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It'd make sense that Ren was practised against blasters though. - I mean, after what happpened on the big night, he probably never saw another lightsaber except for his own, nevermind fought in a duel.

Getting shot at, and dealing with being shot at though? That he probably had a LOT of experience with. But some lunatic charging into melee with a guy wielding a lightsaber? Who'd be dumb enough to do that...

In saying that, I don't really subscribe to the whole "Rey is a Mary Sue" thing. - Or at least, more than any of the other thousands of heroes in film and television. I will say this though, and I don't think it's spoilery, Jyn is an improvement. She's goodish at scrapping with people and good at shooting people and that's her focus and that's pretty good. As opposed to, being ace mechanic, and pilot, and melee expert, and marksman and jedi. On the other hand, that's what jedi do.

 Kojiro wrote:
By the time of TFA Ren has been receiving training in the ways of the Force for at least six years. That's not a trivial amount of time to study something. It certainly should be enough to give one an edge over someone who has had a few hours at best. He seemed pretty confident blocking blaster bolts so I'm going say he's had some prior experience besides terminals.

But that doesn't necessarily mean lightsaber combat training, especially in a context where the jedi are the only people with lightsabers and they're all on the same side. Nor does it mean that he had any interest in keeping up the practice to maintain whatever skills he happened to learn. It's quite possible that he learned a token bit of lightsaber combat and that was it, and by the time of TFA Rey actually had more skill and experience in melee combat. In fact, given Luke's concerns over losing students to the dark side, it would be plausible that he deliberately minimized training in anything remotely related to killing people to keep his students as far as possible from the path towards those dark side emotions.

And yeah, he had the ability to block blaster bolts, but mastering one trick doesn't necessarily mean having any skill at something entirely unrelated. It's not like Rey pulled out a blaster and shot him to death, magically ignoring this demonstrated ability to stop blaster shots.

In a movie where an object belonging to the exact same person gives out visions- 'show me again grandfather'- hardly seems like a bad idea. I'm still betting it was a vision from the helmet that tipped Ren over in the first place.

Sure, I'm just laughing a bit at the image of Kylo Ren standing in front of his precious hat, tears starting to smudge his emo makeup, begging the force to let him be as evil as his grandfather was. But if we grant the idea that the helmet has power then we have to also consider the idea that the lightsaber has power and Rey was not alone in standing against Kylo Ren.

 Peregrine wrote:
But that doesn't necessarily mean lightsaber combat training, especially in a context where the jedi are the only people with lightsabers and they're all on the same side. Nor does it mean that he had any interest in keeping up the practice to maintain whatever skills he happened to learn.

That seems dubious at best since his goal is to find Luke whom we can be reasonably sure has a lightsaber.

It's quite possible that he learned a token bit of lightsaber combat and that was it, and by the time of TFA Rey actually had more skill and experience in melee combat. In fact, given Luke's concerns over losing students to the dark side, it would be plausible that he deliberately minimized training in anything remotely related to killing people to keep his students as far as possible from the path towards those dark side emotions.

If it weren't for the fact the bulk of his known training is under Snoke, that might make sense. But as someone who wants to exterminate the last Jedi Master I'd wager it's more likely he's put significant effort into his saber skills than simply let them rot.

And yeah, he had the ability to block blaster bolts, but mastering one trick doesn't necessarily mean having any skill at something entirely unrelated.

I'd argue that using the Force to guide your blade in your defense has cross over between blaster bolts and lightsabers. Fundamentally you're allowing the Force to guide your movements. Certainly if we're to allow Rey's melee skills to cross over from stafff to lightsaber we should allow Ren's 'Force Defense' to do so.

It's not like Rey pulled out a blaster and shot him to death, magically ignoring this demonstrated ability to stop blaster shots.

No, she pulled out a blaster and shot several professionally trained soldiers to death, before they could shoot her. Which echos how she fixes the Falcon before Han, learns the Force on the fly and goes from grinding the Falcon against the ground to speeding through a wrecked ISSD- while dodging fire from elite pilots no less. Nothing is hard for her, she just 'gets it'. Which is the biggest reason people don't like her that I've come across.

