Star Wars: The Force Awakens Discussion (HERE THERE BE SPOILERS)

[SeerSGB]

I don't know if it has come up at all but right there at the end, as the Falcon came out of hyperspace, for a split second, I wondered if Abrams was going to put Luke & the first Jedi temple on Earth. Just for a second.

The Force Awakens '80?

Guest Starring Dirk Benedict?

There is/was a old scrapped Lucasfilm project that had the origin of the Star Wars galaxy being colonist from Earth...sooooo

The secondary storyline, told through excerpts from a document called The Human Exodus, traces the origins of the Human species to a lost expedition from 25th century Earth. It also makes references to George Lucas's previous films, American Graffiti and THX 1138.

...

"Another place, another time. A world called Earth, in its early 25th century, is moving toward a totalitarian, computer-controlled society."

...

The Human Exodus begins on Earth, in the 25th century. The three main characters—computer hacker Dale Hender, space pilot Antonia Corelli, and her lover Paxton Solo—are leaders of an underground movement resisting the computers who have taken control of Earth's society. Hender discovers that the computers intend to force-feed the people of Earth drugs to control their emotions. They also learn that the computers intend to strip away the identities and family ties of the Humans under their control by replacing their names with serial numbers (Hender is to become the first of the THX series, THX-0001).

Pray that JJ doesn't go to far down the rabbit hole.

I think the idea might have been to Asimov/Niven that Lucas cinematic universe into one be linked generational story like Asimov and Niven have down with their books.

 

[cooleddie74]

Wow. That's....interesting.

And you thought Edward James Olmos had a menacing glare before.

 

[SalvorHardin]

Pray that JJ doesn't go to far down the rabbit hole.

Isn't he pretty much done with Star Wars after TFA? Or is he producing etc the other episodes?

 

[USS Firefly]

I liked the movie, although it felt like a remake of ANH, nothing new.
I've watched it with 8 friends and nobody was really enthusiastic.
And problably Rey gets trained to be a jedi by Luke in EP 8 like Luke was trained by Yoda in EP 5.

 

[Yanks]

I voted: "Better than the Prequels but not great"

It was an enjoyable movie experience.

Visually stunning and very complimentary to the Star Wars universe.

The score didn't raise any eyebrows for me.

I thought the acting was good all around.

I thought Kylo Ren was a weak villain. No intimidation factor there at all.

I really enjoyed Finn and Rey. Impressed with both actors.

I thought Rey seemed to grasp the "force stuff" pretty quickly compared to Luke in the original movies.

Rehashed plot to the extreme... but the SW's faithful don't seem to mind.

I thought JJ did a better job with ST2009. (ducks...)

My 13 year old son teared up when Hon Solo died.

Maybe the next movie will give us a solar system sized death thingy that draws energy from neighboring galaxies... (face palm)

Kylo Ren's lightsaber design is epically stupid. It would be more of a hazard to the wielder than whom he was fighting.

Was the number of the access port (wrong term probably) to blow up the "Star Killer" thingy that contained a "47" a little trek tidbit thrown in by JJ and /or possibly Pegg?

Tons of easter eggs in there for SW's fans.

Plot holes galore, but it's just Star Wars... I don't hold it to the same standard as trek.

I'm not unhappy that I saw it.

 

[TRON JA307020]

Here are my thoughts:
TFA was basically a rehash of ANH plus 30 years. There was literally nothing new that hadn't been done before, and that was it's failing.
1. Superweapon: ill-conceived supersized death star, handwaved in typical Abrams fashion.
Blowing up the starkiller base was even worse than blowing up the first death star. The whole thing felt forced; obviously the heroes were gonna win.
Han Solo being killed by Kylo Ren was a poor rehash of Ben Kenobi's death.
Captain Phasma was useless.
I could go on, but im not going to bother. In a nutshell, this article from LATIMES says it all: http://www.latimes.com/business/hil...the-force-awakens-stinks-20151226-column.html
It's all about mass market entertainment rather than creative and engaging stories; this was as far from creative and engaging as possible.

Production and acting quality (except for snoke and ren) was excellent, but all you get is yet another entertaining mindless popcorn flick rather than a true sequel to the original star wars.

Yeah my big problem is that it was pretty much the same story as ANH with some changes obviously. I mean another death star. That's 3 now and I hope we don't get another. That storyline has been played to death star at this point.

 

[ancient]

The biggest problem I think the movie has is definitely the thrice rehashed Death Star plot. Almost every aspect of the Starkiller aspect fell flat on its ass imo. The only other major problem for me is the rushed pacing. I've joked before that the only direction JJ ever gives his actors is "talk even faster this time" because of how rushed his movies are, with no moment allowed to have real impact.

It's still a fine movie though, just not amazing as a standalone story. I think 8 & 9 will swing my opinion of this movie strongly one way or another in retrospect. I'm glad JJ isn't directing them.

 

[Jedman67]

The biggest problem I think the movie has is definitely the thrice rehashed Death Star plot. Almost every aspect of the Starkiller aspect fell flat on its ass imo. The only other major problem for me is the rushed pacing. I've joked before that the only direction JJ ever gives his actors is "talk even faster this time" because of how rushed his movies are, with no moment allowed to have real impact.

It's still a fine movie though, just not amazing as a standalone story. I think 8 & 9 will swing my opinion of this movie strongly one way or another in retrospect. I'm glad JJ isn't directing them.

