ZkinandBonez

Lord Haseo said:

Scott109 said:
Considering the original trilogy states that Force sensitivity is passed down through bloodlines (“the Force is strong in my family…”), I never understood the problem with midichlorians per se, even if Qui-Gon’s explanation of them is rather boring and mundane.

The Force being hereditary and The Force being the result if micro organisms are completely different things. The main problems is that there is no mention of midicholorians in the OT.

Well, to be devil’s advocate, midichlorians where invented by Lucas back in the 70’s, and they aren’t the Force in of itself, they are just supposed to help certain people connect to it stronger than others (hence hereditary Force-sensitivity among some characters). Sure, it’s an unnecessary addition to a concept I think most viewers understood from the get-go, but it’s not as illogical as many make it out to be. It’s just a superfluous little detail that Lucas initially chose to only include in the EU.

"Definitive proof that Mark Hamill gives the best autographs in the entire galaxy"

http://www.thepoke.co.uk/2016/04/14/definitive-proof-mark-hamill-gives-best-autographs-entire-galaxy/

SilverWook said:

ZkinandBonez said:

flametitan said:

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/herocomplex/la-et-hc-oscar-isaac-on-star-wars-episode-viii-20160417-story.html

Confirmation that Episode VIII will at least feel somewhat different?

Somewhat?

"[Rian Johnson] is going to make some weird thing," Kasdan said. "If you’ve seen Rian’s work, you know it’s not going be like anything that’s ever been in ‘Star Wars.’"

"I would agree with [Kasdan]," said Isaac. "Rian is definitely going to places and investigating things that haven’t really been done in the ‘Star Wars’ universe. For me, it’s so fun getting to explore different things that I wouldn’t have expected in this universe."

It sound like they’re going to do some pretty weird stuff to me, which I wholeheartedly approve of.

I really do doubt that we’ll get the ESB remake that a lot of people are fearing. Sure, I doubt they’ll be able to avoid some similarities, but I doubt we’ll be getting another remake-type plot.

---

Also, I don’t know if this has been brought up, but according to Wookieepedia Johnson screened the films Twelve O’Clock High and Letter Never Sent to the cast/crew to prepare them for the film.
I haven’t personally seen ether film, but they seem like somewhat odd choices for inspiration for a SW film. It does make me even more intrigued about what ep. VIII is going to be like though.

The entire Death Star battle in the original film draws inspiration from the climax of The Dam Busters

Right, I’d forgotten about that. I remembered Kurosawa and Flash Gordon (plus a lot of other sci-fi stories). I’m actually exited to see that a new SW film will be based on classic movies again, rather than just other SW films. Sure, Abrams mentioned having watched Kurosawa’s High and Low as well as some Westerns (not too far from what inspired ANH), but I’m curious to see what Johnson manages to get out of a Soviet drama from the 60’s in relation to a Star Wars film.

I like that they have a large Polish ANH poster hanging on the wall in the studio/workshop. Not exactly the first thing I expected to see.

Also, was this guy in TFA, or is this a new character?

moviefreakedmind said:

SilverWook said:

The Alan Dean Foster ghosted SW novelization actually gets graphic in it’s depiction of blaster hits. A tad gruesome when I was a kid!

I specifically remember a description of a stormtrooper’s helmet melting along with the flesh after being shot on Tantive IV, with bone even being visible. That’s stark contrast to the mostly family-friendly movie.

Well, early drafts of the film was far more violent than the final cut, so he probably got these descriptions from that. The Tantive shootout is quite gruesome in the original storyboards.
Heck, even ANH was censored slightly in the SE.

Some of Tavoularis’ storyboards for the Tantive IV scene;

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/20535561/SW storyboard art by Tavoularis - Stormtrooper shot.png
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/20535561/SW storyboard by Tavoularis - stormtrooper helmet blown off (smaller).jpg
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/20535561/SW storyboard art by Tavoularis - Vader rips off rebel arm.png

flametitan said:

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/herocomplex/la-et-hc-oscar-isaac-on-star-wars-episode-viii-20160417-story.html

Confirmation that Episode VIII will at least feel somewhat different?

Somewhat?

"[Rian Johnson] is going to make some weird thing," Kasdan said. "If you’ve seen Rian’s work, you know it’s not going be like anything that’s ever been in ‘Star Wars.’"

"I would agree with [Kasdan]," said Isaac. "Rian is definitely going to places and investigating things that haven’t really been done in the ‘Star Wars’ universe. For me, it’s so fun getting to explore different things that I wouldn’t have expected in this universe."