But the problems with Rey just don't seem present in Jyn, at least to me. Jyn has some fighting skills- because she was raised by a militant nutjob (though I still detest the utter ineffectiveness of Stormtrooper armour). But we don't see her pull off any piloting shenanigans, she doesn't appear to be a polyglot or have any special technical skills. Despite not showing any of these things she's compelling and interesting and you (well me at least) ended up rooting for her and a bit sad we won't be seeing her again (that is, I suppose, the nature of sacrifice though).

I want to see if Jyn is welcomed by the fandom, as I believe she should be because I want to see it plain as day spelled out that it was the character of Rey that caused arguments, not her gender. Of course, perhaps Jyn won't be welcomed and we can discuss that if/when it happens. But if it doesn't I hope that people can acknowledge not all the flak Rey caught was 'because girl'.

 Kojiro wrote:
That seems dubious at best since his goal is to find Luke whom we can be reasonably sure has a lightsaber.

Sure, Luke has a lightsaber, and Kylo Ren has a superweapon that makes the death star look like a pretty fireworks show. If his goal is to kill Luke there are much easier was of doing it than going off to engage him in a sword fight.

I'd argue that using the Force to guide your blade in your defense has cross over between blaster bolts and lightsabers. Fundamentally you're allowing the Force to guide your movements. Certainly if we're to allow Rey's melee skills to cross over from stafff to lightsaber we should allow Ren's 'Force Defense' to do so.

Sure, Kylo Ren obviously has some skills, which is why Rey didn't just hack him to death in a few seconds. I just dispute the idea that he's some kind of master at sword fighting who couldn't conceivably lose a duel against a lesser opponent.

No, she pulled out a blaster and shot several professionally trained soldiers to death, before they could shoot her. Which echos how she fixes the Falcon before Han, learns the Force on the fly and goes from grinding the Falcon against the ground to speeding through a wrecked ISSD- while dodging fire from elite pilots no less. Nothing is hard for her, she just 'gets it'. Which is the biggest reason people don't like her that I've come across.

IMO this has more to do with the pacing of TFA, which is just plain bad all around, than Rey being a Mary Sue. We do see Rey struggle, the movie just rushes past it to the next big CGI spectacle before the struggles can mean anything. She gets scared, runs off, and is immediately captured. She fumbles with her gun when enemies show up. She tries to fix the standoff by letting the monsters out of their cages, and nearly kills everyone. Etc. Just like the premise of the movie seems to be that the Empire has re-conquered the galaxy and the resistance is the last remaining opposition, until halfway through we get some random throwaway line that by the way the Republic is still around and the new Empire is off in some tiny corner of the galaxy. That important background information is left for some novel that most of the audience will never read, because why explain the background details when you can just blow up some more stuff?

But if it doesn't I hope that people can acknowledge not all the flak Rey caught was 'because girl'.

Not all of it, but IMO it's pretty clear that a large part of that was "because girl" when male Mary Sue characters don't receive the same level of hate.

 Peregrine wrote:
Sure, Kylo Ren obviously has some skills, which is why Rey didn't just hack him to death in a few seconds. I just dispute the idea that he's some kind of master at sword fighting who couldn't conceivably lose a duel against a lesser opponent.

I don't know anyone has ever claimed he's a master swordsman but there's certainly a large area of skill between 'had some basics' and 'the new Mace Windu' that 99.99% of trained force users would all into. Certainly if he's to be any sort of villain for the trilogy he needs must be competent, which thus far he's failed to prove. But that again is a strike against Rey because a hero is judged on what they overcome. If indeed he's just a 'whiny emo brat who beats up computers' then her achievement is correspondingly unimpressive. You beat up a whiny emo brat with poor skills- good for you I guess? Jyn on the other hand has no impressive knowledge, no technical expertise, certainly no force attunement and for it comes across as much more believable, heroic and memorable IMO.

Not all of it, but IMO it's pretty clear that a large part of that was "because girl" when male Mary Sue characters don't receive the same level of hate.

