saber skills, but chalked it up to the force being so strong in her helping her natural skills (piloting small craft and using her staff).  For Finn I chalked his skills up to his life-long stormtrooper training.  And Han Solo is Alpha 1, so he can do anything in the Millenium Falcon that he can think of.
Title: Re: <SPOILERS>Official The Force Awakens Thread<SPOILERS>
Post by: Dragon on January 02, 2016, 08:38:50 pm
Provided the Falcon feels like cooperating on that particular day, of course. Pity ol' Solo ended up dead, Rey now has some pretty big shoes to fill. Fortunately, she still has Chewie. :)

Lightsabers in general don't seem to be "Force user-only" weapons, like EU has often depicted them, but simply impractical in hands of someone who's not fast enough to deflect blaster bolts with them. Finn probably had better qualifications to handle a lightsaber (thanks to electrostaff training he likely got as Stormtrooper) than Rey. Neither was anywhere close to where Luke was during his duel with Vader, but then Kylo Ren wasn't a particularly powerful darksider, either. In fact, he was quite pathetic when you think about it. That said, given the state he was left in, the next time he appears he's going to be a lot closer to Vader in at least one way... :) (TBH, this was probably intended).
Title: Re: <SPOILERS>Official The Force Awakens Thread<SPOILERS>
Post by: Akalabeth Angel on January 02, 2016, 10:58:59 pm
The problem isn't that Ray or Finn can use a lightsaber, the problem is that they make Kyle Ren more powerful than Vader and then have him lose/struggle against them. If they just portray him as being a bit **** himself it would have been fine but when the guy can effortless stop a blaster bolt and read the minds of people he's not even focused on, then it becomes a problem.

In fact that's another thing I found, un-star wars like in this film.  In RotJ sure there were moments where the emperor and vader could read Luke Skywalker to an extent but in this movie it's more on the level of vulcan mind melds or Psi-Cop interrogations  or something.

Basically they always feel the need to one-up what came before. Instead of a Death Star shooting a laser, now it's a planet which consumes a sun to shoot a lightspeed-level beam which magically splits up into 3-4 different beams and destroys several targets simultaneously.

It's kind of silly.

Then they want to incorporate re-used elements from the previous movies and unsurprisingly some of those things don't match up.
Title: Re: <SPOILERS>Official The Force Awakens Thread<SPOILERS>
Post by: MatthTheGeek on January 03, 2016, 02:30:24 am
the problem is that they make Kyle Ren more powerful than Vader
Wat.
Title: Re: <SPOILERS>Official The Force Awakens Thread<SPOILERS>
Post by: zookeeper on January 03, 2016, 03:56:04 am
the problem is that they make Kyle Ren more powerful than Vader
Wat.

What wat? That's the only conclusion you can arrive to from those things, as far as Force powers are concerned anyway.
Title: Re: <SPOILERS>Official The Force Awakens Thread<SPOILERS>
Post by: MatthTheGeek on January 03, 2016, 04:12:29 am
What wat? That's the only conclusion you can arrive to from those things, as far as Force powers are concerned anyway.
Double wat.

Since when having different powers makes you more powerful. A low-level cleric is not more powerful than a high-level warrior, even though the warrior cannot use support spells.

I mean, it's spelled out multiple times during the film than Ren isn't as powerful as Vader, and that he's trying to become as powerful as Vader.

Guys. Srsly.
Title: Re: <SPOILERS>Official The Force Awakens Thread<SPOILERS>
Post by: Crashdown117 on January 03, 2016, 04:16:18 am
the problem is that they make Kyle Ren more powerful than Vader
Wat.

What wat? That's the only conclusion you can arrive to from those things, as far as Force powers are concerned anyway.

Wait a minute. Ren more powerful than Vader???
What does the guy do in TFA?
He breaks somebody's will in an interrogation cell. Vader/Anakin is able to do this, too. It's basically just the dark side version of Ben Kenobi's "These are not the droids you are looking for" seen in ANH, so it's a rather basic Force power IMO.
He stops a blaster beam in mid-air. OK, Vader "catches" it with his hand and shows us his palm unwounded in ESB, but still.
He shows off some quite good lightsaber skills. Vader fights Luke twice, once in each ESB and ROTJ respectively, but he doesn't lose the first fight. And he actually has to fight Ben before killing him.

Conclusion: Kylo Ren is trying to be Galaxy's Next Darth Vader (evidenced by Vader's old helmet/mask) and since his training has not yet been completed he cannot be more powerful than a fully trained Sith lord who was the one to bring balance to the Force, the chosen one. (Yes, I am referring to prequel content here) Is he about equal to Vader then? Not sure, but maybe. One day for sure he will be.

it's spelled out multiple times during the film than Ren isn't as powerful as Vader, and that he's trying to become as powerful as Vader.
Title: Re: <SPOILERS>Official The Force Awakens Thread<SPOILERS>
Post by: zookeeper on January 03, 2016, 04:49:07 am
Come on now. If you have someone freeze a laser bolt in mid-air and keep it there without even concentrating, then they're clearly being portrayed as more powerful than Vader as far as Force powers go. Whether they're portrayed as weaker later on doesn't change that.
Title: Re: <SPOILERS>Official The Force Awakens Thread<SPOILERS>
Post by: MatthTheGeek on January 03, 2016, 04:54:39 am
If you have someone freeze a laser bolt in mid-air and keep it there without even concentrating, then they're clearly being portrayed as more powerful than Vader as far as Force powers go.
Ok, just so you know, repeating the same thing again without any additional reasoning doesn't make it more true. This premise does not lead to that conclusion.
Title: Re: <SPOILERS>Official The Force Awakens Thread<SPOILERS>
Post by: Dragon on January 03, 2016, 05:49:45 am
The blaster bolt scene was strange, but everything after that makes it clear that Kylo Ren is nothing more than a pathetic wannabe. He does have a few tricks under his belt, but aside from the bolt, what does he do? He does mess with peoples' minds (not hard at all, seeing as Rey does manage it without any training) and even there he fails the first time he tries it on someone with strong will. He throws people around, which was shown to be a basic Jedi skill (which he probably learned back when he trained with Luke). And... that's it. He can't focus his emotions at all and is shown to be easily enraged to the point of trashing his own base. Contrast with Vader, who could apply his Force Choke over about a significant distance (from his quarters to Executor's bridge) and was very collected even when he was enraged.

Kylo Ren is outright stated (by himself, no less!) to be inferior to Vader. IMO, the lightsaber fight only serves to highlight how much he actually sucks, seeing that he uses no force powers beyond the opening throw (presumably being too angry to do so) and even his lightsaber skills seem lacking. Admittedly the comparisons are crazy PT stunts and slow, very technical combat scenes from the OT, but in the end, Vader still wiped the floor with Luke while being handicapped by his cyborg body. Kylo Ren lost to a Stormtrooper and one completely untrained girl.
Title: Re: <SPOILERS>Official The Force Awakens Thread<SPOILERS>
Post by: Phantom Hoover on January 03, 2016, 06:34:44 am
What wat? That's the only conclusion you can arrive to from those things, as far as Force powers are concerned anyway.
Double wat.

Since when having different powers makes you more powerful. A low-level cleric is not more powerful than a high-level warrior, even though the warrior cannot use support spells.

I mean, it's spelled out multiple times during the film than Ren isn't as powerful as Vader, and that he's trying to become as powerful as Vader.

Guys. Srsly.

Show, don't tell. What does Vader actually do in the OT? He chokes a couple of officers, steals Han's gun and senses things a few times.
Title: Re: <SPOILERS>Official The Force Awakens Thread<SPOILERS>
Post by: Erkhyan on January 03, 2016, 07:32:51 am
Show, don't tell. What does Vader actually do in the OT? He chokes a couple of officers, steals Han's gun and senses things a few times.
Are we still firmly into “only the movies count and not other non-movie canon material” territory here? Because Rebels and Marvel’s canon comic series have both been doing an awful lot of showing.
Title: Re: <SPOILERS>Official The Force Awakens Thread<SPOILERS>
Post by: Mongoose on January 03, 2016, 01:31:22 pm
Show, don't tell. What does Vader actually do in the OT? He chokes a couple of officers, steals Han's gun and senses things a few times.
...and stops point-blank blaster shots with his bare (robot) hand, and flings multiple massive objects at Luke while simultaneously dueling him, and probably one or two other things that I'm neglecting.  Most importantly, he manages all of this while staying calm and focused, attributes that we've seen allow one to unleash one's actual Force potential.

