To be fair, this happened a long time ago. Heard of anything happening there lately?
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Observations and Questions:
What character is narrating?
Two scenes are from the standpoint of stormtroopers…the first guy on Tatooine and the landing scene. Are we going to have a stormtrooper or someone impersonating a stormtrooper as a major character?
The landing scene seemed like something out of Aliens.
There are two new worlds in addition to Tatooine…the world where the X-wings are rocketing across the lakes district and the icy forest with the Sith lord.
Lightclaymore - well, it make more sense than a double ended lightsaber.
New characters: unknown narrator, guy in storm trooper armor on Tatooine, woman on speeder bike on Tatooine, X-wing pilot and Sith lord.
The only really old “character” to speak of was the Millennium Falcon. And yes, that was awesome.
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also Futbol-D2
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My first thought as well.
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Yep. I had the same problem. I mentioned this at io9 and was then pounced on by a horde of either oversensitive 13 year olds, visually illiterate people, or Disney employees.
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Which, quite honestly, is a pretty clever thought. If that’s an astromech built for a desert world, it’d make sense for it to be a big ball to roll over rocky/sandy terrain, have minimal joints to get sand into, and no small moving parts to break down.
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I know what you guys are saying but I got kind of a thrill from because… it reminded me of how they did it in Firefly. Y’know, Serenity trying to break away from Reavers and stuff? Heh, the Falcon and Serenity, kindred spirits… 
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Yeah I like the shaky cg cam stuff in firefly and battle star, but not in Star Wars for some reason… I would have preferred the illusion that I’m looking at models on blue screen haha
I don’t like the impossible follow-cam behind the falcon because it just looks like a video game. For me it actually reduces the excitement… I was hoping JJ would return to the epic look like Kurosawa or David Lean that the original SW had in some shots. But I’m just being an old grump… The kids will love it, and that’s who star wars is for!
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I gotta say, I really like the shot where the 3 X-Wings are flying in formation over the lake and kicking up that gorgeous wake. It gives you a real sense for how fast they’re going that didn’t exist in any of the original Trilogy. I mean, there’s the trenches on the death star, but that’s got the feel of a Scooby Doo background. The same 20"x20" miniature being repeated over and over, but being shot from slightly different distances and angles.
ETA:
Yes, there’s also the speederbikes on Endor, but that’s just a blur. Also there’s the landspeeder on Tatooine, but that wasn’t done as well as it should have. You can see the rigidity of it’s rigging in how they try to bounce the landspeeder, it ends up looking like a prop on the end of a stick being wiggled around. I know, it was 1977, I just think that there’s positive things to be said for the advancements in practical effects and CG. As long as you don’t build the whole damn movie around them as a showcase, like they did with Phantom Menace, which is basically what it says on the tin when it comes to dialog and story.
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Both better than {most people} make it out to be and not as good as {most people} make it out to be
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Is that on Tatooine? If so, don’t we need TWICE as many lens flares?
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And, hilariously, John Boyega is in an Imperial Stormtrooper uniform and his last film was Imperial Dream!
COINCIDENCE?!?!?!?
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Weirdly enough, the last movie I think I actually stood in line for (at a midnight Thursday-morning release premiere, in fact), was Phantom Menace. I’ve bought my tickets online for every screening since that I’ve expected to go anywhere near sold-out, and for those movies I go to the Arclight, where seating is reserved.
There are plenty of things from the 20th century that I don’t miss at all, and standing in line for tickets is definitely one of them.
There certainly isn’t enough of anything in this trailer to increase or decrease my excitement for the movie. Considering release is over a year away, they won’t have most VFX shots anywhere close to ready for public consumption, so they’ll give us a new character or two, a new droid, a new lightsaber, and something iconic flying along in a nifty way we haven’t seen before(X-Wings in atmosphere, flying just above water, and our old pal the Falcon engaging some TIE fighters… well, okay, maybe we have seen that before). Anyway, looks like things are on schedule. Good enough for me.
But man, would I love to stay off Tatooine for a movie or two. This’ll make six of seven movies that go to this desert backwater that’s supposed to be the planet that’s farthest from the bright center of the universe.
Kinda like if Hogwarts were located in Bakersfield, CA instead of a scenic district in Scotland.
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Okay, that’s my second (actual) laugh out loud for tonight from BoingBoing.
Either this is a really good night, or I might need to slow down on the farmhouse style ales. That is not an XOR.
Edit to add: Full disclosure: I have lived near, and driven through Bakersfield.
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To put it mildly; it was a 60 year old ship in Star Wars, in this one it’ll be pushing 100.
Screw both waiting in line for tickets (had enough of that as a kid waiting for matinees at the only cinema in town) and midnight premieres (done it twice - Attack of the Clones and Matrix Reloaded - twice bitten…).
ETA:
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The Earth has spent more time being a lava planet or an ice planet or a jungle planet than it has being the multi-climate planet we know now.
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Pretty much, yeah.
I’m excited, and I’ll see it at the cinema- but I’m not expecting a masterpiece. The new Hobbit, however…I doubt I’ll spend money on it.
It was just too far, far away.
People chuckle at the single-biome trope, but really the only unrealistic thing about it is that these planets all have human-suitable atmospheres. What’s producing the oxygen on Tatooine or Hoth? Even inside a giant slug in an asteroid cave, the air pressure and gravity are normal.
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Has the series ever actually commented on the relative lack of technological innovation?
60 years old would be like flying the last production Spitfire; 100 years old we’re talking Model T.
I have to say, the prequels so utterly dismayed me, so completely eviscerated my faith in the franchise, that I’m ready for anything. The teaser is pretty cool, some nice stuff, and I have the shivers about Abrams at the helm.
But I might make a thing this time of going to a premiere - with the peregrinus_bis/newgen bunch. Got a year to take them through the originals, to build Lego ATATs, to orate on the virtues of Mark Hamill and Harrison Ford.
