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Heh, yeah. Star Wars, complex it is not. Its the classic fantasy set in spaaaaaaace!

 ScootyPuffJunior wrote:
The rose-colored glasses are strong with this one.

The original Star Wars movie is nowhere near as complex as you're making it sound.

Perhaps you didn't pay close enough attention to it.

Regardless, I watched the originals again the other day. They've suffered in several regards. Their effects are no longer particularly special in comparison to what's done today (although they haven't aged too badly), the actors aren't the best in the world at the time (Harrison Ford has really come a long way), and the good/evil light/dark end of things is rendered far too simplistic (although that's undoubtedly a result of the time it was made).

But I still maintain that those integral glimpses into the universe beyond it were sewn quite carefully throughout the script, and would maintain that it was absolutely necessary that they did so at the time, because it was a new series. They were setting a stage, a scene, painting on a tabula rasa. They HAD to do so, or no-one would have known what the hell was going on.

The new one assumes you saw the previous films, know everything you need to know, handwaves one or two lines about a republic having come into existence alongside this new Imperial lot, and that's about it as far as universe development goes.

 Valhallan42nd wrote:


It might also be that Snoke is dealing with the best that the diminished resources of a broken Empire can give him. I assume Hux is so young as all the old officer corp probably died with the explosion of Death Star 2 at Endor.

This point is somewhat counter-intuitive. If we've just done a thirty year time skip, all those junior officers would now be senior ones.

In the EU, it took account of the fact that the Empire dissolved slowly before the Republic was formed. You had Daala launching her crusade, Thrawn plotting away, or Zsinj pootling about. Eventually, what was left had crumbled away to something like a fifth of their territory under Pellaeon, but it felt like it mirrored the rise and fall of Empires on earth.

Here, we just have a vague reference to how the 'Republic' won, and a very short clip of a few worlds getting hit with a superlaser, at which point they're relegated to having been wiped out. There's no history, no information, no detail on how the Rebel Alliance split. We get told Luke tried to train some Jedi which all get killed by our young emo friend, but that's all the detail on that. Like I said above, all that interesting and potentially engaging history is left out, and the galaxy is reduced to following the brief travels of a junkyard girl, an ex-stormtrooper, and some half-assed space emo sith apprentice. Which would be fine (the original crew weren't much more), but we got glimpses of the universe beyond them sewn into the script and plot previously. Here? The film acts as if things like that are just so much distraction, and ignores them as best as it can.

If you didn't see the glimpses then maybe you weren't paying attention?

- We got glimpses to a rebuilding of the Jedi academy and it's failure
- We got glimpses at the scale of the battles between the movies via a crashed star destroyer
- We got glimpses of a larger First Order through Snoke and how he is recalling Hux and Ren to the rest of his small empire
- We got glimpses of a larger First Order by finding out that they have a large number of planets under their control where they can pick up children to raise as storm troopers.
- We got glimpses of a new General Leia and that there is internal strive between the New Republic and the Resistance

It's really as complex, or not as complex, as the original.

 Ketara wrote:

 ScootyPuffJunior wrote:
The rose-colored glasses are strong with this one.

The original Star Wars movie is nowhere near as complex as you're making it sound.

Perhaps you didn't pay close enough attention to it.

Regardless, I watched the originals again the other day. They've suffered in several regards. Their effects are no longer particularly special in comparison to what's done today (although they haven't aged too badly), the actors aren't the best in the world at the time (Harrison Ford has really come a long way), and the good/evil light/dark end of things is rendered far too simplistic (although that's undoubtedly a result of the time it was made).

But I still maintain that those integral glimpses into the universe beyond it were sewn quite carefully throughout the script, and would maintain that it was absolutely necessary that they did so at the time, because it was a new series. They were setting a stage, a scene, painting on a tabula rasa. They HAD to do so, or no-one would have known what the hell was going on.

