TFA re-watch observations and nitpicks (Spoilers!!)

[WarpFactorZ]

I accessed my digital version of TFA Thursday night, and have watched it a couple times since. Some issues came up that were pause for question:

1. The map to Luke's location: BB8 carries the missing piece. R2 has the rest in his rusty innards. But so does the First Order (Kylo Ren comments they have reconstructed everything from the Empire's databanks). So, why is the missing piece such a problem? Can't they just do a focused search on the habitable planets in that part of the galaxy that ISN'T included? Seems easier that the path they chose.

2. Kylo Ren takes off his helmet and puts it down before he interrogates Rey. When she fights back, he runs to Snoke's chamber without his helmet. But when we see him storming back to get her (directly from speaking with Snoke), he is wearing his helmet. Apparently he stores them for easy access around Starkiller base.

3. Kylo Ren is incredibly interested every time the mention of a girl from Jakku is made. It seems pretty obvious he knows who she is. And as others have noted, Kylo spears one of his own who is about to kill her at Luke's Jedi academy.

4. The ladder to the guns in the Millenium Falcon is oriented vertically with respect to the floor, but from the perspective of the gun-pit, they are horizontal. That must make it hard to stay in those seats when gravity is present (e.g. on Jakku).

Discuss!! (or provide your own observations).

 

[Set Harth]

And as others have noted, Kylo spears one of his own who is about to kill her at Luke's Jedi academy.

I thought that was supposed to be a Jedi student that was killed there.

 

[WarpFactorZ]

I thought that was supposed to be a Jedi student that was killed there.

Whomever it is, they're wearing some type of mask/helmet, and have their lightsaber drawn behind them as if they're going to strike. Pause the scene and consider. Kylo Ren saves Rey, and drops her on Jakku (probably because he recognizes her potential, and intends to convert her to the Dark Side later on). It's the reason why he's so interested in "the girl" who keeps popping up in all the reports he receives.

 

[Reverend]

I accessed my digital version of TFA Thursday night, and have watched it a couple times since. Some issues came up that were pause for question:

1. The map to Luke's location: BB8 carries the missing piece. R2 has the rest in his rusty innards. But so does the First Order (Kylo Ren comments they have reconstructed everything from the Empire's databanks). So, why is the missing piece such a problem? Can't they just do a focused search on the habitable planets in that part of the galaxy that ISN'T included? Seems easier that the path they chose.

First off, space is big. REALLY big. And galaxies are full of stars. Hundreds of Millions of them. What you're suggesting would take years, if not millennia. Add to that the fact that planets aren't exactly small either. Trying to pick out one bloke on a whole planet that could be teaming with life? Good luck with that.

Secondly, it's supposedly in the Unknown Regions, which as the name suggests, it unknown. As in, there are next to no charted hyperspace routes in that whole area of the galaxy, let alone safe courses to every possibly inhabited world.

Finally, I think people have gotten the wrong idea of what the map actually *is*. It's not a map to Luke per see; it's a map to the first Jedi Temple. Trying to find him means trying to find where they think he went. Hence R2 spending a decade or so in low-power mode sifting though 80-something years of memory, trying to piece it all together.
The missing piece came from Lor San Tekka because he's an old explorer who specialises in obscure Jedi lore.

2. Kylo Ren takes off his helmet and puts it down before he interrogates Rey. When she fights back, he runs to Snoke's chamber without his helmet. But when we see him storming back to get her (directly from speaking with Snoke), he is wearing his helmet. Apparently he stores them for easy access around Starkiller base.

Looks like there may have been some footage cut there and caused a minor continuity error. It happens.

3. Kylo Ren is incredibly interested every time the mention of a girl from Jakku is made. It seems pretty obvious he knows who she is. And as others have noted, Kylo spears one of his own who is about to kill her at Luke's Jedi academy.

I'm not so convinced of that.
The vision switched between Luke & Rey's perspective and indeed also showed future as well as past events, so we don't know if Rey was present for that part or if it has even happened yet. People are only assuming that's Luke's academy being wiped out but we have no real context for it.
For one thing, I doubt Kylo was actually Kylo (outfit and all) when it happened. It was supposedly about 10-15 years ago and he would have been little more than a boy at the time.

As for his reactions to "a girl", you could just as easily read that as "seriously? A nobody scavenger is the reason you didn't get the droid?!" Hence his later line to the effect of "I've heard so much about you."

4. The ladder to the guns in the Millenium Falcon is oriented vertically with respect to the floor, but from the perspective of the gun-pit, they are horizontal. That must make it hard to stay in those seats when gravity is present (e.g. on Jakku).

That's always been the case. The artificial gravity in the gun wells is at a right angle to that of the rest of the ship. Just watch ANH.

Whomever it is, they're wearing some type of mask/helmet, and have their lightsaber drawn behind them as if they're going to strike. Pause the scene and consider.

