[QUOTE=XT]
you need a male AND female to make a human 
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OBJECTION
Clones
Parachuting down to the bottom of the thread to share my thoughts, shallow apologies if I retread old ground:
Overall, I’d call it a solidly enjoyable film. I don’t feel it had the overall quality of the original trilogy, nor the emotional punch of Episode III. At the same time, I realize that this movie was laying foundation for the follow-on films that everybody knows is coming, so if I compare it against the last SW film that did this, Phantom Menace, it’s actually doing quite well for itself. EpIII would certainly not work without being able to stand on the previous prequel movies.
Things I liked:
The interaction between the new generation and the old generation, particularly Han’s respect/annoyance at Rey’s plucky skill and annoyance/amusement at Finn’s desperate attempts to build himself up in a transparent effort to impress Rey.
Rey/Finn/Poe make for a nice follow-up power trio to Luke/Leia/Han. They are similar but different in various ways, basically each character fills a familiar position, but is definitely their own person. Even Kylo Ren seems to have a lot of potential as a character. I’m expecting to see his struggle between the Light and Dark to be a central theme of the trilogy (in fact, I’m fully expecting Kylo and Rey to have ongoing tension trying to draw each other to the other side, once they eventually get to a point where Rey isn’t trying to kill Kylo on sight).
I like that Finn is sort of a foil to Luke Skywalker, in that Luke lived on a quiet backwater and wanted to get into the action, while Finn is a soldier desperately trying to get away from it. Similarly, Rey is a foil to Leia, only coming from abject poverty rather than royalty. Poe is Han if Han had been an idealist instead of a cynic. Kylo/Ben is a foil to Anakin Skywalker (and is quite aware of it), with the difference being that Anakin was dealing with being tempted by the Dark Side, where Kylo is tempted by the Light side (which is an interesting change up of the old formula).
The action sequences were all great for the most part, and the reveal of the Falcon was brilliantly funny. Not to mention Finn’s abject inability to deal with many of the things the original trilogy characters took in stride (talking to astromech droids and Chewbacca, the moving gunnery chairs in the Falcon, etc.).
Kylo Ren’s tantrums. Yeah, they’re childish, but they set him apart from Darth Vader in a pretty clear way. He’s young, he’s rash, and he doesn’t seem to share his grandfather’s tendency to kill the messenger. He just destroys everything else in the room until he’s vented some steam and sends the terrified underling off to find a clean pair of trousers. They also seem to illustrate that whatever he’s going to be, he hasn’t finished getting there yet. Jedi Knight or Sith Lord, he still has a lot of growing up to do, not entirely unlike Rey or Finn (Poe for his part seems to mostly have his stuff together at this point in his life)
I like the ship designs. I dig that the First Order troopers go into battle in what appear to be spaceborne Higgens boats. I like how they have a newer version of the X-Wings (if you are familiar with how aircraft or ship designs tend to evolve over time, it’s a nice touch along with the ARC-170 “Hex Wings” from the prequel trilogy).
Things I didn’t like:
Death Star Mark III. We’ve done this thing to death. You can only keep making it bigger until it stops being impressive. Also, the way the weapon works doesn’t seem to make any sense. It’s a giant beam cannon until it seems it’s firing a volley of missiles or something. I can’t wait for the sequel when we get to deal with the Death Star Mark IV, carved out of a sun or something.
The whole plotline of taking the thing down seemed a bit contrived. Captain Phasma is really going to lower the shields just because Finn asked her nicely? What does she have to gain here? If she had any pre-existing conflict with General Hux (more on him later) where she’d benefit from his superweapon going down, it might work, but otherwise it doesn’t really seem like she has any reason not to try and screw the Resistance over (setting off an alarm) or tell them to pound sand (do nothing and let them shoot her or feed her to a dianoga).
Once that’s done, they have to go help the fighter pilots destroy the surprisingly durable giant radiator thing. It really seems like the whole commando running around with thermal detonators and having the confrontation with Kylo Ren could have simply been them taking down the shield generator itself, leaving Poe’s squad to deal with the thermal whahoozit from there.
Really, overall, I feel like the whole Death Star III plot should have been avoided or cut, and the plot of this film should have focused on a race between the Resistance an the First Order to find Luke. They sort of go straight from “Oh by the way we have this superweapon” straight to “Let’s go blow up the Republic!” Which was by the way the same moment where they introduce the planets in question. It seems like if they held off until we actually saw any of the Republic, this might have had any emotional torque at all instead of just being an unexpected plot diversion. On that note, the whole map MacGuffin and everything to do with it was terrible. The less said the better.
General Hux I could not take seriously as a General. He looks like someone’s little brother. He looks like he could be Kylo’s brother. He doesn’t seem like someone who could get into a pissing match with a sith lord (or whatever Kylo Ren is, if not a Sith per se) on equal footing. They should have pulled an older actor with more presence for this. Hux would have been fine as a scheming underling of some sort. As it is, I don’t know why Supreme Leader Snoke is giving him the time of day, let alone putting him in charge of a whole bunch of troops and a superweapon. And this last bit is more of an observation than a complaint: The actor would be perfect as Hans in a live-action adaptation of Frozen.
