What didn't you like about TFA? SPOILERS — Page 9

That probably wouldn’t diminish Vader but would certainly diminish the Emperor in the previous six episodes.

It’s still the same. They are still raising the bar.

Mithrandir said:
It’s still the same. They are still raising the bar.

Since it’s a sequel they damn well better be raising the bar. Why should Force Lightning, Force Pushes/pulls, Force Speed, Tutaminis, enhanced speed/strength/agility due to forced based physical augmentation be the extent one can use The Force? In terms of variation to the EU the Force Abilities shown in Episodes I - VI are not even comparable. It’s time for something new.

OK that sounds like a pro-prequel argument. Reminds me of the RLM review of Attack of the Clones, where everyone has a health bar next to them on the screen and the story and the fights are all about whose force trick is the coolest.

Alderaan said:

OK that sounds like a pro-prequel argument. Reminds me of the RLM review of Attack of the Clones, where everyone has a health bar next to them on the screen and the story and the fights are all about whose force trick is the coolest.

Well this time we have good plot and characters so why shouldn’t we up the anti while we’re at it? Keeps The Force from becoming stale and after 6 movies of seeing the same shit I want to see something new.

imperialscum said:

Lord Haseo said:

Mithrandir said:
It’s still the same. They are still raising the bar.

Since it’s a sequel they damn well better be raising the bar. Why should Force Lightning, Force Pushes/pulls, Force Speed, Tutaminis, enhanced speed/strength/agility due to forced based physical augmentation be the extent one can use The Force? In terms of variation to the EU the Force Abilities shown in Episodes I - VI are not even comparable. It’s time for something new.

Maybe it is time for something new, though unnecessarily… but not something stupid that degrades previous stuff.

Some Force Abilities are bound to be more potent then others. I don’t see how that’s stupid or “degrading” to other force powers.

Lord Haseo said:

Alderaan said:

OK that sounds like a pro-prequel argument. Reminds me of the RLM review of Attack of the Clones, where everyone has a health bar next to them on the screen and the story and the fights are all about whose force trick is the coolest.

Well this time we have good plot and characters so why shouldn’t we up the anti while we’re at it? Keeps The Force from becoming stale and after 6 movies of seeing the same shit I want to see something new.

Ain’t nobody going to be as powerful in the force as Yoda and the Emperor and Vader were. Otherwise, that’s just stupid. The fights get their meaning by what else is going on. Remember Obi-Wan wasn’t trying to kill Vader, he was just trying to give the others time to escape. Vader wasn’t trying to kill Luke, he was trying to get Luke to join him. And the Emperor wanted Luke to kill Vader, but neither of them wanted to kill each other. But without saying those things, it still looked like each combatant was trying to win. That’s good filmmaking.

The prequel fights were garbage because it was just good guy vs. bad guy trying to outfight each other. Who cares.

Alderaan said:

Ain’t nobody going to be as powerful in the force as Yoda and the Emperor and Vader were

Why not? Where is it specifically stated that no other beings could reach the prowess of Sidious or Yoda? Also perhaps Snoke privy to ancient Sith Force Abilities and taught Kylo a couple before Kylo went off to do First Order stuff

Alderaan said:

The fights get their meaning by what else is going on

That’s fine and all but the scene in which Kylo Ren freezes the blaster bolt isn’t even a fight scene it’s a moment in the first scene of the film that establishes how powerful our villain is (which of course ends up being misdirection.). There weren’t any other factors that could have enhanced the tension or importance of the scene. It’s unfair to compare the scenes to be honest.

The prequel fights were garbage because it was just good guy vs. bad guy trying to outfight each other. Who cares.

Exactly. The reason why the lightsaber duels were so epic in the OT – particularly TESB – is because we are emotionally invested in the characters. In TESB, we are actually afraid for Luke as Luke cautiously steps up and ignites his saber and Vader coolly, nonchalantly ignites his. We get the sense that Luke is outmatched. And then the emotional buildup swells from there. When we get to the big reveal, holy crap! It’s thrilling.