The new one assumes you saw the previous films, know everything you need to know, handwaves one or two lines about a republic having come into existence alongside this new Imperial lot, and that's about it as far as universe development goes.

If those previous movies didn't exist, would the offhand remarks in TFA about things that never happened be considered world building?

The OT occupied a weird space of being the middle of a series. They had to reference things that never happened because they literally never happened. But might some day. TFA has those previous movies to reference. It's not the films fault that 1-6 exist.

You know which Star Wars movie totally focused on the underlying causes of war and the larger world? Episode 1.

Do you want Phantom Menace, Ketara?

Because that's how you get Phantom Menace.

I like that it trivialized the previous films, and stepped back. Luke is a legendary hero, Han Solo is a pirate, smuggler, etc depending on who you talk to. All of their glorious efforts have, well, failed as thoroughly as Luke's academy. Leia's through channels government is in shambles, even the rogue in it for himself is broke, reduced to poaching and lost the only good thing to happen to his life.

Instead, we're totally focused on this rogue stormtrooper, his bromantic starfighter 'friend' and a mysterious runaway who appears to be the next last hope of the increasingly desperate Jedi.

 Gitzbitah wrote:
You know which Star Wars movie totally focused on the underlying causes of war and the larger world? Episode 1.

Do you want Phantom Menace, Ketara?

Because that's how you get Phantom Menace.

It really isn't, not at all. You get episode 1 by having terrible acting, clumsy script writing and directing, awkward CGI for everything, and a stubborn insistence on turning the occasional comic relief elements into the focus of the movie. The movie was terrible for reasons that had nothing to do with the choice of story themes.

Phantom Menace was sort of dead the moment its script was written.

If Lucas had made none of the directing mistakes and written a technically flawless script, the movie still would have been boring. No amount of good directing and axing of Jar-jar would have saved it.

That said, the story as is(minus the silly-bits) might have been a decent book. Political machinations are difficult to get right on screen, and doesn't really fit in star wars.

I liked the over-arching premise...evil Sith Lord engineering and exploiting a local conflict to get himself elected to a position of Galactic power; then engineering and exploiting a war as an excuse to build a powerful army directly loyal to himself; then using said army to eradicate his nemesis the Jedi and establishing himself as an Emperor.

The execution was just awful. And the acting. And the writing.

 Shadow Captain Edithae wrote:
I liked the over-arching premise...evil Sith Lord engineering and exploiting a local conflict to get himself elected to a position of Galactic power; then engineering and exploiting a war as an excuse to build a powerful army directly loyal to himself; then using said army to eradicate his nemesis the Jedi and establishing himself as an Emperor.

The execution was just awful. And the acting. And the writing.

And the omnipresent CGI.

Despite the hate for George Lucas and people being glad he signed away 'Star Wars' does anybody else think this is a good think for George Lucas as well?

In one article I read it sounded like the popularity of 'Star Wars' boxed him in somewhat into doing what was expected of 'Star Wars' and staying in it.

I mean other than 'Star Wars' Lucas at one point did some unique movies as well. Perhaps what he really needed was to make new universes rather than stay in the same ones and just make 20 special editions for his old universes.

I mean I'm probably wrong as I wouldn't doubt he enjoyed the fame and fortune he got from 'Star Wars' but I dunno. I think with as complaint heavy as some people were with 'The Force Awakens' it just goes to show how pleasing the fans and newcomers is just a really tough job. Honestly it kinda seems like an awful time for the person at the helm.

------

I'll see if I can find the article somewhere. Also at least George Lucas enjoyed robot chicken's star wars skits (which many have loved). GW tends to kill content anywhere it can esp. fan comics. It's nice to see fans creating something enjoyable to attract more fans rather than the main company threatening court action.

He's done various things over the years. - His last film was 'Red Tails' and, was, well, as far as I understand it, was a bit pants.