Seriously, I can't see at all how someone can sit through what this film shows and come away thinking, "Kylo Ren is way better than Vader."
Title: Re: <SPOILERS>Official The Force Awakens Thread<SPOILERS>
Post by: zookeeper on January 03, 2016, 02:27:05 pm
Seriously, I can't see at all how someone can sit through what this film shows and come away thinking, "Kylo Ren is way better than Vader."

Why would you need to? No one's said that.
Title: Re: <SPOILERS>Official The Force Awakens Thread<SPOILERS>
Post by: Mongoose on January 03, 2016, 02:30:50 pm
You yourself did: "Kylo Ren was portrayed as more powerful than Vader."  My response is that the film shows us the exact opposite, and Ren himself knows this.
Title: Re: <SPOILERS>Official The Force Awakens Thread<SPOILERS>
Post by: zookeeper on January 03, 2016, 02:49:30 pm
You yourself did: "Kylo Ren was portrayed as more powerful than Vader."  My response is that the film shows us the exact opposite, and Ren himself knows this.

Yes, he was first portrayed as more powerful than Vader, and then as weaker than Vader. No one was saying that there weren't moments when he was weaker than Vader, but that there were moment(s) when he was stronger than Vader. And that's like, obviously a completely different thing than, in your words, sitting through the film and coming away thinking Kylo Ren would kick Vader's ass in-universe.
Title: Re: <SPOILERS>Official The Force Awakens Thread<SPOILERS>
Post by: General Battuta on January 03, 2016, 03:53:52 pm
I like the Kylo Ren character a lot. He's especially interesting to see in the next movie after Revenge of the Sith, since he resembles Hayden-Anakin in a mask more than Hayden-Anakin resembled Vader.
Title: Re: <SPOILERS>Official The Force Awakens Thread<SPOILERS>
Post by: swashmebuckle on January 03, 2016, 04:34:19 pm
Episode IX: My Grandpa Could Beat Up Your Grandpa
Title: Re: <SPOILERS>Official The Force Awakens Thread<SPOILERS>
Post by: Dragon on January 03, 2016, 04:59:17 pm
Yes, he was first portrayed as more powerful than Vader, and then as weaker than Vader. No one was saying that there weren't moments when he was weaker than Vader, but that there were moment(s) when he was stronger than Vader.
Did you consider that he might just have had a different bag of tricks than Vader? The only time I clearly saw him do something Vader probably couldn't was the scene with the blaster bolt. Seeing as Vader could absorb one into his hand (dunno if that was using the Force, or if it was just his glove being though), he didn't really need that particular power. With the amount of things you can do with the Force, even an experienced Sith won't know every technique. They trained under different masters, so there might have been some specific areas in which Kylo was better than Vader. As far as I saw it, though, they were few and far between. Unless, of course, by "powerful" you meant "raw natural" power, that is, midichlorians each of them was born with. That could very well be (we don't know how inheriting midichlorians works), but then raw power doesn't make up for his lack of skill.

There's a bit of inconsistency regarding just how good Kylo is, but the intended impression seems to be "not very good". He did pull of some impressive feats, but overall he seemed inferior to me. Also, given his personality, he might have learned those impressive techniques precisely because they're impressive. Vader was hardly the one to show off. "Catching" a blaster bolt like Vader did would probably be more practical, but a blob of plasma frozen in the air looks much more visually impressive.
Title: Re: <SPOILERS>Official The Force Awakens Thread<SPOILERS>
Post by: Akalabeth Angel on January 03, 2016, 06:07:41 pm
What wat? That's the only conclusion you can arrive to from those things, as far as Force powers are concerned anyway.
Double wat.

Since when having different powers makes you more powerful. A low-level cleric is not more powerful than a high-level warrior, even though the warrior cannot use support spells.

I mean, it's spelled out multiple times during the film than Ren isn't as powerful as Vader, and that he's trying to become as powerful as Vader.

Guys. Srsly.

Vader blocked blaster bolts with his hand.
Kylo Ren blocked blaster bolts with his mind.

Which do you think is more powerful?

Kylo Ren also used the force to paralyze people.
When did Vader do that? Never.

When would it have been EXTREMELY useful? The Empire Strikes Back.
You know who could have also paralyzed someone? The Emperor paralyzing Vader before he threw him to his death.


Blocking blaster bolts. Telekenetically paralyzing people. Interrogating people with the force. These are all new abilities and superior to anything displayed in the previous 6 movies.

He breaks somebody's will in an interrogation cell. Vader/Anakin is able to do this, too.

Neither Vader or the Emperor ever interrogate anyone with the force.
They only read emotionally-charged surface level thoughts from Luke.

Whereas Ren literally interrogates people with the force.

Conclusion: Kylo Ren is trying to be Galaxy's Next Darth Vader (evidenced by Vader's old helmet/mask)

Yeah and if that scene wasn't in the show, would you have the same opinion? "I wanna be Vader, therefore the audience will believe I'm not as good as Vader even though I'm displaying much more powerful abilities".  In nerd speak, that scene is a mind trick to make you believe he's not as good as vader even though everything in the movie points to him being superior than the "chosen one"


Title: Re: <SPOILERS>Official The Force Awakens Thread<SPOILERS>
Post by: zookeeper on January 03, 2016, 06:17:21 pm
Did you consider that he might just have had a different bag of tricks than Vader?

Sure. Obviously there's no rules for how many talent or skill points you need for this or that power, but I can't really see the blaster bolt thing as something that Obi-wan, Vader or Luke could have pulled off in the OT even if they had really devoted themselves to practising it for years. Pushing a blaster bolt to the side a bit so it misses? Sure. Pre-empting it and simply dodging? Yeah, why not. Catching it and maybe absorbing some of the energy so that your armoured mechanical hand doesn't wear out quite as much? Absolutely.

But freezing a blaster bolt in mid-air and being able to hold it there for a prolonged period without seemingly having to concentrate on it much at all to me clearly requires the kind of extreme influence over physical reality that none of the aforementioned three could have managed. Even Yoda's big feat, requiring great concentration, is to just slowly lift a fighter up from a swamp.

As said, there's no exact rules so no one can prove who could do what, all that the audience gets is a fuzzy impression of how hard certain things are, and thus how skilled the person doing it needs to be. Does someone really think that the blaster bolt feat as seen in the film doesn't feel more powerful than anything we see Vader do?
Title: Re: <SPOILERS>Official The Force Awakens Thread<SPOILERS>
Post by: NGTM-1R on January 03, 2016, 11:33:07 pm
Honestly I'm not even sure why it's necessary to assume the blaster bolt is any different from any other time we've seen a force user use telekinesis. As the blaster bolt is either massless or has very little mass because it's a blaster bolt, it's also the weakest use of it in the series.

It demonstrates a great deal of finesse and fine reflexes, but there's no reason to assume it was some kind of reality-warping time-stop power we should all be in awe of.
Title: Re: <SPOILERS>Official The Force Awakens Thread<SPOILERS>
Post by: Akalabeth Angel on January 03, 2016, 11:54:18 pm
Honestly I'm not even sure why it's necessary to assume the blaster bolt is any different from any other time we've seen a force user use telekinesis. As the blaster bolt is either massless or has very little mass because it's a blaster bolt, it's also the weakest use of it in the series.

Do you not understand the difference between picking up a box and stopping a bullet?

Further do you know how many Jedi got killed by blaster bolts in Episodes II and III? Did you ever see any of them stop a single blaster shot?


there's no reason to assume it was some kind of reality-warping time-stop power we should all be in awe of.

Given that the director most likely added that shot in order to make Kylo Ren look cool/powerful I find your reasoning faulty on multiple levels.
If it was nothing to be in awe of, then it would have been shown and discarded not made to be a showcase to both the audience and the characters.
Title: Re: <SPOILERS>Official The Force Awakens Thread<SPOILERS>
Post by: NGTM-1R on January 04, 2016, 12:11:42 am
Do you not understand the difference between picking up a box and stopping a bullet?

Do you not understand the difference between how a trained Force-user perceives the world and how we do?

No, it's clear you don't.

