NeverarGreat

Oh I’m glad they didn’t explain it for sure. The thing is that when you are forced to explain something like how the heck it got there, something is wrong. And the lightsaber could have been easily integrated into the movie in other ways.

For example, Lor San Tekka could have it, presumably to give to Rey when she is ready, but when Kylo cuts him down at the beginning he could take it. Then when Ren is interrogating Rey in the forest, she gets a force vision from Ren, which alerts her to her latent ability. After she decides to free herself in Starkiller base using the Force, she finds the lightsaber alongside Vader’s burned helmet, and takes it. The forest fight could play out as before, except that she has the saber before being thrown against the tree, at which point Finn picks it up. This would also make more sense of Ren’s proclamation that the saber is his.

We briefly see food in all 3 OT films. Obviously in the dinner scene of ANH, then Luke eats some food out of a tin on Dagobah and later at Yoda’s hut, and there is some food on the table at Cloud City. After that we get Jabba eating a frog thing and the crackers Leia gives to Wikket. That’s all that I can think of.

I loved the opening shot of the film, with the black Star Destroyer obscuring the planet. On that note, I liked much of the allusion to physical light and dark in the film such as ‘As long as there’s light, there’s hope.’ It was a bit corny, but in a completely Star Wars way.

I loved the introduction of Finn. It could not have been done any better, in my opinion.

I love seeing food in Star Wars. I want that green bread now, and I don’t know why.

I love Finn’s attitude throughout the film, played as a kind of everyman out of his element but trying his best in every situation.

I loved the physicality of the Falcon lifting off from the outpost and crashing into the sand. It made the Falcon real in a way that it has never been before.

I love BB-8. Everything about him.

I love Han’s character. He’s better in this than he was in ROTJ, and considering how phoned in his performances have been recently, it’s almost miraculous to see.

I love Skellig Michael. I visited Ireland just after filming on TFA but before filming of Episode VIII, and I saw the Skelligs in the distance from the top of the Dingle peninsula. It was a breathtaking view, and now that I’ve seen TFA, I consider my trip to Ireland complete. 😃

I love Luke Skywalker. My girlfriend called him a ‘majestic unicorn’ on first viewing, and I quite agree. Just perfect in a Sean Connery Highlander kind of way.

Let me try to articulate why this contrivance bothers me.

It’s certainly possible that a lightsaber would end up in Maz’s castle, but it’s like Qui-gon picking the one place on all of Tattooine that has the part he needs to fix the ship while also being the one place where the ‘chosen one’ is hanging out. Sure, you could easily say that ‘the Force told him where to go’ but it feels too coincidental. The One Ring is able to choose who finds or loses it to some extent, but that’s because it contains much of Sauron’s very SOUL. A lightsaber is merely a weapon, not a horcrux. Could Rey sense it when it was in the basement like Luke sensed the evil emanating from the tree? Sure. Whatever. That’s not at issue.

The issue is the coincidental placement of both Rey and the lightsaber on the same planet as each other IN THE FIRST PLACE. Here are some other places that the lightsaber could have ended up, all of which are equally possible:

-Lost in the depths of Cloud City
-Lost on Bespin
-Scavenged from Bespin and secretly held by a local on the planet’s surface
-Scavenged from Cloud City and held by the Ugnaughts or incinerated by them
-Recovered by the Empire from Cloud City and held on Coruscant
-Recovered by Vader on Cloud City and held by him on his Star Destroyer, which was subsequently destroyed.
-Recovered by any number of scavengers or antiquities merchants and held by them on any number of obscure worlds.

Now include in the probability calculation how many places Han could have taken Rey to get a clean ship:

-One of dozens of inhabited worlds with a spaceport or even containing just a single bar.

So if we accept the given situation where Han was simply taking Rey to any suitable world that had a ‘clean’ ship, the probability is vanishingly small that she would have found this lightsaber. THAT is my problem with it, not the idea that it is tainted with the memories of its owners.