The PT duels were just a bunch of acrobatics and stunt acting for the purpose of “dazzling” the audience. Quite frankly, the villains – Maul, Dooku, and Grievous – who cares? I really couldn’t quite sense why, exactly, they were bad and what they had to gain out of all of it. It’s all just…whatever. Hey, look at that – someone got an arm cut off. Woopee.

It’s stuff like this that leads me to very strongly believe that someone else was writing Star Wars for Lucas. Lucas was coming up with rough ideas: “Let’s do an ice fortress! Let’s have a city in the clouds! Let’s have snow lizards!” and someone else was stitching it all into great stories. And evidently, whoever that person was, was gone by the time the PT was done.

Lord Haseo said:
That’s fine and all but the scene in which Kylo Ren freezes the blaster bolt isn’t even a fight scene it’s a moment in the first scene of the film that establishes how powerful our villain is (which of course ends up being misdirection.). There weren’t any other factors that could have enhanced the tension or importance of the scene. It’s unfair to compare the scenes to be honest.

Like I said earlier, it’s a “Sharknado” moment. Any time you get into the, “But then why couldn’t…” moment, you’ve created something contrived. That is, if Ren can freeze blaster bolts in midair, why couldn’t Vader have frozen the blaster bolts fired by the crew of the Blockade Runner in the first movie?

Admittedly, some of the Force powers shown in TESB cross the line of being gratuitous. I love the idea of being able to use telekinesis to pull small objects like a blaster or your lightsaber to your hand, but the idea of being able to pull an X-wing out of a bog was too much. For then it opened up all other obvious “But then why couldn’t…” moments.

Why couldn’t Vader have caught Luke in his fall?
Why couldn’t the Emperor have floated back up to the platform?
Why couldn’t Luke have thrown the Rancor across the dungeon?
Why couldn’t Luke have bent the bars to let himself out of the Rancor’s dungeon?
Why couldn’t Luke levitate Lando out of the Sarlaac pit?
Why couldn’t Luke push all of Jabba’s bad guys into the Sarlaac pit?

I suppose that last one would be using the dark side, so it wouldn’t count, but you get my drift.

Smoking Lizard said:
but the idea of being able to pull an X-wing out of a bog was too much.

Dude, it was Yoda.

Smoking Lizard said:
Why couldn’t Vader have caught Luke in his fall?
Why couldn’t the Emperor have floated back up to the platform?
Why couldn’t Luke have thrown the Rancor across the dungeon?
Why couldn’t Luke have bent the bars to let himself out of the Rancor’s dungeon?
Why couldn’t Luke levitate Lando out of the Sarlaac pit?
Why couldn’t Luke push all of Jabba’s bad guys into the Sarlaac pit?

All of the examples of telekinesis used stationary objects.

TavorX said:

A Force user trying to do impressive stuff with many things going on leaves them vulnerable to being attacked from multiple sides.

That’s why Order 66 worked so well.

Smoking Lizard said:

The prequel fights were garbage because it was just good guy vs. bad guy trying to outfight each other. Who cares.

Exactly. The reason why the lightsaber duels were so epic in the OT – particularly TESB – is because we are emotionally invested in the characters. In TESB, we are actually afraid for Luke as Luke cautiously steps up and ignites his saber and Vader coolly, nonchalantly ignites his. We get the sense that Luke is outmatched. And then the emotional buildup swells from there. When we get to the big reveal, holy crap! It’s thrilling.

The PT duels were just a bunch of acrobatics and stunt acting for the purpose of “dazzling” the audience. Quite frankly, the villains – Maul, Dooku, and Grievous – who cares? I really couldn’t quite sense why, exactly, they were bad and what they had to gain out of all of it. It’s all just…whatever. Hey, look at that – someone got an arm cut off. Woopee.

It’s stuff like this that leads me to very strongly believe that someone else was writing Star Wars for Lucas. Lucas was coming up with rough ideas: “Let’s do an ice fortress! Let’s have a city in the clouds! Let’s have snow lizards!” and someone else was stitching it all into great stories. And evidently, whoever that person was, was gone by the time the PT was done.

