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I happen to have some military background, which is why seeing stormtroopers being more incompetent than even a new recruit bothers me.

 Bobthehero wrote:
I happen to have some military background, which is why seeing stormtroopers being more incompetent than even a new recruit bothers me.

Same, but its hardly the only series where it happens, heck the much lauded (for some reason) BSG has Pilots better than Marines in ground combat.

Never saw BSG, so I am fine on that front

Star Wars in general has always had a problem with Stormtroopers. It ultimately comes down to creating a villain that is supposed to be super elite that vastly outnumbers the heroes. There's no real way to depict the heroes winning that situation with any consistency that doesn't erode the elite status placed on the villain. Actually, its essentially a problem with any long running story involving lethal conflicts. The villain's binary win condition simply doesn't allow for the kind of give and take wins and losses that can keep them a credible threat for long against heroes that the audience will stick behind.

Bobthehero wrote:I happen to have some military background, which is why seeing stormtroopers being more incompetent than even a new recruit bothers me.

At all points stormtroopers look like extras wearing costumes doing their best to pretend soldier.
There is at least two scenes where stormtroopers look less like a military threat and more like bowling pins.

VictorVonTzeentch wrote:

 Bobthehero wrote:
I happen to have some military background, which is why seeing stormtroopers being more incompetent than even a new recruit bothers me.

Same, but its hardly the only series where it happens, heck the much lauded (for some reason) BSG has Pilots better than Marines in ground combat.

I served after I saw BSG so I'm sure it would be annoying now lol but showes that it isn't an issue for most movie goers.

I always figured the stormtroopers were more of a police force than an actual fighting unit.

Saw the film today, was decent. Needed more Vader.

 Ctaylor wrote:

Spoiler:

AT-ATs are troop transports (they hold 40 stormtroopers plus gear).

AT-ACTs are larger, true cargo variants, used for construction and munitions transport.

Far as i'm concerned this is a much better Star Wars movie than Episode 7 and possibly better than at least one movie of the original trilogy (as heretical as some might consider that).

The few issues i had with the movie.



Things that i'm mixed (dislike and like) on.



Things i really liked:



As i said for the most part i enjoyed it. It was much better than Episode 7 and may actually top one of the movies in the original trilogy but i'm not the best judge here and definitely not the biggest star wars fan.

-----------

 LunarSol wrote:

 VictorVonTzeentch wrote:

 Bobthehero wrote:
The stormtroopers did pretty well in a New Hope intro, considering they had to go through a small man sized hole and into a tunnel where 5-6 men had their guns pointed at the door, either that or the Alderan troopers were really badly trained.

Did the Death Troopers end up being another Captain Phasma?

No, the were fairly effective.

Spoiler:

Minus the part where Donnie Yen is praying to the force and they all miss him.

Which is kind of the whole point.

Spoiler:

My issue with it was that it took too long to play out and robbed a lot of its tension and impact. It either needed to play out faster or he needed to take some hits along the way and have to will himself to keep going.

About the Death Star.

 welshhoppo wrote:
About the Death Star.

Spoiler:

They make it clear they aren't firing this thing on full power, they were going to blow up a moon originally, but Tarkington instead used Tactical Nuclear mode instead of planet wiping mode apparently.

On "the whole point"

 flamingkillamajig wrote:

Spoiler:

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.

Our female heroine killed a rebel tossing a grenade for some reason (was it because it might kill civilians?).

But this is a vastly better film that TFA. Jyn is an infinitely better character than Rey, having to actually struggle and Cassian is actually competent, as opposed to Finn.

It's still far better than TFA though.

Bothans stole the plans for the second Death Star

Rogue Two

Bothans were for the 2nd Death Star

 welshhoppo wrote:

Spoiler:

I think the final shot with the Death Star was so that it could get a good angle through the damaged shield gate. Maybe they were worried about it bouncing off the shield and just damaging the space station?

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.

For most people i don't believe it will be. There were 2 main characters (guy and girl) and nobody was too mary-sue. I myself have more issue with inserting certain characters into certain positions to fulfill a quota and then putting them on a pedestal for a cause of equality. Nobody ever feels equal when people put certain types of people on a pedestal and tell them to treat those people equally after giving them special positions which is why it needs to be done in a concealed matter. Oddly the Star Trek movie was better at this than Star Wars: TFA. If you watch the last Star Trek movie Sulu being gay was shown far less than Sulu being a more central character that did more meaningful things for some reason. In fact Sulu's husband could've even been mistaken for his brother. Had nobody brought it up and just watched the movie they'd probably have never known.

