Anchorhead

Bingowings said:

Anchorhead said:

Lord Haseo said:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sq51w34Hg9I

@ 1:45

This argument need not go further

They ran around it like it was nothing when they were going toward Ben. Once Luke yells, it’s suddenly become a gigantic chasm and somehow they can’t seem to find a way around it

When they went around it the Stormies were distracted by Vader and the old guy in a dressing gown having a glow stick dance party (opps that was Episode 3).
With Luke screaming the galaxy’s favorite word at the top of his voice all the attention was on the remaining heroes.
Yes we all know that Stormies only hit heroes when the plot demands it and never fatally but they don’t know that. So you have a line of troopers firing away and a death pit (the bad guys think railings are unnecessary for some reason).

I was more addressing how the hole goes from a minor obstacle;

To a gaping chasm…asm…asm… when it better serves the plot.

Bingowings said:
a glow stick dance party (opps that was Episode 3).

Actual LOL

NeverarGreat said:

http://www.giantbomb.com/articles/off-the-clock-space-opera-millennials-and-their-gr/1100-5371/

Some good thoughts here.

Excellent piece.

Lord Haseo said:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sq51w34Hg9I

@ 1:45

This argument need not go further

They ran around it like it was nothing when they were going toward Ben. Once Luke yells, it’s suddenly become a gigantic chasm and somehow they can’t seem to find a way around it

Yoda Is Your Father said:
A semen and dog shit sandwich for lunch is ‘original’, but I’ll take good ol’ ham and cheese any day of the week.

Reel it in.

Kepling said:
…some randoms thoughts about it here with you fine folks.

Are you sure you’re on the right board?

Oh, come on! That was funny. Besides, I’m surprised I got that in before Frink.

I thought about also getting the Han\Fett pair, tossing the Fett sock, and having Han & Chewie together. Didn’t do it.

https://www.stance.com/starwars

I agree on the unlikely events being equal in both films. Neither of which bother me, by the way. I also think it’s telling that the people arguing one vs the other as being believable are choosing to ignore how gargantuan a planet is. It would be a one-in-a-million chance for stumbling onto them. **
Same for all the other convenient turns in Star Wars77. Poe & Finn crashing near Rey’s village is no more contrived than R2 & 3PO crashing near Luke.

While we’re on the subject; At least Lor is living near Rey and it’s there where the story begins. Makes a lot more sense than R2 spinning out of control towards - a planet - and very conveniently crashing near Luke and Ben. Then he just happens to be found by Jawas. Then just happens to be sold to Luke. Who just happens to live near Ben. Who just happens to have the lightsaber that belonged to Luke’s father. (In 1977, no one was related to each other and Tatooine was in the middle of nowhere).

The contrivances in Star Wars77 are every bit as unlikely as those which people seem to want to complain about in Force Awakens. Maybe even more so. If you want to complain that Force Awakens wasn’t as serious as Alien, as realistic as 2001, or as dark as Edge Of Tomorrow, fine. Go to it. It’s why we have this thread. At least have the decency to acknowledge those same weaknesses in Star Wars77.

** Of course, even then the odds would still favor the Empire since there is no way in hell R2 was rolling through miles and miles of sand dunes. Even as a little kid I could see it was fake. Wonder why he didn’t just fly into town? Oh, yeah…

HyperNova said:
And just ONE other thing that bothered me…
WHAT HAPPENED TO HYPERSPEED ???
No mentioning of that in the movie. It’s all a bout LIGHTSPEED all of a sudden.

?
1977;
“She’ll make point five past lightspeed.”
“How long before you can make the jump to lightspeed?”
“Go strap yourself in, I’m going to make the jump to lightspeed.”

1980;
“…they’ll dump their garbage before they go to lightspeed.”
“Lord Vader, the fleet has moved out of lightspeed”
"the hyperdrive motivator has been damaged. It’s impossible to go to lightspeed! "

Along with all the old Kenner Star Wars toy commercials, that Pee Wee-Wookiee video was one of several they played before the film. In fact, I was just logging in to post it. I saw it at the theater in the video, theater 4 also, but not during that opening night insanity. Alamo did it up big for the film. They had some nice looking T-shirts for sale but it was crazy crowded. I decided to wait until the second time I went and just a few days later they were all sold out. Still can’t find them anywhere online.

We’ve seen dumber and sillier plenty times before in Star Wars. Half the creatures in the 1977 cantina scene are every bit as silly.

They at least served a purpose plot-wise. They saved our heroes when they killed the other smugglers.

Edit

I mean, like Bones said. 😉

SilverWook said:
I think seller’s remorse is kicking in.

