Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

 Orlanth wrote:

Spoiler:

Someone female and callous, so Phasma perhaps. I could see Phasma abandoning a daughter as a career move, I could see her getting suddenly and unexpectedly maternal when she captures her. This could get real complicated if she is dispatched to bring in Fin, succeeds and then finds common ground with Fin because she can't execute her own daughter.

I like this theory.

Some people didn't like the movie. You don't have to force them to enjoy it (or dislike it). People and their opinions jeez.

Personally I think it mirrored 'A New Hope' too much and then had nostalgia in weird places. Some of it was different sure but mostly in the 'every race and gender must be represented' department. Sort of annoying though since the bad guys are still mostly white dudes. But then I last left the topic at that so I don't know how it ended. Oh and the difference is that Rey is (in my opinion) still a bit too potent for her first movie having had no fighting experience. Her beating Kylo Ren is totally unlike 'A New Hope' where luke didn't do a whole lot.

------

Somehow I'm thinking Phasma isn't that important of a character. She did jack all in the movies except for order Finn and erm get held captive by Finn. She also lowered the shields of the Star Killer and was thrown into a trash compactor or so we hear. I dunno it's just hard for me to take a character serious after that.

http://www.slashfilm.com/star-wars-the-force-awakens-ending/2/


the abandoning





Luke




the battle




2 thoughts then :

One wonders perhaps if Smoke/whomever -- and I do wonder if as someone else said earlier he might actually be quite small -- almost a literal anti-Yoda if you follow me -- perhaps didn't want Kylo or has been using him/making do, as he actually wanted/wants Rey ?
If she is actually more powerful forcewise -- for whatever reason she might well be a better prize/catch/victim/whatever.

Kinda mirrors the Emperor wanting to replace Vader with Luke too.


One also wonders if, during the flashback bit where we see the knights of Ren, Luke err.. "forcelocks" or "suspends" or whatever R2, which puts him into his shutdown mode until mysteriouseventinthefuturehappens ?

 Orlanth wrote:


Light sabre fights.

Spoiler:

Kylo Ren lost a light sabre fight to an untrained force sensitive (Rey) and nearly lost to someone who was just an ordinary dude with combat skills (Fin).
I have some problems with this, light sabre fights use precognition rather than swordmastery. The force tells you where to parry and when and thus allows you to parry any attack if you are sensitive enough. Fin wont have access to this unless he is strong in the force himself and I dot ghink he is from what we see of him.

However as Ren s not a real sith but a kid with sith pretensions
The seperation by a sudden fissure after Rey defeats Ren is a little too conventient and is lazy plot writing IMHO. Didnt like that.

On this point:

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:


You did just claim that the film is firmly (and absolutely) an unoriginal remake. At no point was it claimed that you've claimed such in every instance in this thread, however. There's also no claim about you not being willing to acknowledge anything. If you're getting tired of people snarking, you might want to cut down on the strawmen and absolute statements about subjective subjects.

If someone is going to mock me by stating I believe my opinion is the unequivocal truth, that implies I am not willing to acknowledge other people's arguments despite the fact that I have done so. At no point have I asserted my opinion is the unequivocal truth. There is no strawman there, it's pretty obvious what he's trying to say to me. Also, I'm not making absolute statements about subjective subjects. People can like the movie all they want, but the film is objectively an unoriginal remake. If you disagree with that, you haven't watched A New Hope.

Wait, Ren "nearly lost" to Finn? Finn got his ass kicked.

I'm with HBMC. Finn got beat in a lightsabre fight by a stormtrooper. His fight with Ren was like watching a tauntaun take on Han.

On a related note, what's the internal temperature of a tauntaun?

 creeping-deth87 wrote:
Also, I'm not making absolute statements about subjective subjects. People can like the movie all they want, but the film is objectively an unoriginal remake. If you disagree with that, you haven't watched A New Hope.

It's a shame that it's 2016 now, otherwise that would have been a strong contender for "Statement of the Year 2015".

A friend just showed me Daisy Ridley's nude scene on his phone. Goddamn it. Duck move. The magic is gone!

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:

 creeping-deth87 wrote:
Also, I'm not making absolute statements about subjective subjects. People can like the movie all they want, but the film is objectively an unoriginal remake. If you disagree with that, you haven't watched A New Hope.

It's a shame that it's 2016 now, otherwise that would have been a strong contender for "Statement of the Year 2015".

Haven't watched A New Hope then. Got it.

 Gitzbitah wrote:
I'm with HBMC. Finn got beat in a lightsabre fight by a stormtrooper.