The other issue was the fact Rei was Mary Sue. Jyn was not and shared her main role with a dude she would've banged if they both lived after. If anything people will nag more about the romance sub-plot.

It might also be sad to say but sometimes the whole GG and feminism issue just ruined everything for everybody. If it never happened 2 sides wouldn't have formed up and most likely nobody would care to have women, men, etc in one thing or another. I don't believe media is doing it now because of personal opinions or good will. They want advertisement and something that'll get clicks for people to complain about. Interesting how the most divisive things tend to come from news sites and media rather than the actual people on both sides.

I mean think about it. When 'The Thing' got a prequel how many people complained about the female lead and how many complained because it ruined a beloved franchise?

------

If it's any indication for you i was mixed on TFA and don't like feminism and i really liked this movie enough to say it may have topped one of the original trilogy movies in Star Wars. That's a very good sign. Then again i'm not the biggest Star Wars fan and hardcore fans are known to be a very unsatisfied bunch esp. to very popular and old franchises.

 flamingkillamajig wrote:
It might also be sad to say but sometimes the whole GG and feminism issue just ruined everything for everybody. If it never happened 2 sides wouldn't have formed up and most likely nobody would care to have women, men, etc in one thing or another. I don't believe media is doing it now because of personal opinions or good will. They want advertisement and something that'll get clicks for people to complain about. Interesting how the most divisive things tend to come from news sites and media rather than the actual people on both sides.

No...Those two sides existed long before GamerGate. GamerGate was a flash-point, a symptom of issues that been simmering for a very long time. SJW's and misogyny and 4chan internet trolling and unethical journalism and industry corruption didn't suddenly spring into existence with GamerGate, GamerGate simply exposed that ugly undercurrent to the world.


As for Rogue One...I've not seen it yet but I've read the plot and it sounds like Jyn is the female protagonist that Rey should have been. I.e. not a Mary Sue put on a pedestal. And for the record, I didn't hate TFA, it just felt unoriginal and fairly shallow to me. Better than the prequels at least.

 flamingkillamajig wrote:
For most people i don't believe it will be. There were 2 main characters (guy and girl) and nobody was too mary-sue.

 flamingkillamajig wrote:
I myself have more issue with inserting certain characters into certain positions to fulfill a quota and then putting them on a pedestal for a cause of equality.

 Kojiro wrote:

 flamingkillamajig wrote:
For most people i don't believe it will be. There were 2 main characters (guy and girl) and nobody was too mary-sue.

Spoiler:

The biggest Mary Sue was the blind guy, if anyone. Jyn was raised by a extremist military commander so her fighting skills- while perhaps ham fistedly first demonstrated- aren't beyond belief (there's no reason to violently lash out at people rescuing you and even then she ends up flat on her back). But Jyn's undoubtedly the star, as much as Rey, but feels to me far more like the whole affair was difficult and above all, costly for her.

 flamingkillamajig wrote:
I myself have more issue with inserting certain characters into certain positions to fulfill a quota and then putting them on a pedestal for a cause of equality.

Spoiler:

If anything, this is a mild complaint from me only for incongruity. Great pains are taken to show that the Rebellion is super diverse in both gender and race- which is fine, it would be. But then it's also bleeding apparent every Imperial is not only white, but male. Which is fine, they can be space white supremacists but it's made incongruous when the one Imperial that becomes a Rebel just happens to be not white and leaves you wondering just how Cassian got anywhere as a brown skinned, unshaven guy parading around as an officer. In Ep IV everyone but Leia is a white man, Rebel and Imperial. Clearly they fixed that for the Rebels but elected not to alter the Imps. But this is a minor thing overall, and had identity politics not been so prevalent lately something I'd likely not have noticed.

Silly thing is the only female bad guy i remember seeing in TFA was Captain Phasma and she's awful as a bad guy. They immediately threw her in the garbage which while funny ruined her as a character. She's basically the Boba Fett of the New Trilogy minus the jetpack but female in this case. Seriously everybody thought Boba Fett was cool and somehow some still do. Name me one thing he does cool in the movies. Just one. That's what i thought. She's the exact same thing as Boba Fett.

Also Phasma does a grand total of nothing evil. She talks and that's about it. Name one evil act she did. Same goes for Finn. Ugh that movie.

Rogue One is a much better film but the shared central character thing is more tolerable. I can also sorta get behind that mixed race for good guys vs the racist bad guys.

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.

Boba outsmarts the heroes, talks back to Vader, that's a whole lot more than Phasma ever did.

Meh. That's nothing new. The old premise was that the empire was all white male and excluded alien races. The rebellion has always intentionally been diverse in comparison.

