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I loved the 'nap of the earth' x-wing scene. Kinda a planet bound trench run. Nice.

The Falcon made me giddy, as did the crazy lightb*stard? (Angry darksiders needed a more primal hacking 'blade'. Épée? Katana? Rapier? Too...civilized.) Rageaholics who rooted for Vader rejoice! Unless homey starts doing silly gymnastic choreography instead, that is.

The frozen gelato beach speeder...yuck. Change it, JJ! It's not too late....

EDIT: I see the issue has be resolved and all parties understand that it is indeed an X-wing!

 Manchu wrote:
If she's sitting on the engines, what's under the hood?

Storage space presumably. She's a scrap hunter, according to some rumours regarding the plot.

I find the reaction to the little droid rather amusing. That thing looks like it fell right out of a Java Sandcrawler or Jabba's droid graveyard. It reeks Star Wars precisely because it looks like something that could have been featured in a low budget SF movie 40 years ago, end up in a storage shed only to be kitbashed into another prop.

I like pretty much everything I saw in the trailer, from the troopers to the noe flying X-wings. The side blades on the sabre do look a tad daft though, regardless of what they are. I think just the crackling, phased effect of the beam would have been plenty enough to get people wet about the dark side again.

 His Master's Voice wrote:

 Manchu wrote:
If she's sitting on the engines, what's under the hood?

Storage space presumably. She's a scrap hunter, according to some rumours regarding the plot.

I find the reaction to the little droid rather amusing. That thing looks like it fell right out of a Java Sandcrawler or Jabba's droid graveyard. It reeks Star Wars precisely because it looks like something that could have been featured in a low budget SF movie 40 years ago, end up in a storage shed only to be kitbashed into another prop.

I like pretty much everything I saw in the trailer, from the troopers to the noe flying X-wings. The side blades on the sabre do look a tad daft though, regardless of what they are. I think just the crackling, phased effect of the beam would have been plenty enough to get people wet about the dark side again.

The thing I find amusing about the droid is that even though it looks ridiculous, it's actually feasible for moving over desert; it has a large surface contact area (the ball) that would allow it to move without sinking. That one droid kind of epitomises Star Wars, in my opinion. Yeah, it looks like it's ridiculous and possibly slightly goofy, or that it's been thrown in just to go "look at this cool thing" but there has actually been some thinking behind how it would work.

Also it's awesome.

The trailer has been one-upped! Behold!

 Avatar 720 wrote:

The football droid was a bit laughable, and the slab-speeder was very "...why?", but the blade-guard saber--although impractical--was a bit cooler than I expected it to be from people's comments.

See though, that's the issue I have with the saber - it's cool, really cool, it evokes that instant "oh em gee AWESUM!" reaction...for about five seconds before it collapses under the weight of its own Fridge Logic. It can't work as a crossguard or be used to trap an opponent's blade because the physical projectors extend out from the side of the hilt and the other lightsaber would just cut through those, you can't use the quillions as a weapon by gripping the blade and hilt because you'd slice your own fingers off, and the fact there are two mini-sabers sticking out at right angles from your own blade would make it difficult to use the traditional more "Eastern" sword techniques the Jedi use in previous movies. It basically limits you to big, slow, two-handed sweeps without any of the advantages a more "medieval European" style would give you; that's a hefty price to pay for five seconds of "kewl".

And a lot of folk will doubtless accuse anyone pointed that sort of thing out as being a nitpicking fanboy, and to an extent that's true(I do love me some Star Wars), but for me it's more than just "there's a stupid sword in the teaser" thing, it's that the stupid sword is a perfect expression of exactly what I was afraid of; JJ Abrams' style over substance film making. Everything about the man's style is devoted to invoking that five-second "kewl" phase over and over again for 120 minutes inside a standard 3-act, two-red-herrings-and-a-plot-twist screenplay, all slathered in lensflare and Apple Store, without giving you a chance to think about what's going on until after the credits roll, at which point the plot holes begin to gape open. And you know what, that's fine, it makes for a perfectly entertaining "watch & forget" action movie you can go and see with your mates and then never really think about again, but given the Prequels, that's the last thing Star Wars needs.

Also the rollerdroid is moronic.

 Paradigm wrote:
The trailer has been one-upped! Behold!

Some things in this world are just meant to go together. Lego's and StarWars, peanut butter and chocolate, hot women and baby oil!

 Yodhrin wrote:
Also the rollerdroid is moronic.

More or less moronic than a droid attempting to cross the desert on three fairly small legs?