TV’s Frink said:

Oh no the lightsaber thing again I cant ggu btsxvhb. Bjjj: vbb

Zzzzxxxxxzxxzz

Then don’t. I get that you aren’t bothered by all the same things in this film that bother me, and that’s perfectly fine. I just like overthinking things. If you’ve had too much of that on this forum, perhaps consider taking a breather for a while? I dunno.

Something I noticed while watching the end credits - there is a bit of gate weave in the credits themselves, animated over a largely stationary star field. The stars sometimes slide behind letters in the credits, for example. Just another nice touch.

TV’s Frink said:

How do you feel about the coincidences in the OT?

There were indeed coincidences in the OT, especially Star Wars, but they seem to be of another kind. There was a reason for Ben and Luke to be in the same area on a desert planet, since Ben was watching over Luke. There are potentially good reasons why the Droids land near Luke and Ben, since they could have Ben’s coordinates and were piloting the pod in that direction (as the Radio Drama suggests). In Empire, Luke’s sensors die and his ship crash lands on Dagobah within walking distance of Yoda, which seems like a terrible coincidence. However, since it is established that Yoda can manipulate things even as large as X-wings, he could have brought Luke to his location through the Force.

However, there’s no given reason for Rey and Tekka to be in the same area on the desert planet, if Rey is indeed Luke’s daughter or has ties to the Jedi. It’s a coincidence of a different order, and then there’s the compounded problem of her working at the same outpost where the Falcon is stored. The odds of these three things all being found within walking distance of each other in a vast galaxy strains credulity to the breaking point. Then we have Rey just happening upon Luke’s old lightsaber. This shattered my immersion the first time I watched the movie. The very fact that his lightsaber was not lost on Bespin requires a explanation that Maz acknowledges, but we’re so caught up in how odd that is that we may forget that her stumbling upon the saber on one spot on one planet among millions of planets is wildly implausible in the first place. It is as if in Star Wars, Alderaan wasn’t destroyed and Obi-wan took Luke to one of his old haunts on Alderaan, and the bartender said ‘Oh by the way, here’s Anakin’s lightsaber’ and Obi-wan said ‘how did you get that?’ as if he didn’t know that Anakin was on such good terms with the bartender. I would use the cantina from Star Wars as the example, but keep in mind that Maz is on an entirely different planet that as far as we know, only Han visits among our three old heroes.

So I really like TFA, but I’m not a fan of all of the coincidences, such as the missing piece of the map being in the same county as the Falcon, which is in the same county as Rey, and all of them going to a place with Luke’s old lightsaber, etc. I’ve been thinking about it, and here’s how I would handle them if I was in charge of the backstory:

Luke is training a new crop of Jedi, and Ben is an unstable student of 17. Luke gives him his old lightsaber with which to train. However, the lightsaber causes visions of Vader, it’s first master, to appear in Ben’s head. He goes mad and kills everyone, except the 7 year old student named Rey, since he’s still fighting with the light side of the Force. He puts Rey on the Falcon, which was a gift from his dad, and abandons them on some godforsaken world. They are then found by scavengers, bought and sold multiple times like so much property, until winding up in the hands of Unkar Plutt. Ben becomes Ren and leaves for the First Order.

Luke, meanwhile, is disconsolate. Having failed utterly in his quest to train Jedi, he leaves his old lightsaber, tainted with the atrocities of the past, with Maz (who is the most trusted associate of both Luke and Han) and goes off to search for the first Jedi temple. He knows that R2 has a very rare full map of the galaxy in his files, so finding this temple is possible for him. Finding the temple, he leaves a portion of the map to the temple in the hands of his old friend and fellow Jedi teacher Lor San Tekka, deleting that portion from R2’s memory and putting him in low power mode before giving him to Leia. He has had a vision of his daughter on a desert world and feels that his daughter is still alive, so he tells Tekka to go and search for her and watch over her. Finally Tekka finds her and the Falcon on Jakku, and stays there.

The portion of the map given to Tekka has a beacon on it, which will activate R2 if brought in close proximity to him. This is a safeguard, ensuring that the map does not fall into the wrong hands, but also allowing Luke to be found if the galaxy needed him again.