Lord Haseo said:
That’s fine and all but the scene in which Kylo Ren freezes the blaster bolt isn’t even a fight scene it’s a moment in the first scene of the film that establishes how powerful our villain is (which of course ends up being misdirection.). There weren’t any other factors that could have enhanced the tension or importance of the scene. It’s unfair to compare the scenes to be honest.

Like I said earlier, it’s a “Sharknado” moment. Any time you get into the, “But then why couldn’t…” moment, you’ve created something contrived. That is, if Ren can freeze blaster bolts in midair, why couldn’t Vader have frozen the blaster bolts fired by the crew of the Blockade Runner in the first movie?

Admittedly, some of the Force powers shown in TESB cross the line of being gratuitous. I love the idea of being able to use telekinesis to pull small objects like a blaster or your lightsaber to your hand, but the idea of being able to pull an X-wing out of a bog was too much. For then it opened up all other obvious “But then why couldn’t…” moments.

Why couldn’t Vader have caught Luke in his fall?
Why couldn’t the Emperor have floated back up to the platform?
Why couldn’t Luke have thrown the Rancor across the dungeon?
Why couldn’t Luke have bent the bars to let himself out of the Rancor’s dungeon?
Why couldn’t Luke levitate Lando out of the Sarlaac pit?
Why couldn’t Luke push all of Jabba’s bad guys into the Sarlaac pit?

I suppose that last one would be using the dark side, so it wouldn’t count, but you get my drift.

Whether it’s over the top I don’t care dude because the over the top nature of Star Wars is why I like it. And even the things we’ve seen in the films are nothing to something like when Darth Bane flew the millions of miles from Onderon to Dxun on a Drexl or how he leveled the Rakatan Temple with a Force Wave.

Also maybe Vader couldn’t freeze a blasterbolt midair is because he didn’t know the ability. Not a stretch really…

TavorX said:

Yeah, why didn’t Vader do this on the Blockade Runner either?

Kylo Ren could freeze that blaster bolt since that was the only threat to him and he could focus just on that. A Force user trying to do impressive stuff with many things going on leaves them vulnerable to being attacked from multiple sides. Imagine Yoda trying to stop a whole fleet of Star Destroyers while laser bombardment rained on his location. I don’t think he could do it with so much chaos.

And, well, that’s how we wound up with this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9DI8kkR9G0Q

TavorX said:

I thought I was being nice enough not to bring up the PT when the discussion was driven primarily with the OT.

Yes, the PT is inherently contradictory.

Yes, you’re making a very good point and I’m not trying to use PT to discount your well thought out “Too much other stuff going on to do that” theory; I’m just saying that by expanding the powers of the Force (as in levitating the X-wing out of the bog) leads to gratuitous stuff, like hurling senate stadium seats and freezing blaster bolts midair.

It quickly descends into a juvenile game of one-up-manship. I’m reminded of a kid I went to grade school with named Ricky. When we were 10, this one very creative kid named Omar drew a cool futuristic tank with a big ion cannon on it. When I praised the tank for being cool, Ricky got jealous and drew a similar tank but with six ion cannons on it and then insisted his was better.

Lord Haseo said:

TavorX said:

A Force user trying to do impressive stuff with many things going on leaves them vulnerable to being attacked from multiple sides.

That’s why Order 66 worked so well.

Except that it didn’t.

All the Jedi who were not main characters were Red Shirts. Both in the PT and in TFA.

There were Red Shirt Jedi in TFA? I swear you saw a different movie.

TV’s Frink said:

There were Red Shirt Jedi in TFA? I swear you saw a different movie.

The ones Ren killed. Granted, they weren’t in the movie, per se.

Do we know they were actually Jedi? As opposed to being in-training, or at the very least very inexperienced…the Jedi slaughtered in the PT were battle-tested and even Masters. Big difference.

TV’s Frink said:

Do we know they were actually Jedi? As opposed to being in-training, or at the very least very inexperienced…the Jedi slaughtered in the PT were battle-tested and even Masters. Big difference.

True. That’s a fair point, but what was Luke doing for the past 30 years? Yoda told him to pass on what he had learned…did other things take priority? Does it take 30 years to train new Jedi?

Evidently not, considering it appears Rey has learned pretty much on her own…in ten minutes.