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Star Wars episode 7 coming out soon

 
 
 
Achwienichtig said:
Underseer said:
No, this has always been a flaw in their rating system.

If most reviewers give positive reviews, but most of the reviews are only slightly positive, then the resulting score will look artificially high.

Same thing if most reviews are slightly negative. The resulting score looks artificially low.

Anyway, just got back from the movie. It kicked ass. It had all the same pieces, but the pieces were in different places, so it was different enough to be interesting, but similar enough that I kept thinking "This is what the prequel trilogy should've been."

I like the new characters a lot, especially Finn.

(Major spoilers below)


The trailers were wonderfully misleading. I thought for sure Finn was going to be the new Jedi apprentice. Looks like Rey will fill that role. Also, it seems obvious that she is the sister of Kylo Ren and the daughter of Han & Leia, although they didn't say so explicitly. I kept getting mad at Han and Leia for not saying anything to her.

Now we know why Kylo Ren idolizes Darth Vader. He does not measure up, and that's a good thing. He is a more vulnerable villain, and we get to see his conflict between the light and dark side.

There was definitely a moment during the big lightsaber battle when Rey gave into the dark side a bit, so I expect her to be as conflicted as her brother, but from the other side.

What I really want to know is whether or not Finn is force sensitive and whether or not he will also receive Jedi training. Kylo Ren may be a pale imitation of Darth Vader, but Finn managed to go toe to toe with him in a lightsaber battle despite the fact that Finn is completely untrained in lightsaber combat. Also, how did he overcome his stormtrooper conditioning if he isn't force sensitive?



Poe (the ace pilot of the Resistance and owner of BB-8) was the weakest of the new characters. Hopefully, once they flesh him out, he'll be more interesting, as he did not get much screen time.
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(Spoilers!)


Nowhere did I get the indication that Rey is Kylo Ren's sister. Her family history is obviously something they wanted to tease us about, but I don't think that's the direction it's going.

Finn, IMO, is definitely force sensitive. Hopefully they develop that more.

Overall, I was a little disappointed in the story line. It felt a bit more like a copy of "A New Hope" than an original. Definitely an improvement over the prequels. The next two movies is where I think Abrams really plans on making his mark.

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You're right, it was highly derivative of episode 4, but I think that if it wasn't, the fans would have been in an uproar. They moved just enough pieces around to keep things interesting for me.
 
Underseer said:
Jaecp said:

I think they're both Force sensative, but as Rey is of Vader's lineage she has that natural power boost. Fin is also a force sensitive, but not to the point that most people [outside of Kylo in that opening moment] could really tell.

I kind of wish the Kylo Ren being Ben [which is fucking with me, because Ben is supposed to be Luke's kid's name... wtf] was more of a surprise. They just kind of... exposit it at some point

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You are thinking of the Extended Universe, which is no longer canon.
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I'm well aware of the canon changes and the statements by the SW creative team that they'll be picking and choosing. The thing that annoys me about this is that they took the name from the EU and slapped it on someone else.
 
I just came home after watching it (and after dinner) - I couldn't stop myself saying "wow!" every few seconds for some time. I'm still saying it now. There was that thrill when the "Star Wars" logo came up on screen and the fanfare played... And Kylo Ren - interesting villain, like and unlike his Grandad. Rough, torn, demented even. Great lightsaber duel. Wow. I want more!
 
Just got back from seeing it and all I can say is... meh.

I'm probably being overly critical and I can't say it wasn't 2 hours of enjoyable entertainment.

It was just boringly safe and predictable.

WARNING: HERE BE SPOILERS! Etc. etc.








Kylo Ren was a rather boring Darth Vader clone. A force sensitive guy seduced by the dark side of the force who works as the right hand man and enforcer of some sinister dark lord guy (Snoke) who just seems to be himself a boring clone of Palpatine.

I deliberately avoided reviews and speculation, limiting myself to watching the trailers and TV spots, but it was obvious that Kylo Ren was going to be either Luke's son or Han and Leia's son. And the reveal was just meh. Completely unsurprising and just came across a lazy way of pandering to people who expect and want some sort of "I am your father" type of twist in the plot. I just found it hard to care when I learned who he was.