In this backstory, it doesn’t really matter if Rey is Luke’s daughter or not. I just find it too coincidental that she just happens to be strong in the Force, so she must have had at least some training.

Harmy said:

I was thinking that when watching the movie - the light reflections from the sabers looked really natural.

I saw the movie again tonight and I noticed that the blades reflect red and blue in the character’s eyes. I think they really had glowing sticks on set, which is excellent.

darth_ender said:

NeverarGreat said:

Let’s rewrite that bloated crawl!
From my thread in the Scriptwriting subforum:

EPISODE VII
THE FORCE AWAKENS

Luke Skywalker, the last Jedi, has vanished.
In his absence, the sinister FIRST ORDER
has risen from the ashes of the fallen Empire.

To counter this deadly threat, the Republic
mobilizes a covert RESISTANCE led by
General Leia Organa, to gather allies from
the farthest reaches of the galaxy.

As the FIRST ORDER prepares a crippling
blow to the Republic, its dark forces gather
above the graveyard planet of Jakku…

I like this crawl. Succinct but revealing more information.

Here is my go. Bear in mind, I’m attempting to reveal several more details, but keep it concise. I have a feeling it’s still too long, but take a look:

The democratic NEW REPUBLIC rules with a just hand. But from the ashes of the evil Galactic Empire, the FIRST ORDER has arisen, its strongholds hidden among the recesses of the Unknown Regions.

This new Order, determined to restore the glory of the Empire, have secretly poured resources into a new weapon of rerror: the Starkiller!

General Leia Organa leads a brave RESISTANCE to combat such evil. With little support from the Reupublic, Leia is desperate to find her missing brother Luke Skywalker. She has dispatched her most daring pilot on a secret mission to Jakku, where a group of Force worshipers may hold a clue to Master Skywalker’s whereabouts…

The advantages of this crawl include: a) greater distinction between the Republic and the Resistance, and make the situation appear more dire for the latter; b) allusions to the otherwise surprising DS3; c) explaining why the First Order is still a force to be reckoned with; d) containing most of the same info as the original crawl; e) perhaps explaining why Jakku holds any clues at all; f) its consistent with the background designed for the world building, but not revealed in the film itself.

The disadvantage is that to include so much information, it can make for some clunky wording and an overly long crawl. I’m interested to read others’ thoughts on the matter.

I agree that the Starkiller should be mentioned by name in the crawl. Here’s an updated version:

The galaxy is in crisis.
With no Jedi to resist it,
a tyrannical First Order
has risen from the ashes
of the Empire to threaten
the fledgling Republic.

As the Republic hastens
to form a Resistance led
by General Leia Organa,
the First Order prepares
to destroy the Republic
once and for all with a
lethal secret weapon,
the STARKILLER.

Desperate for allies,
Leia has sent a pilot
to the war-torn planet
of Jakku to learn the
location of the Jedi
while dark forces
gather far above…

SLAVE LANDO

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

Some good thoughts here.

TV’s Frink said:

I found plenty in Rey for me to be emotionally invested in. Same for Finn.

shrug

I didn’t mean for it to come across like I wasn’t invested in them as characters, simply that the editing tended to thwart certain important moments. I would also list the moment when Finn and Rey have just left Jakku, a point in the film that was crying out for a quiet scene for character development. Instead the ship immediately starts to fall apart and it’s another distraction for the audience.

moviefreakedmind said:

The official website used a frame from the unaltered version of Star Wars. It’s cropped and weird looking, but it’s not from the GOUT or the Special Edition.

Here’s the Blu-ray with a luminance boost compared to the promotional image that I quickly regraded:

http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/156949

As you can see, the promo image has tons more detail, especially in Luke’s costume. It also looks like there’s different warping here, just like in the Reliance shots. I’d guess that this was from a potential new release, or as has been mentioned, a film still from the '97 version. It would be wonderful to have a scan of that just to get the missing detail for this shot.

