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

[Ithekro]

From the time I the Old Republic, the Galaxy has either been at war, or been recovering from war for the last 50 years or more. Since the end of Episode II when the Clone Wars started until the present day. Things looks run down and while some military hardware looks new, it is mostly just based on stuff from the Clone Wars.

 

[TRON JA307020]

It's Star Wars. Sure, it looked silly and nonsensical but I don't go to Star Wars movies to validate my scientific view of the universe. The Veridian sun in Generations shouldn't have gone dark the very instant Dr. Soran's trilithium probe detonated but it did.

Frankly, I wouldn't even have used another moon-sized superweapon in this film and gone for something more along the lines of a bacteriological warfare plot against the New Republic to wipe out entire planetary populations, but I doubt that would have gone over too well with Lucasfilm in an era of real-life terror plots and doomsday scenarios. Creepier. More realistic and it wouldn't have involved violations of basic scientific rules to execute such a plot, but probably a non-starter in this day and age.

There isn't much more they can do with a destructive weapon story line now. I wish they would have waited at leas after EPVII to do another death star. Now we have a death star in EPVI and VII a bit of overkill. I suspect they will now focus on the new orders military might and have another episode focus on their star destroyer fleets which of course would be derivative of TESB. Maybe we will see the new order wiping out civilizations the old fashioned way or bending them to their will using storm troopers, At Ats, Tie Fighters and the Star Destroyers.

I hope they don't do something stupid and have the new order create a sun destroyer or something along those lines.

 

[Ithekro]

Maybe the just wanted to get the superweapon out of everyone's system right at the start so they can go to other kinds of storytelling. Or to even the odds by having to take out the Republic Fleet and Capital while the Resistance takes out the superweapons, thereby leveling the playing field and making any rebuilding efforts of the last in universe 30 years wiped clean, so to speak.

So by the next film, its young force users, a few capital ships and lots of Starfighters and freighters as the balance of power.

 

[TRON JA307020]

Maybe the just wanted to get the superweapon out of everyone's system right at the start so they can go to other kinds of storytelling. Or to even the odds by having to take out the Republic Fleet and Capital while the Resistance takes out the superweapons, thereby leveling the playing field and making any rebuilding efforts of the last in universe 30 years wiped clean, so to speak.

So by the next film, its young force users, a few capital ships and lots of Starfighters and freighters as the balance of power.

Possibly. The super weapons were out of my system after ROTJ. I am surprised that the one they came up with was basically the same thing only that it could destroy more than one planet at a time if they were close together. Of course the old death star was of greater concern because it could travel so it was a greater danger to the galaxy imo. I just wasn't impressed with this last death star. I hope we get to see a larger space battle in the next one then what we have seen before.

 

[Ithekro]

Starkiller does have to be mobile, simply because of how it powers its weapon. You cannot drain a star to exhaustion if you plan to fire more than once. Logic (What? logic in Star Wars?) suggest that Starkiller Base moves to the system it just blew away and drains that star to power the next shot. In theory this keeps it safe from direct attacks from the planets it is going to attack, if the enemy doesn't know where they are going to attack. Of course people would know where it is going, but no one would be using that star for anything anyway and it doesn't telegraph your next target as standard procedure.

Sure the Resistance knew where Starkiller was going to shoot next, but maybe there is something else in that system that the First Order doesn't want destroyed, so they don't go there to drain that star.

Of course there must also be several hundred to thousands of charted stars with no planets around them that could just be navigation hazards that could be used to fuel the main weapon of this base.

 

[Mr Light]

My fanwank excuse for why they could see the Starkiller energy:

The energy obviously is passing through hyperspace to reach Hosnian Prime, and due to the vastness of space it's obviously guided energy not moving in a straight line. Therefore, since they're controlling the trajectory they intentionally flew it through the region of enemy planets to intimidate them along the way.

(wait, do we see the planets exploding, or just the beams going by? that would kill my theory)

 

[Ithekro]

I will see the film again by the end of the week, so I can investigate if we see exploding planets from the castle, or just the beams.