I think the comparison to Luke is always going to miss because it's Luke from Star Wars. It got into us (like religion) when we were little and it's really difficult to peel back the rose tint and see it as it is. But I feel that for many young people, Rey will have the privilege too (in 30 or so years). But that's not a defense of either, nor is it indicative of sexism any more than the future defenders of Rey are sexist against men. Luke's 'pass' (if you want to call it that) doesn't stem from his masculinity but from his period, from when he won us over. Even then I'd argue he's nowhere near as hyper competent as Rey but that's another topic. If Jyn is widely accepted though I think you need to reassess that claim of 'a large part' (or at least define it).

Ultimately R1 stands on it's own as a very good story, connected with the SW universe but also expanding on it (and cleaning up that annoying 'why is there an super weakness!?! issue) which is something EpVII failed to do utterly.

Exec interference is all too obvious in this film. About 10% of a thoughtful, ambitious film made it to the screen. It almost feels like the rest was lost in a fire. And then Disney hired a team of accountants to reconstruct the missing parts.

When Cassian kills the informant at the beginning, I was really impressed: that scene says "this film is going to tackle some tough realities about war and rebellion." Just like how it has been marketed! But nope, not even close. The rumors that Disney demanded reshoots to pull back to the Saturday morning cartoon sensibility of the larger franchise turned out to be true. The Empire is as comically ineffectual as Cobra mooks in an episode of G.I. Joe.

This is fine for the usual SW picture, the ones that start with the purposefully cheesy serials-inspired John Williams overtures and scrolling texts. It falls totally flat in a picture set up as a "dark and gritty war film." But before anyone says, hey it's for kids, consider the sudden shift back to visceral violence when Vader shows up like Jason in a Friday the 13th sequel.

I would like to read a candid interview with Gareth Edwards about his experience with Disney while making Rogue One. Judging by the look of the picture, which is really very inspiring, he was certainly capable of making a much more tonally consistent film. The film Disney released feels choppy and rushed through Act 1 before becoming an entirely different - and increasingly preposterous - movie in Act 2.

Considering what apparently happened here and that the next non-trilogy movie is slated to be the adventures of teenage heart throb Han Solo, I guess Disney has decided that SW sells better as a cartoon. It's certainly tempting to think Edwards's original Rogue One would have been a better movie - the "dark and gritty war movie" everyone is talking about. But maybe SW really is better off as a soaring romance with no pretense of "realism."

Mushing the two together was an unfortunate mistake.

 Manchu wrote:
words

Kinda shocked i'm saying this for a mod but spoiler tag some of that.

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
How scary or traumatizing would it be for young children?

Fairly to very. This is very much a more adult Star Wars.

Gonna spoiler tag my description of this but i think it's the best way to describe it.

How are you shocked? The thread title has a spoiler warning. And if you thought it needed spoiler tags, why would you quote the whole thing?

I changed it and i only felt like one sentence needed a spoiler tag.

Thread is labeled as containing spoilers. That warning obviously suffices.

I really disliked some of the heroes of TFA (Rey included, of course). But I enjoyed Jynn a lot, being a, woman or not is not important. What is important is to be a well written character.

Ok well i won't argue with a mod. I just thought maybe it slipped your mind at first. I just felt that there's a general courtesy to spoiler tag spoilers regardless. It's no big. Not like anything you said was too huge of a spoiler.

I avoided this thread before seeing the film - considering it had a spoilers tag - out of courtesy to people who had seen the film and wanted to talk about it as well as to, you know, avoid spoilers. That's what the spoiler tag on the thread is for.

 godardc wrote:
I really disliked some of the heroes of TFA (Rey included, of course). But I enjoyed Jynn a lot, being a, woman or not is not important. What is important is to be a well written character.

Agreed. Jyn Erso being a woman is totally irrelevant to the plot EXCEPT the sudden, pointless, obligatory love scene or pseudo love scene at the end. Other than that foible, you could CGI in a male actor playing "Jon Erso" and the story would not change at all. Whether she is well-drawn or consistently-characterized is a separate matter.

 godardc wrote:
I really disliked some of the heroes of TFA (Rey included, of course). But I enjoyed Jynn a lot, being a, woman or not is not important. What is important is to be a well written character.

