Bingowings

We sometimes lose planes and things of that nature but Earth is a water world and we don’t have a level of technology to break out of our stellar system faster than four decades. The Empire have much better technology than that and they are looking at a almost uniform sand ball.

We have no idea how long the droids travelled with the Jawas, though it would be nice to think Artoo had a hand in sending them off to the Lars farm (which he still remembers) either by hacking the crawler or persuading the Jawas of the potential profits (in the radio drama version he deliberately sabotages R5D4 so that Owen buys him instead so it’s not outside his behaviour type to do something like this).

The Death Star seems to be only able to destroy solids (rocky planets, metal spaceships). Destroying Yavin may have been beyond it’s design parameters.

The Death Star is the size of a small moon but how much of that is habitable space is not explained. A gravity train travelling through an Earth sized object would take about 45mins to travel pole to pole. The Death Star has less mass and is mostly hollow but a powered elevator would do the job even faster. One assumes there is some sort of transit hub on the station so it may be a matter of changing elevators a few times. A bit like using an underground train system only a military one without all the annoying gits with ice-cream making machines getting in the way.

It’s a two meter, ray shielded port on a top secret battle station surrounded by laser turrets and guarded by waves of fighter craft and this from a designer who doesn’t expect a small scale assault (it almost doesn’t work). The only other pilot to get near enough to fire (at the expense of his squad buddies) misses and gets himself blown up for his trouble. The elite bombing squadron is all but wiped out in the first attempt.

Star Wars has some little leaps into the coincidental but they are much fewer than TFA not unless there’s one all-powerful force controlling everything.

Bosk said:
Prometheus was a good film IMO, I’m looking forward to the next one. But then again I was never bowled over by Alien.

There goes your street cred 😄

One change that might make this film a bit different from ANH is making the main goal of building the Starkiller to take out the Republic capital and their fleet and the whole purpose of entering the base and trying to destroy it is to prevent that.
A countdown graphic could be added to rank up the tension and the base would be destroyed but too late to save the targets so the footage of the core worlds being destroyed comes after the weapon has been destroyed. This would make the ending even more bitter sweet because not only have we lost Han but also the Republic government and defences all in the final act.
The capital being destroyed wouldn’t be an exact mirror of Alderaan but instead would play out like Yavin 4 being destroyed and a few survivors looking on in horror from escaping ships.
The First Order may have lost their big gun but it has done it’s main job. They won.

Lifeforms on your Earth can live for many hundreds of years (Frink’s mom joke in 5…4…3…2…1…)

The quicksand scene is yet another Dune ‘homage’, It’s a spice blow or maybe an attacking worm… either make more sense in that book than this film. (ditto)

Jetrell Fo said:

It is obvious that everyone in this thread had some form of expectation going in to the theater and that is why opinions very so much. I enjoyed the film as a whole but it doesn’t mean I don’t expect the bar to go up now that TFA is here. I’m sure they are watching and listening to all the reactions.

This film has short comings for sure. I went in expecting nothing and had a good time with my daughter. Do I think some of the rehash was unnecessary, sure. Do I feel the writers, including Lawrence Kasdan, could have brought it bigger, yes. I’m sure there were a lot of outside interests at play here that none of us had control over too. The film is here to stay regardless of how anyone of us feel about it.

I’d like to think that with the box office draw it’s had they can use that and all the reactions to tread smarter for the next 2 installments. Us Star Wars fans are a finicky bunch but we probably know the universe far better than those making the films now so it stands to reason that there are a lot of heavy handed reactions. I am hoping that we will all be heard and that they will think before they leap in to the next film.

😃

I remained unpumped by the hype so there wasn’t the deflation I experienced after TPM or Prometheus. Sadly I remain unpumped for the next one too.

Worst case scenario :

It is a dark time for the
Resistance. Although the Starkiller base
has been destroyed,
First Order troops have driven the
Resistance forces from their hidden
base and pursued them across
the galaxy.

Without the protection of the fleet of the New Republic,
a group of freedom
fighters led by POE DAMERON
has established a new secret
base on the remote swamp world
of Dryth.

The evil knight KYLO REN,
obsessed with finding young
REY and LUKE SKYWALKER, has dispatched
his sinister order into
the far reaches of space…

Bosk said:

Why would there even be a map to locate Luke if he’s gone into hiding>? Plus don’t Force sensitive folk ‘sense’ each other and talk to each other remotely as seen in the OT.

Depends Obi-Wan, Luke, Leia and Vader all get Force hunches but the entire Jedi council don’t see Palpatine coming and Palpatine doesn’t quite read the situation between Luke and Vader fully. I guess the map is just a prediction based on known sightings and the final bit of the jigsaw leads to his final destination. I doubt if it was drawn up by Luke like a business card.

Smoking Lizard said:

Leia: “Han, bring our son Ren home!”

Yes. Please do. To face multiple counts of mass murder, genocide, and other egregious crimes against humanity. And then be found guilty and be executed by lethal injection.

That’s why it was lucky for her that Dad Vader died in ROTJ, chucking an old man down a well doesn’t make up for all them murders he done. 'specially the kiddies.
They really are a cursed family. Padme is strangely attracted to an unobtainable warrior monk that openly confesses to killing kids, he kills more kids and tries to strangle her while she is pregnant. And this is a whole generation before Leia’s son goes boiyoiyoing.