It was pretty bad, though it was funny that Cuba Gooding Jr. has been typecast as "that guy who plays Tuskegee Airmen on TV"

 Compel wrote:
He's done various things over the years. - His last film was 'Red Tails' and, was, well, as far as I understand it, was a bit pants.

I think I heard that too but I mean hey this could be a good thing for George Lucas. Maybe he needs to sharpen his skills again. Even if his new movies suck it won't suck upon a universe he made that was good. I mean to an extent people expect stuff of him but I feel like people's expectations are pretty low. It's pretty nuts the 'The Force Awakens' got so many tickets sold over such a short time. Some enjoyed it but what I don't understand is the movie was decent but not the best I've ever seen. I guess it's riding on fan expectations and hopes. I dunno I just didn't find the movie to be the greatest of all time. I've heard some mention movies like 'se7en' or 'bladerunner'. 'Star Wars' in comparison is fairly light on story. Perhaps it's the atmosphere people love of 'Star Wars'.

--------

Also is it me or does anybody find it odd all the arena style areas they enter in 'Star Wars' movies and how ridiculously unsafe some things are. I mean how many people have died falling into bottomless pits? Robot chicken made it a running joke after all. I mean regardless of where you are in 'Star Wars' there's generally a bottomless pit to fall in. I mean really what protects you from falling down a bottomless pit usually except a thin walkway and a knee to waist high guard rail. Not only that but the place where luke loses his hand to darth vader in cloud city looks most like a giant air duct to me. In fact it makes the most sense given what happens.

They really need better OHS guidelines in the Star Wars galaxy. Just some solid, secure handrails would do.

 d-usa wrote:
If you didn't see the glimpses then maybe you weren't paying attention?

- We got glimpses to a rebuilding of the Jedi academy and it's failure
- We got glimpses at the scale of the battles between the movies via a crashed star destroyer
- We got glimpses of a larger First Order through Snoke and how he is recalling Hux and Ren to the rest of his small empire
- We got glimpses of a larger First Order by finding out that they have a large number of planets under their control where they can pick up children to raise as storm troopers.
- We got glimpses of a new General Leia and that there is internal strive between the New Republic and the Resistance

It's really as complex, or not as complex, as the original.

I mentioned the Jedi thing, a crashed star destroyer does not a plot point make, it's more or less a given that the First Order had to be bigger than a single planet (or it really would have been a localised affair!), the 'large number of planets to pick up children' thing is more or less speculation (all we know is one kid got picked up and even in the EU there were entire stormtrooper training worlds) tied into the 'more or less a given' point from before, and the 'strife' thing is speculation (all we know is they don't work together, there could be any number of reasons for that).

Altogether, that's exceedingly thin soup for a thirty year time skip of events across an entire galaxy, and I'm surprised you're even trying to argue it.

To reiterate (again), I have nothing against the film on it's own merits, I just feel it lacked the sense of scale of the previous ones.

Considering that we've got a dozen fighter brawl and a three man base infiltration compared to say, the first death star assault, Hoth, Endor, and the second Death Star run, the action perspective isn't up for debate, and considering the first three films created the SW Universe, its factions and its politics, I really don't think the general scriptwriting is either. Whether you liked it or not is really beside the point, namely that the scope/scale of the action and storytelling was clearly reduced.

For me, I found that lessened my sense of enjoyment. YMMV.

 Gitzbitah wrote:
You know which Star Wars movie totally focused on the underlying causes of war and the larger world? Episode 1.

Do you want Phantom Menace, Ketara?

Because that's how you get Phantom Menace.

I like that it trivialized the previous films, and stepped back. Luke is a legendary hero, Han Solo is a pirate, smuggler, etc depending on who you talk to. All of their glorious efforts have, well, failed as thoroughly as Luke's academy. Leia's through channels government is in shambles, even the rogue in it for himself is broke, reduced to poaching and lost the only good thing to happen to his life.

Instead, we're totally focused on this rogue stormtrooper, his bromantic starfighter 'friend' and a mysterious runaway who appears to be the next last hope of the increasingly desperate Jedi.

