Star Wars: The Force Awakens - Seen It (Assume Spoilers Within)

Cafe Society
701

That is exactly what is being established. Setting up characters with room to develop.

Anakin becoming the Big Bad was a boring story boringly and poorly executed; the growth of Kylo Ren from a weak-assed Bad wannabe, conflicted, petulant, and emo, into a true inhuman horror of vast power, will hopefully not be such a boring story, especially since the character has so much room to develop and we do not know exactly where he is going to end up nor how he gets there.

Finn is already developing. From an unnamed unindividuated number-letter identifier who realizes he has a will and that his will does not want to be part of the killing (and being killed) for the First Order and who thus just wants to run away, to identifying someone, if not something, that he is willing to fight for, and to be willing to die for.

Also agree with someone somewhere in this already pretty dang long thread that this plot only makes sense from the perspective of things-that-are-meant-to-be. There are prophecies, ones that Ren is already aware of, of a girl who will rewaken the Force, and be a power at least equal to his own. She is not found by that droid at that time, does not take that junked ship up at that moment, and find herself to where she is called by the saber of Vader and of Luke, out of coincidences, but out of destiny. She was hidden for a reason and now her destiny pulls her forward. Rey was waiting … she thought for her family to return … but in fact for her destiny to call and for Ren to serve as the catalyst to awakening her power. And Luke has been waiting for that as well … he also knows the prophecy. The question I have is whether he will answer honestly (to her and to us) when she, early in the next movie, asks him “Who am I? What am I?” And if not honestly, how does she react when learns whatever the hidden truth actually is?

702

Can someone recap what was shown in Ren’s Force vision? Was a great scene but I just can’t recall every piece.

703

She starts out in a hallway, and you can hear Vader’s respirator somewhere. She starts running and the hallway collapses behind her just as she gets out. She’s now in the rain, watching what appears to be Kylo Ren and his followers slaughtering Luke’s students. There’s a shot of Luke (probably) kneeling next to R2 and touching him with his cybernetic hand. Then it’s Ren as a small child, watching a ship (carrying her parents?) taking off while she cries, before being dragged off by the junk dealer from the start of the movie. Finally, she’s in the snowy forest from the end of the movie, and Kylo appears, threatening her with a lightsaber.

I think that’s the whole thing.

704

Did anyone else think that the Starkiller weapon was a bit -er- over the top? All the matter and energy of a star, compressed into the core of a planet?

The temperature would be measured in TeraKelvin, according to Anders Sandberg
http://aleph.se/andart2/megascale/starkiller-base-versus-the-ideal-gas-law/

…a formidable weapon indeed. It could destroy planets in an eyeblink.

Not only that, but it seems to be able to destroy planets in distant star systems in a dramatically short time; the beam must travel at faster-than-light speeds. With such a weapon you could attack anywhere in the galaxy without warning - lucky the few Force-capable humans that are left can predict the future.

They can, can’t they?

705

Traveling through hyperspace ain’t like dusting crops, boy! Without precise calculations we could fly right through a star or bounce too close to a supernova, and that’d end your trip real quick, wouldn’t it?

706

Hyperdrives have a failsafe that cuts the drive and drops the ship out into normal space in regions of high gravity, such as the gravity well of a star or planet. Or at least they did in the EU (the remnant Empire had ships that had devices that mimicked gravity wells, called Interdictors, that they used to pull ships out of hyperspace).

707

Don’t be too proud of this technological terror you’ve constructed. The ability to destroy a planet is insignificant next to the power of the Force. Also you’ve left a little hole in it where the lasers can get in.

708

It’s essentially the Galaxy Gun from the EU, but firing multiple “warheads” instead of just one, and built into a planet instead of being freestanding.

IIRC, Finn explicitly mentions that the blasts travel faster than light.

709

Her metal bikini days are gone. Fortunately, Carrie Fisher is still a riot.

710

Was the blaster bolt Poe Dameron shot in the beginning of the movie more “physical” than a typical laser gun? I’m asking because Kylo Ren was able to stop it mid-flight. Is there a reason he could do this when Vader could only stop blasts with his hand?

711

Might just be that he didn’t learn the same tricks Vader did due to them not learning from the same masters. I imagine Luke’s Jedi order favored a lot of improvisation and freewheeling compared to the old Jedi or Sith, and I see no reason that Snoke either wouldn’t do more of the same or would have a different tradition of technique to pass on than Palpatine did.

712

Vader was a head, a torso, and part of an arm, attached to a life support system bound into his armor and prosthetics.

Kylo Ren is a whole person with no significant injuries.

It seems like, as far as one’s ability to wield the Force, that makes a difference.

Also, for the record, blaster bolts are quite specifically not lasers - in the EU, at least, they’re superheated plasma/gas.

713

well, given the Empire’s hard-on for planet-destroying capability, it sort of makes sense. as in, “We built a Death Star, the rebels blew it up. We built a bigger Death Star, the Rebels blew it up. So let’s just build this one into a planet. Surely the rebels can’t blow up a planet!”

714

I loved her cameo on The Big Bang Theory, the episode that guest-starred James Earl Jones. (I’ve heard they never actually met while making the Star Wars movies.)