I also don't know what the political situation is in the Galaxy. I appreciate that we weren't bored to tears with crawling text and painfully dull exposition about senators, laws, trade federations, etc. a la the prequels but I don't know who runs the Galaxy in this movie. The Rebels are now called the Resistance which implies that they are in a similar situation that they were in the original trilogy as the underdogs to some sort of dictatorship they're trying to overthrow. But in the original trilogy the Empire was overthrown so I assume some sort of democratic regime lead by the Rebels replaced the Empire and that the First Order would be the underdogs trying to emulate the Empire and overthrow the good guys. But I genuinely don't know what the situation is. Is Snoke in the same position as Palpatine in the original trilogy, i.e. some sort of dark side of the force brutal dictator behind the scenes with a right hand man in a black mask and robes who gets shit done (Vader/Kylo Ren) or are the First Order some sort of organisation trying to reclaim that situation but aren't actually in control? Cool thing about the original trilogy is that within seconds of the crawling text appearing on screen in A New Hope is that you are absolutely clear what the situation is. The Empire are bad guys and the Rebels are good guys trying to overthrow the bad guys. If it was explained during this movie who was actually running the Galaxy and who was the underdog trying to overthrow them then I completely missed it.

And they threw in a new Death Star as well. Woohoo.

And as well as a Darth Vader clone, they threw in a Grand Moff Tarkin clone. A senior military commander who equals or outranks the masked and robed Vader/Ren character and also answers directly to Palpatine/Snoke.

I also don't know why Kylo Ren wears his mask. Is it just some sort of weird homage to Vader? We get to see why Vader wears his mask in the original trilogy when we get to see the scene with the back of his scarred and injured head and he clearly wears it not just to be a scary motherfucker, but because he actually needs his bionic implants and additions. Why does Kylo Ren wear his mask/helmet? No fucking idea. Again, if it was explained, then I missed it.

It was also obvious that one of the protagonists of the original trilogy was going to get murderified during the movie. Again it came across as a lazy callback to Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon's deaths in the first of the other 2 trilogies. Older wiser dude who is friend of protagonist gets murdered and gives motive to protagonist. Meh.

And the "reveal" of Luke at the end was also easily predictable. Luke turns out to be an Obi-Wan type character, an aging Jedi in hiding as some sort of hermit in the middle of nowhere. Who the fuck didn't see that coming?

I'm rambling now so having said all that I have to say it's genuinely an improvement on the prequel trilogies, but that's not saying much. JJ Abrams, if nothing else, is an effective director. He's not particularly amazing or artistic or stunning, but he knows how to make an efficiently entertaining movie. Which he did well enough with The Force Awakens. Unlike Lucas who directs every scene and actor in the most boring, flat and unimaginative way possible. So I did enjoy the movie. But I'm disappointed with how unimaginative and predictable it was in general.
 
This post also has spoilers. If you're reading this far into a thread about a movie that's already out and you don't want spoilers, you're fucking dumb and I don't care that I ruined things for someone as stupid as you.

I liked the movie a lot. It's really nice that I can now spend the next year talking about how good the latest Star Wars movie was and not be constantly corrected, because I Phantom Menaced the shit out of the prequels and now I'm just embarrassed about that. This one was really good. It captured the tone of the earlier Star Wars movies and was a blast to watch.

One of the problems with their trying to redo the storyline of the first one, however, is that the new Death Star (I don't care what they called it, it's just another Death Star) was kind of lame. They tried to hype it up about how much bigger it was, but that was just kind of dumb - "Here's the old Death Star and now here's the new one - look how much bigger it is! Huh? Huh? That's exciting, isn't it?" No, it isn't. Also, it blowing up those planets was a dud. Even the rebels, who apparently had some kind of connection to the people who were on those planets, didn't seem to give a shit about it five seconds later and that's five more seconds of giving a shit about them than I was able to do. It was supposed to be an epic display of power and it just fell flat. Also, by not describing beforehand that these lasers travelled through hyperspace, it just made it kind of confusing what was happening and where everything was happening. I thought that they'd built some kind of secret base in Republic territory or something. Also, if the lasers were travelling through hyperspace, why was Han Solo able to see them from whatever random planet he happened to be on at the time? It was just weird.

