Yeah, and you didn’t need Rey to make it to Luke for all we see of Mark Hamill. You could have got away with a silent shot of Luke looking at the camera without getting the protagonist there right at the end of the movie.
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There were a couple of benefits for that ending, though. The primary one being that you signal that the next movie is not going to deal with the search for Luke. Just a little bit of screen time to cut out a bunch of exposition later.
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My first impression was that they were trying to undo the damage done by the prequel, they redid a new hope, empire and jedi as a means to safely establish a recognizable world. Lazy, but annoyingly effective.
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Strongly agree. His conflict is fundamentally that he is a Vader wannabe.
We don’t know why, though. (At the risk of a bad pun) This doesn’t happen in a vacuum.
Next installment I expect we learn why he wants to be Vader and not Luke.
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I actually loved how they handled this.
Why the massive visual difference between the first and second Gen movies?
Well, the second gen movies were mostly set on densely populated city planets where the Republic was based. First Gen movies took place in space or on marginal planets where the law did not strongly hold sway.
The new film rationalized it briefly by showing the sleek, clean city planets depicted in the prequels. Moments before destroying them (a symbolic ‘sorry’? Maybe.)
It isn’t a perfect way to explain away why the prequels looked more futuristic than the originals, but considering that any movies after 1983 were not planned, it is admirable that they managed to come up with that much.
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There was no rational reason I should have expected this but I really wanted some kind of comment made to Han so that his reply would have been, “Whaddya mean? I always shoot first!”
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So among the music geeks I know, you might be amused that some think John Williams is a hack that copied Holst’s “The Planets”.
They may have a point. But you should all check it out for yourselves.
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Arrived in Tijuana yesterday late afternoon hoping to catch the 7:00 pm showing in 4DX. Tickets were already sold out.
Tachin Jr had his heart set on the full experience and since we’re in town for his birthday I bought tickets for today. What’s one more day?
Anyway, I liked the movie, I really did, it felt like star wars and it was a lot of fun.
It really felt like everybody involved was doing their best and they were having a lot of fun. I loved Rey and Finn, (Other people have mentioned that it was somehow obvious that Rey is Luke’s daughter, I didn’t see it but I did get the impression that her memories as a child might not be complete so I gave her a pass on everything except the force suggestion, seriously that came out of nowhere)
My biggest problem with the movie is that I don’t think there’s a clear story arc for everyone involved. Sure, Rey learns how to use the force but it’s so sudden and apparently effortless it almost feels like she doesn’t deserve it, at the very least she hasn’t earned it. Finn doesn’t want to be a stormtrooper and sort of stumbles into the rebellion, but we never see him overcome his desire to run. And don’t tell me he never wanted to run, he was told he had the eyes of someone who wants to run.
We know the bad guy is conflicted and we see him overcome his dilemma while setting up an obvious redemption arc for his character but we never see why he’s tempted by the light, or how he was seduced to the darkside.
It felt incomplete that way.
But like I said. It fun and I got my money’s worth, that’s as much as I dared hope for.
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I’m going to have to read the novelization (Hey! Alan Dean Foster!) to see if it can shed any light on anything that might have been cut for time, or was otherwise not communicated effectively in the movie. Most of what went on was just groovy; this movie was very entertaining, and much, much better than the prequels. I really want to like it. But I have no patience for lazy storytelling, even my own, and just because something has been a trope or myth for thousands of years doesn’t mean one should stop looking for a new tale to tell.
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Ya, but the cool part is Fett getting rescued from the sarlacc and barely being digested after decades down there…
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Hey guys, some fun reading here: Starkiller Base: The Contractor Memos
A highlight:
Let us know when you’ll arrive and we’ll deactivate the shields for you. By the way, your design of the shields to bar only objects traveling at sub-light speed was very smart; that design tweak saved us thousands, not to mention a full day of construction. As you noted: What kind of moof milker is going to approach a planet at light speed? No one, that’s who.
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Bowcaster wound. Bowcasters require wookiee strength to operate. At least according to the EU. So it bugged me that Han could use it without trouble.
One thin I did like was the new SFX for the blasters and turbolasers. They actually sound like they’re shooting deadly stuff instead of the traditional Pewpew.
Hey, is it just me, or doe Poe look an awful lot like Biggs from Empire?
