Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015)

Oblio · Dec 19, 2015

Khalan_sl said:
1) At the start when Finn wakes up on Jakku, you can very clearly see his seat ejected with a parachute. Since when did the Empire/FO care of about Tie Pilots to the point of giving them parachuted ejection seats? Most TIE's didn't even have shield for the very reason that the pilots were a dime a dozen. Maybe since the defeat things have changed.

2) Mox Van Sydows Character has way way more backstory we are not getting, he Knew Luke, knew of the Solo's, Knew Kylo's identity and obviously fought in some capacity in the war along with the Jedi. I am really curious who he ends up being.

3)When Kylo knocks Rey out in the forest, she is holding the GUN han gave her down at her side, so it is assumed when she is knocked unconscious she drops it, but we later see her with the exact same gun at the end of the movie. Small error there, but nothing big..

1. Ejector seats are standard issue with the First Order.

2. From StarWars.com: LOR SAN TEKKA
A legendary traveler and explorer, Lor San Tekka is a longtime ally of the New Republic and the Resistance. After the Battle of Endor, San Tekka helped Luke Skywalker recover secret Jedi lore that the Empire had tried to erase, and Leia Organa hopes the old scout can now help find her brother. Following decades of adventure, San Tekka retired to live simply on Jakku, where he follows the dictates of the once-forbidden Church of the Force. But his retirement is fated to be anything but peaceful.
3. It happens...

Breakdown · Dec 19, 2015

What I took from Ren is he's ?ber strong but untrained and too emotional.

You see in the beginning how strong he is stopping a blast and his mind reading. But we saw multiple times where he freaked out and had tantrums. He's not fully trained and thinks he is just going to be as strong as Vader.

At one point he says to snook that he can find the droid he just needs him to show him how. He's asking for his training to be finished. He's a big baby with a big gun, and he's not ready. I think snook wanted him to get his ass kicked, and then he's ready for his training now that he killed his father and has seen he's not strong enough to be Rey.

I think we will see him much stronger through training next episode. Luke will refuse to train Rey. He will be a broken man. Ren will kick Rey's ass and Luke will be forced into the fight, and will finally train Rey for the final episode.

Malakriss · Dec 19, 2015

His name is Snoke and he is not on Jersey Shore.

Miguex · Dec 19, 2015

Saw it for the second time today, and it was better the second time. Things I missed because of the excitement first time I caught. People are still missing that Rey had training before being abandoned, whether Keg calls me a dickhole or not. There are multiple times in this movie that it is implied or straight up put in your face that Rey was one of Luke's students. Yet people are saying she magically picked up force abilities. It sprinkled throughout this thread. During Kylo's interrogation of her, I'm pretty certain that by the end he recognizes who she is from before the massacre of Luke's students. The awakening was within her is the entire point.

I see a lot of people talking about how there was a lot of things unanswered or uncertain in this movie. As someone who saw all the originals in the theater as a kid, with three years in between movies, some of my fondest memories growing up were the talks I would have with my friends about "what do you think...". One of the biggest issues with the prequels to me was that Lucas spelled absolutely fucking everything out explicitly, and answered every question he could think of (where did Boba Fett come from...fuck I was happier not knowing). I've already had more in depth conversations with my friends and my nephews about what we think is happening moving forward from this movie that I ever did with my friends after any of the prequels.

Khalan_sl said:
1) At the start when Finn wakes up on Jakku, you can very clearly see his seat ejected with a parachute. Since when did the Empire/FO care of about Tie Pilots to the point of giving them parachuted ejection seats? Most TIE's didn't even have shield for the very reason that the pilots were a dime a dozen. Maybe since the defeat things have changed.

The old gen Ties didn't have any protection. Finn and Poe stole a Tie Elite next gen Tie Fighter. The ones with the red arm leading to the left wing. They have gunner seats, some shielding although very little, and limited hyperspace capability. Just nerd stuff, but true.