It sound like they’re going to do some pretty weird stuff to me, which I wholeheartedly approve of.

I really do doubt that we’ll get the ESB remake that a lot of people are fearing. Sure, I doubt they’ll be able to avoid some similarities, but I doubt we’ll be getting another remake-type plot.

Also, I don’t know if this has been brought up, but according to Wookieepedia Johnson screened the films Twelve O’Clock High and Letter Never Sent to the cast/crew to prepare them for the film.
I haven’t personally seen ether film, but they seem like somewhat odd choices for inspiration for a SW film. It does make me even more intrigued about what ep. VIII is going to be like though.

Lord Haseo said:

John Doom said:

DuracellEnergizer said:

Eh, the Sith weren’t really new when the PT came out. The novelizations and the EU had already prominently mentioned/featured them prior to TPM’s release.

I know the novelizations called Vader the “dark lord of the Sith”, but I think its current meaning wasn’t officially revealed until TPM.
Were they in the pre-PT EU too? I admit I don’t know much about the EU except for a few comics and videogames, so please tell more about it.

I could have sworn the Thrawn Trilogy called Vader a Dark Jedi. It’s been a while since I read it so don’t quote me on that.

You’re probably thinking about Joruus C’baoth.
(He was a Jedi turned evil/mad, but he was never affiliated with the Sith so he was simply referred to as either a Jedi or Dark Jedi in the trilogy.)

However, I never really understood what made Vader and Palpatine Sith, even more so after the PT. Neither of the act very Sith-ish, maybe Palpatine to some degree, but definitely not Vader. The again, I haven’t read any PT material in 10 years so I wouldn’t really know what makes a Sith a Sith. I do however feel that they both fit very ell into the definition of Dark Jedi (especially Vader).

John Doom said:

DuracellEnergizer said:

Eh, the Sith weren’t really new when the PT came out. The novelizations and the EU had already prominently mentioned/featured them prior to TPM’s release.

I know the novelizations called Vader the “dark lord of the Sith”, but I think its current meaning wasn’t officially revealed until TPM.
Were they in the pre-PT EU too? I admit I don’t know much about the EU except for a few comics and videogames, so please tell more about it.

Wel, the EU did have the Tales of the Jedi comics in the early/mid 90’s. I haven’t read these myself, but from what I’ve gathered part of the series dealt with the Sith War that took place several thousand years before the PT/OT.

Also keep in mind that the early drafts of ANH did mention the "Knights of the Sith" fairly often. The first/rough draft even had several Sith appear throughout the story, and they were essentially just rivals of the Jedi Knights not too different from what ended up in the PT.
The more “evil” and “occult” aspects of them however I think started with the PT, but like I said I haven’t actually read the Tales of the Jedi comics. In the rough draft however they weren’t so much “evil wizards” as they were simply a fascist sect of Jedi-Bendu.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v93Jh6JNBng

Ryan McAvoy said:

Chewbacca being a Wookiee (who live for centuries) means he ages at a different rate to Han. One of those interesting character questions unique to SF&F.

In the OT we were catching Han and Chewie at the moment when they were both the same age (So to speak). Equals, brothers in arms. In TFA Han is much older than Chewie and we see Chewie making sure Han wraps up warm against the cold, like a caring son. So in a young Han Solo movie will Han relate to Chewie as something of a big-brother, or even a father figure?

That’s quite an interesting angle to their relationship that has never occurred to me before.
I seem to recall Lucas having planned to include a young Han on Kashyyyk in ROTS where Chewie undoubtedly would have been a sort of father figure to a 12-ish year old Han. So even Lucas seem to have thought about this side to their age/aging difference.
So I hope the directors of the new Han Solo film realises this and make Chewie seem older in his personality. It would be interesting to see a young Han Solo following Chewie around, as opposed to Chewie just being the “side-kick”.

Well, Pablo Hidalgo has given his answer to why we saw a “dish” on the Death Star framework in ROTS and the dish being installed 19 years later in the RO teaser.

http://www.starwarsnewsnet.com/2016/04/star-wars-weekly-social-buzz-5.html

Obi-Wan was actually a kind of last addition to the plot. He didn’t even show up in the script until very late in the writing process (third draft I think). Although I do agree that he does add tremendous weight to the final battle, so Lucas definetely struck gold when he got the idea to give Luke an aged mentor. I think it was Joseph Campbell’s writing that eventually convinced Lucas that there had to be a teacher/guide of some kind.