Force users are shown, repeatedly, to be able to stop bullets. They don't simply hold out their hand and make them stop in mid-air usually, but stopping a "bullet" is something we've seen them do before, many times. Vader just sucked one up. Dozens of Jedi in the prequels as well as Luke were shown to be able to stop them or redirect them with a lightsaber, and even just dodge them even at times when by rights this shouldn't be possible.

The reflexes required to prevent a blaster bolt from hitting you at short range by hook or by crook are amazing to us.

They are normal to Kylo Ren, as indeed they are normal to most Force-users. His method is flashy. That does not make it powerful.

Your argument about why the director chose it is facile on multiple levels. First, as noted, his method is visually impressive but ultimately no more effective than most, and even less effective than some (during the prequels and the sail barge fight Jedi are shown to be able to redirect blaster fire at their attackers or to other targets as they desire, turning the weapons of their enemies to their own purpose). Second, while it was obviously chosen because it was visually impressive, the fact that Kylo Ren chose a visually impressive method does not mean of necessity that we are to be in awe of his power. It could equally reflect his ego, be an attempt to intimidate others, or for a host of other reasons that speak to the needs of Kylo Ren. It doesn't have to be as one-dimensional as you want it to be. Third, your argument is explicitly born from the director's interpretation of the scene, rather than a viewer interpretation. Go look up Death of the Author. I'll wait.
Title: Re: <SPOILERS>Official The Force Awakens Thread<SPOILERS>
Post by: Akalabeth Angel on January 04, 2016, 01:28:30 am
Force users are shown, repeatedly, to be able to stop bullets. They don't simply hold out their hand and make them stop in mid-air usually, but stopping a "bullet" is something we've seen them do before, many times. Vader just sucked one up. Dozens of Jedi in the prequels as well as Luke were shown to be able to stop them or redirect them with a lightsaber, and even just dodge them even at times when by rights this shouldn't be possible.

Show me one example in any of the other six Star Wars movie where a force user stops a blaster shot in mid-air using only his mind.
Title: Re: <SPOILERS>Official The Force Awakens Thread<SPOILERS>
Post by: The E on January 04, 2016, 01:41:11 am
Well, Yoda once caught and redirected a bunch of force lightning...
Title: Re: <SPOILERS>Official The Force Awakens Thread<SPOILERS>
Post by: Akalabeth Angel on January 04, 2016, 02:12:03 am
Well, Yoda once caught and redirected a bunch of force lightning...

That's probably the closest analogy, the difference of course being that he was using all his concentration to perform the action rather than nonchalantly walking and chatting.
Title: Re: <SPOILERS>Official The Force Awakens Thread<SPOILERS>
Post by: Dragon on January 04, 2016, 03:54:02 am
I don't really think the lighting bit is relevant, seeing as it's a Force power as well. Yoda not only had to redirect the bolts themselves, he had to mentally fight the user casting them. Force Lighting is a very high level Dark Side power.

I think that the main point of Kylo's blaster bolt trick was, ultimately, looking cool. Indeed, in light of the rest of the movie, I think this might have been one of these scenes (there were more like that) which were visually impressive, but the implications weren't quite thought out. It clashes with what we're shown afterwards.

Also, logically speaking, it just hit me that it's stopping a blaster bolt that would require a lot of energy expenditure and concentration. Keeping it there afterwards would be a trivial trick of little utility. Could Luke levitate a bullet-sized object and hold it in the air during his early days? Probably. This is no different, aside from the initial effort it took to actually bring the bolt to a halt. The motive force is applied to the bolt as it leaves the barrel. It's no wonder Kylo could walk and talk with this thing hanging in the air. It looks to us like it should spring forward the moment he lets go, but it shouldn't. He didn't freeze time, he froze the bolt. He would likely have to put some effort into stopping it from dissipating (talk about showing off...), but that's probably not very hard, either. In light of the above, what he did was a totally pointless show trick that seemed mighty and awesome to everyone who didn't know its workings. That's Kylo Ren, all right. :) This is also why we didn't see it earlier. Other Jedi might have stopped bolts as well, but if they did, they let them drop and dissipate afterwards.

Note that the above is an example of "fridge brilliance" and thus isn't really a plus. When you think "Hey, that scene does make sense after all." the next day (or two...) after watching the movie, this still means something went wrong, just not as badly as you thought.
Title: Re: <SPOILERS>Official The Force Awakens Thread<SPOILERS>
Post by: Erkhyan on January 04, 2016, 04:13:10 am
I’m currently reading Marvel’s Vader Down series, where Vader effortlessly deflects dozens of proton torpedoes in the middle of a furball, destroys several attacking Y-Wings only with his mind, and decimates entire Rebel infantry platoons all by himself.

And then I’m reading people arguing that he’s not that impressive compared to Tantrum Junior.

Ha.
Title: Re: <SPOILERS>Official The Force Awakens Thread<SPOILERS>
Post by: Crashdown117 on January 04, 2016, 06:07:12 am
He breaks somebody's will in an interrogation cell. Vader/Anakin is able to do this, too.

Neither Vader or the Emperor ever interrogate anyone with the force.
They only read emotionally-charged surface level thoughts from Luke.

True, they don't actually do it on-screen. But please read one more sentence that is there. You know, the one right after stating that I think this is merely a mind trick like what Rey does with the stormtrooper when she's in the cell or what Ben Kenobi does in ANH when they arrive at Mos Eisley and the Troopers stop them.

Conclusion: Kylo Ren is trying to be Galaxy's Next Darth Vader (evidenced by Vader's old helmet/mask)

Yeah and if that scene wasn't in the show, would you have the same opinion? "I wanna be Vader, therefore the audience will believe I'm not as good as Vader even though I'm displaying much more powerful abilities".  In nerd speak, that scene is a mind trick to make you believe he's not as good as vader even though everything in the movie points to him being superior than the "chosen one"

Definitely the same opinion, regardless of the existence of that particular scene. I'm only using that shot as evidence, not as the one and only basis for my opinion. But then again, discussing this is a bit stupid, since the scene is in the movie for a reason: To show what Kylo Ren is like. "Wanna be Vader" is a rather important part of his character IMO, as Vader himself is the role model to him, the thing that Kylo Ren wants to achieve. So if he doesn't say/show/convey by mind tricks played on the audience that he looks up to his grandfather and wants to be like him, then his whole character falls apart in my eyes and what's left of him is nothing but a wimp wearing a somewhat Revan-like mask/helmet and wielding an exotic kind of lightsaber. I have to admit though, that some of the stuff he pulls off looks cooler and maybe even superior to Vader's tricks and feats in the OT. But think about one little thing: How to do things like what we see in TFA with the special effects/CGI tech that was available back when they made these three movies?
Title: Re: <SPOILERS>Official The Force Awakens Thread<SPOILERS>
Post by: NGTM-1R on January 04, 2016, 11:43:09 am
Show me one example in any of the other six Star Wars movie where a force user stops a blaster shot in mid-air using only his mind.

Show me an example where they'd want to rather than redirecting it back at them or simply disposing of it permanently. (Indeed, given the close temporal connection it's been argued before that Vader didn't just absorb the blaster bolt, but actually used it to power stealing Han's gun and saving himself some trouble.) Kylo's trick is flashy, but compared to the other options in the hands of a Force-user it's actually one of the least effective.

Your argument that "it's never been done therefore it's impossible" is petty and dumb, as was noted before in this thread. We do not know what others were fully capable of, we only know what we saw them do. That does not prove they were incapable of anything else.
Title: Re: <SPOILERS>Official The Force Awakens Thread<SPOILERS>
Post by: Dragon on January 04, 2016, 12:43:55 pm
Or maybe he wanted to show the futility of using a blaster against him. He simply did that differently than Kylo Ren did. He shrugged off the shots, which is arguably more intimidating than stopping them. If you've got a guy that could answer your question (the one about getting shot) with "I don't care, it doesn't really matter", he's probably not to be messed with. Vader didn't even need to stop them. Same with paralyzing Han. Why bother? Let him try and shoot someone he can't hurt anyway. Remember, Vader's hand, much like the rest of his body, was cybernetics. It might have been stronger than Stormtrooper armor, for all we know (OK, I know it's not saying much :) ).

Of course, that is assuming he didn't somehow neutralize them in his hand, which is another possibility.
Stopping a blaster bolt in mid-air would have been perfectly achievable. Having Darth Vader stretch out his hand and try to mind-rape leia would have been the same.

