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

Cafe Society
1181

We addressed this issue with only very little controversy. About 2/3 of respondents to the poll agreed that bethonged buttocks = naked buttocks.
Minor controversy arose when Little Nemo addressed the distinction between use of the word buttocks and use of the word ass- claiming that “ass” refers to more than just the buttocks.

So, was Evil Captor’s use of the word “BUTT” meant to refer to all bits that make up the ass? Or is “BUTT” synonymous with “buttocks”?
If “BUTT” is synonymous with “buttocks” then by SDMB IMHO Poll Authority the movie Your Highness does display Natalie Portman’s naked BUTT/buttocks however non-callipygian the offering may be.

I’ll leave it to Evil Captor to clarify the intended use of the word “BUTT” in the quoted post.

1182

2/3 of y’all are wrong.

1183

Forget it, Jake. It’s IMHOtown.

1184

I was pretty sure it was going to be a decent movie and probably even a good one. At the end of the day it was even better than I expected. A solid 8 or 8.5 out of 10 (the original trilogy is a 9 out of 10 - I haven’t seen the prequels).

It’s a good mix of the old and the new. The feel of the original movies is respected, the old characters are back but the new ones are interesting, particularly Poe Dameron and Rey (nice to have a girl as the ass-kicking main protagonist, by the way - a logical evolution from Leia who was already far from being a mere damsel in distress waiting for her saviour).

The visuals and the sound effects/music are excellent, adding some tasteful new twists to the feel of the original trilogy.

Killing off Han solo was a bold move. My inner child was weeping but, as an adult, I recognize that it took guts to do it. More importantly, from a story-telling perspective, it helps us link the new characters with the past but gives them the space to develop, something that the presence of such an iconic guy would have hindered. Plus he bows out gracefully after so many narrow escapes in seedy places. Good call, well done.

Most importantly, I was really entertained. I’ve loved Star Wars since I saw The Empire Strikes Back in the theatre in 1980 but I’d never describe myself as a hardcore fan. I wanted the new movie to be respectful of the original material and fun. It delivered.

Two things didn’t work for me: one minor, the other more problematic.

First, many people have complained about the rehashing of the old material. I thought it was a bit lazy indeed but it didn’t really bother me. The trench run however was insipid. I felt like it was over in 5 seconds and, in spite of the impressive effects, it was completely anti-climatic - a mere sideshow. Compare that with the similar sequence in A New Hope…

The more annoying problem is that the villains don’t work. Snoke looks like a reject from The Hobbit, his looks stand out like a sore thumb. And by the way, is that the best name they could come up with ? Snoke ? Sounds like a character from SpongeBob SquarePants. And Kylo Ren just isn’t impressive at all. Compare his first appearance with that of Vador. The latter was badass, even scary when I was a child. Kylo Ren is just a generic bad guy who tries really hard - but not all that successfully - to be bad.

1185

I suspect Kylo Ren is going to end up being a terrific character. He’s not supposed to be Darth Vader, he’s supposed to be a kid trying, largely unsuccessfully, to be Darth Vader.

One way the next movie can go would be contrasting the growth between Kylo Ren, who we now know has gone to “finish his training,” with that of Rey, who has the opportunity to train with Luke Skywalker, who doubtless will do the old reluctant-mentor thing. It’s a parallel story opportunity that couldn’t happen in the first trilogy because there was no bad guy equivalent to Luke; Darth Vader was already a fully trained badass. How they’ll spin in an adventure story involving Finn and Poe I don’t know, but I think that’s where we’re headed.

It’s easy to forget but Darth Vader’s character was not universally popular in “Star Wars” (it wasn’t called “A New Hope” in 1977) and really didn’t become the super-icon he is until “The Empire Strikes Back,” when he became the central villain and got his own theme song. In “Star Wars” I don’t think Vader is onscreen for ten minutes and he is clearly second fiddle to Tarkin in the Imperial command structure, although he’s much more interesting.

I do agree, though, that the Supreme Leader/Snoke character wasn’t well done. That was one part of the film I didn’t like. I thought him being projected to giant size was actually a clever cinematic ruse, but his face made me think “Holy shit, the First Order is being run by Gollum.” Later on I found out the guy who plays Gollum also plays Snoke. I’ll postpone judgement on the name; after all, “Han Solo” and “Luke Skywalker” are kinda stupid, too.

1186

I see your point and I hope you’re right for the future development of the character. There’s definitely a potential here, but not as the badass villain.

In general, I could see episode VIII going for a grittier story, the same kind of departure that episode V was from IV.

1187
1188

Have not read the entire thread, but did see the movie last Friday and have taken several days to think about it before posting.

IMHO, it was both better and worse than the Original Star Wars (now called Episode IV: A New Hope). No use comparing it to any other movie in the lexicon, the parallels are too obvious between them to allow for any other comparison.

Better in that it was well-shot, the dialogue was more…grown up…, the acting by and large was better and the effects were very, very good.

Worse in that the original was a romp, a comic-book writ large, an entertainment, that captivated those who saw it. This was more of a movie, with all the appropriate tropes and emotions, and while that does not make it a bad film, it does make it different in makeup and tone to the first, and IMHO, makes it somewhat less enjoyable that that film.