I think that after Episodes 2-3, they sat down and said, 'Right, let's try to streamline things. Keep the action fast, keep the story character-centric and focused'. There was a fair bit of lashback against the extremely dull 'Star Peace' of Episode II, and I would imagine they were desperate to avoid it. This film had a lot riding on it financially and in terms of reputation, they couldn't afford to have people sleeping in the cinema again. So they turned the scriptwriting quite heavily around in the opposite direction.

As a result, we have a film that's got a very narrow focus on a few key characters, with a sprinkling of old ones, on a tried and tested action/prior SW movie format. Which isn't a bad film, if you judge it upon its own merits. For me personally though, whilst entertaining enough for a single watch through, the change in focus and style meant that it simply didn't quite live up to the name. I'm hoping that Rogue 1 will be better though.

 Ketara wrote:

Considering that we've got a dozen fighter brawl and a three man base infiltration compared to say, the first death star assault, Hoth, Endor, and the second Death Star run, the action perspective isn't up for debate,

If you are comparing TFA to ANH, ESB, and ROTJ then you may have a point. But I don't think that it would make much sense to compare one movie to three and complain that it wasn't as in depth as the other three.

But if you are talking about a dozen fighter brawl and a three man base infiltration, then suddenly it becomes hard to even know if you are talking about TFA or ANH .

 -Loki- wrote:
They really need better OHS guidelines in the Star Wars galaxy. Just some solid, secure handrails would do.

There were actually a surprising number of railings on Starkiller base. It seems the safety initiatives we saw in RotJ were one thing that survived the Emperor's death.

 Grey Templar wrote:

 -Loki- wrote:
They really need better OHS guidelines in the Star Wars galaxy. Just some solid, secure handrails would do.

There were actually a surprising number of railings on Starkiller base. It seems the safety initiatives we saw in RotJ were one thing that survived the Emperor's death.

It apparently didn't help too much.... none of the storm troopers or ANYONE from the First Order were wearing PT belts

Watched TFA last week. Watched it again last night. I can now pass judgement on the movie, as I'm confident my opinion will not suffer from "omigodijustsawanewStarWarsmovie" syndrome (a common affliction that frequently affects people upon viewing a new Star Wars movie for the first time, which alters their perceptions and can convince them, for a few days at least, that Phantom Menace was a good film... it usually wears off in a week or so).

It was a good movie. It wasn't a great movie. It borrowed far, far too heavily from ANH to be a great movie. But it was a good movie, with generally good performances, good visuals, good characters, and just the right amount of funny moments.

I like the trio of new good guy lead characters. Abrams did a good job of paralleling the Han/Luke/Leia triumvirate of the OT with Finn/Rey/Poe, and they all seemed to enjoy being in the movie. BB-8 was surprisingly enjoyable as a character. He was "cuter" than R2, and funnier than R2, but he wasn't just a useless ball of cute and funny. Chewie had some good lines (we only understand them through other characters' reaction to them, which I think makes them even better...) and Old Han was great. Harrison Ford clearly wanted to do this movie, unlike RoTJ.

The villains are more of a mixed bag. I want to like Phasma, but she's no Boba Fett. The guy with the stun baton who slaps Finn around before getting blasted is more of a Boba Fett than Phasma. I like General Hux as a character, and the actor does a decent job, but it felt like the role should have gone to an older actor. Kylo Ren was a harder sell for me. I didn't like him at first. Still don't like him, actually, but he works in the context of the film. He is the guy who never had a chance and never had a choice. His parents were Han freaking Solo and Princess freaking Leia. His uncle was Luke fething Skywalker, the last Jedi. This guy had the deck stacked against him from birth, because he was never going to measure up to what others were expecting of him. And even if (as I suspect is the case) his family didn't have overly high expectations of him, he almost certainly *thought* they did. And he felt he wasn't measuring up to them, which made him feel like he was failing at something he wasn't given a choice in. Did he even want to become a Jedi, or was that something his mother chose for him? Leia makes a comment about "sending him away", which sounds like it wasn't Ren's decision to go get his Jedi on with Unca Luke. So here's a guy failing at doing something he maybe doesn't want to do, getting frustrated and angry, and getting told by Luke "don't get frustrated and angry; you'll end up like Vader".