Here's a question.
Do you know what movie came out in 1999? The Matrix. Do you know what Neo does in that movie. He stops multiple bullets in mid-air.
Do you know how many Jedi in Episode 2 (2002) and Episode 3 (2005) could have benefited from being able to stop bullets in mid air? Pretty much all of them. 
Special effects are easy.
No, in 1999 they weren't. Hoisting a bullet up by a string is easy, it's a physical object like any other. Hoisting up a bolt of light and making it look good? Not so much. And no, it certainly wouldn't look the same as a lightsaber. At the time the OT was filmed, it'd probably have to be some dorky-looking light. Maybe it could be made to look good, but this would be hard. Also, the first film had a rather small-ish budget. In general, at that time a simpler effect would've made much more sense. A blaster bolt hanging in midair would in no way change the plot enough to justify its expense.

Regarding the interrogation, remember that Leia was his daughter and she was no slouch in terms of the Force, either. Perhaps he did interrogate her with the Force and was resisted by her. Rey also does that (and she doesn't have training, like Leia), so perhaps the innate power is enough to pull this off, even against someone who's pretty strong. Remember, Jedi Mind Trick doesn't even work on all species, so it seems mental manipulation has its limits. It would appear that if you're "strong in the force", resisting such interrogation boils down to not wanting to tell your interrogator what he's looking for really badly. Leia was very strong-willed.
Title: Re: <SPOILERS>Official The Force Awakens Thread<SPOILERS>
Post by: chief1983 on January 04, 2016, 12:56:25 pm
I think the point is missed here, is that they both stopped the bolts with _the Force_.  Nevermind 'mind or hand', look, his hand didn't physically stop the blast.  He didn't have some superhuman enhancements, he had sufficient control of the Force to prevent it from damaging his hand.  Kylo stopped it in midair with _the Force_.  Not his mind itself, his mind's control of the Force.  We don't know Vader couldn't do that either, we just know that ILM would have had to spend a lot more money showing that effect because drawing blaster bolts on frames cost a lot more before CGI was cheap.  So having a frame or two with a blaster bolt and then some sparks emitting from Vader's hand was a much more effective effect with the technology and budget allowed.  As I type this I had only glanced at Dragon's post because I'd already been formulating this thought and just realized we're mostly on the same page.  Even in 1999 CGI could probably have achieved a passable effect, but ILM wasn't going to pull that off in ESB, when it wasn't critical to getting the point across that Vader can manipulate blasters with the Force, as can Kylo Ren, even though they did it with a different flair.

But this whole Kylo vs Vader thing just sounds like a comic book store argument of my superhero can beat up your superhero, based on over-extrapolated data from a limited amount of exposure to the universe at hand.  I can tell because we've done some over-extrapolation in our time.  And by the pixels.
Title: Re: <SPOILERS>Official The Force Awakens Thread<SPOILERS>
Post by: Akalabeth Angel on January 04, 2016, 01:00:12 pm
He didn't have some superhuman enhancements, he had sufficient control of the Force to prevent it from damaging his hand. 

So why is there smoke? If it didn't hit his hand, why is there an impact?

And again. This basic pattern recognition.

Deflecting/Blocking with a Light Saber, Blocking with a hand = precognition

Stopping a blaster bolt in mid air = precognition + direct control


Title: Re: <SPOILERS>Official The Force Awakens Thread<SPOILERS>
Post by: Dragon on January 04, 2016, 01:08:50 pm
If he didn't need to stop them why did he use his hand? Where is your logic man?
Wait, let me guess, he armoured the palm of his HANDS but not his chest plate right?  Or maybe he wanted to impress him in two different ways, both by catching them and not crying out.

Because everyone knows that Vader is such a big show off.  He lives on the approval/fear of others. 
If you believe a certain horrible book, only the glove was indestructible (but would still give the proper impression). If you don't, well, he had blinkenlights on his chest, so maybe he decided that it'd be better to use his hand. Or maybe it was about the dramatic gesture. Vader was not a showoff, but he certainly preferred the people to fear him. He appeared intimidating and was quick to underline he means business (for example, force-choking Motti for expressing doubt about the Force. It was not like he couldn't refute his point in civil discussion, but that's not exactly his style).
Oh **** it's a good thing they didn't use laser swords then. That would have looked terrible.
Those were vital to the plot, so it makes sense to spend money on that. If you read about how they did them, it was quite a complex setup and a chore to work with for the cast.
Quote
So now you're claiming that Leia used the force to resist but Vader didn't realize she was using the force?  Because you do know that Vader never knows that Leia is a force user. Even in Return of the Jedi he only knows that Luke has a sister.  Arguably he would know its Leia at that point but clearly before that he did not know.
Maybe it doesn't even take Force aptitude. Since we're not told the exact rules, mind manipulation might only work on the weak-willed. Kylo Ren might have simply never encountered anyone strong enough to resist him before. It's been established that even simply being of a certain species can make one immune to Jedi Mind Trick. This could extend to more invasive techniques as well.

Also, Leia wasn't a Force user at that time. The Force was strong in her (we know that for a fact), but she didn't consciously use it. Rey wasn't deliberately making use of the Force when she resisted Kylo Ren's interrogation, either. The Force being what it is, you don't have to explicitly invoke it for it to manifest. Vader could probably sense that she had a natural connection to the Force (Jedi seem to be able to sense things like that), but that alone wouldn't be enough for him to recognize her as his daughter.
So why is there smoke? If it didn't hit his hand, why is there an impact?
He allowed it to dissipate, that's why. There's no visible damage to his hand, so either the bolt hit some Force barrier, or it was stopped and allowed to dissipate. That was probably easier than what Kylo did (as he likely had to hold the bolt together, normally they last for a few of seconds), but the end result was just the same.
But this whole Kylo vs Vader thing just sounds like a comic book store argument of my superhero can beat up your superhero, based on over-extrapolated data from a limited amount of exposure to the universe at hand.  I can tell because we've done some over-extrapolation in our time.  And by the pixels.
Well, you're right, but at the same time it's a pretty big plot point. We're essentially arguing if it fell flat or not. Kylo Ren was intended to come off as inferior to Vader, I think that this was pretty explicit in the movie. Whether he actually did is, I think, the whole point of this argument.
Title: Re: <SPOILERS>Official The Force Awakens Thread<SPOILERS>
Post by: Dragon on January 04, 2016, 01:24:15 pm
There's no arguing with people who ignore direct and plain on-screen evidence as well as basic logic and pattern recognition in favour of their own complicated fantasies.
Good point. Just remember that the scene with Vader's mask happens to be direct and plain on-screen evidence. :) If whoever replaces Abrams is any good, the second movie will settle that anyway.
Title: Re: <SPOILERS>Official The Force Awakens Thread<SPOILERS>
Post by: Dragon on January 04, 2016, 03:39:48 pm
No, but there must be a reason for his feeling of inadequacy. It is quite possible that he's got an exaggerated image of his grandfather, but Kylo Ren is not the kind of person who underestimates his own skill. This personality type has a tendency to have an inflated opinion of himself. It is possible that his impression of Vader is exaggerated as well, of course, but I feel that if a person like Kylo Ren declares someone his superior, he's right and by a far margin.

Ultimately, we have no solid way to compare them. Vader trained longer (by virtue of being much older), this is beyond doubt. We don't get Midichlorian count of Kylo Ren, so we can't compare immediate ability. We don't know rules behind the Force, so we can't even reliably compare abilities displayed. We can speculate, but Force doesn't exactly follow "basic logic" you like so much (and the films don't, either. There are many "out of universe" constraints for what is shown and what isn't). Add to that the fact that Kylo Ren certainly knows more about Vader than we do (being privy to all the "background information" that we have to wait for supplementary material to reveal) and probably has a better idea of his own abilities (although we don't know what kind of master Snoke is. Giving his apprentice an inferiority complex on purpose is certainly something a Sith master could do). As far as I see it, there is more evidence of his assessment being accurate than not.