Khalan · Dec 19, 2015

Miguex_sl said:
Saw it for the second time today, and it was better the second time. Things I missed because of the excitement first time I caught. People are still missing that Rey had training before being abandoned, whether Keg calls me a dickhole or not. There are multiple times in this movie that it is implied or straight up put in your face that Rey was one of Luke's students. Yet people are saying she magically picked up force abilities. It sprinkled throughout this thread. During Kylo's interrogation of her, I'm pretty certain that by the end he recognizes who she is from before the massacre of Luke's students. The awakening was within her is the entire point.

The only thing against this is when she first meet han and says " I thought luke skywalker was only a legend" and then its never made clear later on if she "remembers" him due to the force awakening. So at the start of the movie she was either mind wiped or never trained at all.

Im sure it will be answered in Ep9

Conefed · Dec 19, 2015

X-Wings used same sound effects as Star Control's Yehat Terminators, and it was mildly distracting.

DeadAgain!?_sl · Dec 19, 2015

He won't be taking his mask off anymore, his ass got burned on that planet.

Miguex · Dec 19, 2015

DeadAgain!?_sl said:
He won't be taking his mask off anymore, his ass got burned on that planet.

he's also going to need a new mask, he left his on the bridge.

Joeboo · Dec 19, 2015

Miguex_sl said:
he's also going to need a new mask, he left his on the bridge.

Rebuild Vader's mask? I have to assume it's still safe up on the star destroyer or whatever the huge ship was that he spent the first half of the movie on.

Blakkheim · Dec 19, 2015

Got to watch it earlier today. Just a few thoughts:

Overall, I came away very impressed. I think JJ had an extremely difficult task at hand having to advance the story 30 years into the future while introducing new characters and developing their backgrounds, to integrating all of the old characters into one coherent story. Putting all of this together would have fucked almost any directer and I think JJ did about as good as anyone could have done honestly.

If I were to rank this among the rest of the series, it would easily be in the top 3 no doubt. It blew the fucking shit prequels out of the water. I'd still probably put ESB as my number one. But I think I would actually put this one ahead of ROTJ. Maybe I'd have it tied in second place with ANH. Which would be fitting giving the obvious story similarities.

Things that I really liked:
- Probably my favorite seen was when Kylo Ren went for the light saber after Fin lost it and Rey rips it away from him. Fucking got chills!
- I really enjoyed the mindfuck scene when Kylo Ren tries to go all badass on Rey reading her mind and she just flips the shit around on him. I was impressed with both actors and how they handled this.
- I was very skeptical of the Maz Kanata character scenes from what I had been reading and I thought they handled the character surprisingly well.
- When I first saw Snoke I was like, "WTF?!? this is retarded! Look how big this thing is!" Then it was revealed to be a massive image projection and I was like, that was actually pretty fucking cool. I'm really looking forward to finding out more about him and I'm actually glad we didn't learn too much about him in this movie (Darth Plagueis?).
- Although Poe Dameron is kind of a goofy name, I liked his character and thought Oscar Issac played the part well. My hope is that he becomes this trilogy's Han Solo character.
- For someone with little acting experience, Daisy Ridley was a badass.
- I thought Kylo Ren's character was developed pretty well. He's not just another rip off of Darth Vader. He seems much less controlled and more psychotic almost compared to Vader. Throws tantrums. Even has a bit of humor to him.
- The Millennium Falcon chase scene on Jakku was pure fucking Star Wars.