What does a frustrated, angry teenager do when you tell them not to do something, or not to be like someone?

They go out and do that thing and be that thing. I get a real vibe from Ren that he jumped into the Dark Side as something "edgy" and "cool" to get back at his parents with, and it spiraled out of his control. He genuinely feels bad about what he's done, which frightens him, so he tries to throw himself into all this space Nazi wizardry, in the hopes that if he can just be evil enough, he'll stop regretting everything he's done. He pushes himself to be more and more evil, because in his mind, at some point he'll get evil enough to stop caring. Also, I kinda get the impression that Vader's redemption at the end of RoTJ isn't common knowledge. Luke might've told Leia, but telling new Jedi students that the most evil dude in the galaxy turned good at the last second might not warn them away from the Dark Side as effectively as just letting them think that once you go black (helmet & cape) you never go back... which could explain Ren's obsession with being as evil as Vader, even though (from a Dark Side perspective) Vader wussed out in the end. Maybe Ren doesn't know Vader turned to the Light at all...?

So, while I'm not super excited by Ren, I think I get where the filmakers where going with him.

As for the mysterious origins of Rey and Snoke which seem to be all the buzz on the internets... all I can say is that I hope to gawd that Rey is NOT Luke's daughter, or Han's daughter, or the daughter of anybody from an earlier movie. I hope her parents were John and Jane Doe from planet Nondescript, who just happened to have a Force-Sensitive child at a time when the First Order was going around making life unlivable for people with Force sensitive children. It would make the Star Wars universe feel bigger than it does. In the Prequels, Lucas did a very good job of shrinking the Star Wars galaxy from a galaxy to a small neighborhood, where everybody knew everyone else growing up (everyone in the main cast bar Han and Lando show up at one point in those movies). The universe needs to expand outwards. The galaxy needs to have people doing amazing things who aren't named Skywalker, or married to someone who is. Kylo Ren is Han's son, and that's enough. Rey needs to be her own woman, not somebody famous's daughter.

For the same reason, Snoke needs to also be nobody. Especially not some obscure Sith Lord who is only name-dropped in a single scene in a movie that came out a decade or more ago, and who only matters to the kinds of Star Wars fans who read the novels (ie; not the majority of people going to see these movies).

My only other quibble, the thing that I dislike more than anything else in this film is Starkiller Base.

Why? Why did they build this? Did Supreme Leader Snoke really look at the track record of giant death machines with stonking great planet-shattering guns on them and think "yeah, I totally need to build another Death Star for the good guys to go blow up in a single engagement!". Because there is no way anyone even remotely sane would think that was a good idea. Death Star One? Blows up one planet, then explodes. Death Star Two? Blows up no planets, then explodes and kills the Emperor. That's an impressive track record, and there is no way that those earlier results can indicate future trends, no sir. Let's go build a newer, bigger, death-er star.

Actually, let's just build a metric fethton of Star Destroyers and bomb planets from orbit. Blowing up 1 Death Star is easy. Blowing up 25,000 Star Destroyers? Not so easy.

IMO the scale issue is less about the literal number of ships/soldiers on screen and more about their place in the movie. In ANH the death star attack is clearly the climax of the movie, and it takes its time building up to that final torpedo shot. A simple pursuit and destruction of a TIE fighter gets a decent amount of screen time, the music is matched perfectly with the action, etc. It's a classic space battle for a reason. But with TFA the pace is so frantic and the intensity of the action is so constant that the x-wing attack feels like it's almost an afterthought. There's never any time to appreciate what you're seeing before there's another spectacular CGI shot or you're jerked along to the next Major Plot Event. And so it's reduced to "there were a few x-wings in the background when Han died", as forgettable a battle as anything in the prequel trilogy.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

squidhills wrote:
I like General Hux as a character, and the actor does a decent job, but it felt like the role should have gone to an older actor.

