Star Wars: Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)

[stip]

we're off of spoilers and currently failing to merge...

[Strat]

Which thread are we on to talk in? Im seeing two but don't wanna be a spoiler for anyone

Our wonderful mods are figuring out how to mod right now.

[spike]

There you go

nope

wtf

the merge is being force blocked; joey really is a jedi

[dimejinky99]

Has any other star wars film ever left us with so many questions?

I think it's a major victory for Abrams that we're all left wondering and with kind of a cliff hanger ending(see what I did there?) to chew over...for the next 17 months

[McParadigm]

6) Han going back to being a smuggler. So his son turns evil, he and Leia separate, and he just goes back to smuggling? Seems beneath him, considering he was a general. Why not just take another position in the New Republic away from Leia?

One of the biggest reasons I'm repelled by the thought of this movie is that they felt they had to undo ALL of the victories from the original trilogy.

They beat the Empire! No they really didn't.

Luke faced the ultimate temptation, and is now a true Jedi who will bring light and hope to the galaxy. No he failed and skipped town, leaving everyone to their own, but he left a fucking treasure map because lol.

Han Solo grew as a person, found his conscience, and fell in love. Nah being a dad was hard and shit so he literally rejected all of it and went back to pirating.

It's like the fear of having to come up with new ideas was so great, that they had to dismantle the ending of a great story arc. The Han Solo story is now "he was a bit of a scumbag then was nice for a while then a scumbag again and then died." No thanks. I am perfectly content with keeping it at "they blew up the empire and lived happily ever after," for those characters.

This is a pretty glib reading on all of this. It's worth having this discussion when you actually see the movie but:

1. The Empire spanned the whole galaxy. I read somewhere that they had 25k Star Destroyers. I'm perfectly fine with them going away, retrenching/rebranding, and returning. It's a pretty accurate mirror of real politics.

2. I am fine with Luke having a crisis of faith after the nephew he was training slaughters all his students. I can certainly see that make me want to give up teaching.

The map stuff is something I presume will be explained. I THINK (if Luke is the guy who hides Ray on Jakku) that the map is there to reunite the two of them when she's older, can be kept safer, something we'll see in the movie.

Right now the map idea is hard to judge. There are reasonable payoffs but there are certainly stupid directions we can go in.

3. I think it is a lot more realistic that Han and Leia's relationship was not likely to be successful in the long term, especially after their son becomes a genocidal maniac. People have gotten divorced for less...

That's great stip. I don't disagree with any of that. But you're defending a movie...and a movie called Star Wars...on whether or not it's realistic to imagine these outcomes, not whether it makes for good storytelling.

It's realistic to assume that after The Wizard of Oz Dorothy gets tuberculosis, the farm fails, and global warming eventually deprives Kansas of rainbows forevermore. It's realistic that after ET those kids are taken away and interrogated, then spend their lives as social pariahs before eventually succumbing to space mesothelioma or something. Either one of those could be 'plausible' sequels to those movies. That doesn't make either one an exercise in good storytelling.

The new Star Wars is a victory of soap opera over romance. If that's your thing, then ok. But I'll take romance every time.

[E.H. Ruddock]

we're off of spoilers and currently failing to merge...

ruddo to the rescue

[stip]

6) Han going back to being a smuggler. So his son turns evil, he and Leia separate, and he just goes back to smuggling? Seems beneath him, considering he was a general. Why not just take another position in the New Republic away from Leia?

One of the biggest reasons I'm repelled by the thought of this movie is that they felt they had to undo ALL of the victories from the original trilogy.

They beat the Empire! No they really didn't.

Luke faced the ultimate temptation, and is now a true Jedi who will bring light and hope to the galaxy. No he failed and skipped town, leaving everyone to their own, but he left a fucking treasure map because lol.

Han Solo grew as a person, found his conscience, and fell in love. Nah being a dad was hard and shit so he literally rejected all of it and went back to pirating.

It's like the fear of having to come up with new ideas was so great, that they had to dismantle the ending of a great story arc. The Han Solo story is now "he was a bit of a scumbag then was nice for a while then a scumbag again and then died." No thanks. I am perfectly content with keeping it at "they blew up the empire and lived happily ever after," for those characters.

This is a pretty glib reading on all of this. It's worth having this discussion when you actually see the movie but:

1. The Empire spanned the whole galaxy. I read somewhere that they had 25k Star Destroyers. I'm perfectly fine with them going away, retrenching/rebranding, and returning. It's a pretty accurate mirror of real politics.

2. I am fine with Luke having a crisis of faith after the nephew he was training slaughters all his students. I can certainly see that make me want to give up teaching.

The map stuff is something I presume will be explained. I THINK (if Luke is the guy who hides Ray on Jakku) that the map is there to reunite the two of them when she's older, can be kept safer, something we'll see in the movie.

Right now the map idea is hard to judge. There are reasonable payoffs but there are certainly stupid directions we can go in.

3. I think it is a lot more realistic that Han and Leia's relationship was not likely to be successful in the long term, especially after their son becomes a genocidal maniac. People have gotten divorced for less...

