$55 million estimates for Thursday night. Pretty impressive though actually not quite as impressive as the last Harry Potter (it made $43 million but it only had midnight showings, not the 7-12 showings of TFA). Still, given the release date an audience, I think the weekend will be better distributed than HPDH2. Most are thinking in the 220-240 range but I'd go high side with 260 (barring a theater shooting or something like that).
I concur. Although ROTJ was the weakest of the original trilogy, it's still a fucking awesome conclusion to the story (except for the ewoks). Luke's final confrontation with Vader and the emperor is awesome. The rescue of Han from Jabba's palace is also epic (except for the shitty way that Boba Fett died). Carrie Fisher when she was young and smoking hot in a slutty slave bikini (hell yes). I know that movie was 30 years ago, but holy shit did she not age well.
Felt like Star Wars. Will go see it again in a week or two, but movie had a bit too much deja vu. I look forward to the many different directions they'll be taking things from here.
The thing that would make sense about R2 to me was that he was in sleep mode while computing the map to Luke or something, and he just coincidently woke up at this point. When he wakes up someone translates him saying something like "he finally found it" or something.
Throughout the saga, R2D2 always had strong "personality", many times doing things on its own. What i think is 1 of 2 things: or luke told that if he finds anyone that could be his apprentice, help him....or, R2D2 saw Rey and felt that she could be the right apprentice for Luke and revealed Luke's whereabouts
On the originals, ROTJ always has the feels factor and being the last film that tied up the trilogy that put it right up there with Empire for me, but once I got old enough it was easy to appreciate Empire as the better movie. Honestly as much as I love ROTJ, all the Ewok shit and tromping around on the planet for as long as they did detracts from the movie a little, although it does kind of help transition all of the characters for the big 3 part final battle.
yeah I didn't get the death star thing either, like does it suck up ALL the power of the sun and then shoot out a fireball? Wouldn't the fireball it shoots out be limited to light speed, meaning whatever target planet would have years to evacuate? They kept saying in the movie "when the light is completely gone, the time is up" but that doesn't make any sense unless it truly is sucking up all the energy from the sun. I guess you could say the installed gravity/warp drives on a goddamn planet so it just moves to another star, but that seems like an insanely stupid weapon since everything would freeze on the surface (all trees life etc dies). I know, I know, star wars is fantasy not scifi but still the entire weapon just bothered me. I hope neal degrasse tyson does a little video on it sometime.
wasn't coruscant one of the planets destroyed? They showed a brief scene with a bunch of people on a platform, it sorta looked like coruscant with the senate dome in the background. Snoke mentioned destroying the republic senate to cripple the rebellion. I hope someone finds a snapshot of the background scene and finds Jar Jar binks in it.
For the person asking about taking the wife, i'd say go for it. My wife hasn't really watched any star wars (she watched a bit with me when I marathoned through 4-6 last weekend) and she really enjoyed it. As she put it, "i'm glad there is more than one bikini wearing woman in the galaxy in this movie".
Really enjoyed the movie. Thought it was really well done overall. I'm not quite ready to put it on par with the original trilogy yet, but it's close. Infinitely closer than any of the prequels were. It feels like the "Rocky Balboa" of that franchise, a really good continuation after a long layoff that's on par with the best of the series. Doesn't break any new ground, but it doesn't need to in order to be a good movie.
I thought they did a great job at casting the new characters. Mostly actors that are solid, and have experience while not being so well known that it's distracting(other than Max Von Sydow, but even he fits in well in the brief role he is in). The humor was balanced perfectly, nothing ridiculous or over the top like Jar Jar, but enough humor to keep the overall feeling light and never letting the movie get too dark or too serious for very long. Some nice emotional moments(almost all involving the original characters)
I honestly can't think of much more that I would have wanted out of the movie.