For other minor points, Han’s death did not bother me, it was telegraphed as soon as the scene started, and was a ‘good death’. As usual, the Star Wars universe couldn’t spell Physics if you spotted them the P, h, and y; I thought I’ve become inured to that, but some scenes still bothered me. And the bad guys just didn’t come across as malevolant; a good does of Tarkin would have been better.

I think, in the end, people will see it because, dammit, they are supposed to see it; it’s a cultural thing. But I’m hoping the next one will be better, and it definitiely has the room to be better than this one.

IMHO as always. YMMV.

1189

I’m beginning to think that everybody else saw a different movie.

TFA was perfectly serviceable and entertaining, a solid 6/10, but it wasn’t anything like the masterpiece that a bunch of critics/SDMB posters make it out to be. As some other folks here have already indicated, the more I think about it (and I saw it two weeks ago) the more stupid the movie seems to me. Too many things in the movie just don’t make any logical sense, the pacing is disjointed, and the number of fucking coincidences in the story is inexcusable, unbelievable, and something that really pulled me out of the movie.

And yeah, Revenge of the Sith was a better film. No contest.

1190

yeah…Snoke has terrible acne-you would think that plastic/cosmetic surgery would be pretty advanced by then. I still cannot handle the super high-technology (FTL travel), with people dressed up in medieval peasant garb. I mean, what is that all about?

1191

Star Wars has always had dumb names. Grievous? Jar Jar Binks? Dooku?

Snoke didn’t remind me of Gollum, but I did lean over to my wife and say, “So what, now the Empire’s being run by Voldemort?”

1192

Palpatine never bothered to due anything about his Force lightning scars after he became Emperor. Perhaps when you’re that powerful and there’s no such thing as galactic CNN, what you look like isn’t all that important.

I don’t recall seeing anyone wearing a tunic over a knee-length undershirt and leggings but no pants or underpants. The people wearing what you call “peasant garb” are usually poor workers on the backwater planets where fashion isn’t exactly going to be a priority, the same way you don’t see the Duck Dynasty guys wearing tuxedos to the dinner table.

1193

If Snoke picks up a wand, I swear, I’m outta here…

1194

IIRC correctly, it was a medium-distance shot, not a close-up. Butt will do, a thong surely does not make a difference over a distance. Now, I’m thinking for the word ass, something like what’s seen below in the NSFW spoiler box

1195

Can’t we have one thread about Star Wars that doesn’t get derailed by a pedantic argument about the definition of the word “butt”?

1196

This has nothing to do with the subject of the OP. I’ve deleted the link and we’ll go back to discussing Star Wars.

RickJay
Moderator

1197

Star Wars has never made sense, physics-wise. One cannot criticize the new movie without also ripping into the previous ones. I mean, light sabers just make no sense at all right out of the gate. Hell, even if they did, *the way people fight with them doesn’t make any sense, either. * Oh, and by the way, where were the engines on the Death Star? It could move, obviously; it went to the Alderaan system and then went to Yavin, so it could move, and it wasn’t being towed. So why was it described as a space station, rather than a ship, and where were the big glowing thrusters that take up a large amount of space on all the other ships? Why were AT-ATs impervious to laser fire when other objects of similar size were not? One could go on.

You kind of have to take the Star Wars universe as being, well, the Star Wars universe. The technology is magic, and it’s really about the* feel *of it; the civilization is very, very, very old, and they’ve had more or less the same technology for generations. The Galactic Republic is sort of like the fall of the Roman Republic, which was by that point a very old civilization (at the fall of the Republic it was twice as old as the USA is now and had largely forgotten its own pre-Republic past) that didn’t advance very quickly scientifically and was kind of run down, impersonal, and perpetually in some kind of internal or external war.

We know from our own technological progress that the progress of the Star Wars galaxy makes no real sense; they have mastered hyperspace but not weapons that work beyond visual range, to use one obvious example. Artificial gravity everywhere but nobody seems to have anything like a smartphone. Modern space operas like the new “Battlestar Galactica” are more feasible. But that’s the universe that was created in 1977 so for the sake of consistency, you gotta stick with it.

1198

Star Wars is a fairy tale set in space. That is both its strength and its weakness.

1199

I would sincerely love to discover that Snoke is actually three inches tall.

1200

Nonsense.
[ul]
[li]Buzzbots![/li][li]Jedi-Incapacitating Force Fields that the Jedi forgot about and have no defense for, and are common knowledge. Their whole plan is stupid.[/li][li]Jedi-Incapacitating Force Fields that the bad guy almost forgot to use.[/li][li]A senseless 45 minute fight on skateboards over lava, off of falling towers, flippy-flippy-slash-slash. And then because Obi Wan is two meters above Anakin on a gentle slope, “You can’t win, I’ve got the high ground!” Idiocy.[/li][li]Reflected force lightning makes Palpatine look shitty. A stupid solution to a problem no one in the universe had. Who was going, “Hey, I wonder why Palpatine, the guy who is harnessing true-evil for power looks kinda scabby 25 years after taking control?” [/li][li]Padme dies because she lost the will to live. Well, fucking intubate her then.[/li][li]Horrible acting.[/li][li]Horrible scripting.[/li][li]Boring action scenes.[/li][li]Jar-Jarringly inept creature design.[/li][li]Nooooooooooooooooooooo! [Shakes fists with elbows tucked into body, as a small girl might][/li][/ul]