That's great stip. I don't disagree with any of that. But you're defending a movie...and a movie called Star Wars...on whether or not it's realistic to imagine these outcomes, not whether it makes for good storytelling.

It's realistic to assume that after The Wizard of Oz Dorothy gets tuberculosis, the farm fails, and global warming eventually deprives Kansas of rainbows forevermore. It's realistic that after ET those kids are taken away and interrogated, then spend their lives as social pariahs before eventually succumbing to space mesothelioma or something. Either one of those could be 'plausible' sequels to those movies. That doesn't make either one an exercise in good storytelling.

The new Star Wars is a victory of soap opera over romance. If that's your thing, then ok. But I'll take romance every time.

I do think all those options potentially make for great storytelling. I really like the story they've started to tell (or rather, the story as a backdrop for the characters I want to know more about). You can do all this stuff in a hokey/ham fisted way, or you can do it in a way that adds new layers to people who you thought had finished with.

Other than the Han thing (which was handled very well in the movie) the other two points are still works in progress, so we don't know where it's going yet. The jedi stuff is very intriguing, in part because Kylo Ren is potentially the most interesting character (certainly villain) we've seen to date. I agree that right now the First Order stuff exists more so we have a backdrop for epic space battles. It could have been an entirely new group unrelated to the Empire, I suppose. But the first movie was designed to pose questions more than it was to provide answers, so we'll see where they go.

[LoathedVermin72]

stip just said Kylo Ren is the most interesting villain we've seen in SW to date.

stip





stip

stop stip

[EJ]

yeah, yikes

[darth_vedder]

stip just said Kylo Ren is the most interesting villain we've seen in SW to date.

I actually think Kylo is kinda interesting. Maybe not THE most interesting, but interesting in regards that he's beginning his journey to the dark side. He's not full on evil, or full on powerful like Darth Vader or the Emperor; he just seems to be really tapping into it. Murdering his father will surely help complete his journey (if he made it off the starkiller alive - which I assume he did) and reign new terror over the Resistance.

[stip]

new poll is up, old one was wiped in the merge

[Monkey_Driven]

stip just said Kylo Ren is the most interesting villain we've seen in SW to date.

I actually think Kylo is kinda interesting. Maybe not THE most interesting, but interesting in regards that he's beginning his journey to the dark side. He's not full on evil, or full on powerful like Darth Vader or the Emperor; he just seems to be really tapping into it. Murdering his father will surely help complete his journey (if he made it off the starkiller alive - which I assume he did) and reign new terror over the Resistance.

I do too. He's certainly more interesting than any other action movie villain of the past 15 years.

[stip]

stip just said Kylo Ren is the most interesting villain we've seen in SW to date.

stip





stip

stop stip

I said potentially, we need to see where he goes. But the idea of someone being tempted by the light instead of the dark, struggling to live up to an image that is not a natural fit for them, someone in the middle of their training rather than a full fledged character, someone wielding enormous power but riddled with insecurity.

There's a lot of great storytelling you can do with that character. Vader is impressive and awesome, but we never learn in the OT why he becomes evil other than 'bad man corrupts me' and his struggle is largely 'do I feel like killing my kid because my boss told me to'. The attempt to flesh out Vader was hideously botched, but we all see the potential there. It's actually the story we're getting with Kylo Ren, but told in reverese.

[stip]

I voted as good as the originals. I've discovered, to my existential horror, that I can't really rank the OT right now. Empire has the best character moments, but nothing as thrilling as the trench run or the final interlocking sequences in Jedi.

[stip]

And obviously FA needs time to sit with me, and I need to see how it is on dvd without the hugeness of the theater

[spike]

stip just said Kylo Ren is the most interesting villain we've seen in SW to date.

stip





stip

stop stip

he has the potential to be. anakin's journey to the dark side was botched, so maybe they get kylo ren's right.

[dimejinky99]

Someone spotted that in three different scenes with Rey you hear elements of Lukes theme from the OT.

I got the soundtrack to this. Must listen to it.

[LoathedVermin72]

I'm not sure it's fair to say what makes a villain interesting is finding out why they became evil. Vader's struggles with Obi-Wan, his son, and his master in the OT strike me as far more meaningful and nuanced than anything we've seen from Kylo.

[spike]

I'm not sure it's fair to say what makes a villain interesting is finding out why they became evil. Vader's struggles with Obi-Wan, his son, and his master in the OT strike me as far more meaningful and nuanced than anything we've seen from Kylo.

6 movies and 40 years covering vader compared to 1 movie and less than a week for ren. as always, you're completely fair in your assessment.

[dimejinky99]

I'm not sure it's fair to say what makes a villain interesting is finding out why they became evil. Vader's struggles with Obi-Wan, his son, and his master in the OT strike me as far more meaningful and nuanced than anything we've seen from Kylo.

Nuanced isn't what th character should be about though. The opposite in fact. He was to be an evil badass and struggles with the fact that he isn't one. He's beyond angry about it and we need to see that.