Absolutely. A good movie or video game or whatever can have various types of characters and people will get over their personal issues (if they have them) and still love the movie or game. I mean i know one feminist on dakka that wanted to not play deus ex: human revolution for not having much in the way of female leads but got over it and was glad he did. The game was still a fantastic game and a work of art.

Actually i disagree Manchu. A man could've played the part exactly the same. It just would've ended up with a gay ending love scene (though i'll admit some might not be comfortable about that). That or they could have switched the characters of who was male or female in the pair.

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
Thanks for the heads-up. It's going to be a tough call.

Other than the Vader horror movie scene, which is not gory or anything but it is meant to be relatively shocking, the violence isn't the problem so much as the film introducing the idea that good guys sometimes must do bad things, temporarily problematizing that (are bad guys and good guys really that different), and then totally brushing it off with empty propaganda. I think an intelligent kid would be troubled by that and it would be good to discuss it with them after the film.

Ok, well, if no spoiler tags... then away we go!

I thought it was great. Tons of things in there for SW fans to find, and a good story overall. I disagree with Manchu that only 10% of the original film made it to screen. The re-shoots were likely only to affect the ending ie. having Andor and Jyn end up on the beach - that probably wasn't in the film and he probably originally died in the archive room, and having Krennic show up on top of the tower was another reshoot (he was on the beach originally - watch the first trailers).

This is a darker film. To say that it's a SW film made into a Disney cartoon is incredibly blind. Everyone dies.

 flamingkillamajig wrote:
Not sure how i felt about the death star killing planets not being instantaneous and rather becoming a 'good guys run away from an explosion that slowly happens behind them rather than all at once'. The death star may have been fixed in the small amount of time between this and 'A New Hope' but somehow i doubt it.

That's because they specifically weren't 'killing the planet'. They were firing low-level blasts intentionally, both because Tarkin wanted to send a message and because the Death Star was still unknown by the Imperial Senate, and could pose a political problem that saw planets switching to the Rebellion. Remember that the Emperor only dissolves the Imperial Senate part-way through ANH. Up until that point they were important.

 Kojiro wrote:
I'm interested to see if Jyn becomes as divisive as Rey. I don't believe she will, despite being the central character in a SW film and female. If the problem with Rey was indeed she's female, that should also crop up for Jyn.

The problem with Rey wasn't that she was female, but that she could do everything without having to try.

Personally that never bothered me - I thought Rey was fun. I always saw it as her being someone with an immense (yet unknown) connection with the force, manifesting itself mostly through being excellent with technical things and piloting skills (just like Anakin!).

 flamingkillamajig wrote:
Not British myself but i still don't get why Brits always gotta be evil even if it's a central thing with Star Wars. I think i saw a few in Rogue One as the rebels though. Hard to say as i'm not good at exactly placing accents.

This is one of those things that people seem to forget about movie-making. All the bad guys being English men who all spoke in posh accents wasn't some sub-text laden exploration of gender or nationalism or whatever. It's because they filmed the movie in England! You hire what's available.

 flamingkillamajig wrote:
A man could've played the part exactly the same. It just would've ended up with a gay ending love scene (though i'll admit some might not be comfortable about that).

The part in parantheses is exactly the problem - Disney has yet to take that step and let's just be honest not doing it is a conscious choice. That weak ass "love scene" is almost certainly the product of test screenings. We know the general audience often feels like a movie is incomplete unless "the guy gets the girl." (Of course, I could bend over backwards to gin up some tortured rationalization for that scene but why bother.) I think if it was Cassian and "Jon Erso" rather than Jyn Erso, that is the only scene that would have changed - again, specifically because of the audience expectations.

There was no 'love scene'. You're overstating it.

HBMC

Everyone dies because the script kills them. They are completely safe from all danger until the script has no further use for them. That's a cartoon version of war.

RE: love scene - you're splitting hairs, I even typed "love scene or pseudo-love scene" and then referred to it as a "love scene" using quotation marks and even described it as "weak ass"

RE: British accents - most of the Rebels in R1 have British accents

 Manchu wrote:
Agreed. Jyn Erso being a woman is totally irrelevant to the plot EXCEPT the sudden, pointless, obligatory love scene or pseudo love scene at the end. Other than that foible, you could CGI in a male actor playing "Jon Erso" and the story would not change at all. Whether she is well-drawn or consistently-characterized is a separate matter.