 LunarSol wrote:
Meh. That's nothing new. The old premise was that the empire was all white male and excluded alien races. The rebellion has always intentionally been diverse in comparison.

I see no reason to not include imperial women though. Also they're less racist and more speciest if there is such a word. It's more human superiority than white male superiority. That's actually the accepted theme. Aliens are barely tolerated if that. That's why Mr. Smurf (Thrawn) was such a big deal (because normally a non-human couldn't get such a high rank).

 LunarSol wrote:
The rebellion has always intentionally been diverse in comparison.

I beg to differ. Hence why I call it incongruous. These are the same Red/Gold/Blue teams in Rogue One and Episode IV, yet here they're suspiciously devoid of the clearly present females of Rogue One.

Just to be clear, the issue is not the presence of women in R1's Rebels, but rather the lack of them in R1's Imperials.

The original film is certainly far from the kind of diversity in the latest film, but so was the culture at the time in general. Certainly by Jedi they'd pushed the rebel diversity quite a bit.

The point is, the Empire was designed from the start to be Space Nazis and there's just not a lot of priority in making them more diverse or sympathetic in any way.

 BrotherGecko wrote:

Spoiler:

I still think the character deaths were just tacked on rather than part of the story. A artificial means to wrap up their story arcs for A New Hope. You could take out their deathsand the story actually doesn't change at all which is bothersome. Except for K2, every character dies after completing their mission and not even as a result of the mission being complete but rather it just happens after they complete it. The imperial pilot is killed by a grenade as a random effect after his mission is done. The blind guy was a bomb (if I remember right) after his mission is done. The machinegun guy is a grenade once his mission is done. The girl and the rogue are killed after their mission is done so we don't have to ask where they were in the trilogy. K2 at least dies completely his mission and securing the mission, his is the only one that has any dramatic sense to it.

 flamingkillamajig wrote:
It might also be sad to say but sometimes the whole GG and feminism issue just ruined everything for everybody. If it never happened 2 sides wouldn't have formed up and most likely nobody would care to have women, men, etc in one thing or another.

The issue of representation in fiction is one that has been ongoing for a long time before 4chan decided to take a all over the internet. And "keep doing things as they are, where women/LGBT people/etc are rare and white men are the default for everything" is not really an improvement. All gamergate did was make it public knowledge that there are people who will whine and cry about "SJWs" any time anyone dares to suggest that there might be a problem somewhere.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 flamingkillamajig wrote:
Rei though with small help beat a significantly better trained and better experienced individual in her first movie.

No, she really didn't. She beat a whiny emo kid with daddy issues, whose primary experience in lightsaber combat was probably hacking apart his computer every time he got bad news. This is the same guy who has to resort to begging his grandfather's hat to help him figure out how to win. Sure, he obviously had some power, but he was no Vader. And we see very early on that Rey had experience in melee combat, in the scene of her beating up the thugs with her staff. Having her transfer that experience to a different weapon is in line with similar "because plot" skill acquisitions by other characters.

And Luke and Anakin are also Mary Sues by that standard. FFS, Anakin's introduction starts with "he is the special snowflake who will be the plot device we desperately need", and who can forget the cringe-worthy scene of him winning a major space battle purely by accident ("let's try spinning lololololol!!!!!!"). Luke is less painful to watch, but he picks up lightsaber use well enough to block laser shots with his eyes closed with a brief lesson, and miraculously turns skill at flying the family space-Cessna into out-dogfighting veteran TIE pilots in his first flight in a high-performance military fighter and even survives pursuit by Vader himself better than any of the rebel pilots with far more combat experience. Then because of plot the force he makes the impossible torpedo shot that his squadron leader couldn't match. Luke should have been lucky to make it out of the hangar without crashing, and been shot down effortlessly by the first TIE fighter to get behind him. But hey, he's the main character, so he gets to win!

AHHHHH IT'S SO AWESOME!!!

Definitely go see it, I'm kind of beside myself absorbing it after the fact now. It builds up slowly (and well imo) and the end is just fantastic!

 LunarSol wrote:
The point is, the Empire was designed from the start to be Space Nazis and there's just not a lot of priority in making them more diverse or sympathetic in any way.

That explains the white, but not the male.
Granted there's a black guy or two in there but I'd hardly call it remotely diverse, certainly not gender diverse. I think there's a sort of dishonesty in revising the Rebels only if you're going to also claim that representation matters. Either it does or it doesn't- it can't matter only when it's a group you like being represented.

No, she really didn't. She beat a whiny emo kid with daddy issues, whose primary experience in lightsaber combat was probably hacking apart his computer every time he got bad news.

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.

This is the same guy who has to resort to begging his grandfather's hat to help him figure out how to win.

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.