I actually disagree with this, given a point that was mentioned earlier. The First Order is supposed to be the young zealots, while the old veterans of the previous war have accepted defeat and signed their peace treaties with the Republic. Having Hux be older kind of contradicts this idea.

 Peregrine wrote:
Event. And so it's reduced to "there were a few x-wings in the background when Han died", as forgettable a battle as anything in the prequel trilogy.

It seemed like it tried too hard to recreate the "rebel forces is trying to attack the death star but can't do anything until the shields are down/ground team is trying to take down the shields while fighting" dynamic from ROTJ and it just didn't have the time and scale to pull it off and have the same impact.

 ScootyPuffJunior wrote:
The rose-colored glasses are strong with this one.

The original Star Wars movie is nowhere near as complex as you're making it sound.

The originStar Wars was a simple story well told. A good simple story. One might say the very archetype of a good simple story.

TFA was a more complex but crappier story badly told. JJ has no sense of scale, physical or emotional. His characters don't develop, they hit bullet points on an outline. Most of his scenes are shorthand for the kind of experience the original Star Wars gave legitimately. It is to the credit of the actors, the SFX guys, and the dialog doctor that so many people are able to enjoy the movie despite its huge, gaping flaws.

squidhills wrote:
Kylo Ren was a harder sell for me. I didn't like him at first. Still don't like him, actually, but he works in the context of the film. He is the guy who never had a chance and never had a choice. His parents were Han freaking Solo and Princess freaking Leia. His uncle was Luke fething Skywalker, the last Jedi. This guy had the deck stacked against him from birth, because he was never going to measure up to what others were expecting of him. And even if (as I suspect is the case) his family didn't have overly high expectations of him, he almost certainly *thought* they did. And he felt he wasn't measuring up to them, which made him feel like he was failing at something he wasn't given a choice in. Did he even want to become a Jedi, or was that something his mother chose for him? Leia makes a comment about "sending him away", which sounds like it wasn't Ren's decision to go get his Jedi on with Unca Luke. So here's a guy failing at doing something he maybe doesn't want to do, getting frustrated and angry, and getting told by Luke "don't get frustrated and angry; you'll end up like Vader".

What does a frustrated, angry teenager do when you tell them not to do something, or not to be like someone?

They go out and do that thing and be that thing. I get a real vibe from Ren that he jumped into the Dark Side as something "edgy" and "cool" to get back at his parents with, and it spiraled out of his control. He genuinely feels bad about what he's done, which frightens him, so he tries to throw himself into all this space Nazi wizardry, in the hopes that if he can just be evil enough, he'll stop regretting everything he's done. He pushes himself to be more and more evil, because in his mind, at some point he'll get evil enough to stop caring. Also, I kinda get the impression that Vader's redemption at the end of RoTJ isn't common knowledge. Luke might've told Leia, but telling new Jedi students that the most evil dude in the galaxy turned good at the last second might not warn them away from the Dark Side as effectively as just letting them think that once you go black (helmet & cape) you never go back... which could explain Ren's obsession with being as evil as Vader, even though (from a Dark Side perspective) Vader wussed out in the end. Maybe Ren doesn't know Vader turned to the Light at all...?

So, while I'm not super excited by Ren, I think I get where the filmakers where going with him.

I think this is pretty spot on, although it sounds like I enjoyed the character more than you did

I mean, he's whiny and angsty, and certainly not as high up the Evil Overlord scale as Vader... but on the other hand, he's believable, and his fall (at least as far as has been extrapolated so far) is much more sensible than the way Anakin's was portrayed in the prequels.