Also, even if he was stronger and more skilled with the Force than Vader, it still doesn't mean his defeat by Rey is that implausible (especially seeing as it was likely his first "real" lightsaber fight). Force powers don't magically grant you fencing prowess, this is a separate skillset. Granted, they can give you an edge in a fight, but Kylo didn't use them then, for whatever reason. As far as lightsabers go, Vader was clearly a better duelist.
Title: Re: <SPOILERS>Official The Force Awakens Thread<SPOILERS>
Post by: Dragon on January 04, 2016, 06:42:40 pm
How about in-universe Wikipedia about him? Honestly, Vader is his grandfather and mentor figure. What we know comes from six movies and a cartoon. He has the entire body of news about him from Galactic Empire (where he was a prominent figure), probably.
Fixed that for you
That is ad hominem, completely untrue and completely pointless. Though seeing that I go quite a bit beyond basic logic into more advanced kinds, I can understand why you may have trouble following (yes I know, Chief, that was uncalled for).

Anyway, "The Force" is not SW universe's substitute for "Magic", it's closer to its substitute for God. Its treated a lot like one by many, as well. It does have some rules of who can call on it and how (at least presumably), but its sentient and it would appear that by its own will, it can do whatever the heck it wants. Why are you expecting it to follow human logic? Its nature is unexplained and it works "in mysterious ways", which is what makes it such a powerful narrative tool, while at the same time not a complete game-breaker. It could be likened to an omnipresent Lovecraftian god, a being beyond human understanding, beyond human control, which can be approached, interacted with, but not understood in its entirety. And you are expecting it to conform to your principles of "basic logic" (as in, logic simple enough for you to understand)? You should also note that "The Force" doesn't even have a morality. It's simply "Use it responsibly and in moderation, you're fine. Abuse it, you go mad". This is the picture we get from the movies. It's been a metaphor for a lot of things (God, magic, political power, just to name a few), but that's the big picture this paints.

It does seem to generally align its will with human interests, but maybe its just not fond of being abused and drives humans it can control to eliminates those who do that? It certainly doesn't seem to want much more than to bring balance to itself, which always involves eliminating darksiders. Of course, by now I fallen in the exact same trap as you did, expecting it to have reactions that follow human logic. So nevermind this paragraph.

What does follow logic are how humans react to it and how they use it. The human philosophy regarding it, human way of living with it. Sensitivity to it seems to be inheritable, but we don't know if the innate Force sense becomes "diluted" with generations, or if it gets stronger in every generation. It might even have a set range of values for each line of force users, with any value in that range being able to manifest in any member of the line. We don't know if it increases or decreases with age (seeing as all the old force users we see trained heavily). We don't know what exactly are the limits of what you can do with particular powers. We don't know if there are limits of what those powers can be, either. There's a reason we don't, and why nobody set those limits (or ever will in a canon book, hopefully). Explaining too much about the fundamental nature of the Force would rob SW universe of much of its mystique. Understanding that is useful when you want to understand the world of Star Wars (and especially if you want to write stories set in it that feature the Force as anything but background).
Title: Re: <SPOILERS>Official The Force Awakens Thread<SPOILERS>
Post by: Erkhyan on January 04, 2016, 06:48:53 pm
For most people, two lines said by Ben Kenobi on-screen in the very first movie were enough to establish Vader as a major threat:

Quote
For over a thousand generations, the Jedi Knights were the guardians of peace and justice in the Old Republic.

Quote
A young Jedi named Darth Vader, who was a pupil of mine until he turned to evil, helped the Empire hunt down and destroy the Jedi knights. He betrayed and murdered your father.

Since we’re going to accept that people talking about Luke’s supposed pre-Yavin mad piloting skills in the same movie is pretty much the same thing as showing them on-screen, why not believe the guy who says that Vader helped bring down an Order that stood for over a thousand generations?
Title: Re: <SPOILERS>Official The Force Awakens Thread<SPOILERS>
Post by: Akalabeth Angel on January 04, 2016, 07:07:05 pm
Explaining too much about the fundamental nature of the Force would rob SW universe of much of its mystique.

Mystique?  Star Wars doesn't have mystique.  It's a cash cow with very raw udders which has been milked to death by both fans and media alike, milked so much that the new film is regurgitating the same stories that have already been told. Every detail of the films has probably been expanded upon or explained in detail. Picked apart by both authors, creators and fans alike.

Vader is his grandfather and mentor figure.

Mentoring someone requires that the person be alive. Vader was dead before this twerp was even conceived.  It's amusing that you think 2nd-hand knowledge is any sort of replacement for witnessing events first-hand. The audience has experienced Anakin's life first-hand for 6 movies and officially, the clone wars cartoon.  No history book is going to detail what happened in more than half of the events portrayed and the events portrayed were the most important events of his life.

Title: Re: <SPOILERS>Official The Force Awakens Thread<SPOILERS>
Post by: Phantom Hoover on January 04, 2016, 07:29:49 pm
That is ad hominem, completely untrue and completely pointless. Though seeing that I go quite a bit beyond basic logic into more advanced kinds, I can understand why you may have trouble following (yes I know, Chief, that was uncalled for).

oh i'll bite, how does forcing work
Title: Re: <SPOILERS>Official The Force Awakens Thread<SPOILERS>
Post by: chief1983 on January 04, 2016, 07:36:24 pm
Yes there was already a warning about personal attacks in this thread, I'll let CB be the final judge of whether we just lock this thread.  it really isn't yielding any positive discussion anyway.
Title: Re: <SPOILERS>Official The Force Awakens Thread<SPOILERS>
Post by: NGTM-1R on January 04, 2016, 07:53:03 pm
So Vader is a force capacitor now? Who doesn't get his power from a connection to the world but because he sucked up a laser bolt?

Do you deny that there was energy there, and that he absorbed it or nullified it somehow? It went away, we know that much. Your disdain for the notion is amusing, but it's all you have. You can't disprove it, so you just act like it's silly when you haven't got a lick of evidence.

When would a Jedi have wanted to stop a laser bolt? Every single time a Jedi died from a blaster bolt.

You are being deliberately dense.

They already have a method to stop a blaster bolt: their lightsaber. The lightsaber, in fact, not only gives them a chance to stop the blaster bolt from hitting them, it gives them the ability to send that bolt back at the thing attacking them, making it stop shooting altogether! The methodology of using a lightsaber to redirect the bolt is a clearly superior one to simply stopping the bolt in midair for a time.

Every time the Jedi didn't stop a bolt in mid-air, indeed pretty much every time they died, they were under fire from dozens of blasters, or taken by surprise in pretty much the only way possible in the case of Order 66. Kylo Ren managed to stop one bolt. Just one. A lightsaber user is shown to be able to cope with being shot at by at least six to eight people at once, and for a decent length of time in terms of how it's measured in combat.  ore powerful than anything we've seen before? Not with those results. By all evidence to hand it is a fundamentally inferior method of coping with blasterfire.

Indeed, even Ren seems to think so. When he was getting shot at continuously by Rey, he used his saber.

Your digression about The Matrix is you once again reaching for something outside the universe to explain in-universe logic. This is not a discussion of Doyle, but of Watson, so it's pointless. (If you don't understand the reference go back to literary criticism 101 and don't return until you've finished it.) Similarly, your digression about arguments proves only that you are ignorant. You don't know enough about how the universe of the story works to disprove any of these hypotheses you heap scorn upon. They don't fit your vision, but in the end scorn is all you have, that and your own vision of how things would work. You don't know any of this.

You don't even know how evidence works. You're arguing that the absence of evidence is evidence of absence. That's not the way it works. The absence of evidence is not the same thing as a null result; nobody does something can be a simple event of random chance, or a judgement that it was not useful.
Title: Re: <SPOILERS>Official The Force Awakens Thread<SPOILERS>
Post by: Phantom Hoover on January 04, 2016, 07:57:25 pm
i mean kylo also got shot later in the film when he was presumably distracted
Title: Re: <SPOILERS>Official The Force Awakens Thread<SPOILERS>
Post by: Dragon on January 04, 2016, 08:00:15 pm
So Vader is a force capacitor now? Who doesn't get his power from a connection to the world but because he sucked up a laser bolt?

Do you deny that there was energy there, and that he absorbed it or nullified it somehow? It went away, we know that much. Your disdain for the notion is amusing, but it's all you have. You can't disprove it, so you just act like it's silly when you haven't got a lick of evidence.

When would a Jedi have wanted to stop a laser bolt? Every single time a Jedi died from a blaster bolt.

You are being deliberately dense.

They already have a method to stop a blaster bolt: their lightsaber. The lightsaber, in fact, not only gives them a chance to stop the blaster bolt from hitting them, it gives them the ability to send that bolt back at the thing attacking them, making it stop shooting altogether! The methodology of using a lightsaber to redirect the bolt is a clearly superior one to simply stopping the bolt in midair for a time.