I did and it's not a lightsaber, it's a metal club or staff of some sort. Also, not a mask, just a helmet. If you freeze frame it you can see a bearded human face.

Also of interest, if you look in the background in the wide shot, you can see a structure in the distance silhouetted by the flashes of lightning. The shape looks suspiciously similar to the Jedi Temple on Coruscant, though they're clearly not on Coruscant.
That could be the first Jedi Temple, which would support the idea that that particualr part of the vision was the future, not the past.

 

[Set Harth]

Whomever it is, they're wearing some type of mask/helmet

Looked like a hat to me. And I don't think this was supposed to be something that personally happened to Rey.

That's always been the case. The artificial gravity in the gun wells is at a right angle to that of the rest of the ship. Just watch ANH.

That was presumably understood by the OP. The question is how this is affected by dogfighting in a gravity well.

 

[Lakenheath 72]

I had the close caption on, so I was able to pick up dialog I may missed earlier.

How did Finn and Poe get into the TIE fighter without being spotted?

On the digital release, it seems to me that one scene has been altered. It's when Rey is on Jakku. She hears a ship leaving and she looks up to see a starship departing. I have seen the film on my tv twice. Both times, I see an empty sky with the sound of the ship departing. What happened to the ship?

I find it strange when Han Solo says that he drop off Rey and Finn off at the nearest habitable planet. This makes it sound like the Millennium Falcon left the Jakku system and was in another system. Yet, the MF did not go into hyperspace and Finn was adamant about leaving the system. It feels to me that some scenes were written by two or more writers who were not always in sync.

Finally, as the Starkiller Base is destroying, a TIE Fighter is seen from the control room as the base is exploded. One of the techs states that all eyes must be on the TIE Fighter. What is special about this fighter?

 

[HMS Ark Royal]

SDs or SSDs at Starkiller Base

 

[Admiral Shran]

3. Kylo Ren is incredibly interested every time the mention of a girl from Jakku is made. It seems pretty obvious he knows who she is. And as others have noted, Kylo spears one of his own who is about to kill her at Luke's Jedi academy.

I've only seen the movie twice, so I'm sure I haven't noticed a lot of things yet. This is definitely one of them. I'll have to keep a close eye on that scene on my next viewing.

 

[Reverend]

Not a nitpick, but there is something I noticed that I missed on first viewing. Rey didn't just stumble on Luke at that cliff side, one of the shots of her searching the ruins has her finding some evidence of habitation. It's easy to miss since it's low in frame, mostly obscured and the eye generally wants to focus on what Rey's doing, but there was a low table/stool and what looks like cooking utensils.

I did wonder why there were so many shots of her just wandering around and it seems I just missed the purpose of at least one of them.

That was presumably understood by the OP. The question is how this is affected by dogfighting in a gravity well.

Very little it would seam.
Artificial gravity seems to be *very* old technology in this universe so the systems seem perfectly able to compensate for the most part, with at most only a dramatically appropriate amount of lurching in extreme manoeuvres.

I find it strange when Han Solo says that he drop off Rey and Finn off at the nearest habitable planet. This makes it sound like the Millennium Falcon left the Jakku system and was in another system. Yet, the MF did not go into hyperspace and Finn was adamant about leaving the system. It feels to me that some scenes were written by two or more writers who were not always in sync.

Yeah, this seems to be a recurring problem in this script. Whoever wrote it doesn't have a very good grip on even the basics of how such things work even in fictional space travel.

It felt VERY contrived how Han & Chewie showed up seemingly minutes after the Falcon broke orbit. I get that he probably had the transponder rigged in case of theft and this was just the first time the Falcon got into open space since it was stolen, But how did he get there so damn fast? Was he already in the system? If so, why act surprised that it was on Jakku which logically should still be visible out the damn window?

A somewhat more sensible approach would have been to have Han intercept them at Ponemah Terminal which would also have given the film a much needed breathing space after all the crazy action, instead of hurtling from one chase scene straight into another.

 

[The Wormhole]

^^What I never got, when Han's freighter reels the Falcon in, shouldn't the Star Destroyer have been right next to them watching it happen? I kind of wonder if this is somehow an Abrams thing, since his Trek movies feature both Vulcan and Qo'nos being such short jaunts from Earth. Plus in STID it isn't really made clear, are they on the border between Federation and Klingon space, or the edge of the Qo'nos system?

 

[Reverend]

Yeah I don't think he gets that space travel isn't supposed to be instantaneous (let alone how close planets and stars have to be to one another to be able to witness the destruction of one from the surface of the other as it happens.)

I don't mind a little inconsistency in travel times since of course, ships must move at the speed of plot. But there should be *some* sense of a passage of time or else the world starts to feel very small.