I would have preferred it if they held off on the reveal of the relationship between Kylo Ren and Han/Leia as long as possible. Leave all the breadcrumbs, the warning that he’d be dealing with Han Solo, Han telling Leia that he’d seen him, etc., but don’t spell it out until Han and Kylo’s confrontation on the bridge. It’s OK if the audience figures it out on their own, but there was no good reason to just give it away so early. I feel like this was JJ trying to overcompensate for the John Harriman/Khan reveal in Star Trek Into Darkness (though judging from the internet, I was the only one who liked it rather than got annoyed by it in that film).
I’m undecided on Carrie Fisher’s performance as Leia. I’m somewhere between “she seemed to be phoning it in” and “maybe Leia is just so worn out from decades of war that she has barely anything to give at this point”. Either it’s very lackluster or amazingly spot on for a character who has had to deal with being the dutiful daughter leading the Resistance while her brother and husband have both scattered to the four corners of the galaxy because they couldn’t cope with the situation.
It frustrated me to no end that Poe never ordered the other pilots to “lock S-Foils into Attack Position” before any of the battles. I was on the edge of my seat waiting for that line. Alas.
Finally: Max Von Sydow: Who the heck was he supposed to be? I’m guessing one of Luke’s surviving Jedi knights, gone into hiding after Kylo betrayed Luke? He’s familiar enough to me that I was trying to figure out if he was someone from the original trilogy that I just wasn’t getting right away due to the years having gone by.
Oh, I have a theory on that: He just murdered his father. His father’s best friend (perhaps a surrogate uncle or godfather to him) wounded him in immediate retaliation. He’s feeling self-loathing, anger, all sorts of mixed up negative emotions. He also uses the Dark Side, which draws heavily off of intense emotion. So he’s pounding on the wound to make it hurt more, to amp himself up and make himself more powerful in the fight.
That or he’s trying to stop the bleeding. I wasn’t sure.
Wouldn’t be Han’s kid then…he would be a clone of Han.
Well, the actor has never appeared in Star Wars, so he’s not been seen on-screen before. His character name was “Lor San Tekka” which has an Obi Wan Kenobi and Qui Gon Jinn rhythm to it. And the implication was he fought in the Clone Wars or at the least the Battle of Yavin, so anything is possible.
My guess is he will appear in the animated TV series Star Wars Rebels sometime soon.
Domnhall Gleeson’s had a hell of a last two years. Last year he was very good in “Frank”, “Calvary” (where he costarred with his father Brendan) and “Unbroken” and this year I saw him in “Ex Machina”, “Brooklyn” and “Star Wars”. and don’t forget, he’ll be in "Revenant.
He’s been busy.
:smack:
The way the Starkiller works is pretty similar to one of the doomsday weapons the Imperial Remnant builds in the EU. I saw it as a wink-and-a-nod to the hardcore fans who’d be familiar with those books.
I disagree. The First Order in general is a young organization. Hux is a young guy. Kylo Ren is a young guy. Phasma is a young woman. This cadre of raised-from-birth stormtroopers is just coming into service for the first time. It’s not like the Empire, which carried the weight of millenia of Republic bureaucracy and had a military run by old men like Tarkin. The First Order admires idealism and adherence to official dogma a lot more than the naked scheming and cynicism of the Empire - it’s likely that anyone older than Hux would have grown up before Snoke came to power and thus would be unsuitable for service.
And don’t forget he was mentioned in the opening crawl. Paraphrasing: “Leia sent her most daring young pilot to gather information on Luke’s where-abouts from an old ally”
I was sure it would be someone we knew. (Wedge or Capt Antilles or something) He also says, “[Leia]'ll always be ‘royalty’ to me”. Seems like a lot of information for no one to know what they meant.
I’d imagine that, after the Emperor died, there was a lot of infighting among the remnants of the Empire before Snoke rose to power - and once he was in control, I suspect there were a lot of purges of officers loyal to other contenders.
I’m guessing Max von Sydow’s character is going to be (or already is) part of the new EU. His line about how Leia will “always be royalty” to him suggests that he’s an Alderaanian.
I’ll echo others, good but not great. Solid foundation for the next few movies, but too many callbacks and not terribly original plot. No more Deathstars going forward, ok guys?
None of that comes through in the film. To the casual viewer, it’s just Empire v2.0 with a new paint job. More storm troopers, more TIE fighters, more Death Stars, more of the same with a new Vader wannabe stomping around. It’s like saying Comcast is a hip young company now because they call themselves Xfinity. Is Phasma a young woman? Who knows? We barely see her and, when we do, she never takes her helmet off. And leader of this “young” organization is some wizened bald giant hologram.
Someone who knows the material better might get your take from it but it mainly just looked like a couple kids improbably running the show.
Rather than a sun-sized Death Star next time, I want them to go in the other direction and have a hundred comet-sized Death Stars. Make it up in volume, bad guys!
One thing that makes the First Order different from the Empire is I don’t think they run the galaxy. The New Republic does.
