In some cases the trailer is made by a separate director so that might be the case here. Of course I would assume Abrams would still have to OK any trailer.
I think it’s a bit of a wash. We never saw Vader “freeze” a blaster shot in mid-air, but he didn’t really have to - he could casually block blaster shots with his bare (well, gloved) hand.
Rey, not Ren. AK was going on about how overpowered Rey was relative to Anakin (all but using the M-word, to which I say fie)
This Ren/Rey stuff is going to get confusing, isn’t it?
I liked it quite a lot but I agree with the criticisms of over-using plot elements from the original trilogy, in particular the idea of a planet-destroying weapon. It worked in ANH but then it was recycled in ROTJ; using it a third time was just ridiculous IMO.
Hopefully now that they have the first one out they will take a few more risks with the story. In particular I hope that Rey isn’t Luke or Leia’s daughter and that Kylo Ren isn’t redeemed like Darth Vader.
Is it written somewhere that there are no one-night-stands in a galaxy far, far away? Why is it necessary for Luke to have been “in a relationship?” Can’t the guy get some strange at a cantina some night when he’s feeling bored? Maybe hook up with some careless Force-groupie?
You just know he hit up some Ewok after the Battle of Endor. It’s the lustrous pelt… 
This movie is printing money. My theater uses assigned seating and the first showing I can get a reasonable seat for my second viewing is next Thursday.
There is great explanatory power in the theory of Luke playing Johnny Jedi-seed to jump start the development of a new Jedi order, I seriously doubt they went that route. I don’t know, kind of an ewww factor. I especially doubt it’ll turn out that he did all that inseminating the old fashioned way.
Several users mention having been apprehensive that BB8 would be an annoying comic relief sidekick. Nobody seems to be bothered by the fact that the design of the droid is goddamned preposterous. So, the head clings to the body by magnets, with wheels inside spinning a trackball-type motivator? How does sand not get in and cause a constant scraping noise and ruin the paint and scratch the metal surfaces? But, in the movie I let go of these concerns. What the hell, they bought off my disbelief. He’s cute, and not overdone.
On the issue of predictability, I was actually surprised at the fact that all the shit I damned well saw coming failed to annoy me by playing out more-or-less as predicted. I did think the death of Solo was inevitable as soon as he stepped on the bridge just because that’s how that kind of scene ends. I knew he was damned sure going to die when Ren said he needed help, because he clearly meant no other than the main – he sucked at the dark side because needed to kill off the goodness that was his lingering love of his family. Once I reached that conclusion, it seemed like they were dragging out the inevitable without really kidding anybody that he might not do it.
I try to post here for most of the movies I see where we have a thread running… and this one breaks pretty much all of the normal “movie thread” standards. I saw it Tuesday, and even by then the length here was pretty intimidating. So I’d tend to be a little more forgiving here than usual.
Anyways, I didn’t feel quite as strongly as AK84 clearly does, but I am pretty far below the SDMB-consensus on this one. I’d give it something around a B- or C+, largely because the plot was a predictable, paint-by-numbers rehash of all of the points the original trilogy hit. I liked most of the human-acting, but Driver and Isaac were easily the two best, which didn’t help since they had relatively less screen time. Lots of stuff that just doesn’t make sense if you think about it for more than a few seconds, even more than usual for Abrams. I’m sure I’ll be there when the next one comes out, but this spate of people who never go to the movies seeing this three and four times (both here and my RL friends) just confuses me. Happy people are enjoying it, though!
We saw it on Sunday, three days into the theatrical run (if you count Thursday) and this thread was already over 300 posts. So, yes, the thread is quite intimidating. Just reading the whole thing to catch up is going to take quite a while.
[/Hayden Christensen with a stupid haircut]
Haven’t had time to read this entire thread - sorry.
Saw SW7 recently and liked it a lot, although the climax was a bit too similar to the Death Star/Death Star 2 climaxes of Eps. 4 and 6 (sorry Capt. Phasma was such a dud, too). Great to see the original cast together again. The new cast is also good - the actress who played Rey was very cute. Great action sequences and a stirring soundtrack.
Some questions:
What is the relationship between the Republic and the Resistance? Why doesn’t the Republic have its own armed forces to fight the First Order and other bad guys?
Why is Threepio’s arm red?
Other than Finn’s having plot armor, why didn’t the big tentacled rolling alien eat him right away on Han’s ship?
Has anyone broken down/explained all of Rey’s multifaceted flashback after she touched Luke’s lightsaber?
Can’t wait for SW8!
I agree, I suspect a bit of a critical backdown is coming after the hype settles and it can be viewed a little more objectively. I mean, it’s not The Phantom Menace, it’s perfectly watchable, but that’s only because it’s practically a scene by scene remake of the first Star Wars. These aren’t just “plot elements”, it’s the same fucking movie, only remade with a cast of excitable children. As someone said above, as bad as the prequels were, at least they aspiredto tell their own story. This is just lazy, cynical pandering.
I assume there’s a toy angle involved.
I believe it’s a sort of proxy war - the Republic considers it too risky to engage the First Order directly, so they’ve been providing the Resistance with materiel and “advisors” on a wink-wink-nudge-nudge basis.
The destruction of the Hosnian system is likely to change that, though.
Personally, I knew it with 98% certainty when Leia told him to bring their son back. Since they’d been following all emotional beats of Star Wars I figured that meant he was going to go the way of Obi Wan.
I wasn’t bothered by him dying or knowing it was going to happen. What bothered me what exactly he and Leia were planning to do if they could get him to come home and be good. The guy just participated in destroying five planets and millions, if not billions, of people in addition to whatever he did to Luke’s Jedi Academy. But that would all be shrugged off if he hugged mommy and promised to play nice going forward?
One podcast I listen to said that to learn the story of the red arm that there is a comic book that was released this week that has the story. Which, if true, is lame that they wasted a line of dialog on it in the movie. I’m fine with the EU existing. I’m not fine with the movie itself waving its arms and saying “this only makes sense if you consume things other than the movies!”
If Leia had said “Bring him home… dead or alive,” I think I’d’ve been impressed - if it suggested she was going to trust Han to decide if their son was redeemable or not.
Of course, I also would have liked it if, instead of “I’m being torn apart!” whining, the kid (Ren, right?) had said something like:
Han: Snoke is only using you. When he’s done, he’ll crush you.
Ren: Well… [broad smile] He’ll try.
This would at least suggest the kid had a long-range plan to seize power for himself, and wasn’t just some manipulable puppet.
I was, I admit, somewhat distracted by the stiffness of Carrie Fisher’s face. It seemed like she could only move her mouth, and reluctantly at best, like she was a Clutch Cargo character or a chronic botox-abuser.
I read it as the Republic being a tenuous government with no military, and the Resistance being the emboldened successor to the Rebel Alliance, made up of people more than willing to fight on their behalf.
I’m not a huge Star Wars fan, and left the film pleased, but a little confused. My friend and this thread filled me in on all of the glaring problems with this movie in comparison to the others. I’m sure if I knew Star Wars a little more going in, and was invested in the cannon, I would have hated the movie. I hope they address some of the inconsistencies in the movie with the sequel, (like how “What’s her name” knew how to use The Force.)
If you’re a fan of the franchise, how do you justify liking it?