Also, the rebels reaction to the new Death Star was pretty much just "Well, is there some easily accessible and poorly defended part of it that we can use to destroy the whole thing using small, one-man fighters?" "Yes. It's right here". There didn't even need to kill off any Bothans to get that information. I get that it's a character-driven story and they just wanted to move the plot forward, but they didn't even try here.

I just loved Kylo Ren. The reveal that he was just peacocking for the first half of the movie and the guy you thought was the next Darth Vader was only just Anakin fucking Skywalker was brilliant. With no other Jedi in the galaxy, a half-trained apprentice dominates the field, but as soon as he meets someone else who can use the Force, he doesn't measure up. Also, the twist on things where he was struggling to resist the temptations of the Light Side was very well done. This is the kind of character arc I wish I could have seen in the prequels for Anakin. They also handled Han's death well where he got to die trying to save his son and Ren got a majot evil moment to move him forward as an actual Vader type in the upcoming movies.

The final scene where the girl is holding out the lightsaber to Luke with the pleading look on her face and the torment he displays looking back at her was a great way to end it as well.

The main two were awesome, the story was well done and I was entertained. I like what they've done and where they seem to be going. Overall, I was extremely impressed.
 
I enjoyed it - and yes, I'm assuming that spoilers no longer have to be hidden from fans at this point.

I like the two new characters and look forward to learning more about them. I think they did a nice balance of giving the old characters some showing for continuity, but the real action was all new people. That worked well for me.

It was a little thing, but I really liked a lot the cute glee that the new characters had when they did something they didn't know they could do. They were surprised and empowered, and then brought back to reality that the problem is not over when you you shoot down one thing. That was fun for me and made them more real. Inexperienced, naive and it was appropriate.

Yes, the death star repeat left a lot of potential on the table. I was okay with that because this movie gave the bonus of being the FIRST movie since #4 to introduce truly new crucial characters. And that was JUST WHAT I WANTED. So, fine, now that I got to meet them and know them, give me a different weapon menace next time.

I did get the feeling that Rey is going to be related to someone. I will enjoy speculating who.

Also glad the CGI was minimized. I never needed that to feel SciFi. There were some to color the background, but they didn't become foreground (I HATED Jar Jar Binks!)

I think they did the identity of Kylo well. I didn't want a big "reveal." I didn't need a secret. The reveal had happened in the plot's past and it apparently broke up a marriage. So moving on to who he is and how he operates was a good foil, IMHO, for the fact that he was trying to fill Vader's role. I like Tom's analysis of it being better because he's NOT as incredible as Vader. I agree. Big Fish in a Small Pond and what a nasty surprise that turns out to be for him. How will he react? Well, that's a (genuine) character shaping experience. So we'll see, won't we!

And the death scene - again, not overplayed and I'm glad. It will also be defining later. Guilt, much?

I liked it a lot. Looking forward to seeing it again. :)
 
Rhea said:
And the death scene - again, not overplayed and I'm glad. It will also be defining later. Guilt, much?
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It really was a perfect end to his character, especially considering that Harrison Ford didn't want to do it anymore and needed a lot of convincing to be in this one. He went from starting out as a selfish smuggler with maybe a hint of good inside him to a loving parent who was willing to risk everything for a chance to save his son. You knew the second he walked onto that bridge that he wasn't walking off of it and he gave the impression that he knew that too, but he was quite willing to die just for one more try to get his boy back. Then, his last act was to stroke Ben's cheek and let him know that he still loved him anyways. I just loved everything about the scene.
 
Achwienichtig said:
Tom Sawyer said:
They didn't even need to kill off any Bothans to get that information.
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^^^This^^^
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Ya, it was really kind of lame how blase they were about everything involving the thing. "Oh, we have to go and blow up this planet they built it on? Fine ... I guess. We're not doing anything this afternoon that can't wait. Now you, the guy who was working for our enemy up until yesterday, how about we give you the ultra-important job of wandering over and taking down the shield protecting the planet? Take the old guy with you. There's probably only one or two guys guarding the thing, so try and give at least 50% effort on the mission if you don't mind. The rest of us will just stay here and not bother starting any kind of evacuation of non-essential personnel from this planet we're on that they're about to target. Now, on to the subject of what we're going to order for dinner ..."
 
