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

[Strat]

First Order/Resistance/Rebellion

Okay Burt, here you go.

Accordingly to the new canon the Empire basically collapses after the battle of jakku a year or so after Jedi. The First Order is the heir to the empire. I guess they can't call themselves the empire anymore. But First Order is a shitty name.

I think they are also supposed to be significantly less powerful than the Empire was, at least militarily. That's probably why the starkiller base was necessary--to make them a credible threat without a galaxy spanning navy. Clearly they are hoping that a few force users are enough to also push the balance, assuming they can kill Luke.

The New Republic has the resources of the galaxy at its disposable. If you want a smaller empire (to make the force stuff matter more) you need a smaller army. So the story goes that the new republic basically disarms, but Leia convinces them to fund a small military technically unaffiliated to fight off the first order. Picture the US arming some other army to fight a proxy war. This way you can keep your forces balanced.


A criticism I have of the movie is that the destruction of the New republic home planet (i think) should have been made a bigger deal than it was. THen again, Leia got over Alderran pretty quickly in A New Hope so maybe this is just par for the course.

So people here upset about the first order?

[dimejinky99]

Kathleen Kennedy :

Lucasfilm CEO Kathleen Kennedy says that while the Force Awakens doesn't follow George Lucas' original treatments for a sequel trilogy, they were an inspiration
"We had discussions based off of George's treatments," she says, "and then when J.J. and Larry came into the process, there were new ideas being discussed, which is normally what would happen in a development process. We didn't have a script, we didn't have an extensive treatment of any kind, so we were still trying to find the story for the movie, so it's not as though something was just read and then set aside, and everybody said, 'Oh, we don't want to do that, we're going to start on this new thing.' Everything emanated from what George had created with the original movies, and then some of the things he was talking about in this brief synopsis. We carried on from there."


Quote:


Peter: Who and how is it decided that the treatments that George Lucas had submitted for the sequel trilogy were to be abandoned?

Kathleen Kennedy: Well, here’s the thing. There are certain things they retained and obviously everything George created, you can imagine, every single person involved in this process hugely respects and wanted to know as much as they possibly could about the universe that he was describing. He had specific plot ideas that evolved. He sat down with me in 2012, and now it’s almost 2016, and you know the development process, where you bring writers on and once the story starts to take shape, it evolves. George wasn’t a part of those development discussions, so it was a fairly natural process of evolution. It sounds like we ignored him but that’s not really what happened.

Peter: How is J.J. Abrams’ final movie, The Force Awakens, different from what was planned early on?

Kathleen Kennedy: You mean from what George was talking about?

Peter: Yeah, like was George’s story more focused on the original trilogy characters?

Kathleen Kennedy: No, because the legacy characters play a significant role in this, and I would say and inside the balance that George was talking about to begin with. It was really much more to do with the specifics of the history of the saga. We changed the order of a few things, let’s put it that way. We didn’t make some wholesale change.

Peter: What are the differences between the Saga films and the anthology films?

Kathleen Kennedy: Well the Saga films are primarily the soap opera centered around the Skywalker family. The standalone films can be a wide variety of genres inside the Star Wars universe, and they very definitely have a beginning, middle, and end. They are not being designed to necessarily build new franchises. They are really being designed as standalone movies which is fantastic for the filmmakers we bring in, and the actors we hire, because it’s a different sensibility. And the stories can fall pretty much anywhere on the timeline. There is no strict guidelines for what we’re doing. Although what’s brilliant about what Kiri Hart is doing inside the story department is, we’re really looking at everything we’re doing. Our story group looks at and gets involved with animation, anything we’re doing with games, anything going on with theme parks, anything that’s happening with publishing, even certain things inside DCP. We are very closely tied to any of the narrative storytelling in those divisions because that does have to make some kind of sense. We don’t want something heading off in some direction that completely undoes what was setup in another story.

[southp]

I forgot about the chewie-Leia snub. A hug was in order there but instead went to Rey. Hmmmm....

[Strat]

I forgot about the chewie-Leia snub. A hug was in order there but instead went to Rey. Hmmmm....

Bro Code. Lei kicked han to the curb, chewie ain't having none of that.

[dimejinky99]

Thundercunt?

Does RM have an underbelly I'm unaware of?

[southp]

Haha!

[Chris_H_2]

Is general Hux the guy that plays Gavin Belson?

[southp]

Glad you're here to bring balance Strat. This thread had turned to the dark side for a bit.

[Strat]

Glad you're here to bring balance Strat. This thread had turned to the dark side for a bit.

Thats what happens when you let chud, mcp and lv run the show

[Strat]

Glad you're here to bring balance Strat. This thread had turned to the dark side for a bit.

I haven't skimmed through this thread. What are your thoughts?

[Strat]

I really love how they handled the force here.

I loved the new shit that kylo brought with the force. Intense and scary.

[Strat]

Thundercunt?

Does RM have an underbelly I'm unaware of?

Respond to my thoughts in the other thread!

[southp]

Glad you're here to bring balance Strat. This thread had turned to the dark side for a bit.

I haven't skimmed through this thread. What are your thoughts?

Everything I wanted and probably more emotional than I expected. For me it was the character connections that made a sci-fi movie so incredibly human. Bb-8 and Poe, Chewie and Han, Luke and R2 (which makes me well up just thinking about it). Only thing that fell flat was Leia and Han which was handled with some well placed 3pO humour.

[dimejinky99]

Don't look too much into the leia / Chewie no hug bit.

Just cos you dont see it doesn't mean it doesn't happen. But mainly? How do you show a scene like that,two old friends mourning their friend and honour Han AND honour their loss without it feeling rushed and forced?

Think about it

[LoathedVermin72]

You guys make me nauseous

[Simple Torture]

I forgot about the chewie-Leia snub. A hug was in order there but instead went to Rey. Hmmmm....

That's what you get when you don't give Chewie a medal.

[Sgt. Crackpot]

I think Chewie and Leia didn't hug, because things were awkward between them. Things happened in the last 30 odd years that they weren't proud of.

[LoathedVermin72]

I like how only Han could be the one to talk to Kylo. Apparently mothers are useless.

[Strat]

I like how only Han could be the one to talk to Kylo. Apparently mothers are useless.

Umm. What?

[Simple Torture]

I think Chewie and Leia didn't hug, because things were awkward between them. Things happened in the last 30 odd years that they weren't proud of.

The fake spoiler I sent to my siblings after seeing the movie was, 'I can't believe Leia and Chewie had a kid!' which sounds a lot like this.