Imagine if you will an 18th century historical drama in which the protagonists steal a row boat in Port Royal and arrive in Cairo before the sun sets. Likewise, in a modern setting, imagine if someone jumped in a taxi in Time Square in New York and after a five minute on-screen conversation with the cabbie, gets out at their destination in Tiananmen. It'd be bloody jarring.

I'm not saying they should accurately portray travel times down to the minute since even otherwise well grounded movies cheat at that sort of thing all the time, but they should at least acknowledge that the story is happening *in* a place rather than places simply revolving around a story at will.

 

[Set Harth]

I kind of wonder if this is somehow an Abrams thing, since his Trek movies feature both Vulcan and Qo'nos being such short jaunts from Earth.

It is. In ST09 one can see the destruction of Vulcan ( which is extremely large in the sky ) while standing on the surface of Delta Vega. Warp travel is superfast - but this could be excused as a quirk of the alternate timeline, while the editing permits some degree of vagueness regarding duration. Unfortunately, in STID that is no longer the case, and we're left with a trip that seems to necessarily occur nearly just as fast as the corresponding scenes progress on screen in real time - and that's pretty much Ludicrous Speed territory.

Plus in STID it isn't really made clear, are they on the border between Federation and Klingon space, or the edge of the Qo'nos system?

You can see Kronos from the Neutral Zone, apparently. That's the problem, the movie doesn't seem to act as though these are all different spatial locations, at distances from one another in the light-years. The Force Awakens is only the most recent and most blatant example of this kind of thing, but it's in all three films. Abrams' grasp of astronomy is teh fail. The image we see of the Hosnian system has the planets all grouped absurdly close to one another like so many billiard balls.

 

[Kor]

Can't they just do a focused search on the habitable planets in that part of the galaxy that ISN'T included?

Spaceflight and navigation in Star Wars are a bit peculiar. If the exact hyperspace "lanes" leading to a destination are a secret, then they aren't likely to be discovered by someone who doesn't know them.

Kor

 

[Lakenheath 72]

I noted a major continuity error in the film.

The Poe/Finn Tie Fighter departs the hangar bay. As the fighter flees, it is fired upon by turbolasers, which Finn destroys. We can see the semi-hemispherical dome on the underside of the star destroyer in the background as the turbolasers are destroyed. Then, the fighter leaves the star destroyer behind.

Or, the Poe/Finn Tie Fighter departs the hangar bay. We see the fighter weaving in and out of the support columns connecting the two segments of the hull together. As the fighter leaves the cavernous space behind, the fighter is fired upon by turbolasers. Then, the fighter leaves the star destroyer behind.

So, we are seeing two different approaches to how they escaped the star destroyer. It's like reading the Bible and coming across two stories about the same event. There are two stories of creation, two stories of Noah's flood, and so on.

I do not know why JJ Abrams' films have these flawa and the flaws mentioned earlier. They are hard to reason away.

 

[The Wormhole]

After re-watching the movie today something I noticed. When Poe makes attack run to cripple Starkiller, when the last shot is fired, his X-Wings S-Foils are in flight position. Likewise, after Starkiller is destroyed and the X-Wing squadron jumps into hyperspace, their S-Foils are in attack position. And what's the deal with the squadron callsigns? Poe is Red Leader, but there is apparently someone else known as Red One, their loss is reported to Poe. We actually hear "Red Leader, we have lost Red One" or something to that effect.

Then there's when Han and Chewie first meet Rey and Finn. Has suggests tossing them in a pod and ditching them on the closest inhabited planet, to which Rey protests she needs to get back to Jaku. They're still in the Jaku system, that is the nearest inhabited planet.

More an observation than a nitpick, but this is the first time I noticed the Millennium Falcon has a new satellite dish. Which makes sense, given old dish was clipped off in ROTJ.

 

[Lakenheath 72]

Poe is Black Leader. He commands Red and Blue Squadrons.

It is not clear whether R1 is short for Red Leader or the name of a pilot.

 

[The Wormhole]

Well, I'm basing it on the OT, where the squadron leaders were called "Red/Gold/Whatever Leader" and the next highest one was "Red 2" or whatever. You'd think the Resistance would stick with a system that worked.

 

[Ithekro]

I think the two squadrons were Red and Blue, but Poe is detached from Black Squadron as Wing Leader and kept his callsign.

Black Squadron might be a Republic squadron rather than a Resistance squadron.

 

[Reverend]

There is no "Black Squadron". According to the TFA Visual Dictionary: -

"The Resistance base on D'Qar maintains two primary X-wing squadrons, code-named Red and Blue. Blue Squadron is the primary line of defence for the base, with Red Squadron flying as support. Commander Poe Dameron leads both squadrons, under the call sign Black Leader - not as an indication of a separate squadron, but to denote his specialised fighter, Black One."

Basically Poe is a wing leader, rather than a squadron leader. Granted, a wing usually consists of at least three squadrons, but clearly the Resistance only has the budget for two. Needs must and all that.

 

[Ithekro]

Or they lost one earlier.