 

[Skywalker]

My fanwank excuse for why they could see the Starkiller energy:

The energy obviously is passing through hyperspace to reach Hosnian Prime, and due to the vastness of space it's obviously guided energy not moving in a straight line. Therefore, since they're controlling the trajectory they intentionally flew it through the region of enemy planets to intimidate them along the way.

(wait, do we see the planets exploding, or just the beams going by? that would kill my theory)

We see the planets exploding, too.

 

[Mr Light]

Curses! Well, we only see the planets exploding from Maz Kanata's planet right? Is there any chance her planet was in the Hosnian system? (of course even that doesn't make sense, since the image would only travel at the speed of light so it would take minutes/hours/days to reach the other world) Man, why couldn't they just have watched the explosion on a damn tv or something...

 

[Skywalker]

Or they could have had Leia speaking to the Resistance officer she sent to speak to the Senate (we see her in that shot just before the beam from the Starkiller hits), then suddenly she looks up at something and has just a moment to react before her hologram cuts out, and then they find out what happened.

 

[Set Harth]

My only gripe with the film was the CGI characters Maz and Snoke. Why do it?

So you can have aliens that are more alien-looking than you would get with people in makeup?

 

[Unicron]

In watching a vid about some of the unused concepts that didn't make the final cut, one of them was kind of interesting. I don't know how far the idea might have gone beyond basic concept art, but at one point they were thinking of having Anakin's force ghost appear as a "hybrid" version. That is, it would include both elements of his original appearance during the Clone Wars before he fully turned, as well as some of his mechanical Vader implants to reflect that some Jedi who have struggled with both sides still have attributes of both, and casting off the shadow isn't easy.

 

[Magellan]

My only gripe with the film was the CGI characters Maz and Snoke. Why do it?

So you can have aliens that are more alien-looking than you would get with people in makeup?

*Ahem*

 

[Ithekro]

It worked for ESB and ROTJ, but it didn't for TPM. Yoda looked better as CGI for the PT.

The puppet was a huge risk. It worked, but that was a risk.

 

[cooleddie74]

^
+1.

The puppet of Yoda in the original theatrical version of TPM looked, well, just plain awkward and seemed to only barely resemble the Yoda that he'd become a generation later. His whole look was wrong and while I'll give George Lucas and Frank Oz credit for trying to make Yoda look younger and from a different era in galactic history, the designers of the Episode I puppet went too far and the results didn't look right at all.

The Blu ray CGI changes to Episode I fixed all of that and should be applauded, even by the fans who don't like George tinkering with his own movies.

 

[Venardhi]

The CGI Yoda still doesn't look like Yoda to me. Especially the version they plaster on merch. The proportions of the face, the hair, the skin color, the skin texture, etc. are all wrong.

 

[Ithekro]

He looked better than TPM puppet.

 

[Mach5]

The CGI Yoda still doesn't look like Yoda to me. Especially the version they plaster on merch. The proportions of the face, the hair, the skin color, the skin texture, etc. are all wrong.

True. Which is mind-boggling. Why couldn't they've just scanned the original puppet from ESB?

 

[Ithekro]

Probably not with the movement range and clothing collision programs available at that time. I seem to recall that Lucasfilm was pushing the edge in those days with just what they could do with CGI characters.

 

[Viper78]

My only gripe with the film was the CGI characters Maz and Snoke. Why do it?

So you can have aliens that are more alien-looking than you would get with people in makeup?

Here's the thing, I prefer the look of the aliens from the original trilogy.

There is something more realistic using physical characters whether it is puppets or people in makeup rather than a glossy looking CGI character. Jabba the Hutt for example looks much better in ROTJ than in the Special Edition ANH.

There is a place fore CGI in this film (Ships/lightsabers/space battles) but my point is when you are deliberately trying to get the same feel of the original trilogy why then would you make 2 of the bigger characters CGI which clearly sticks out?

This is my only negative for what I think is an excellent film.