And not every space movie that came out in Star Wars’ wake was a bomb either.

Seller’s remorse for sure, coupled with the restored & non-Lucas direction being hugely popular, breaking records (and in record time), and a public who is now much more vocal about how terrible the prequels were. He’s also a megalomaniac who can no longer exercise his omnipotence. The casual and/or non-nerd fans of Star Wars are starting to see a side of him that we’ve known about for many years.

You’re also correct on his being off about space movies failing after Star Wars. Alien was an enormous success and launched a franchise. I’d also bet Star Wars had a great deal to do with the rebirth of the Star Trek franchise, for which his company handled the special effects by the way.

He’s really showing how petty we’ve always know him to be. I guess his next move will be a sequel to his middle finger to the fans t-shirt - “Han Shot First” …“I Shot A Star Wars Film First”.

eiyosus said:
Anyway, here’s a little then and now (and no, we did not wear these shirts to the actual screening of Awakens. And no, we are not lovers, nor are we virgins, despite what the commentators on Reddit would have you believe, but I admit this picture is pretty damn dorky out of context):

(I don’t know how to embed pictures)

I’m on the right:

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/8390106/the boys.jpg

Countdown shirts! Fantastic. Very clever. Digging the scratch-out when it’s down to one day. Well done. Glad the movie matched the moment for you. Welcome back.

I went back and fixed your original post for image display.

SilverWook said:

Don’t sell yourself short, YIYF. Stanley Kubrick was fascinated by tv commercials and studied them. 😃

I agree. I have a close friend in L.A. who designs & builds sets for a living. Mostly commercials, local news sets, cable news sets, and an occasional video. We sometimes sit and discuss the insanity of what it takes to get fifty people rowing the same direction for what will be 60 seconds of film. I can’t even imagine what it would take on a two and a half hour film that took nearly two years.

Not to mention, there are some very well done commercials these days. 60 seconds of camera work, acting, sets, music, etc that equal the level of a film. I’ve spent more than a few moments occasionally watching some on Youtube because I thought they were so well done.

"Pigs claim they acted in self defence"
Well done, YIYF. 😉

That’s fantastic. Really.

TV’s Frink said:
I know a pretty smart eight-year-old. Smarter than some of the “adults” on this site, that’s for sure.

Ummm…excuse me…I’m still in the room.

“They wouldn’t be using the same ships 30 years later, that’s bullshit”

“Tie fighters didn’t have two seats 30 years ago, that’s bullshit”

TV’s Frink said:

That’s one consistent thing I’ve seen here, people complaining about things in TFA that didn’t bother them in ANH.

Understatement of the week.

For the record; I get being disappointed and critical of a film. Really, I do. I’m coming at this from being a fan of one Star Wars film only (until last week), swearing off all things Lucas, and having not even bothered with watching his last two cartoons. I’m well aware of what it’s like to watch a beloved story tailspin into a poorly revised, poorly written, poorly acted, CGI shitfest.

That said; I’m also aware that Star Wars77 had more than it’s fair share of contrived plot points and plot holes. I accept them, embrace the story, and go on the adventure. However…

• An escape pod the size of an SUV falls to a planet, sometime later the Empire decides to go look for it, and within minutes the stormtroopers are standing next to it? Weak.

• The pod lands very near Luke’s house and he just happens to buy the droid that was inside? Later it ends up at Ben’s, who also just happens to have the lightsaber the totally random farm boy’s dad used to own? Contrived.

• The Death Star - constructed specifically to blow-up planets - has to go around a planet before it can…blow up a different planet? WTF?

• The Death Star is the size of a moon, yet our heroes seem to be able to walk everywhere they need to be in what appears to be just a few minutes. Unrealistic.

• A small exhaust port on a moon-sized space station can lead the entire station disintegrating? Contrived.

There are others I’m sure I’ve forgotten over the years. My point is just this; The intense criticism of The Force Awakens can easily be applied to Star Wars77. I’m at a loss as to why one gets a pass and one does not.

Bingowings said:
Maybe some of these things have an in universe explanation which we haven’t seen yet. Rey could just be absorbing skills from the minds of people around her. She knows the Falcon because Han and Chewie do, She knows how to fight with a lightsaber because Ren has been train to do so. She understands Chewie and BB8 too so she can draw skills from non-humans and robots. It could be a new Force skill where connective nature of the Force is being used as a tool.

I like that idea. She has to be drawing the knowledge from somewhere and clearly it’s being kept from us for a couple of years. I also really like the cryptic exchange between Luke and Rey. He doesn’t appear to be glad to see her, but really it’s hard to tell if they even know each other.