Which brings up my question. If everyone thinks the force is a myth and the only ones left with lightsabers are the Knights of Ren, why did that stormtrooper have an anti-lightsaber weapon? Luke was AWOL so who were they expecting to fight?

 Breotan wrote:

 Gitzbitah wrote:
I'm with HBMC. Finn got beat in a lightsabre fight by a stormtrooper.

Which brings up my question. If everyone thinks the force is a myth and the only ones left with lightsabers are the Knights of Ren, why did that stormtrooper have an anti-lightsaber weapon? Luke was AWOL so who were they expecting to fight?

I think it was a taser weapon, so for like crowd control or something. It might be used by all troopers or certain troopers.

 creeping-deth87 wrote:

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:

 creeping-deth87 wrote:
Also, I'm not making absolute statements about subjective subjects. People can like the movie all they want, but the film is objectively an unoriginal remake. If you disagree with that, you haven't watched A New Hope.

It's a shame that it's 2016 now, otherwise that would have been a strong contender for "Statement of the Year 2015".

Haven't watched A New Hope then. Got it.

Umm... I won't argue with you that Episode 7 is "unoriginal".... However, it most definitely is not merely a remake of ANH. Sure, it shares a lot of elements and story, such that they bear strong resemblance to each other, but they aren't the same movie.

Finally saw the Force Awakens. Definitely felt like an awkward remake...like they tried to bash all the cool parts of Episodes 1, 2, and 3 together.

There was not nearly enough background given for the First Order, or whatever the new bad guys are called. Very forced and one-dimesnional: these are bad guys. The emo Sith just about ruined the movie for me, but other than that, it was an enjoyable movie. I really liked the new girl Rey, and I think they set it up for some better movies to come.

All in all, I'd put it right above Phantom Menace, probably almost as good as Episodes II and III (when the Anakin/Padme scenes are skipped), not really approaching the original trilogy.

 Asherian Command wrote:

 Breotan wrote:

 Gitzbitah wrote:
I'm with HBMC. Finn got beat in a lightsabre fight by a stormtrooper.

Which brings up my question. If everyone thinks the force is a myth and the only ones left with lightsabers are the Knights of Ren, why did that stormtrooper have an anti-lightsaber weapon? Luke was AWOL so who were they expecting to fight?

I think it was a taser weapon, so for like crowd control or something. It might be used by all troopers or certain troopers.

It's a taser like shock weapon that's used to stun people into submission. They are also meant to work against droids, which given that their specific mission was to capture a droid it would probably explain why they have shock weapons with them. They'd probably want to bring in BB-8 intact so they could extract the map from him as opposed to risk destroying him with blaster fire. (sort of like when the Jawa's zap R2D2 with an ion gun in ANH)


The ion/shock weapons appear in several of the video games, old republic and also republic commando. General Grievous's Magnaguard have a double ended staff version in episodes 1-3, as well as appearing in the clone wars animated series.

Electrostaff: http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Electrostaff

 jasper76 wrote:
Very forced and one-dimesnional: these are bad guys.

That's par for the course when it comes to Star Wars, though. Considering it's pretty much a fairy tale set in outer space, it's always been as simple as "the bad guys are bad and the good guys are good."

The emo Sith just about ruined the movie for me

That's a shame because Kylo Ren is widely considered to be one of the best villains in a Star Wars movie. He's essentially what Anakin should have been in the Prequels.

Also, he's not a Sith.

He is a dark apprentice, not a sith or a dark jedi, which is not a sith.

I finally saw TFA, and I loved it! The only gripe I had was that it did parallel ANH a bit too much, but there was enough different stuff in there to make it enjoyable. Really enjoyable when Daisy Ridley was on the screen (if you know what I mean!).

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
Wait, Ren "nearly lost" to Finn? Finn got his ass kicked.

Well neither of those extremes is true. Ren was definitely the superior fighter, if he hadn't been severely injured and mentally exhausted he probably would have easily killed Finn. So Finn managed to injure Ren's right shoulder, which would make any further fighting incredibly difficult.

Ren was fighting Rey with a major shoulder injury and gaping chest wound. Its little wonder he lost.

Ren also wasn't really trying. He went into the fight with Finn full of confidence and arrogance, and was just toying with Finn until the guy got a lucky hit on Ren that pissed him off.

 ScootyPuffJunior wrote:

 jasper76 wrote:
Very forced and one-dimesnional: these are bad guys.

That's par for the course when it comes to Star Wars, though. Considering it's pretty much a fairy tale set in outer space, it's always been as simple as "the bad guys are bad and the good guys are good."