 Yodhrin wrote:

See though, that's the issue I have with the saber - it's cool, really cool, it evokes that instant "oh em gee AWESUM!" reaction...for about five seconds before it collapses under the weight of its own Fridge Logic. It can't work as a crossguard or be used to trap an opponent's blade because the physical projectors extend out from the side of the hilt and the other lightsaber would just cut through those, ...

Cortosis was a thing in the EU. And while the EU was thrown out, it is not too far fetched to think that there is some sort of material that can be impervious to a lightsaber, however rare or extraordinarily expensive it might be to produce. Still a bit of a stretch, but since when has Star Wars ever really been about what is logical?

 Tannhauser42 wrote:

 Yodhrin wrote:

See though, that's the issue I have with the saber - it's cool, really cool, it evokes that instant "oh em gee AWESUM!" reaction...for about five seconds before it collapses under the weight of its own Fridge Logic. It can't work as a crossguard or be used to trap an opponent's blade because the physical projectors extend out from the side of the hilt and the other lightsaber would just cut through those, ...

Cortosis was a thing in the EU. And while the EU was thrown out, it is not too far fetched to think that there is some sort of material that can be impervious to a lightsaber, however rare or extraordinarily expensive it might be to produce. Still a bit of a stretch, but since when has Star Wars ever really been about what is logical?

Even in the films there was saber-proof material, such as that used in the Magnaguard staffs in Revenge. Cortosis, I think, actually shut down the blade as well as being impervious to it.

Darth Vader's suit takes a direct hit from Luke's saber and it bounces off.

1.03



I still think Flashman's hypothesis about them being exhausts is correct.

People

The side beams are not beams, they are an energy release. Look at them closely, they don't have the same substance of the main beam, they look more like flames, similar to a blow torch.

 Medium of Death wrote:
I'm not sure how I feel about a darker Star Wars with the particular leaked rumours. Hopefully there's a fair amount of light heartedness in there as well.

The rollerdroid suggests there will be.

The teasers for Phantom Menace were all fairly dark as well.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Ahtman wrote:
Why is the speeder bike seat so high in the air and how would you get up to it? Seems to defeat the purpose of a speeder bike if it takes five minutes to mount it.

Maybe it wasn't originally designed for a small human female...

 Paradigm wrote:

 Tannhauser42 wrote:

 Yodhrin wrote:

See though, that's the issue I have with the saber - it's cool, really cool, it evokes that instant "oh em gee AWESUM!" reaction...for about five seconds before it collapses under the weight of its own Fridge Logic. It can't work as a crossguard or be used to trap an opponent's blade because the physical projectors extend out from the side of the hilt and the other lightsaber would just cut through those, ...

Cortosis was a thing in the EU. And while the EU was thrown out, it is not too far fetched to think that there is some sort of material that can be impervious to a lightsaber, however rare or extraordinarily expensive it might be to produce. Still a bit of a stretch, but since when has Star Wars ever really been about what is logical?

Even in the films there was saber-proof material, such as that used in the Magnaguard staffs in Revenge. Cortosis, I think, actually shut down the blade as well as being impervious to it.

What Cortosis did was generally different depending on the writer. Some of them just wrote it as being resistant to lightsabres; others had it short lightsabres out, but they could be instantly reignited; and others had it short out lightsabres for around several minutes.

 insaniak wrote:


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Ahtman wrote:
Why is the speeder bike seat so high in the air and how would you get up to it? Seems to defeat the purpose of a speeder bike if it takes five minutes to mount it.

Maybe it wasn't originally designed for a small human female...

Could also be that she built it out of scrap material.

 ds9lord wrote:
I just felt to me like a incredibly arrogant thing to do to completely ignore the 30 years of stories created by people who enjoyed the movies and wanted to ad to it, I mean there are so many create settings and stories from the expanded universe that they could make a movie about but instead they just ignored it..

The thing is, one of the big shifts to come from the Disney takeover is that they want everything produced for Star Wars to be canon.

With the current Expanded Universe, that's just not possible. It's far too riddled with continuity errors and contradictions. Some imposed by Lucas with the prequels and cartoons, which the EU writers have tried to retcon as best they could, and some imposed by a lack of adequate oversight when the novels were being written, particularly in the older ones.

Now, they could conceivably have just gone back and edited the existing EU stuff to remove those continuity errors... except that would have upset people as much as Lucas going back and tinkering with the original Trilogy.

So the next best option is to leave the EU intact... but start a new continuity. Those 30 years of storytelling are still there. You can still read them/play them/watch them/whatever... but the new stories take place in a new Star Wars universe. In the same way that the new Trek movies don't replace the original series... they're just a new set of stories being told in the same (more or less) setting.