Things I didn't like:
Really, there wasn't all that much. Most of these are minor issues or just nitpicking
- I still don't know what the purpose of Fin's character is. Although I thought Boyega did a decent enough acting job, I'm not sure how this character really fits in? I can only assume they must have some other bigger plans for him in episodes 8 and 9 (perhaps a showdown with Phasma?). If not then it seems like his purpose is just to fulfill demographics requirements.
- The weird octopus/spaghetti monsters in the space ship that got loose. This scene just came across as somewhat cheesy with too much cgi. I think it would have been better had Solo used his wits to outsmart the bad guys in some other way.
- Would have liked to have seen more Captain Phasma character. I expected her to have a bigger role. Hopefully she will in episodes 8 and 9.
- Same thing with Max Von Sydow's character. Wish we could have learned more about him.
- Han Solo and Chewbacca just randomly stumbling upon the Millennium Falcon out in the middle of space just seemed a bit Deus ex machina.

Things I'm looking forward to/hope we find out more about:
- Who the fuck are Rey's parents? For whatever reason, I had just assumed we would be getting an answer to this. Is she Luke's kid? If so, who the hell is her mother? Is she Han and Leia's kid? If so, why didn't they seem to recognize her? I'll honestly be disappointed if she ends up being just some random person who was ditched on Jakku who also just happens to be force sensitive.
- Really hoping to see Rey integrate that staff into some kind of light saber pole-arm.
- Hoping that General Hux ends up being more than just some random slime-ball officer who worked his way up to general level as a twenty year old.
- As mentioned above, can't wait to find out more about Snoke.
- Hope we find out how the hell Maz ended up with the light saber.

I think I saw in an interview where JJ expects to have maybe another 10 to 20 minutes of film added back in when the extended edition DVD's roll out. Can't wait to see what they left out.

Overall score I'd say 9/10. Good enough for me although I know some people are going to bitch no matter what.

spronk · Dec 19, 2015

video of rey's dream sequence when she touches the saber
Sendvid - Instant video upload

some people say when they step through the frames while rey is in the rain, her face transforms into Snoke's face for a few frames. So maybe Snoke is her daddy

also apparently Ewan McGregor recorded a few lines of the voice in there, presumably speaking as Obi Wan. He apparently says Rey, and people say maybe that makes her a Kenobi.

Also this was a passage in the novelization of the movie, so it means Snoke and Rey know that Vader ultimately turned back to the light

Nightmare · Dec 20, 2015

spronk_sl said:
video of rey's dream sequence when she touches the saber
Sendvid - Instant video upload

some people say when they step through the frames while rey is in the rain, her face transforms into Snoke's face for a few frames. So maybe Snoke is her daddy

also apparently Ewan McGregor recorded a few lines of the voice in there, presumably speaking as Obi Wan. He apparently says Rey, and people say maybe that makes her a Kenobi.

Also this was a passage in the novelization of the movie, so it means Snoke and Rey know that Vader ultimately turned back to the light

If you listen closely near the end of the flashback after you hear Ben say "Ray" you also hear in a whispering voice that sounds to me like Ben as well "These are the first steps".

Trained by a force ghost as a small child, or at least made aware of her powers then some horrible event caused her to block it out?

Brahma · Dec 20, 2015

As far as Han and Chewbaca stumbling on the Millennium Falcon, didn't he say something along the lines it was being tracked easily by him and the First Order? Making the assumption here. Power up the MF = tracked.

Column_sl · Dec 20, 2015

You could make the excuse that Rey is being sub consciously guided the whole movie. There's a lot of instances where she just happens on people.

One being stumbling into Solo on that huge Starkiller base.

Miguex · Dec 20, 2015

Yeah, you can call me stupid and I'm sure some will, but for the vast majority if not all perceived "plot holes", I feel like they covered it early in the film before it happened. Having said that, this is not a perfect film, but in my opinion it is pretty much a perfect Star Wars film.

edit - referencing Brahma's post

Miguex · Dec 20, 2015

Column_sl said:
You could make the excuse that Rey is being sub consciously guided the whole movie. There's a lot of instances where she just happens on people.

One being stumbling into Solo on that huge Starkiller base.