The emo Sith just about ruined the movie for me

That's a shame because Kylo Ren is widely considered to be one of the best villains in a Star Wars movie. He's essentially what Anakin should have been in the Prequels.

Also, he's not a Sith.

Not too steeped in star wars lore on the Sith front.

In any case, the main problem I had with the film was the lack of back story bridging episode VI to episode VII, which I think would have helped Ren's charachter a bit. Hes certainly a better actor/villain than Anakin.

I imagine we will have more filling in of the gaps as time progresses. As the first film there will naturally be some gaps, otherwise the film would have been a boring yet informative monologue of the previous 60 years.

 jasper76 wrote:

In any case, the main problem I had with the film was the lack of back story bridging episode VI to episode VII, which I think would have helped Ren's charachter a bit. Hes certainly a better actor/villain than Anakin.

Personally, I think there was enough to meet the major plot points of TFA to stand as a first movie in the trilogy.

Also we need to keep in mind that in between Episodes, we're going to be getting further one off stories, IIRC starting with Rogue One, or whatever it was called to fill in more of those gaps.

I think its worth remembering that, unless they take SW in a completely different direction, Episode VIII likely won't pick up where VII leaves off, but rather several years later. I would expect that when VIII opens, we will find that Rey is well along in her training, and that the First Order has all but defeated the Republic/Resistance.

 -Loki- wrote:
Just a point - the Mandalorian flag was flying at Maz's place. With the rest of the EU disregarded, the only use of that flag in the films is the Fetts. Odd that they'd be flying Fetts banner at that place if he's been dead for 40 years.

edit - also, he'd be at least in his 60s. If the Fett banner was flying for any reason other than fan service, he'd have passed the mantle onto another by now, or someone took it from him.

Errr... theres an entire arc about Mandolorians in the still-canon TCW tv series, and I think Sabine in Rebels has the mythosaur skull on her armor as well but I could be wrong.

There was a multi-series sub plot in Clone Wars that dealt with Mandalore (and was excellent), so they do have more canon presence than just the Fetts. The series ended before it was properly resolved, but in Rebels

The "Son of Dathomir" comic mini-series is actually considered canon (the only thing from Dark Horse that is AFAIK) and covers the incomplete mando sub-plot (the Son of Dathomir arc covers Darth Maul and Savage Oppress shenanigans, etc. and was made from the scripts of the incomplete episodes).

The whole "trained from birth and only given a serial number" thing doesn't quite hold up anyway, unless maybe it's only a part of the Storm Troopers that are trained that way. On Starkiller base a couple of them are discussing the new T-17 like a couple of our soldiers might be discussing a new car model, and you see others that have more personality than you'd expect from a brainwashed number.

Lets not forget that Phasma is a Captain, and Finn rank-and-file. Could be that officers get names and enlisted dont.

Kylo Ren was a weak villain but a strong character.

I would agree with this, I think he was the most developed and complex of the characters in the film, and felt the most believable to me, but he didn't necessarily do it for me as a villain in the way Vader or Sidious/Palpatine did, though he was better than Tyranus/Dooku I think (whos motivations always kinda confused me), was more interesting than Grievous (who looked cool, but was too much of a mustache-twirling coward stereotype - all he needed was some railroad tracks to tie up Padme (or maybe Palpatine) on), and more deep than Maul (though Maul was actually menacing).

Everyone keeps just glancing over the fact that Ren was literally shot by a bowcaster five minutes before that fight. Throughout the entire movie they keep hinting at how powerful Chewie's crossbow is, including the shot in Starkiller Base when it sends a trooper flying across the hallway and the scene where it blows up two troopers at once outside Maz's place. Ren took a direct shot to the stomach. And then, Finn lands a solid light-saber hit on Ren's light-saber arm.

I think its more people are intentionally ignoring it, because its absolutely stupid. They spend the entire film showing people flying off as though punched by a 600lb gorilla, then Ren takes a shot and he hunches over in pain and then stands back up. Either the weapon isn't quite as powerful as we are lead to believe, or Ren wasn't hit quite as hard as you would like to believe (or more likely the production staff didn't really ever bother to take it into account in the first place and fans are looking into it a bit too much). The only real indication we have that Ren is even bothered by the shot is the fact that he will take a few moments every so often to pound on his own wound with his fist, whereas in pretty much every other Star Wars film a wounded lightsaber combatant is typically presented as doubled over in pain and trying to guard themselves rather than go on a further offensive.

But...Star Wars IS a never ending cycle. Have you played KOTOR 1, 2 and the MMO?