Could be worse. Could be Sorkin writing them

 

[TRON JA307020]

The biggest problem I think the movie has is definitely the thrice rehashed Death Star plot. Almost every aspect of the Starkiller aspect fell flat on its ass imo. The only other major problem for me is the rushed pacing. I've joked before that the only direction JJ ever gives his actors is "talk even faster this time" because of how rushed his movies are, with no moment allowed to have real impact.

It's still a fine movie though, just not amazing as a standalone story. I think 8 & 9 will swing my opinion of this movie strongly one way or another in retrospect. I'm glad JJ isn't directing them.

Agreed. I am glad JJ isn't writing or directing them. Hes good at remakes but not much originality. Lets hope Rian gives us something new. I also want to see some cool world building. Getting tired of desert planets and yavin like worlds.

 

[Set Harth]

Dessert planets... yum!

 

[davejames]

All the other comparisons people make to ANH don't bother me at all, and actually do feel like clever homages or reinterpretations... but the reuse of the Death Star just feels SO blatant and uninspired that I have a hard time overlooking it. And unfortunately it's the one thing that keeps me from really loving the movie as much as I wish I could.

Especially considering so much of the second half of the movie seems to revolve around the damn thing.

 

[Mr. Adventure]

I watched RLMs review, and now I can never un-see the notion that Luke was taking a piss when Rey shows up at the end.

The Force Shakens

 

[TRON JA307020]

All the other comparisons people make to ANH don't bother me at all, and actually do feel like clever homages or reinterpretations... but the reuse of the Death Star just feels SO blatant and uninspired that I have a hard time overlooking it. And unfortunately it's the one thing that keeps me from really loving the movie as much as I wish I could.

Especially considering so much of the second half of the movie seems to revolve around the damn thing.

Agreed. Also calling it starkiller base didn't hide the fact that it was still a death star. I find it funny that the resistance cheered and acted like they had a huge victory after the thing destroyed 5 planets including the seat of the republic. Not a great victory if you ask me. The first order had crippled the republic and all they lost was another death star.

 

[Skywalker]

All the other comparisons people make to ANH don't bother me at all, and actually do feel like clever homages or reinterpretations... but the reuse of the Death Star just feels SO blatant and uninspired that I have a hard time overlooking it. And unfortunately it's the one thing that keeps me from really loving the movie as much as I wish I could.

Especially considering so much of the second half of the movie seems to revolve around the damn thing.

Agreed. Also calling it starkiller base didn't hide the fact that it was still a death star. I find it funny that the resistance cheered and acted like they had a huge victory after the thing destroyed 5 planets including the seat of the republic. Not a great victory if you ask me. The first order had crippled the republic and all they lost was another death star.

But they prevented the Starkiller from destroying their base of operations, and other worlds after that. The Resistance lives to fight another day while the First Order loses its most powerful weapon. It's certainly a victory worth celebrating.

 

[arch101]

I saw nothing in the film to make me believe that the First Order had anything more than Starkiller Base, the men on it, and a star destroyer. If that's the case, then the Resistance did win a big victory here, and the FO is now on the run. It makes sense that Empire wanna-bees, hanging onto the last shreds of Palpatines imperial dream, would resort to putting all their eggs in one basket, just like their predecessors did.
Did I miss any reference to a larger FO? or is it just assumed there's more to them than that?

 

[{ Emilia }]

I would assume that the fact that Snoke wasn't with them on Starkiller Base means that there's another headquarter.

 

[Trekkin]

Starkiller base seemed to be a combination of the Deathstar and the sun-destroying superweapon from the EU.

I think that last part is why I'm so blasé about the movie taking the same track. The novels ended up doing it so many times (sometimes well, sometimes really badly) it ended up being a running gag that constructing fragile planet-destroyers really is the only trick in the Imperial handbook.

 

[InklingStar]

I don't know if it has come up at all but right there at the end, as the Falcon came out of hyperspace, for a split second, I wondered if Abrams was going to put Luke & the first Jedi temple on Earth. Just for a second.

That's the twist - the old monastery at Skellig Michael was actually the ruin of the first Jedi temple.

 

[ancient]

You can only use the planet killing weapon so many times...

...before you run out of planets.

Then you have to invent a Genesis device to get your planets back.

 

[USS Triumphant]

Imagine this change to the ending:

They bring back BB-8 *before* the attack on Starkiller Base, and determine than rather than being exactly a map to Luke, it's a vector, frequency, and encryption key to use to send a message to Luke. So they send one.

They make their attack on the Base, Han gets killed by Kylo, and the attack otherwise fails miserably. All seems lost - Chewbacca is picking up Finn and Rey to make a run for it - when something huge drops out of hyperspace. It's a partially built Death Star! Even less finished than the one in ROTJ, it's basically a barebones - superlaser, general frame, hyperdrive, etc, but not filled in otherwise really at all. Turns out, it's Luke - he left to go find the facility where they laid the hull for the other two Death Stars to try to prevent the place from being used to build anymore since the First Order was starting to rebuild their power, and found the original prototype unit used for testing the superlaser designs. (While he's explaining this, cut to Hux, Phasma, Kylo, and probably just generally everyone evacuating the Base.) He fires it and blows the crap outta Starkiller Base, just before it was going to fire and destroy the Resistance.

Then he meets Rey and begins to train her, and Kylo goes to Snoke, just as before.