I realize that contributing to this thread is almost certainly an exercise in futility, but here it is:

There is no such thing as a perfectly plotted film. Films are similar to dreams, in that their primary value is in generating an emotionally compelling illusion. Thus, plot holes and conveniences are only a problem when they break this emotional illusion.

It is in the strength or weakness of its emotional content that a film succeeds or fails, since people rationalize any experience which they find emotionally compelling, regardless of its internal logic. So the extent to which people are defending the conveniences of ANH while disparaging similar conveniences in TFA speaks to the differing levels of emotional investment in these two films.

Now does TFA lean on convenience more than ANH? Yes. That is one of Abram’s weaknesses as a storyteller, and the fact that the script was rushed and cobbled together at the last minute rather than being worked on for several years like that of ANH definitely shows. TFA is a frustrating film, at once more energetic and spirited than almost anything else in the Star Wars saga, and at the same time less logical and less ‘earned’. I don’t think it is particularly valuable to compare the levels of convenience in ANH vs TFA since TFA has lost on that count, but I think it is valuable to talk about the emotional arc of the film’s protagonist, Rey, since emotion trumps logic in film every time.

So what about TFA’s final duel? The fact that so many people have a problem with Rey defeating Kylo Ren while simultaneously accepting Luke’s ‘One in a million’ shot at the end of ANH speaks to a failure of emotional investment. Rey is established through her actions to be a competent fighter and a quick learner who is unnaturally strong with the Force, so logically her victory over the wounded and emotionally unstable Kylo Ren makes sense. However it FEELS off, like we are being asked to accept too much. In ANH, Luke’s journey from his acceptance of the quest at the end of act 1 has been building to the moment of truth, where he learns to let go of machines and even his own senses in order to succeed. It doesn’t make sense logically, yet we accept it because it feels RIGHT. So why does Rey’s moment feel unearned? I think that it is because she begins to win the EXACT MOMENT when she fully accepts her latent ability.

Remember that in ANH Luke chooses to trust the Force over a minute before he takes his shot. During this minute he has to reassure the base that everything is alright, then R2 is hit, then he is saved by Han Solo and Chewbacca. Only after all of these events occur is he allowed to take the shot, during which time the audience has had time to process his decision and become invested in his gambit. Contrast this with Rey’s immediate Force powerup and the difference is striking. Rey first pulls the sword from the snow (or stone), an event with Arthurian association which is filmed to surprise the audience as much as Ren. Just as we are recovering from the shock of her power, we are given another surprise as she taps into the Force at the exact moment it is required. At no time is the audience allowed to process the events which are taking place, so it feels like two titans battling for domination, and who are only parted when the earth itself splits asunder. After this Rey can only be a force of nature, not a mere mortal as Luke was even at the end of ANH.

Now this doesn’t mean that I didn’t like this scene or the film in general. If they expand on this Arthurian take on the hero while also exploring the more weak and human nature of the villain it will be an interesting inversion of the original trilogy. Here’s to hoping that it happens.

Oh? Has this been the plan? Iiinteresting 😃

http://www.hitfix.com/harpy/one-simple-trick-that-makes-that-star-wars-prequels-way-more-watchable

So what do you think? I’m pretty sure that Lucas never considered this angle, but it’s fun to think about.

FanFiltration said:

Creed 5/10
The Big Short 8/10
The Force Awakens 7/10
Twelve Angry Men (original) 8/10
The Man From Earth (2007) 9/10
Birdman 7/10
Gravity 6/10
The Martian 5/10
Sunshine (2007) 4/10

I’ve seen all of those except The Big Short, and I find your subjective opinion to be wrong! Sunshine is one of my favorite films, and Creed is at least an equal to TFA. Good choice on The Man From Earth though. 😃

I had an idea this morning for a set of Blu-ray covers showcasing the small things in Star Wars. As a rule, I determined that they should be smaller than a lightsaber, since lightsabers are overused on covers already.

This is just a rough draft. If I were to create art specifically for these, I would have chosen R2’s restraining bolt for ANH and the crackers that Leia gives to Wicket for ROTJ, as well as focus on just the lamp held by Yoda.