Your planet can be destroyed in seconds if one were to strike the Earth three times with Poseidon’s trident in Yellowstone Park… probably…

Spoilers considered, now that TFA is out I would be interested in hearing if Ady’s plans for ROTJ:R would contradict the world as we know it in the sequels.

People want good Star Wars films, some us have been waiting since 1980.

Anchorhead said:

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.

And he could look completely different in real life. He could be Mace Windu or Leia or anyone.

John Doom said:

While watching TFA, I was wondering how comes Rey can pilot ships. I understand she’s a scavenger, and she might’ve learned about mechanics in her work (though unlikely in real life), but when did she learn how to fly too? I mean, Luke has been in the Academy for some time before ANH, but what about Rey? She seems so poor she can only afford buying food, nevermind going to the Academy.
Without a proper answer from the movie, I’d say it’s too convinient to the writers that she’s got all those skills to show off just at the right time 😄

Here we enter into the realm of fan theory but such weight was placed on the survival of death in PT and in the form of Force Ghosts in the OT that maybe Rey and Ren are somehow a Jedi/Sith experiment (maybe gone wrong). Rey could have the memories of someone who knew the ship, knew how to use a lightsaber and knew how do the mind trick (lets call this person Kenobi for the sake of discussion) and Ren could have the memories of the dark lord that drove a Jedi too close to the dark side until he became Darth Vader. They whisper to them what they need to know to continue their conflict from beyond the grave.
Just a thought.
These films seem to be using not just the main films but rejected or unused concepts from earlier drafts. In an earlier script for ROTJ Yoda and Ben physically resurrected to help in the fight against the Emperor. From the little we know about the next films they are supposed to be weird.
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 trained 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.

Maybe a cowl would hide Snoke’s obvious CGI-ness.

SilverWook said:

I took it literally as a boom box in the cell. Doh!

I was but if we are going with the ball it could have a disco ball imposed over it and rotate while playing Meco a bit like this GameCube menu http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=6BM5LrMwN9Q#

I find it problematic because its rubber tentacles. It’s where I am yanked out of a galaxy far far away and forced to be in an Ed Wood movie for five minutes. I’m also surprised that the bit George fiddled with in the special editions was the totally fine eye stalk and not the terrible tentacles in all their horrid crappiness.

Jay said:

TV’s Frink said:

Actually there are many of us here who rate TPM highest of the prequels.

I don’t doubt that. I mean that I don’t dislike it as much as most here do. Maybe I have the wrong impression, though.

In defense of prequel 3 it does have good action set pieces and a few examples of the actors bordering on giving a performance. It also has the moment where Ian McDiarmid stopped being subtle and one or two lines that actually out do AOTC in the awkward romance stakes. But I did leave the cinema with a bounce in my step missing when I left after watching TFA

CoughLando! It’s not racist to suggest an actor was specifically chosen to tick a demographic box. Star Wars has a well deserved reputation about it’s deployment of female and ethnically diverse characters. Even Mace Windu and Panaka were support characters. At least in this film a main cast member is an actor of colour and that should be applauded. It’s not controversy that Rey was always going to be female in a saga where the protagonist has been male six out the last six times. Both actors were cast on merit but both characters were written to type and when it’s not Jar-jar level insensitive there is nothing wrong with that in my view.

Jay said:

Alderaan said:

One of the worst parts of the film was when the CGI prequel monsters got loose on Han’s freighter. That whole part of the film was not Star Wars. The tone was wrong. Anyone else feel the same?

Yes.

Funny that you call them “prequel monsters” because that’s exactly what I was thinking during that scene. Just dumb.

As you know I was indifferent to the film but the creature design didn’t worry me. In the first film we had Luke attacked by rubber tentacles. Personally I find the dianoga far more problematic.

My father learned to cook in the catering corp’s of the RAF. He also learned how to jump out of planes and potentially kill people. It was a gag line bit it didn’t break the film. It might have worked better if Finn was pulled out of his sanitation duties by phasma because he hadn’t seen active duty yet. He hadn’t killed yet. Which would be psychologically vital for an army of brain washed zombies. Maybe Finn is still brainwashed and was programmed to infiltrate the Resistance by showing empathy and is now a sleeper agent of some kind.

[captainsolo said’ … Ridley Scott for that matter.

Think of all the possibilities if the Mouse tries for all demographics with all the spinoffs.

Are you high? Did you see Prometheus?

TV’s Frink said:

Script as in story or dialogue? 'Cause I thought the dialogue was great.

Events that happen, plot or rather lack of one beyond a series of references.

So who is this Smoke then? Someone new or a mask concealing someone very old?

emanswfan said:

Listening to the soundtrack last night, thanks Amazon.

Definitely better than John William’s PT scores and right up there with the originals. The score has such a freshness and familiarity at the same time

I couldn’t agree less. This for me was the weakest Star Wars score. Even the crappiest prequel moments had memorable themes. The only motifs that I recognised were from the OT.

To my knowledge only Peter Cushing
He signed a photo of himself as Sherlock Holmes and thought I might be a bit too young for my Hammer bubble gum cards but we both thought the captions were funny. He was promoting his memoirs in a book shop and he was very nice to the children in line. I said I liked him on Morcambe and Wise and Star Wars. I Wish I had met Christopher Lee too.