Again, I’m happy about all that was left unsaid in the end scene and elsewhere. There were all manner of things left unexplained in Star Wars and Empire. They worked for me in that regard. The universe stayed vast and mysterious. It was the last four Lucas films (at least the two I’ve seen) where he started with the leave your imaginations at the door direction of the story. Taking the mask off of Vader in Return was where Lucas took the mask off the franchise. It’s where I knew I’d be making my exit.

DominicCobb said:

…it’s not like those things didn’t happen - they did, just off screen. It feels like, to me anyway, that there’s a whole other trilogy that happened before TFA and after ROTJ (detailing the beginning of the New Republic and New Jedi Academy and all the way through the rise of the First Order/Resistance and Ben’s turn to the dark side and Jedi Purge).

Presequel Trilogy ®.

RU.08 said:

When using CGI it’s best practise not to zoom it to fill the frame, but with Snoke JJ just puts it right in the frame to pull us out of the suspension of disbelief.

Unless I missed something, we never see Snoke. We just see a holographic projection Kylo is speaking with.

boredom3031 said:

Here’s what I’d like to see, a very hungry wookiee, on a bad acid trip and maybe half drunk also.

Sounds like you’ve never seen the Star Wars Holiday Special.

TavorX said:
I was thinking those that grew up with the theatrical releases don’t want the few precious moments of their childhood…a crowd of older people wanting to believe Star Wars from their childhood will always have a fairy tale ending. It’s the few good thing that they can cling onto…

Well kid, as condescending as you come across, I can assure you that older people don’t have a few precious moments that they can cling onto.

From the board reviews I’ve read (here and another), the criticisms of the erased 1980s appear to be coming from the fans who do not yet understand the journey.

pablumatic said:

Had there actually been a new threat to the galaxy, rather than just the Empire with a public relations name change and a large bucket of black paint for their spaceships, it would have worked better for me.

Had there actually been a new threat to the civilized world rather than just the Taliban with a public relations name change and a large bucket of black paint for their flags…

As it is, somehow the Rebels didn’t really win and the Empire managed to sneak off and make an even bigger Death Star.

We captured and tried the group behind the original attempt to bring down the World Trade Center in 1993. As it is, somehow the US didn’t really win and the terrorists managed to sneak off and come up with an even bigger plan.

Edit
My point with quoting and responding in this manner isn’t to be dickish. It’s to show that those points could easily be applied to the real world.

MJR80 said:
I understand what you’re saying, but history does repeat itself. After Alexander the Great died, his empire fell to pieces, often waring over power. In recent history, the Soviet Union fell, only to become something as powerful some twenty years later (Russia), who is, in some ways, succeeding in becoming the power it once was. In many ways, this is like the Empire falling, only to rise out of the ashes the First Order.

I can see how some folks would be upset about re-using the Death Star plot point; however, again, this mimics history. For example, modern nukes are many times more powerful than the A-bombs used during WWII. But are they not essentially the same weapon, only far more powerful (much like the Starkiller Base is in TFA)? Why wouldn’t the First Order want a weapon as powerful as that? And who is to say building such a weapon wasn’t a ploy (and a plot device in the next two films) to lure Luke from hiding?

Last, I have read folks complaining about the Galaxy “forgetting” history in TFA. This again can have roots in reality. There are societies with totalitarian regimes who recreate history on a whim (North Korea, anyone?). Is it not plausible that the First Order, with its power and influence can and would attempt to rewrite history for some (Finn) and erase it altogether for others (Rey)?

This is exactly why the film works so well for me (aside from Rey and Han). Those of us in our 50s are well aware that one wartime defeat, no matter the size, often changes things only temporarily.

As you’ve pointed out with several excellent examples, some of which I’ve lived through, the wiped-clean happy ending of Return very much mirrors reality. I suspect a great many of the fans complaining that the erased happy Ewok dancing are twenty-somethings who have yet to experienced the reality of the world’s differing philosophical beliefs or the lengths those nations and leaders are willing to go to to try and force them on the rest of the planet. That very much includes their censoring the outside world and history from their people. That behavior is going on daily. Not even remotely a stretch to show it happening in The Force Awakens.

Yoda Is Your Father said:

PeakSine said:

Is Rey the daughter of Luke Skywalker? I’m curious about your thoughts!

I hope not. Too obvious. Why can’t she be strong in the force without being a Skywalker?

I agree. I really hope she’s Rey Random and our only family connection is Ben. Stop the universe shrinking before it gets any worse.