Lord Haseo said:

imperialscum said:

I can’t really imagine an Obi-Wan film set after ROTS without them making up any ridiculous stuff. Sonce he should have been living on Tatooine foe the entire time, I don’t think many would be interested in slice-of-life on Tatooine type of film.

They could just have the plot be about Obi-Wan protecting a settlement from criminals and/or Tusken Raiders or something.

Well, since SW was inspired by Kurosawa’s Hidden Fortress, why not a Yojimbo type film with Ben Kenobi on Tatooine?
I’d watch that, although I doubt it would ever happen.

However, I’m getting the feeling that Disney might be dropping the third anthology film (for now anyway). I’m pretty sure that they’ll make enough money with just the five films planned, and another anthology film after the main trilogy has been finished might confuse people a lot. A lot of people are already confused by the RO teaser. Sure, Disney is out to make back the 4 billion they spent on Lucasfilm, but they are after all making a new Indiana Jones film, so they might use that as a sort-of replacement. It’s scheduled for a 2019 release, so it’d probably be released a few months before ep. IX.

Lord Haseo said:

DuracellEnergizer said:
I’ll take '70s-'80s Carrie over Portman any day of the week, thank you very much.

You’re on dope lol

What an odd thing thing to argue against.
This is like one of the most subjective things imaginable, so why bother?

This may not be news for some of you, but for someone like me who hasn’t bothered to pay attention to the new EU, this did at least clarify some of the possibilities as to what rank/position Mendelsohns character might hae in RO;

http://www.starwarsnewsnet.com/2016/04/speculation-ben-mendelsohns-character-in-rogueone.html

Also, some rumors as to who might be playing Vader;

http://www.starwarsnewsnet.com/2016/04/rumor-british-actor-spencer-wilding-cast-to-play-darth-vader-in-rogue-one.html

Ronster said:

You know the two sticks on her back… is she (pretending to be) a semaphore operator for the landing bay Ties and so on?

Runway Agent or something like that. THen again she is actually in a pilots uniform

They might just be those batons that we saw her beat stormtroopers with earlier in the trailer.

SilverWook said:

Nice catch! Always wondered why we never saw him in Empire.

Well, as far the lore goes there’s roughly four years between ANH and ESB, so a lot could have happened. He might even have been killed, hence his absence on Hoth. Also, I’m not too sure how the new canon works, so I guess he could simply be somewhere else during that time period.
Is the Rebellion larger in the new EU? That’s the impression I’m getting from a lot of the discussions about it here on the forum. I always figured that the Rebels in the OT, before the PT and Disney was mostly one small army with several smaller branches around the galaxy, but I guess that’s no longer the case?

(PS. I didn’t technically “catch” the above detail, unless you count me watching a YouTube video and sharing a link and a screenshot here as a “catch”.)

There’s been some discussion as to where General Dodonna is in RO, and apparently he might be in the trailer standing in the dark behind Mon Mothma.
(I’d be surprised if the guy in the picture below is not supposed to be Dodonna, he’s a dead ringer for Alex McCrindle.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rAfjrzvsxbg

(PS. Should this be in the spoiler thread? I’m a bit confused as to what’s the difference, I mean all we have so far is one teaser trailer, so what exactly qualifies as a “spoiler”?)

Sure, I’m just saying that these arguments rarely go anywhere.
The same happened with the TFA trailer and all some people accomplished was to agitate each other over a film that hadn’t come out yet.

http://www.starwarsnewsnet.com/2016/04/closer-look-at-the-ahch-to-huts-at-ceann-sibeal-in-kerry-for-episodeviii.html

Are you two really arguing about this? Imperialscum was intrigued by this trailer, but not the trailer for TFA and the actual film itself didn’t interest him. End of story.
We’ve been through this before, I see no reason to argue about it.

Scott109 said:

Perhaps I need to watch the film a second time to give a more objective assessment.

A storm trooper spontaneously deciding to leave the First Order and join the Resistance is equivalent to a member of Hitler Youth deciding to leave Nazi Germany and fight for the Allies. It is conceivable, but his motivation should have been explained better.

Well, Finn was forced into the First Order, unlike the Hitler Youth which joined voluntarily (based on various reason relating to ideologies, propaganda, etc.). But, yes, I can agree that it seems somewhat hasty, but the film didn’t exactly have a lot of time to spare on his motivation, which btw we don’t really know. He might have bee doubtful of the First Order for a very log time.