JJ Abrams has said that the idea behind the First Order is “what if the Nazis had fled to South America and taken over there”. So at first you have the old guard running things and bringing in the Imperial idealogy - and then this guy Snoke shows up and takes over somehow, like Stalin seizing power in Russia after Lenin died, and he pushes out the old guard, the questioners, the people who remember a time before Snoke and haven’t been raised to adore him unquestioningly. That’s what I read into it, anyway. Snoke doesn’t seem to be part of the old order, he’s strong in the Dark Side but isn’t Sith. He finds the First Order’s idealogy useful for keeping himself in power, and he doesn’t want anyone working for him who isn’t a true believer.
As far as the “old scarred bald guy” thing, I get the impression that the image of the Supreme Leader that shows up in official propaganda looks about as much like the real man as those of the Kims, or the king of Thailand, or anyone else who’s the center of a cult of personality.
But none of that requires knowing the material. I had the same though during my viewing of the movie. The First Order is young because its been 30 years since Return of the Jedi. The old leaders of the Empire are dead (either through in-fighting or in massive battles like the one that must have occurred on Jakku) and a new generation is running the show. Just as it is with the old Rebel Alliance and the new Resistance.
I also thought it was pretty strongly implied that the First Order is just one of many powers that operate in the galaxy now. The New Republic is another such entity, but they can’t engage in direct warfare with the First Order, so they offer support to the Resistance to do it for them. Hux’s speech was a rallying cry for the beginning of a new war between the two groups.
Not that this is something that’s entirely clear from the movies, but the Empire didn’t rule the whole galaxy, either - nor the old Republic before it. There are other polities in the galaxy. When they land on Tattooine in Phantom Menace, for example, Qui-Gon points out that they’re not in the Republic anymore, and Republic laws (such as outlawing slavery) don’t apply there.
Yeah, it’s pretty apparent that, even at its peak, the Republic never controlled the entire galaxy, and the same probably applied to the Republic as well. The Resistance can’t make sense of BB-8’s map because it’s an uncharted sector of the galaxy, so it seems there are places that the Republic doesn’t even know about.
Just saw it – really enjoyed it.
First, the positives:
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Abrams deserves a Nobel prize for getting a good, focused, and energetic performance out of Ford. I can’t remember Ford putting that much effort into a role since Air Force One (or maybe even before).
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Visuals and everything was great. Not surprised, of course. Great design, too, with most of the locations and aliens.
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Characters and performances were great all around – especially Ridley and Boyega. Great to see such a competent, not-needing-to-be-saved female hero!
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BB-8 was fantastically cute.
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I really liked the performance of Driver as Kylo Ren – he effectively portrayed a dangerous but screwed up twerp wannabe. Kind of like the bad guy from The Incredibles, but with self-doubt and rage instead of glee and sarcasm.
A few things (Abrams-isms) bugged me:
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The Abrams-ism of having the heroes be suddenly awesome at things without having to learn or practice… Kirk is ready to be the Captain of the flagship of Starfleet just a few months after graduating Starfleet Academy??? Rey can pilot the Falcon like a hotshot without ever having set foot in it before, and (apparently) without ever flying any space-going vessels before??? Finn and Rey are ready to go toe-to-toe with a Sith Lord (albeit a wounded one) in lightsaber combat after a few hours of playing with one (at most, for Finn), or having never even lifted one (for Rey)??? This one could partly be explained if they say that Luke was guiding them from a distance, I suppose, but based on Luke’s apparent surprise (as I read his expression, at least), I don’t think so.
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The Abrams-ism of glossing over technical challenges – Kirk just has to kick the engine really hard to fix it; Finn’s plan to lower the base’s shields is to just put a gun to the head of a high-ranking stormtrooper? Not only does she obey (and apparently there are multiple unmanned shield-control stations on the base!), but no one else on the bridge or command deck just happens to notice their shields are down, and no one can bring them back up? The astrography (astronomy + geography – mapping in space) seemed weird (kind of like beaming from Earth to the Klingon homeworld); all the planets that were blown up were apparently within sight of each other during daylight, Rey and Finn can steal the Falcon and just drift into what seemed like interstellar space right off of Jakku, all hyperspace journeys seem to take minutes.
I still liked it – lots and lots of fun stuff. But I think those Abrams-isms could be prevented without too much trouble by touching up the script in small ways (especially #2).
Finally, the questions:
Is Snoke that enormous, or is it just the hologram (like the Emperor in Empire Strikes Back)?
What is Rey’s background (I’m sure this will be explored)?
I think there’s a very high likelihood that the only reason Han Solo was killed was because Harrison Ford told them (I’m guessing – obviously I don’t know for sure) he wouldn’t do it unless they killed off the character.
Again, didn’t come through for me at all in the film. The First Order didn’t seem to be on the run – they had just built a giant star-eating-planet-ship for heaven’s sake. What kind of time and resources does that take to pull off? The good guys are still the “Resistance”; not the term you use for the winning team.
More power to ya. I sure didn’t.
Just got back. Wow, that was disappointing. It felt like a retelling of Episode 4, for an ADD audience. I didn’t give a shit about any of the characters, probably because the pacing was poor, and you could see the strings of the script pulling the characters plot point to plot point.
BB-8 was pretty rad though