Another thought: why would the First Order immediately destroy Poe’s damaged X-wing? I’d think they’d want to keep it for study, to recover any secret info it might have aboard, or for possible future espionage use.
I finally saw this movie today. Despite having had Han’s death spoiled, I enjoyed it as much as the originals. It was especially nice because at 10AM on Saturday, the theater was half empty, and it had big, comfy stadium seating chairs. Funny, the comfort of the seats wasn’t such a big deal when I saw the first one way back when…
The X-Wing is 40-odd-years-old technology at this point, and (per the old EU) was originally developed by the Empire in the first place, so it’s doubtful that there’s very little they could learn from capturing one intact that they didn’t already know. As to secret info; it seems to me that we’re still operating on the idea that Star Wars-era tech is based on a '70s conception of what a '30s conception of “the FUTURE!” would look like, so the fighter itself probably has little if any onboard data storage, and anything of note would be stored on the astromech droid instead.
How much of the next Star Wars movie should be Rey training with Luke?
He definitely has a lot to learn from her. Maybe with some training from Rey, Luke will be strong enough to defeat the Ren and Snoke.
Plus, they probably figured better to risk losing the data than to risk letting Poe escape with it.
Once you see Poe flying in his replacement X-Wing later on, it’s pretty clear that they made the correct decision in not letting him make off with it.
Also, while the X-Wing was around during the OT 30 years previously, it’s worth noting purely for geek interest that the X-Wings in this film are of a different design. Different engines and wings in particular, but other lines are reworked as well. The OT X-Wing was a T-65, IIRC, and the new one is a T-70. The intent was pretty clearly to show a family evolution from the ARC-170 “Hex Wing” from the prequel trilogy through the X-Wings of the OT to the X-Wings of the new trilogy.
On that note, I look forward to seeing evolved designs of some of the other fighters, like the A-Wing, B-Wing, and Y-Wing, or a newer Corellian Corvette, with a soft top and ABS brakes.
Exactly. It was a different design than we’ve seen before. Why take the chance that there was no classified info aboard? And Poe wouldn’t escape with it since they, you know, took him prisoner.
They disable it before Poe can escape - but after Poe’s captured, Kylo Ren orders his troops to destroy it completely. At that point, there’s no reason they can’t capture and study it, if they wanted to. But I’m assuming that, while this model of X-Wing is new to us, it’s not new to the Order, who have had opportunities to capture and study them before. And by design, all sensitive information in an X-Wing is stored in the R2 unit, not in any on-board systems. So while destroying it might have been a little rash, the odds are that taking it apart would have been a waste of time.
I figured it was because his face isn’t that terrifying. Once of the features of the Stormtrooper armour is that the helmets make them impersonal, anonymous, and less human. Part of the whole POINT of that armour is to inspire fear.
There’s also the chance that the helmets provide some kind of HUD with tactical information, communications, maybe infrared goggles, aiming information, that sort of thing. I’ve no cite for this, just a stray thought that it would make sense.
Another stray thought is that the masks are movie-symbolic of how Stormtroopers (and Ren) are cut off from the people they are oppressing. No eye contact and no face-to-face interaction. It’s easier to oppress people you don’t identify with.
I finally got to see it this afternoon. I had not heard one single thing about the movie beforehand other than that there was something in it called “Kylo Ren.”
My take: it was good for warm, fuzzy nostalgia value, but pretty cliche. You could see every plot turn coming a mile away. I hadn’t had anything spoiled for me and in fact didn’t even know Harrison Ford was going to be in the movie, but figured out that Han Solo was going to die about 20 minutes before he actually did. I thought, “They are pretty obviously copying Episode IV and somebody major needs to die soon like Vader killing Obi-Wan. There is no way 73-year-old Harrison Ford wants to be in more than one of these, so he’ll probably be killed.” And whenever there’s a catwalk in Star Wars, one of the two people on it always falls off and dies. So when it happened, my reaction wasn’t emotional at all, more “Oh, well, there it was.”
But I enjoyed it anyway. It was cliche but still much better than the execrable prequels. Hopefully the next installment is a bit more creative.
Saw it again for the third time today at noon. Getting more from the music and such.
Also, noontime show, three weeks? Four? after release and the theater was sold out.
I think the thetres are lying about the “sold out” status of TFA. We saw it at a Showcase Cinema-they said that the 7 PM show was 'sold out"-at least half the seats were empty.
Why would they do that? There’s no economic benefit to theaters telling customers that a showing is sold out if it’s not.
The Force Awakens made $41 million this weekend (officially pushing it past $800 million total). Clearly, it is sold out in a lot of places.
I saw it today. My opinion? It was good but not great. As others have said, it recycled too much from the original movie. The most original addition to this movie was nostalgia for the previous movies.
Just seen it. I kinda liked it. Pretty entertaining. Not as good as the original trilogy, but much better than the prequels.
Too much retreading of elements from the original. A robot designed to copy the success of Artoo. Carrying information back to the resistence, and hunted by the Empire, no less. Why didn’t they just use Artoo? A Ben Kenobi look alike. What was the point of that? Darth Vader’s grandson dresses up like the original. Why? Couldn’t they have given him a more original personality? And of course, the bigger, badder DeathStar with the same weak spot. What, again? Weakest part of the film.
What really disappointed me was the dialogue. The original trilogy was so full of quotable lines. In this one I find it hard to recall *any *specific lines.
I’ve not read the thread yet, I’m sure this has been discussed at length. Who do we think Rey is? I was expecting it to end with the line, You are my father, Luke.
Finn: “We’ll let the Force guide us.”
Han: “That’s not how the Force works!”
Finn: “What about that ship?”
Rey: “It’s garbage!”
(the ship they’re running towards gets blown up)
Rey: “The garbage will have to do!”
Rey: “You will undo my bindings and leave the room with the door open.”
JB-007: “I think I’ll tighten your bindings.”
Rey: “You will undo my bindings and leave the room with the door open.”
JB-007: “I will undo my bindings and leave the room with the door open.”
(he does so)
Rey: “And you will leave your weapon on the floor.”
JB-007: “And I will leave my weapon on the floor.”
Han: “You changed your hair.”
Leia: “You’ve got the same jacket.”
Han: “It’s a new jacket.”
I’m sticking with my gut feeling - she’s no one of any significance. She’s not the child or cousin or clone of anyone we’ve met before. She’s just an orphan girl who’s strong in the Force.
“Isn’t that impossible?”
“I never ask that until after I’ve done it.”
“What do they look like?”
“… They look like that!”
“…do I talk first, or do you talk first? I talk first?”
I was about to post speculation the Rey is related to Lando Calrissian, but I notice a couple of other people in the thread beat me to it.