Scott109 said:

Luke was only able to deflect the blasts of the seeker droid and blow up the Death Star as a result of Obi-Wan’s training. Even if Luke trained Rey as a child before Kylo Ren wiped her memory, she should not have been able to subconsciously remember how to perform a Jedi mind trick as her memory was wiped.

Well, to be devil’s advocate, all Rey did was a mind trick and a Force pull, she hardly did anything fancy like what we’ve seen other Jedi do throughout the films and EU. Even Luke managed to deflect the blasts from the “seeker droid” after no more than a few days after he had learned that the Force was a thing that existed. Also, Ben didn’t give him much more advice and instruction than “feel,” so what it actually takes to do these things are quite debatable. You might even claim that the smaller things rely entirely on will-power and the knowledge that it’s possible. This was after all pretty much all Luke had prior to meeting Yoda.

Scott109 said:

If Kylo Ren massacred the New Jedi Order, why was he unable to defeat Rey?

Well, first of all he was most likely assisted by the Knights of Ren, and secondly an emotionally compromised man with a large bullet hole (I seem to recall Wookiee bow-casters shooting actual metallic bolts) in his guts isn’t exactly going to be able to fight to his full abilities.

canofhumdingers said:

ZkinandBonez said:

One of the things that really stands out to me in the trailer is how amazing this shot of the Star Destroyer looks.

It looks so much like the miniature ships from the OT, however I can’t find any reason to rationalize this effect as being anything other than CGI.
It could of course just have to do with the resolution of the trailer, and maybe when I see it on the big screen it’ll look more like the CG ships in TFA, but maybe they’ve done something somewhat different. This is really just a wild speculation (based off one shot at that), but maybe they’ve done something similar to what was done in Star Trek: Insurrection, where they photographed the miniature of the Enterprise from the previous film and then made a 3D CG model out of those photos to make it look more convincing. Maybe they’ve done something similar with one of the old Star Destroyer miniatures?
Or maybe it’s just an exceptionally good CG shot, I just thought it look strangely better than the AT-AT’s in the trailer, as well as all of the spaceships in TFA (both the film and trailers).

It’s definately NOT an old miniature. The original Star Destroyer model still exists and goes on tour with other props (I’ve seen it in person twice) but it has been damaged and repaired (the “X” shaped antenna has been re-attached lying flat, matching the later star destroyer models from ESB)

It IS an extremely faithful, but much more detailed recreation of that original model from '76. Which is awesome because that model is significantly different from all other Star Destroyers featured in the films. The most obvious detail being the upright “X” antenna atop the bridge, and a couple others being the radar dish things at the forward corners of the large hangar bay and the three cannons lined up on the spine of the ship just ahead of all the conning tower stuff.

As for what is the model, my guess is pure cgi. Though I do agree it looks GREAT. But so did a lot of TFA’s cgi ships (watch that shot of the Falcon in space leaving Jakku and tell me it’s not amazing! It looks VERY much like another shot of that ship leaving a desert planet from the 70’s…)

Although TFA had a lot of great CG shots (the opening shot with the darkened Star Destroyer really stands out to me) I never really felt that any of the shots were too convincing to me. Good, yes, but not as realistic as they could have been. This one shot from RO looks much better though, and I find it hard to believe that RO should have managed something that TFA didn’t.
That’s why I thought that they might have scanned an old miniature from ANH, not used it, but scanned it to get the dimensions right, and maybe even used the photos to create a more realistic texture to the 3D model. Also Star Destroyers don’t move that much do it wouldn’t require that much digital trickery to make a few photos look convincing on screen.
Anyway, we’ll have to wait until the movie is released to see just how good these Star Destroyers actually look.

joefavs said:

I mentioned it a couple pages ago, but the white uniforms in ANH are for the Imperial Security Bureau, or ISB: http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Imperial_Security_Bureau

Ah, right, I missed that somehow.

However it does seem that the white uniforms being part of the ISB is currently only in the Legends canon so I’m curious to see what Disney canonize them as. I guess that also means that the guy in RO isn’t a Grand Admiral, but something else.

SilverWook said:

ZkinandBonez said:

I’m glad to see that Mon Mothma wasn’t a CG recreation of Caroline Blakiston and was instead played by a new actor. Hopefully we’ll get something similar with Tarkin.
(I was also surprised by the inclusion of a Grand Admiral. Wasn’t that whole white uniform thing invented by Timothy Zahn in the Thrawn trilogy?)

Nope!

So is this guy a Grand Admiral? Or did Zahn retcon that later?
Someone mentioned earlier in this thread that a lo of officer on the DS wore white uniforms.