715

I just assume that Force users learn from the same general bag of tricks but to different degrees, RPG style.

“I’ll take two points in deflection, one point in telekinesis and three points of mind control…”

716

It’s a pretty neat trick, IMHO, stopping it without depleting it’s momentum, was it some kind of local time distortion.

717

Mine (9pm 3D show, Fri. night) was even more surprising. No cheers or applause at any point; the only sound they made was a few chuckles at funny bits.

I’m not as bothered by her being a crack mechanic who has some experience with the Falcon, as I am by the fact that she treated it as though it was a long-immobilized piece of junk which she then got to fly out into space immediately, with no repairs whatsoever. The greatest auto mechanic in the world can’t just go sit behind the wheel of a rusted '57 Ford and make it drive out of the junkyard without even getting under the hood first.

Srsly? Sigh.

You were saying Rey’s ability to do everything is no more unrealistic then James Bond’s similar abilities are. My point is that 007 does not just happen to find himself in the midst of international intrigue and then just luckily possesses all these skills. He is selected out of millions of Britons by the government, intensively trained at the cost of millions of pounds, and then the UK’s presumably robust intelligence services apparatus determines exactly where to send him. So the point is context. I doubt the people who are finding Rey’s abilities unrealistic would say the same if she had flown in and said “I am the top secret agent of [the Republic’s equivalent of MI6], let’s light this candle”. Agree or disagree, do you at least get my point now?

I hadn’t noticed, but in retrospect: yes, totally.

718

Saw the movie yesterday. Loved it! Don’t care about the minor plot holes or the similarity of the plot. I think it pretty much had to be that way to reclaim the series away from the godawful prequels.

Anyway, I have a theory about Rey’s origins. I thought of this right after seeing the movie, so I’ll just throw it out there and see what you guys think.

First, let’s establish the background: After the events in ROTJ, Luke goes off and studies the force more, and Leia and Han get married and have a kid. Now, Han and Leia would be terrible parents. Leia is busy running the Republic and doing whatever, and Han is off smuggling or gallivanting or whatever it is he did. Plus, they fought all the time. So their kid is pretty messed up. Luke takes the problem kid in and tries to teach him the force to give him some calm and balance, but it backfires. Meanwhile, the Dark Side is back in the form of the First Order and its leader, and Ben is lost to the dark side. There are major risks again to Luke and any other Jedi that is discovered. The First Order has spies everywhere looking for Jedi and killing them.

Now, we’ve established that the Force is hereditary. At least among Skywalkers it is. So any of Luke’s progeny will be fearsome. But Luke can’t marry, and the Jedi are almost non-existent. You need a lot of them.

What we also know is that there is a legend that when Luke Skywalker resurfaces, there will be a new awakening of the force, yada yada. The First Order is so scared of that they are trying to hunt Luke and kill him, and have been for a long time.

So, what’s going on? How about this: Luke donated his sperm, and they inseminated many women as future-Jedi incubators. These women and their husbands were then scattered around the galaxy in the most out-of-the-way places. Desert planets, jungle planets, whatever. Along with them went an old Jedi or someone who could be trusted, to protect the child and see to it that they learned what they needed.

These kids were then ‘stealth trained’. They didn’t know they were Jedi, but they were taught self-defence with lightsaber stand-ins like a staff. They were put into hard lives to make them tough and resourceful. At a certain age, the parents bugger off, leaving the kids to make it on their own (with the wise old Jedi making sure they don’t do something totally stupid). This further toughens them, and removes the possibility that they might be tracked through their parents who would have had some connection to Luke or the New Republic.

The idea is that these kids will all come of age at about the same time. A new army of Skywalker-blood uber-Jedi are born. In the meantime, the old Jedi are each given part of a map to Skywalker mountain. That way, none of them can give away his location under interrogation. But one day a call will come, and all the wise old birds will bring their new charges to a location where they will put their map pieces together and discover how to find Luke. Then they take all the kids there, Luke finishes their training and turns them into an army, and away we go.

Anyway, that explains pretty much everything. It explains why Rey already knows how to fight and fly spaceships - Max Von Sydow arranged circumstances so that she would learn those things. Maybe she bullseyes womp-rats in a T-16 for cash, or does side work hauling cargo or whatever.

It explains why Max Von Sydow would have a partial map to Luke’s location.

It explains why Rey was waiting for some imminent return of her parents - she knew they would be coming back for her when she turned 18, or 20, or whatever. It explains why Luke was in exile and why there will be a general rising of the Force once he emerges. She certainly acted like she knew someone was coming for her right away - she even said “it may even be too late” at one point - which would be a strange thing to say if your parents had buggered off 10 years ago. Why would you assume they would be back so immediately? My guess is that Max told her that someone was coming for her very soon.

Any thoughts? Anything I’m missing? Some reason why this theory can’t be right?

719

Also, R2-D2 had a copy of the map without the missing piece, and went into low-power mode when Luke left. No one knew why. Well, now we do - R2 was to wait until someone showed up with the missing piece of the map, and then wake up and fill in the rest. He went into low power mode so that he would be hidden away safely. However, that also means that there was either only.one map piece, or that all the Jedi watching the kids had the same piece, or that Rey is the only one they created.

720

Um … not necessarily, it turns out.