It’s a damn good poster.

(I’m going to assume this is the one he has in his house, as long as we’re making assumptions about other people’s lives, since I have the same one and it’s awesome 😉 )

TavorX said:

The funniest bit about that image is that he owns a pair of BB8 sneakers.

Let’s rewrite that bloated crawl!
From my thread in the Scriptwriting subforum:

EPISODE VII
THE FORCE AWAKENS

Luke Skywalker, the last Jedi, has vanished.
In his absence, the sinister FIRST ORDER
has risen from the ashes of the fallen Empire.

To counter this deadly threat, the Republic
mobilizes a covert RESISTANCE led by
General Leia Organa, to gather allies from
the farthest reaches of the galaxy.

As the FIRST ORDER prepares a crippling
blow to the Republic, its dark forces gather
above the graveyard planet of Jakku…

My friends and I have just seen Episode 7, and although it was a fun (if derivative) movie, the crawl stood out like a sore thumb. So we have taken a stab at rewriting it:

First, here’s the crawl as it is in the film:

"Luke Skywalker has vanished.
In his absence, the sinister
FIRST ORDER has risen
from the ashes of the Empire
and will not rest until Skywalker, the last Jedi,
has been destroyed.

With the support of the REPUBLIC,
General Leia Organa leads a brave RESISTANCE.
She is desperate to find her
brother Luke and gain his
help in restoring peace and
justice to the galaxy.

Leia has sent her most daring
pilot on a secret mission
to Jakku, where an old ally
has discovered a clue to
Luke’s whereabouts . . . ."

And here’s our version:

STAR WARS
EPISODE VII
THE FORCE AWAKENS

Luke Skywalker, the last Jedi, has vanished.
In his absence, the sinister FIRST ORDER
has risen from the ashes of the fallen Empire.

To counter this deadly threat, the Republic
mobilizes a covert RESISTANCE led by
General Leia Organa, to gather allies from
the farthest reaches of the galaxy.

As the FIRST ORDER prepares a crippling
blow to the Republic, its dark forces gather
above the graveyard planet of Jakku…

Thoughts?

Animeman1000 said:

On MySpleen I’ve only found the 2.5 version of “A New Hope”, but the other versions are like 1.0 or 2.0 and so on of The Empire Strikes back and Return of the Jedi. I want 2.5 of all 3 films, but no one has uploaded them and I can’t get Jdownloader to work properly! So I can’t download from tehparadox!!! AGH!!! I’ve downloaded Jdownloader 5 or 6 times and have reinstalled it that many times as well.
Can anybody help!?

I can’t help you with Jdownloader, but version 2.5 only exists for A New Hope. The latest versions for the other two are a 2.0 Workprint for Jedi, and I think only 1.0 for Empire.

Here’s the CUBE version of my latest LUT:

https://mega.nz/#!fFlhDYBA

Key: !hRF4lpAM6wpP984TMlx61RdFKXxL1wn-COz3X8rqrkA

Hal 9000 said:

Shadester9 said:

what are your thoughts on redubbing Jar Jar with an alien voice (and subs) to make his dialogue not only bearable but good, like the Anti-Cheese edits?

It could be fun to try, and I’d toyed with doing an alternate version just to try it. But I haven’t, and I would not want to subtitle Jar Jar since he’s a supporting character who follows the core group around as opposed to a villain we see here and there (like Jabba).

It’s only a matter of time before someone gets a whole new English voice cast for this film so that they are able to completely change the sound. Director Danny Boyle once suggested that sound is 70% of the movie experience, and I agree. If were to happen, Anakin could become a strong character, Qui-gon could become fatherly and wise, and Jar Jar could become actually decent: He could be seen by Qui-gon as a budding Force Sensitive who fights the guiding hand of the Force for most of the film, resulting in him appearing clumsy, mindless, and cynical. However, under the Jedi’s influence, he is able to channel some of his intuitive ability and gains some self respect, regardless of his mannerisms.