Every time the Jedi didn't stop a bolt in mid-air, indeed pretty much every time they died, they were under fire from dozens of blasters, or taken by surprise in pretty much the only way possible in the case of Order 66. Kylo Ren managed to stop one bolt. Just one. A lightsaber user is shown to be able to cope with being shot at by at least six to eight people at once, and for a decent length of time in terms of how it's measured in combat.  ore powerful than anything we've seen before? Not with those results. By all evidence to hand it is a fundamentally inferior method of coping with blasterfire.

Indeed, even Ren seems to think so. When he was getting shot at continuously by Rey, he used his saber.

Your digression about The Matrix is you once again reaching for something outside the universe to explain in-universe logic. This is not a discussion of Doyle, but of Watson, so it's pointless. (If you don't understand the reference go back to literary criticism 101 and don't return until you've finished it.) Similarly, your digression about arguments proves only that you are ignorant. You don't know enough about how the universe of the story works to disprove any of these hypotheses you heap scorn upon. They don't fit your vision, but in the end scorn is all you have, that and your own vision of how things would work. You don't know any of this.

You don't even know how evidence works. You're arguing that the absence of evidence is evidence of absence. That's not the way it works. The absence of evidence is not the same thing as a null result; nobody does something can be a simple event of random chance, or a judgement that it was not useful.
Good point, and well said. Should've pointed out those logic flaws instead of resorting to petty jabs. Perhaps I should get back to it tomorrow/whenever I'm not tired. And yeah, I agree that it's essential that we keep the discussion in-universe. Doylist arguments are irrelevant here.
Mentoring someone requires that the person be alive. Vader was dead before this twerp was even conceived.  It's amusing that you think 2nd-hand knowledge is any sort of replacement for witnessing events first-hand. The audience has experienced Anakin's life first-hand for 6 movies and officially, the clone wars cartoon.  No history book is going to detail what happened in more than half of the events portrayed and the events portrayed were the most important events of his life.
Bah, you're obviously right on that count. I meant the role model, just used the wrong word. You'll have to argue with someone else for the next couple of hours. I'm off to bed.
Title: Re: <SPOILERS>Official The Force Awakens Thread<SPOILERS>
Post by: Phantom Hoover on January 04, 2016, 08:17:10 pm
if vader's a force capacitor how many farads does he have
Title: Re: <SPOILERS>Official The Force Awakens Thread<SPOILERS>
Post by: AdmiralRalwood on January 04, 2016, 08:25:20 pm
It should be noted that while it was thrown out with the rest of the EU, it used to be canon that Vader was, in fact, absorbing at least part of the energy of the blaster bolts and redirecting that energy into telekinesis, so NGTM-1R isn't just pulling the idea out of a hat or something.
Title: Re: <SPOILERS>Official The Force Awakens Thread<SPOILERS>
Post by: Akalabeth Angel on January 04, 2016, 08:41:16 pm
It should be noted that while it was thrown out with the rest of the EU, it used to be canon that Vader was, in fact, absorbing at least part of the energy of the blaster bolts and redirecting that energy into telekinesis, so NGTM-1R isn't just pulling the idea out of a hat or something.

Expanded Universe was never truly canon in the way that the films were.  That's why it was called EU, not Star Wars.

Even after the Disney take over there are no less than five tiers of canon. The Clone Wars and Rebels series are canon, but they're not as canon as the movies are.

Whoever wrote that energy absorption idea was undoubtedly some author who either had to justify his own problems with the film or was trying to draw on some shred of the movies in an attempt to give his own story a scrap of legitimacy or relevance, just like authors have apparently taken every alien in the Mos Eisley cantina and told their story told at one time or another.
Title: Re: <SPOILERS>Official The Force Awakens Thread<SPOILERS>
Post by: Phantom Hoover on January 04, 2016, 08:54:04 pm
i think in the old eu it was canon that darth vader's glove was made out of a magic indestructible amulet
Title: Re: <SPOILERS>Official The Force Awakens Thread<SPOILERS>
Post by: Crashdown117 on January 05, 2016, 10:31:11 am
Maybe if you had Kylo Ren waiving his hand around saying "you will tell the information that I want" and Po repeating his words you could assume it was the related, but that's not what happens.

But there you exactly tell the difference between light side and dark side methods of influencing somebody's mind (and that's the similarity between the two things: using the Force to influence a weak mind)
Light side: Kindly asking you to do something. A bit of handwaving, telling you what I want you to do/say.
Dark side: Simply forcing you to do it. Ripping the information from your mind without even caring about if you get hurt in any way.
Title: Re: <SPOILERS>Official The Force Awakens Thread<SPOILERS>
Post by: Akalabeth Angel on January 05, 2016, 11:25:56 am
Even after the Disney take over there are no less than five tiers of canon. The Clone Wars and Rebels series are canon, but they're not as canon as the movies are.
Big nope here. Clone Wars and Rebels are fully canon. The tiers of canon occurred before Disney, not after. The whole point of killing the EU was to simplify what is and isn't canon.

Oh yeah I see now that after presenting all the information on the wiki there's a sentence which basically says 'none of this matters anymore'.

Maybe if you had Kylo Ren waiving his hand around saying "you will tell the information that I want" and Po repeating his words you could assume it was the related, but that's not what happens.

But there you exactly tell the difference between light side and dark side methods of influencing somebody's mind (and that's the similarity between the two things: using the Force to influence a weak mind)
Light side: Kindly asking you to do something. A bit of handwaving, telling you what I want you to do/say.
Dark side: Simply forcing you to do it. Ripping the information from your mind without even caring about if you get hurt in any way.

Planting ideas in someone's conscious mind and forcing them to recall information from memory is not the same thing.
And again the problem is that Vader was never seen using these methods of interrogation, not in Episode IV and not in Episode II when the assassin was dying. "Tell us now" was all he had to say. Neither he nor Obi Wan showed any sort of interrogation method light or dark


Furthermore, both Jabba and Watto refer to the act as a "mind trick".  It's heavily implied that it's effect is not lessened versus strong-willed individuals, it simply does not work. Both these facts suggest that it is not a jedi forcing his will on someone else but simply as its stated, a jedi tricking someone into doing what they want. This is not what Kylo Ren was doing. At all.
Title: Re: <SPOILERS>Official The Force Awakens Thread<SPOILERS>
Post by: Erkhyan on January 05, 2016, 11:58:14 am
A QUICK REMINDER ABOUT WHAT IS CURRENTLY CANON AND WHAT IS NOT
since apparently some haven’t been paying attention

CANON

There are no “levels” of canon. Every publishing support has to be consistent with every other publishing support. Meaning that movies aren’t allowed to contradict canon novels, novels are not allowed to contradict comic series, etc., and all information that appears in a canon work is valid in the context of every other canon work.

NOT CANON
Basically everything not in the above list. Information and concepts from non-canon works only become canon if repeated in a canon work (for example, Tarkin’s first name, the concept of a Light Side, the New Republic, or the existence of the Interdictor Cruiser).

“IN CANON LIMBO”
Title: Re: <SPOILERS>Official The Force Awakens Thread<SPOILERS>
Post by: Akalabeth Angel on January 05, 2016, 12:03:42 pm
“IN CANON LIMBO”
  • The MMO game The Old Republic uses a lot of non-canon information and concepts. Even though there is a current effort to make it more compatible with the canon timeline, bringing the entire game into canon would require retconning a lot of stuff. As a result, the MMO doesn’t officially count as canon yet.
  • The Holiday Special. Might be canon, might not be. No one really dares say anything serious about it because it would require digging up some painful memories.

No love for the Ewok movies.
Title: Re: <SPOILERS>Official The Force Awakens Thread<SPOILERS>
Post by: MatthTheGeek on January 05, 2016, 12:12:20 pm
or the existence of the Interdictor Cruiser
The prototype at least appears in Rebels. Second reading of your post reveals that's exactly what you meant. My bad.
Title: Re: <SPOILERS>Official The Force Awakens Thread<SPOILERS>
Post by: Erkhyan on January 05, 2016, 12:37:09 pm
The Interdictor prototype’s first (catastrophic) use in canon was actually in the Tarkin novel. Which leads to the interesting conclusion that they spent roughly ten years refining the thing before they dared use it again. Ladies and gentlemen: Imperial efficiency.
Title: Re: <SPOILERS>Official The Force Awakens Thread<SPOILERS>
Post by: SypheDMar on January 05, 2016, 07:51:50 pm
Maybe if you had Kylo Ren waiving his hand around saying "you will tell the information that I want" and Po repeating his words you could assume it was the related, but that's not what happens.