Star Wars was never supposed to be a never ending cycle, the entire point of the OT (especially when taken in the context of the PT) is that the story is about BREAKING cycles. Just because the EU often (almost always) got caught in cyclical nonsense doesn't mean Star Wars is about a never ending cycle. Even then, KOTOR/TOR aren't entirely cyclical in the broader/grander scheme of things, though there is a lot of repetitive nonsense going on within that period of time (to the extent that I actually have trouble following).

Battlefront games are canon stilll

So yes there was a clone uprising still.

Sorry I just had to come in and say that.

There is actually a list of things that ARE Canon still.

Only one Battlefront game is canon, and its not the one that you're talking about.

Battlefront 1 and Battlefront 2 are no longer canon. Hell, even TOR isn't and that game is still getting updates.

Insofar as I can tell, Lucasfilm Story Group doesn't consider Bioware stuff to be canon nor legends, but an entity unto itself. They basically said that Bioware has done a great job with it and they don't have any interest in messing around with it, and that there is enough going on in the PT/OT/ST era that they don't have any plans to go that far back in the timeline in the forseeable future. In other words, its not really canon, but its more canon than Legends, up until they decide to revisit it in the future.

It occurred to me after seeing TFA that having such a big gap between episodes 6 and 7, while killing off the old EU, was going to be a big money spinner for Disney... Before seeing TFA, I was curious as to what was going to be different. After seeing the movie, I need to know what happened in those 30 years for things to have wound up as they are. I'm sure I'm not the only one... And that's going to sell a lot of novels.

Thats the thing that bothers me most - not a lot at all seems to have happened. The rebellion defeats the Empire relatively quickly in the new timeline (1 year and 4 days), unlike the EU where it took over a decade of fighting against clones of the Emperors, self-styled warlords, Imperial splinter groups, and rogue superweapons, etc. It wasn't always the best, and there was a lot of repetition, as well as a lot of lolzworthy crap like the Sun Crusher, but the overarching storyline felt far more believable. Anyway, after the Empire is defeated, Han and Leia make a baby, Luke starts training Jedi, Han and Leias baby kills Lukes jedi, Han and Leia break up, Luke goes into hiding, and thats basically all you need to know about what transpired in that 30 year period. I mean, yeah, Im sure there were all sorts of interesting adventures that occurred prior to all of that stuff going down, but at some point that all stops and basically ceases to be relevant because the primary dramatis personae cease functioning as change agents within the continuity and fade into obscurity in a manner that makes their previous endeavors more or less pointless.

Kasdan made a point doing "less is more" during writing the script.

Problem with that is that it worked for ANH because it was the first film set in a relatively more simple black and white setting. TFA comes after several decades of real world development of the overall setting (which was largely overturned and reset by Disney) as well as changes within the continuity that need to be addressed and explained. ESB and RotJ didn't just leave things hanging the way TFA does, nor did the original trilogy (though arguably thats the problem with the original trilogy).

Yes I have. And I'll say this, JJ makes a much better star wars film than he does a star trek one. If he shat on star wars lore the same way he did trek the internet would have imploded already.

Depending on who you ask, he did gak on Star Wars lore in a very similar manner, just less people noticed/more people were willing to go with it this time.

He kind of did. The cast and crew succeeded despite Abrams. Also, Star Wars fans are apparently willing to overlook a lot of crap for a few diamonds. I suspect in 3-5 years public perception of TFA will have cooled, and more of the fans will realize just how much JJ screwed the pooch on the new trilogy with this first installment.

I dont think TFA will ever be derided the way the prequels are, but I think in 10 years or so, most will regard TFA as an 'average' Star Wars film. I fully expect the series to get better moving forward (and in that respect, JJ did a good job of essentially wiping the slate clean and opening up room for new plot).

One also wonders if, during the flashback bit where we see the knights of Ren, Luke err.. "forcelocks" or "suspends" or whatever R2, which puts him into his shutdown mode until mysteriouseventinthefuturehappens ?

Nah, this is explained in interviews. R2D2 is in low power mode because his droid brain thing is sad that Luke is gone. When BB-8 approaches him about midway through the film, BB-8 tells him that he has a part of a map but he doesn't know what to do with it and wants to know if R2 can help. R2 can hear this, but because hes in low power mode it takes him longer to process the data and access his memory banks. He finally wakes up when he locates the map in his memory (which he downloaded off the Death Star in ANH - yea woulda been nice if they mentioned this detail in TFA), and its just coincidence that this happens when it does.

That's a shame because Kylo Ren is widely considered to be one of the best villains in a Star Wars movie.