Of course you could substitute in Jon Erso in the love scene as well and nothing changes.

As explained above, agreed the plot does not change in that case - just the scene would change because it is a different thing relative to the audience's expectations.

 Manchu wrote:
Everyone dies because the script kills them. They are completely safe from all danger until the script has no further use for them. That's a cartoon version of war.

No, it's a fictional description of war. Characters only dying when necessary for the plot is standard for fiction. You don't introduce characters we're supposed to care about and then kill them off at random just because that's how war works, you keep them alive to do their part in the story and you kill them off if/when their deaths are necessary for the story.

Disagree. There is a difference between a story about war and war as a setting for a story. R1 - like all other Star Wars movies - falls into the latter category, despite marketing patter. R1 is no more a war film than ANH or ESB. ESB depicts warfare in an arguably more serious and dark manner than R1, even considering ESB ultimately is not about war generally or even really the GCW specifically. R1 is an adventure story shot with a certain style of lighting and some far-less-than-half-realized ruminations on the "gray areas" of political conflicts.

 Manchu wrote:
Disagree. There is a difference between a story about war and war as a setting for a story. R1 - like all other Star Wars movies - falls into the latter category, despite marketing patter. R1 is no more a war film than ANH or ESB. ESB depicts warfare in an arguably more serious and dark manner than R1, even considering ESB ultimately is not about war generally or even really the GCW specifically. R1 is an adventure story shot with a certain style of lighting and some far-less-than-half-realized ruminations on the "gray areas" of political conflicts.

What exactly are you disagreeing with? Your post immediately follows mine with no other reference made, but the difference between "a story about war" and "war as a setting for a story" has nothing to do with what I said.

If that's so then your original objection also has nothing to do with what I said.

I just got back from Rogue One.

Rogue One is the movie we were all hoping for when TFA was announced. Some critics were saying it's a heist movie and while there is a component of that, it doesn't feel like a heist movie. It feels more like the French Resistance versus Space Nazis (this is a good thing, trust me). The only real criticism I have is that there were a couple of cameos (characters from A New Hope) in there that weren't needed. In fact, they only cause confusion after you leave the theater because you're left wondering how they got from point A (in RO) to point B (in ANH) in the amount of time available to them. Another minor nitpick is that the CGI of two characters' faces was just a bit off. It came across as a little creepy. CGI just can't master skin (flesh, tones, and movement) yet. Still, it's much better than what's come before and serviced the plot appropriately so it's forgivable.

I think this is easily right behind A New Hope as my favorite, with Empire Strikes Back in third. I really hope Disney/Lucasfilm take note and give us more good, original stories.

 Compel wrote:
In saying that, I don't really subscribe to the whole "Rey is a Mary Sue" thing.

I'm sorry to argue but she really is a Mary Sue, I'm not exaggerating. If you've got some time, this video covers exactly what makes her a Mary Sue (in addition to everything else the video covers). 8:03 is the spot where the narrator points it out. Well, the first spot. There are a few others, too.


My God, Abrams is a complete hack.

Very much agree RE: CGI Tarkin and Leia - really tripped into the uncanny valley for me and I doubt these effects will hold up over time, either. I wish they had just recast the parts or worked around showing these characters somehow.

Anyone else dislike the squid monster thing? That thing was ugly, needless, too reminiscent of the bad cgi in the prequels AND TOO suggestive

I'm also confused over Jyn's stormtrooper toy. Is there an in-universe toy factory that makes toys of key players? Will Hasbro have to make a version of Jyn which comes with a stormtrooper toy. Is it morally wrong to make an action figure FOR an action figure oh no, I've gone cross-eyed

Of course there's an in-universe toy factory that makes Stormtrooper toys. - That's propaganda 101.

Cgi Leia wasn't so bad

cgi Tarkin however, he looked way too thin.

Also, why was Vader chilling out in Baradur? I get he rests in a cooling tank for his burns, but why then place that cooling tank on a lava world.