But there you exactly tell the difference between light side and dark side methods of influencing somebody's mind (and that's the similarity between the two things: using the Force to influence a weak mind)
Light side: Kindly asking you to do something. A bit of handwaving, telling you what I want you to do/say.
Dark side: Simply forcing you to do it. Ripping the information from your mind without even caring about if you get hurt in any way.

Since all the other things have been dealt with before my ****ty internet decided to work again I've got nothing to add there.
Sorry for not mentioning this sooner, but seeing this bulleted reminds me that the Jedi aren't all that great at being good guys when the Sith are involved:


ie The Jedi are not beyond torture and forcing their enemies to do things, even if it threatens the victim's mind.

Also notable since this is canon: You don't have to be force-sensitive to resist Jedi mind-tricks. Cad Bane is a talented Bounty Hunter, second to Jango Fett in fame, but not Force-sensitive. Ordinary people with strong enough WILL, it stands to reason, can prevent themselves from being forced to give any information to Kylo Ren.
Title: Re: <SPOILERS>Official The Force Awakens Thread<SPOILERS>
Post by: SypheDMar on January 05, 2016, 07:58:12 pm
“IN CANON LIMBO”
  • The MMO game The Old Republic uses a lot of non-canon information and concepts. Even though there is a current effort to make it more compatible with the canon timeline, bringing the entire game into canon would require retconning a lot of stuff. As a result, the MMO doesn’t officially count as canon yet.
  • The Holiday Special. Might be canon, might not be. No one really dares say anything serious about it because it would require digging up some painful memories.
No love for the Ewok movies.
In a recent interview, I believe the developers of TOR states that it is part of the Legends continuity and not new canon so that it can do whatever it wants.

Ewoks are not canon as of this moment. Like the rest of EU, elements (parts or wholesale) may eventually be considered canon in the future, but we can safely pretend that they didn't happen.

Rule of thumb: If Lucasfilm Story Group hasn't declared something canon, it's not canon.
Title: Re: <SPOILERS>Official The Force Awakens Thread<SPOILERS>
Post by: Trivial Psychic on January 05, 2016, 10:01:40 pm
Also notable since this is canon: You don't have to be force-sensitive to resist Jedi mind-tricks. Cad Bane is a talented Bounty Hunter, second to Jango Fett in fame, but not Force-sensitive. Ordinary people with strong enough WILL, it stands to reason, can prevent themselves from being forced to give any information to Kylo Ren.
I'm not sure if anyone here still wants to include the midi-chlorians in their explanations, but I would surmise that there are a far greater number of people in the galaxy that, while not having enough midi-chlorian concentration to be classified as force-sensitive and marked for later Jedi training (at least during the Republic days), they probably have a moderate concentration, enough to perhaps be considered "force latent".  Even with proper training, the best someone like this might expect to be able to do with the force would be some precognition to enhance their reflexes, mild telekinesis (like a pitcher being able to give the ball a bit of extra oomph), and possibly mind-trick resistance.  Aside from certain species that are mind-trick-immune, perhaps those that are not "weak-minded" also are force-latent.  Just something to consider.
Title: Re: <SPOILERS>Official The Force Awakens Thread<SPOILERS>
Post by: Dragon on January 06, 2016, 06:01:09 am
Remember that a degree of Force sensitivity is present in every living being (or almost every one, though Ysalamiri and the Vong are non-canon now). Everyone is "force lantent" to a degree. With enough willpower, whatever Force capability one has can presumably be put to use, such as resisting mind tricks and "having a (bad) feeling" about certain things. :)
Title: Re: <SPOILERS>Official The Force Awakens Thread<SPOILERS>
Post by: Akalabeth Angel on January 06, 2016, 12:07:50 pm
Remember that a degree of Force sensitivity is present in every living being (or almost every one, though Ysalamiri and the Vong are non-canon now). Everyone is "force lantent" to a degree. With enough willpower, whatever Force capability one has can presumably be put to use, such as resisting mind tricks and "having a (bad) feeling" about certain things. :)

Citation needed.
Title: Re: <SPOILERS>Official The Force Awakens Thread<SPOILERS>
Post by: Crashdown117 on January 06, 2016, 12:54:19 pm
Remember that a degree of Force sensitivity is present in every living being (or almost every one, though Ysalamiri and the Vong are non-canon now). Everyone is "force lantent" to a degree. With enough willpower, whatever Force capability one has can presumably be put to use, such as resisting mind tricks and "having a (bad) feeling" about certain things. :)

Citation needed.

How about Qui-Gon saying this:

"Without the midi-chlorians, life could not exist, and we would have no knowledge of the Force."

In the same scene he says something about midi-chlorians being present in every cell of every living being (couldn't find the exact dialogue lines for that) and that would lead to the conclusion that - since midi-chlorians are the key element for someone being Force sensitive - a small degree of Force sensitivity - not enough for somebody to become a Jedi  or Sith of course - is also present in every living being.

You're welcome.
Title: Re: <SPOILERS>Official The Force Awakens Thread<SPOILERS>
Post by: Aesaar on January 06, 2016, 03:07:32 pm
I still can't believe that midichlorians are canon but Thrawn isn't.
Title: Re: <SPOILERS>Official The Force Awakens Thread<SPOILERS>
Post by: StarSlayer on January 06, 2016, 03:17:11 pm
To be fair in ANH when Ben uses the Force to "not the droids your looking for" past the checkpoint he states:  "The Force can have a strong influence on the weak-minded." not the low on parasites. :P
Title: Re: <SPOILERS>Official The Force Awakens Thread<SPOILERS>
Post by: Dragon on January 06, 2016, 04:03:34 pm
Further, saying that all people are low-level force users diminishes the relevance of Jedi and their opposites.
And saying that one's ability to resist is not based on willpower but latent force use diminishes individual importance as well because they succeed because of factors outside of themselves.

And ironically this statement is coming from the same guy (Dragon) who said he appreciates the "mystique" of the force.
You keep mistaking "Force user" for "person with Force potential". Force users use the Force. :) People can have a low-level sensitivity (which would manifest, for example, in "hunches" people have from time to time) without actually being able to consciously use the Force. They can still interact with it, however. "Will of the Force" isn't something that only the select few are involved in. Indeed, this is presumably why Force powers work on people in first place. You couldn't "mind trick" an inanimate object, or a droid (though there probably are alternate techniques for dealing with those), simply because they're not alive and thus don't have this connection to the Force.

It's been stated multiple times that all life has a connection to the Force. IIRC, Obi Wan said it in ANH (when explaining it to Luke), Qui-gon in TPM (that one was quoted a few posts back) and it might have been mentioned in TFH as well.

Actual Force users are special in that their connection to the Force is much stronger, thus enabling them to actually ask (or demand, in case of darksiders) something from the Force, as opposed to taking what it gives them. This is what "using the Force" is. Resisting mental probing is probably as far as using the Force goes for normal people, and even that probably doesn't go any further than blocking out the intrusion, even for the strongest-willed individual. It also seems like a very instinctive thing (boiling down to "not wanting to tell anything, very strongly"), see how Rey was able to turn the tables on Kylo during the interrogation and get into his mind not only without even the slightest bit of training, but by a complete accident. Some species are even completely immune, presumably by their instinctive "mind trick defense" being much stronger.

Indeed, it seems not to work more often than it does. Notably, both cases when it does are stormtroopers. Military training puts a lot of emphasis on obeying orders first and thinking later (ideally during carrying the order out and not long after that... :) ). It probably makes the troopers prone to falling for the mind trick. Making a weak mind is easier than making a strong but obedient one.
To be fair in ANH when Ben uses the Force to "not the droids your looking for" past the checkpoint he states:  "The Force can have a strong influence on the weak-minded." not the low on parasites. :P
It would make sense that you need strong will to call upon your Force connection in first place, however small. A weak minded person wouldn't even think about resisting. Also, any "regular" use of the Force seems to be based on strength of one's mind as well. See the scene in which Luke is trying to pull the X-Wing out of the swamp.
Title: Re: <SPOILERS>Official The Force Awakens Thread<SPOILERS>
Post by: Phantom Hoover on January 06, 2016, 05:39:08 pm
I still can't believe that midichlorians are canon but Thrawn isn't.