I thought Ren was going to be quite unimpressive from the trailers and promotional stills... but in action, he has a surprising amount of presence, and I liked him far more than I expected to.


And with the cinema sound, that damn freaky lightsaber made me jump every time he lit it up...

I don't even think Ren's character was that whiny or angsty. Unfortunately the actor who plays him looks whiny and angsty. The character has a strong undercurrent to his actions that makes me want to see more of him, but they found the most generic looking "i'm dark and no one gets me" face to play the role.

 d-usa wrote:
It seemed like it tried too hard to recreate the "rebel forces is trying to attack the death star but can't do anything until the shields are down/ground team is trying to take down the shields while fighting" dynamic from ROTJ and it just didn't have the time and scale to pull it off and have the same impact.

I think this is exactly it. They've got the same ship designs as the original trilogy and figured out how to copy some of the theme elements of the battles, but they don't seem to understand why those battles are so memorable. And instead they compensate by having more dramatic CGI in the hope that the audience is too distracted to notice the flaws.

Adam Driver is a pretty good actor. I just hope they give him more do do with growing the character.

Peregrine wrote:It really isn't, not at all. You get episode 1 by having terrible acting, clumsy script writing and directing, awkward CGI for everything, and a stubborn insistence on turning the occasional comic relief elements into the focus of the movie. The movie was terrible for reasons that had nothing to do with the choice of story themes.

I would have to disagree with you. The story for The Phantom Menace is bad, really bad. That movie is a perfect storm of stupid ass story, terrible acting (from most of the cast), horrible dialogue, and misguided special effects.

Breotan wrote:And the omnipresent CGI.

I know the Prequels get a lot of flak for the CGI used in them, and rightfully so, but a lot of the big set pieces in all three of them were done with traditional miniature work. The models are actually insanely awesome because ILM had some of Hollywood's best model makers working for them at that time.

 ScootyPuffJunior wrote:
I would have to disagree with you. The story for The Phantom Menace is bad, really bad.

I don't think it is, honestly. The execution of the story is terrible, of course, but I think with a few fairly small changes you can get a decent story out of the basic idea:

1) Make Anakin older, about 20-25ish. This fixes one of the most annoying parts of the movie from a bad acting perspective, and makes his accomplishments a lot more plausible.

2) Reduce the amount of time spent on pointless diversions like the underwater chase. These aren't even part of the story, they're just filler material that can be removed without losing anything.

3) Make the droids and gungans serious characters instead of comic relief. In fact, you could even remove the gungans entirely and replace them with the main characters hiring a mercenary force to retake the planet after the Republic fails to help.

A fixed version of the story isn't going to win any literary awards, but it would at least be an enjoyable movie.

 Grey Templar wrote:

 -Loki- wrote:
They really need better OHS guidelines in the Star Wars galaxy. Just some solid, secure handrails would do.

There were actually a surprising number of railings on Starkiller base. It seems the safety initiatives we saw in RotJ were one thing that survived the Emperor's death.

Well railings are there yeah but you have to understand this is a possible fall so far even a grand master space jedi would die instantly including emperor palpatine (unless they have some super jedi/sith ability now). My point is a dinky little hand rail isn't much protection if the fall is a bottomless chasm. What if there was a slippery floor? Whoops I slipped and fell under the railing to my imminent certain death. Normally when the danger is extremely massive they prepare for things like that. Perhaps no way to fall under and for the most part safety bars and crap that probably goes far up enough that you have to be insane, stupid and reckless in equal measure to try to get around it. Not that I'd doubt jedi or sith would do something massively dangerous or stupid for cheap thrills to the audience. Realistically a lot of these stunts if done wrong would end in the jedi's/sith's death and even if it was a 10% chance if you do it 20+ times in a few weeks while jedi'ing then chances are you're pushing your luck and your life should end soon.

Well any force user worth his salt puts a little xp into "Move Person".