Don't get me wrong, for all its flaws, I'm a big fan of the EU. I own most of the novels, and they get re-read fairly frequently. And I was a little annoyed to begin with when Disney announced that they were scrapping it. But I found that lasted right up until I watched the EpVII teaser... and now I just want to see what they do with this new Star Wars. Because this has the potential to be just as awesome as the original EU... but without the EU's problems. And that excites the hell out of me.

And when I get nostalgic... well, those X-wing novels will still be there on the shelf.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Daston wrote:
Heres a question if EU stuff is now scrapped what happens with the Xwing game? Disney are putting their logo on it but saying the characters and ships don't exist?

IIRC, everything released up to the novel 'Crucible' is rebranded as 'Star Wars Legends'.

Everything released from that point is supposed to be vetted to fit the new continuity.

Nerd rage then Falcon to stop the pain. The lightsaber claymore has grown on me,hate new stormies, tie wings seem to be see through, x-wing is an abomination....but I could forgive all the flaws if that droid didnt exist.

Still not getting the droid hate.

 insaniak wrote:

 Medium of Death wrote:
I'm not sure how I feel about a darker Star Wars with the particular leaked rumours. Hopefully there's a fair amount of light heartedness in there as well.

The rollerdroid suggests there will be.

The teasers for Phantom Menace were all fairly dark as well.

Hopefully. If the rumoured ending is true there's going to be some pretty big feels.

 Medium of Death wrote:
Still not getting the droid hate..

Particularly since droids have pretty much always been comic relief in Star Wars.

The poor automaton is just misunderstood.

I'm wondering what function would the ball-droid have?
Is it like an R2 unit? Or does it just look like one?

For some reason it strikes me as smaller than an R2 unit.

I hate the droid because why dosent it fall of? And what can It even DO? It has no arms.

 Da krimson barun wrote:
I hate the droid because why dosent it fall of? And what can It even DO? It has no arms.

Arms might come out of the ball. At a passing glance, R2-D2 has no arms either.

People need to stop applying physics to Star Wars films. Have you seen a Pod Racer?!

So it looks like two different shots pasted together. The end of whatever that is looks a bit lightsaber to me. It might just be staff or piece of technological stuff.

 insaniak wrote:

 Medium of Death wrote:
Still not getting the droid hate..

Particularly since droids have pretty much always been comic relief in Star Wars.

Exactly! Where's the decrying of the GONK droid? That would be major heresy.

 Flashman wrote:

 Da krimson barun wrote:
I hate the droid because why dosent it fall of? And what can It even DO? It has no arms.

Arms might come out of the ball. At a passing glance, R2-D2 has no arms either.

People need to stop applying physics to Star Wars films. Have you seen a Pod Racer?!

You're absolutely correct that an R2 unit has no arms, at first glance! He very well could have any manner of arms that come out for spcific needs.

 Medium of Death wrote:


So it looks like two different shots pasted together. The end of whatever that is looks a bit lightsaber to me. It might just be staff or piece of technological stuff.

Impressive spot. I did think that it didn't really look like she was being chased in the follow up shot to her jumping on the bike.

 Da krimson barun wrote:
I hate the droid because why dosent it fall of? And what can It even DO? It has no arms.

Feasible answer: Fancy engineering that means the ball is actually held to the head by a frame of some sort, that spins so that it's spine is pointing in the direction of travel, explaining why we can't see it.

Less Feasible Answer: Magnets

Even Less Feasible Answer: A piece of string.

I'm not sure who spotted it originally but it's floating around the internet quite freely.

It kind of implies that it can go faster as, like you say, it hardly looks like she's trying to escape in the next scene.

 Da krimson barun wrote:
I hate the droid because why dosent it fall of? And what can It even DO? It has no arms.

Magnetism? The head is not physically attached, simply held in the reference position? I kind like the idea of the head having its own wheels or something that it allows to slide on its own body while it rolls on terrain.

Well... detach the head and you could play soccer. Otherwise collect weather, moist information, simply monitor certain activity. Best not to dwell too much on it.

 Manchu wrote:
Astromech droids are primarily astronavigators, right? They would not be necessary for atmospheric or in-system flights.

Neither A-Wings nor B-Wings had astromech droids, and both were hyperspace capable craft. They just replaced their astromech slots with a more advanced nav computer that the older X-Wings and Y-Wings lacked. I'm guessing this is just a new X-Wing variant that has an updated nav computer similar to an A-Wing or B-Wing.