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Well, your entire theory is a bit flimsy because there’s a whole bunch of Force abilities you weren’t aware of. There’s lots of ways to explain how this all happened but c’mon, we’re still on the first movie. Rian Johnson (who’s directing Episode VIII) actually requested certain scenes in Episode VII to be cut so Episode VIII can explain and expand upon them. I’m sure the mystery behind Rey’s powers, her heritage, and how Anakin’s lightsaber came into Maz’s hands will be expanded upon then, or if not then, in some spin-off series or novel.
Also, you are making assumptions about Luke’s character. It’s been 30 years. Perhaps in retrospect, he decided that Obi-Wan and Yoda did make the right decision by dropping him off on Tatooine with his uncle and aunt. Either way, the Empire would have found him sooner or later because of how the Force works: those strong in the Force are always at the center of its tapestry of destiny, no matter how hard they try to outrun it.
And especially since Rey is tremendously strong in the Force, there aren’t many places for her to hide besides Jakku. The Force is in all living things, and on a desert planet, there aren’t many living things. This is why it took the Jedi so long to discover Anakin. Typically, Force-sensitive children are extremely easy to identify – Obi-Wan himself was sent off to the Jedi Temple when he was only six months old. In a desolate environment, this is much harder because there is very little life to draw from, so an untrained Force-sensitive child’s powers are not immediately apparent. Similarly, it’s also why Luke was able to hide so easily and why Rey’s powers didn’t really start manifesting themselves until she went off-planet.
EDIT
Also, just remember this, but another bit of KOTOR making it into official canon: Rakata Prime has been formally recognized. It’s very strongly implied that this is the planet that Luke is on (right down to the islands and huge sea), which in turn implies that he succeeded in discovering the first “Jedi” temple.
Too bad they didn’t go with the Star Forge as the new bad guy superweapon. One of my big peeves of the movie is how Starkiller Base is just a Death Star 3.0. I have a feeling JJ Abrams and Lawrence Kasden really, really wanted to go a different direction but it was probably a concession they had to make with the Disney producers. They’re even self-aware about how lame it is as a plot device and poke fun at it in the movie.
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The panelists on the current Incomparable Podcast episode (excellent show!) stressed the fact that Poe is an entirely new character and not a stand in for Han or Luke (or anybody). But to me he totally comes off like Biggs, not only in how he looks, but his character, too.
{*} It’s Star Wars, not Empire as he died in the Battle of Yavin
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Yeah I didn’t quote chapter and verse. But hey, maybe I’m not crazy. Dailies from Star Wars have better characterization of Biggs in the context of his relationship with Luke. Maybe Poe is one of those people with dead people’s eyes?
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With much apologies to Arlo Guthrie…
You know, if one story, just one story, has the son kill the father, they may think it’s really sick and they won’t like it.
And if two stories do it, in harmony, they may think that one’s a knock off and they won’t love either of them.
And if three stories do it! Can you imagine three stories, in a row, singin’ a bar of “Oedipus’s Restaurant” and walkin’ out? They may think it’s an “organized trilogy.”
And four? Four stories in a row and some clown might call it lazy writing.
But can you imagine fifty stories in a row ? I said FIFTY stories in a row. Walkin’ in, singin’ a bar of “Oedipus’s Restaurant” and walkin’ out?
Friends, They may think it’s MYTHIC, and that’s what it is: THE LAZY FATHER-KILLING MASSACREE MOVEMENT!
. . . and all you gotta do to join is to clap again it the next time a sequel comes around on the screen
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Your post is full of terrific ideas and a lot of deep knowledge of SW lore that I hadn’t even connected; THANK YOU for reminding me of the KOTOR powers. That puts a whole new spin on Snoke and the training Kylo Ren’s received.[quote=“metsuken, post:116, topic:70920”]
The Force is in all living things, and on a desert planet, there aren’t many living things.
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I hadn’t even thought of this, but it makes total sense.[quote=“metsuken, post:116, topic:70920”]
One of my big peeves of the movie is how Starkiller Base is just Death Star 3.0. I have a feeling JJ Abrams and Lawrence Kasden really, really didn’t want
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That’s the feeling I had, too – Han and Leia practically roll their eyes on camera when they hear about it. My hope is that it was a symbol of the First Order’s hubris, and something to keep the Resistance feeling overconfident as we go into the inevitably-darker middle chapter.
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But isn’t the opposite the reason Yoda hid on Dagobah? An overabundance of living things hiding his own force signature?
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