The only thing I was hoping for at the time, that didn't come to pass was
I was hoping that during the snow forest saber fight scene, that when Luke's blue saber was force-pulled from the snow that It was going to fly past Kylo to be grabbed by Luke himself, who would fire that sucker up and put the fear of god into Kylo, seeing the fear in his face of already being injured and less than 100% and now facing the equivalent of a god in this universe would have been amazing. It could have been the first time in the series that you see legitimate fear from a darkside/evil character when confronting a "good" character. And my theater would have absolutely lost it's shit had that happened at that moment, everyone was already cheering and clapping and stuff through the whole movie everytime someone appeared for the first time or did something that referenced back to the original movies.
Obi Wan used force push on more than one occasion and Yoda has as well. Not sure where the confusion is on that point but it's a pretty common technique.
yeah I didn't get the death star thing either, like does it suck up ALL the power of the sun and then shoot out a fireball? Wouldn't the fireball it shoots out be limited to light speed, meaning whatever target planet would have years to evacuate? They kept saying in the movie "when the light is completely gone, the time is up" but that doesn't make any sense unless it truly is sucking up all the energy from the sun. I guess you could say the installed gravity/warp drives on a goddamn planet so it just moves to another star, but that seems like an insanely stupid weapon since everything would freeze on the surface (all trees life etc dies). I know, I know, star wars is fantasy not scifi but still the entire weapon just bothered me. I hope neal degrasse tyson does a little video on it sometime.
wasn't coruscant one of the planets destroyed? They showed a brief scene with a bunch of people on a platform, it sorta looked like coruscant with the senate dome in the background. Snoke mentioned destroying the republic senate to cripple the rebellion. I hope someone finds a snapshot of the background scene and finds Jar Jar binks in it.
For the person asking about taking the wife, i'd say go for it. My wife hasn't really watched any star wars (she watched a bit with me when I marathoned through 4-6 last weekend) and she really enjoyed it. As she put it, "i'm glad there is more than one bikini wearing woman in the galaxy in this movie".
They explain it all during the Resistance tech demo of Starkiller Base. They said it uses a "hyperlightspeed" cannon. IE when you saw it blowing up that whole system, it went across lightyears in seconds to fuck them all. Obviously its hard enough for us to grasp lightspeed itself, much less that shit, but its fantasy-fi, so whatever, they blew it up anyhow.
Should this be seen in 3D or 2D? I usually dislike 3D because of motion blur, but occasionally there's a movie that does it well like Mad Max. Opinions?
XD 3D had a couple of action scenes where it added some value, but overall it wasn't necessary. Stick with 2D and for the love of god never see regular plain old 3D for any movie.
Much Much better than the prequels. I rate the originals a little bit differently from a lot of people.
4-9.0
5-9.5
6-8.0
The Ewoks really did mess up RotJ for me. I would give this movie an 8.0. It could have been better but, I think it did a great job of both recognizing its roots while setting up the new world. The new actors were so much better than the prequels. I did not leave the theater disappointed and will most likely go back at least one more time to watch it.
Rey might be the daughter of Ezra from the Rebels cartoon, since the age would be consistent. I don't think she'd be some random force-sensitive that Luke trained so she has to be related to a known character. This would also avoid Luke having to mindrape her which I don't think Disney would go with. We also have no idea who Max von Sydow's character (Lor San Tekka according to imdb) actually is but the fact he was on Jakku can't be ignored.
The xwing/tie/falcon dogfighting scenes were pretty cool in 3D, but that's what, like 10% of the movie at most?
I didn't feel like the 3D was a tacked-on afterthought, it was actually cool during the fights, but you really wouldn't miss much without it. The movie isn't quite as action packed as I expected from the trailers. All things being equal, I'd pay the extra $3 for 3D vs 2D, but I wouldn't drive further out of your way for 3D or anything like that.
Great movie, total rollercoaster, didn't want it to end. I liked that it was nostalgic, except for one of the plot points that felt a little too nostalgic. I wish they could have come up with something different. I'm really looking forward to see what happens with Rey, Luke and Kylo.
