This is another one I paid more attention to on a second viewing, and there was a line about how the Falcon is an easy ship to track, or something. So I think the implication is that it was hard for Han and Chewie to find as long as it was on the ground (and there was another line about how they should have kept looking on that planet), but once it was in the air it showed up on their scopes in some fashion.
Which just brings us back to the “everything in the galaxy is always in sensor (and visible) range of everything else in the galaxy” issue, but that one I have no justification for at all.
Agreed. iLemming’s borderline-racist remarks about Finn are just bizarre. It’s like he had a narrative in mind and then twisted everything that happened to fit into that narrative.
Saw it last night with no spoilers and had watched no previews. I was very impressed, 2 hours went by like nothing and I was totally absorbed in the movie. I had to remember where I was after the movie was over.
It’s a really great action movie and a really great Star Wars movie, Abrams captured the look and feel and most of the humor of the original movies. Much better than the Star Trek remake/reboot IMO.
Almost everything was good, which makes the occasional bad aspect stick out a little more. Much of the humor relied on repeating/referring to the original 3 movies. For example I guess it’s nice in a nostalgic way that Han Solo said “I’ve got a bad feeling about this” but was it really necessary? What’s the odds that in the entire galaxy the Falcon is on Rae’s planet and that she, with the map to Luke, steals it just as Han shows up to reclaim it? Very forced plot point but I was glad to see Han fairly early in any event. And the big Death Planet or whatever it was seemed a bit silly, I had to work a little to suspend my disbelief. Are the bad guys just going to keep building bigger and bigger ships/weapons?
I thought Han’s son was a weird looking dork and not that great of a bad guy once the mask came off. I knew as soon as Han walked out on the long narrow bridge with no railings (where is OSHA?) to confront his son that the son would betray him. I didn’t buy the son’s tears and breakdown although I do think maybe he was conflicted.
Sorry I haven’t read the whole 9 pages, but was it ever explained why 3PO had a red arm, and was it hinted that Rae somehow related to Luke (daughter maybe?)
For anyone who has played Skyrim, that whole scene reminded me very much of the walk up to High Hrothgar to see the Greybeards. Except there was just one greybeard.
The film-makers leave it a deliberate mystery who Rey’s parents were. They spend half the movie dropping hints she’s Han and Leia’s daughter, and the other half dropping hints she is Luke’s daughter (mother unknown).
No doubt her parentage will be a major plot-point in the upcoming next movie.
My own favorite theory is that she is Luke’s daughter, but he never knew it - he left before he found out her mom was pregnant; and that her mom left her on that planet because she was being chased by bad guys, who then killed or captured her.
My less-favorite theory is: split the difference - she is Luke’s and Leia’s daughter.
Heck, I didn’t even get some of the names.
Spode or whatever? Was that the Supreme Commander or whatever? I didn’t catch anyone using his name. Was that from the credits?
Ben/Obi-Ren?
There may have been others.
I didn’t even really catch the whole “who is winning” backstory - and still don’t. Are we to assume the good guys have a dominant position, despite the bad guys being able to weaponize an entire planet?
And why did they blow up those 5 planets, instead of the one where the fighters were?
There has been some discussion in this thread (which I did not follow) about where “the fleet” is.
So are these only minor battles within some huge overarching struggle? Because I don’t get any of that.
You obviously missed a page worth of static because I didn’t immediately recognize the difference between this group of Stormtroopers, TIE fighters, dark-helmeted laser-sword wizards and Planet Sized War Spheres and the last group of Stormtroopers, TIE fighters, dark-helmeted laser-sword wizards and Planet Sized War Spheres
I think this is the biggest problem with the movie; these are important questions which serve to explain why the characters want to take action.
From reading ancillary material after watching the movie, here’s what I gathered:
Post Return of the Jedi the Rebellion and the Empire continued to battle for a while, but the Rebellion prevailed in a major fleet action near Jakku and the two sides then entered into a treaty. The Rebellion then established the New Republic, which is large but not the galaxy-spanning behemoth that the Old Republic or Empire were - there are a lot of various regional powers out there. It’s not clear whether the First Order encompasses all of the old Imperial forces/territory or if it’s just one of many such groups, but they’re not technically at war with the New Republic as the movie begins.
Leia thinks that the Empire generally and the First Order in particular are serious threats which ought to be opposed, but there’s not a lot of appetite within the New Republic for a new galactic war. The Resistance is a group which is fighting the First Order’s territorial ambitions in the corner of the galaxy they are in, and at Leia’s urging, the New Republic is funding the ostensibly separate Resistance with ships, money, and advisors. It’s not clear whether they’re doing this overtly or secretly, but this is what General Hux is going on about in his maniacal rant. The planets that the Starkiller Base blows up are the habitable worlds in the Hosnian system, which is the capital of the New Republic and apparently where most of their war fleet is based. As such the First Order is both declaring war against the New Republic and hoping for a political/military decapitation strike at the same time.
Whether or not this actually makes a ton of sense, it’s coherent enough. But there is really no way that just watching the movie will let you know that this is what is going on.
The blaster bolt was new, but I think there’s an argument to be made that his “aggressive force choking” is a less sophisticated use of telekenisis than Vader’s force choke was. Vader could shut off someone’s airway from across a radio channel. Kylo has to physically pull guys to him to get his hand on their windpipe.
Stopping the blaster bolt mid air was new (and very cool), but I think the idea that someone who is untrained or partially trained in the Force can use some powers more effectively than other powers is an established part of the setting.
My take on that was that they were both trying to grab it at the same time, and it didn’t move until one of them won the struggle. But I think there’s something to the idea that he was just exhausted at that point, physically and mentally, and couldn’t summon his Force powers as easily as he could when he’s rested and unharmed.
This is pretty much my assumption, too, although I’m hoping that Hosnian was a regional power center being used as a staging ground for moving aid to the Resistance, and not the seat of the Republic government.
C-3PO comments that the area the map depicts doesn’t match any maps in their database, presumably because it’s outside of Republic space in a little-traveled area of the galaxy. If you needed to get to the Cleveland Public Library, it wouldn’t do you any good to have a road map of Cleveland unless you knew where Cleveland was and how to get there in the first place.
Well, obviously the actual answer is that JJ Abrams wanted us to see force users to doing cool and spectacular things… we’ve seen force chokes, so let’s see more awesome force chokes. But it certainly made it feel like “this guy is powerful” as opposed to “this guy is so untrained that he can only do big bulky things not subtle things like Vader could”.
Except traveling throughout Cleveland actually requires roads on a two dimensional plane and thus a map with “turn left here, turn right there” directions makes sense. Less so when discussing mostly empty three-dimensional space. Here’s the point of light we’re at, here’s the point of light we’re headed to, hopefully you can manage to avoid any planets or stars in the big vast void of space along the way.
If interstellar travel required wormholes or something it might make more sense. But, from what I can tell, in Star Wars you can go into and drop out of hyperspace pretty much at will.
In the old EU it was explicitly stated that there are “hyperspace routes” which are known to be safe and which almost all FTL traffic goes through. Theoretically you could just point yourself in any direction and be off, but if there happens to be a star in between you and your destination you’re not going to be able to hit the brakes in time.
The lines on the map might not be, “Here’s how you get to this planet,” so much as, “Here’s the route Luke took when he went to look for the first Jedi temple.” Actually, the whole map thing makes a bit more sense if you assume that it’s not a map so much as Luke’s hyperspace logs. People following him don’t have to trace that exact route, hitting all the planets that didn’t have the Jedi temple on it - they can just travel directly to the end point.