Obviously Thrawn isn't canon, did you expect them to make a series of Thrawn films? That was never going to happen.
Title: Re: <SPOILERS>Official The Force Awakens Thread<SPOILERS>
Post by: Phantom Hoover on January 06, 2016, 08:41:04 pm
The more important part here is that midiclorians might be 'canon' according to the implications of some press release by Disney, but I'll bet good money that they will never be mentioned in the new film series.
Title: Re: <SPOILERS>Official The Force Awakens Thread<SPOILERS>
Post by: zookeeper on January 07, 2016, 01:20:19 am
Which reminds me that one thing I really appreciate is that they never mention the word "sith". It's always just "the dark side"... as it should be.
Title: Re: <SPOILERS>Official The Force Awakens Thread<SPOILERS>
Post by: Dragon on January 07, 2016, 07:09:12 am
Nothing you say makes any sense.
Interacting with something is literally acting upon it, you cannot unconsciously act upon something.
You're just plain wrong on that count. First of all "interaction" doesn't mean you have a say in it, or that you know about it. The Force influences (and manipulates) you, so it must be aware of you. Therefore, your presence influences the Force (it wouldn't be doing what it's doing if you weren't here), while it influences you. In SW universe, this happens all the time, yet only the select few are aware of it.

You certainly can act upon things unconsciously. In fact, you're doing this all the time. Your body is doing a whole lot of things unconsciously. You're digesting foods and pumping blood through your veins without thinking about it, you're not even aware of this until someone tells you. You can't control this directly without special training. Your body unconsciously acts upon things all the time (ever had your mouth water when you smell something tasty?). Why would interacting with the Force be any different? What I say does make sense it you bothered to think about it for a while. Probably should've stated it like that earlier, but I think that resisting mind probing/manipulation is a reflexive reaction, much like the aforementioned mouth watering. If conditions are right (being mind-probed, not wanting to be, or smelling something, wanting to eat it, respectively) it triggers with appropriate intensity, but a normal person can't induce it directly.
Inanimate objects do have a connection with the force. Yoda explicitly says that force is within trees and rocks, the land, the X-wing in Empire Strikes back.
The fact you cannot mind trick a rock isn't because it's not connected with the force, it's because it's a rock.
I always took the line as stating that Dagobah itself is "saturated" with the Force (BTW, trees are alive and the land on Dagobah might very well be, too. You can presumably interact with what passes for tree's "mind" using the Force. It's not as ridiculous a statement as you probably think it is). Remember, it is not only in the living beings, some places also seem to have an "aura" of sorts. Does that mean they're "alive"? It's never stated, but it might. It does seem that it's the living beings who need the Force, not the other way around (a nice bonus of that reasoning would be that it'd imply that the Force is far more than just Midichlorians being somewhere or not).
Title: Re: <SPOILERS>Official The Force Awakens Thread<SPOILERS>
Post by: CountBuggula on January 07, 2016, 11:49:05 am
Ok guys.  I had some busy days so there was an awful lot added to this thread that I had to catch up on.  And I have to say I'm disappointed.  Let me start by saying this:

I HATE censorship.  It drives me nuts.  But in a public forum like this we need to have rules to keep things civil, and after my last warning, things got significantly worse.  Consequently, there are a number of posts that have been deleted due to ad hominem attacks and profanity.  I was serious about being respectful, and that sort of behavior will not be tolerated here.

I'm stopping short of completely locking this thread, but will do so if things get out of hand again.  I will say however that the Vader vs Kylo Ren argument is finished.  If you want to continue arguing about it, go start a thread elsewhere.  So with that out of the way, moving on:
I still can't believe that midichlorians are canon but Thrawn isn't.
I can't agree more.  I weep a bit every time midichlorians are mentioned.
The more important part here is that midiclorians might be 'canon' according to the implications of some press release by Disney, but I'll bet good money that they will never be mentioned in the new film series.
This is my best hope as well.  Goes along with what Zookeeper said about "Sith" vs "Dark Side".  Good stuff.

And in conclusion, I'm just going to leave this here (http://adequateman.deadspin.com/remake-the-star-wars-prequels-1751118443).
Title: Re: <SPOILERS>Official The Force Awakens Thread<SPOILERS>
Post by: Akalabeth Angel on January 07, 2016, 12:56:42 pm
Which reminds me that one thing I really appreciate is that they never mention the word "sith". It's always just "the dark side"... as it should be.

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.

I always took the line as stating that Dagobah itself is "saturated" with the Force (BTW, trees are alive and the land on Dagobah might very well be, too. You can presumably interact with what passes for tree's "mind" using the Force. It's not as ridiculous a statement as you probably think it is). Remember, it is not only in the living beings, some places also seem to have an "aura" of sorts. Does that mean they're "alive"? It's never stated, but it might. It does seem that it's the living beings who need the Force, not the other way around (a nice bonus of that reasoning would be that it'd imply that the Force is far more than just Midichlorians being somewhere or not).

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.
Title: Re: <SPOILERS>Official The Force Awakens Thread<SPOILERS>
Post by: Galemp on January 07, 2016, 01:50:38 pm
As Han says, "The Force doesn't work that way!"
Title: Re: <SPOILERS>Official The Force Awakens Thread<SPOILERS>
Post by: zookeeper on January 07, 2016, 03:48:53 pm
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.
Title: Re: <SPOILERS>Official The Force Awakens Thread<SPOILERS>
Post by: Spoon on January 07, 2016, 04:10:52 pm
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.
Title: Re: <SPOILERS>Official The Force Awakens Thread<SPOILERS>
Post by: Dragon on January 07, 2016, 04:12:55 pm
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.
Title: Re: <SPOILERS>Official The Force Awakens Thread<SPOILERS>
Post by: SkycladGuardian on January 07, 2016, 04:27:54 pm
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.
Title: Re: <SPOILERS>Official The Force Awakens Thread<SPOILERS>
Post by: Akalabeth Angel on January 07, 2016, 05:15:57 pm
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.
Title: Re: <SPOILERS>Official The Force Awakens Thread<SPOILERS>
Post by: Dragon on January 07, 2016, 05:34:02 pm
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.
Title: Re: <SPOILERS>Official The Force Awakens Thread<SPOILERS>
Post by: Akalabeth Angel on January 07, 2016, 06:01:15 pm
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?
Title: Re: <SPOILERS>Official The Force Awakens Thread<SPOILERS>
Post by: Mongoose on January 07, 2016, 07:58:32 pm
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.
Title: Re: <SPOILERS>Official The Force Awakens Thread<SPOILERS>
Post by: Akalabeth Angel on January 07, 2016, 08:27:28 pm
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?

Title: Re: <SPOILERS>Official The Force Awakens Thread<SPOILERS>
Post by: Dragon on January 07, 2016, 09:24:59 pm
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.
Title: Re: <SPOILERS>Official The Force Awakens Thread<SPOILERS>
Post by: Crashdown117 on January 08, 2016, 03:29:39 am
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.
Title: Re: <SPOILERS>Official The Force Awakens Thread<SPOILERS>
Post by: Wobble73 on January 08, 2016, 08:55:42 am




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!).
Title: Re: <SPOILERS>Official The Force Awakens Thread<SPOILERS>
Post by: NGTM-1R on January 08, 2016, 01:15:45 pm
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.
Title: Re: <SPOILERS>Official The Force Awakens Thread<SPOILERS>
Post by: Akalabeth Angel on January 08, 2016, 01:26:55 pm
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.
Title: Re: <SPOILERS>Official The Force Awakens Thread<SPOILERS>
Post by: Erkhyan on January 08, 2016, 01:29:36 pm
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.
Title: Re: <SPOILERS>Official The Force Awakens Thread<SPOILERS>
Post by: Akalabeth Angel on January 08, 2016, 01:30:45 pm
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.
Title: Re: <SPOILERS>Official The Force Awakens Thread<SPOILERS>
Post by: Erkhyan on January 08, 2016, 02:58:51 pm
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.
Title: Re: <SPOILERS>Official The Force Awakens Thread<SPOILERS>
Post by: CountBuggula on January 08, 2016, 03:03:19 pm
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.