"The masses are asses"

In reality, saying that hes one of the best Star Wars film villains isn't saying all that much, because most of the villains barring Vader and Palpatine, are actually pretty gakky.

 Ensis Ferrae wrote:

 jasper76 wrote:

In any case, the main problem I had with the film was the lack of back story bridging episode VI to episode VII, which I think would have helped Ren's charachter a bit. Hes certainly a better actor/villain than Anakin.

Personally, I think there was enough to meet the major plot points of TFA to stand as a first movie in the trilogy.

Also we need to keep in mind that in between Episodes, we're going to be getting further one off stories, IIRC starting with Rogue One, or whatever it was called to fill in more of those gaps.

The anthology movies won't be helping bridge the gap to the new trilogy, at least not from what we've heard so far.

Rogue One is about the team that recovered the first death star plans (so Kyle Katarn never did it in Dark Forces). The other is a Han Solo film set before A New Hope. There's been mention of a Boba Fett film, but that sounds like he's being done as the villain in the Han Solo film.

That leaves a single film to do some filling in of the new trilogy, which I assume it won't be doing.

They're using books to bridge the gap, not movies.

 -Loki- wrote:
That leaves a single film to do some filling in of the new trilogy, which I assume it won't be doing.

For now. There will be more, so long as they keep bringing in money. And they've said that the stand-alone movies can potentially wind up covering stories from anywhere at all through the timeline.


Having said that, it's a big expanse of time to cover with stand-alone movies, so I would expect that most of the filling-in will be done through novels and comics.

 insaniak wrote:

 -Loki- wrote:
That leaves a single film to do some filling in of the new trilogy, which I assume it won't be doing.

For now. There will be more, so long as they keep bringing in money. And they've said that the stand-alone movies can potentially wind up covering stories from anywhere at all through the timeline.

Yeah, just talking about what's been announced. They announced 3 trilogy films and 3 anthology films. The anthology films would take place in the off years from the trilogy films. And they've talked about 2 of them which don't have anything to do with the new trilogy, they're purely expanding on the OT.

As said, they seem to be bridging the gap with books rather than films. Personally I'd have preferred if they crafted some completely new one off films that had nothing to do with any of the trilogies. An anthology film set during the KotOR era would be fantastic.

This is going to mind feth my parents. They still don't understand after 30 year what a Prequel is, and why the original trilogy was renamed to Episode 4,5,6.

I think im going to have to explain it in terms of World War films.

"Someone made a trilogy about the second World War. Then they decided to go back in time and do a trilogy about the First World War to elaborate on the events referenced in the original trilogy.

Then someone else bought the IP and did a sequel trilogy about WW3."

How the feth am I going to explain a trio of films that don't represent a continuous trilogy arc and are set at different times, before after between and during the older films...But are released one by one in the off years between each of the sequel movies?

"Then they decided to do three one off movies in between each of the new sequel movies, but these ones aren't about Ww3 and have nothing to do with the sequels. They're about things that happened before during and maybe after WW2,like the Munich agreement, great depression and prohibition era."

I'm gonna have to write a flow chart for them...

I thought the themes borrowed from the original trilogy were a real strength of the film. To me, they gave a sense of a cycle repeating itself. We now know the big three of the original trilogy failed and fractured. Now it's the next generations' turn to get things right.

People can like or dislike it. Personally I haven't found the stronger opinions I've seen against the film to be compelling, and in fact I think many of them distort or oversimplify the film. It's not a perfect film, but I think there's more interesting themes and developments going on in TFA than in any SW film since TESB.

 reds8n wrote:

One wonders perhaps if Smoke/whomever -- and I do wonder if as someone else said earlier he might actually be quite small -- almost a literal anti-Yoda if you follow me -- perhaps didn't want Kylo or has been using him/making do, as he actually wanted/wants Rey ?
If she is actually more powerful forcewise -- for whatever reason she might well be a better prize/catch/victim/whatever.

Kinda mirrors the Emperor wanting to replace Vader with Luke too.

The book seems to indicate that Snoke is playing the long game, and that he's quite scared of Luke. I get the feeling that anything Kylo/Ben gives Snoke at this point is gravy. The most important thing was what his turn to the DS did to the big three.

Maybe Snoke wants Rey. Or perhaps she's an unexpected complication. Snoke may have learned a lesson from Palpatine and the Sith about keeping apprentices around. And I wonder if it wasn't Kylo/Ben who left Rey on Jakku in the first place. Which would be an interesting betrayal of Snoke if Rey goes on to undo him. Kind of a pre-emptive toss into a pit.