Its Vice Versa, Solo stumbled onto her but they were both in an area explicity expressed to be central to the plot, the thermal vent or whatever they called it, being around the "trench" which was probably 10% of that planet, but I could actually let this go as something that was a little far fetched. It was a still an awesome moment with him doing the head motion and Finn being all "wtf is with that head motion". Finn had some awesome funny shit in this movie.

Sylas · Dec 20, 2015

man am I glad i tempered my expectations.

This was...meh. My 4th favorite star wars film. But that's a lot like saying getting surprise shot in the back of the head would be my 4th preferred method of dying. behind 1) peacefully in my sleep at a ripe old age; 2) massive instant death heart attack after nutting all up in some 22 year old hottie on my 80th birthday; 3) just the right amount of an opiate overdose where I drift off into dream world and never wake up. So yeah, after those, surprise gunshot to the back of the head that kills me instantly and painlessly is probably my 4th favored method of dying.

It's better than the prequels but that's a lot like saying a pb&j is better than dogshit. It wasn't necessarily a bad film, but it certainly wasn't what i would consider good. My rankings:

Phantom Menace 1/10
Attack of the Clones 0.5/10
Revenge of the Sith 2/10
Star Wars 7/10
Empire 8.5-9/10
Jedi 6/10
Force Awakens 4.5/10

So i'm going to compare this film to another movie that released this year which is in a similar boat. I've seen tons of comments about how it borrows elements of the original trilogy and I kept hoping that this movie was going to be like "Creed", but nope. this film is more like Spectre (007).

While creed is basically the same story as Rocky I (or even Rocky 6, rocky balboa) it both pays respect to the franchise, is a homage to the franchise, and truly feels like it's a passing of the torch from old to new in the telling of the story. It is a great film on it's own merits despite the similarities in structure to the earlier films.

Force Awakens feels like they took the original trilogy, threw them in a blender and took chunks, just cut and paste entire segments of it and through it against a wall. Whatever order they fell in is what got used making this film.

If you've seen the original trilogy, you've seen The Force Awakens. and not in a good way. At best, this film is a way for young children who've never seen 4-6 to just watch 1 movie as a "recap" for the Star Wars saga to date.

Big Phoenix · Dec 20, 2015

I'm assuming they basically remade ANH because they wanted to play it safe because they knew they would be crucified and probably kill their 4 billion dollar investment if it wasn't at least okay.

Better safe than sorry. Makes sense but I hope to god ep8 is more than go find the force and get trained only to have the bad guys come out on top like ESB.

khorum · Dec 20, 2015

Is that novelization out?

EDIT: nm Amazon says the 5th.

The Edge · Dec 20, 2015

Just got back from seeing this at the beautiful El Capitan in Hollywood. I thought it was very good. However, I did feel it was missing something. I don't know what, but that connection I was afraid of it missing by being a JJ film was not there. I'm not one to sit through movies and think about what's coming next, but with this I seemed to be onto every major plot point before it happened, so nothing was surprising, and the emotional level was minimum. The only real emotional moment for me was the final scene, seeing Luke, but then it quickly faded. Han's death did nothing for me, and was so very obvious. The destruction of the planet/weapon was meh. Everything looked really good though. Was beautifully shot, and the musical score was quite good. I'm eager to see Rey go full on Jedi mode. I'd give it an 8/10, but it's probably my least favorite Star Wars film.

--------

Oh, and I felt they would go this direction, but it's a letdown. They didn't do anything to further the philosophy of the Force in this movie. Nothing that was said was new info. This is the only Star Wars movie to do that.

-----

Favorite scene would be Rey resisting Kylo during the interrogation. That was cool.

Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015)

Utah

Gunnar Durden

Golden Baronet of the Realm

The lad himself

Trakanon Raider

Blackwing Lair Raider

shitlord

The lad himself

Molten Core Raider

Karazhan Raider

FPS noob

Golden Knight of the Realm

Obi-Bro Kenobi-X

shitlord

The lad himself

The lad himself

Pronouns: zie/zhem/zer

Murder Apologist

Lord Nagafen Raider