Looking forward to seeing the movie. Sounds like the Empire or whatever it is that's running the Galaxy has made a new standard of incompetence.
 
Jayjay said:
Looking forward to seeing the movie. Sounds like the Empire or whatever it is that's running the Galaxy has made a new standard of incompetence.
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Ya, but some of their Stormtroopers actually hit what they were aiming for. That's a step forward. Just so long as they keep making incremental improvements each time, the Empire which comes along in Episode CXVII will competently rule the galaxy in an efficient manner and the Rebel Alliance will need to enlist the help of the Jedi in overcoming the problem that any revolution they're successful in will only make things worse for everybody. That's the longterm goal of how the Dark Side wins.
 
Tom Sawyer said:
This post also has spoilers. If you're reading this far into a thread about a movie that's already out and you don't want spoilers, you're fucking dumb and I don't care that I ruined things for someone as stupid as you.

I liked the movie a lot. It's really nice that I can now spend the next year talking about how good the latest Star Wars movie was and not be constantly corrected, because I Phantom Menaced the shit out of the prequels and now I'm just embarrassed about that. This one was really good. It captured the tone of the earlier Star Wars movies and was a blast to watch.

One of the problems with their trying to redo the storyline of the first one, however, is that the new Death Star (I don't care what they called it, it's just another Death Star) was kind of lame. They tried to hype it up about how much bigger it was, but that was just kind of dumb - "Here's the old Death Star and now here's the new one - look how much bigger it is! Huh? Huh? That's exciting, isn't it?" No, it isn't. Also, it blowing up those planets was a dud. Even the rebels, who apparently had some kind of connection to the people who were on those planets, didn't seem to give a shit about it five seconds later and that's five more seconds of giving a shit about them than I was able to do. It was supposed to be an epic display of power and it just fell flat. Also, by not describing beforehand that these lasers travelled through hyperspace, it just made it kind of confusing what was happening and where everything was happening. I thought that they'd built some kind of secret base in Republic territory or something. Also, if the lasers were travelling through hyperspace, why was Han Solo able to see them from whatever random planet he happened to be on at the time? It was just weird.

Also, the rebels reaction to the new Death Star was pretty much just "Well, is there some easily accessible and poorly defended part of it that we can use to destroy the whole thing using small, one-man fighters?" "Yes. It's right here". There didn't even need to kill off any Bothans to get that information. I get that it's a character-driven story and they just wanted to move the plot forward, but they didn't even try here.

I just loved Kylo Ren. The reveal that he was just peacocking for the first half of the movie and the guy you thought was the next Darth Vader was only just Anakin fucking Skywalker was brilliant. With no other Jedi in the galaxy, a half-trained apprentice dominates the field, but as soon as he meets someone else who can use the Force, he doesn't measure up. Also, the twist on things where he was struggling to resist the temptations of the Light Side was very well done. This is the kind of character arc I wish I could have seen in the prequels for Anakin. They also handled Han's death well where he got to die trying to save his son and Ren got a majot evil moment to move him forward as an actual Vader type in the upcoming movies.

The final scene where the girl is holding out the lightsaber to Luke with the pleading look on her face and the torment he displays looking back at her was a great way to end it as well.

The main two were awesome, the story was well done and I was entertained. I like what they've done and where they seem to be going. Overall, I was extremely impressed.
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I agree with your assessment of Kylo Ren. When I watched Avatar: the Last Airbender, I kept thinking that Zuko was a better Anakin Skywalker than, well, Anakin Skywalker. Kylo seems to owe more to Zuko than to Anakin, and that's a good thing. Heck, he might owe more to Loki than Anakin.

One other touch I liked was that Rey was able to survive that lightsaber fight solely because she gave in to the dark side, showing that she is as conflicted between the light and the dark as Kylo, and there are a ton of interesting story possibilities opened up by that.

One thing that bugged me is that the trailers led me to believe that Finn would be a Jedi. Instead, they left open the possibility but never answered it. How was he able to overcome his psychological conditioning if he isn't a latent force-user? How else could he go toe to toe against Kylo in a lightsaber duel if he didn't have at least some latent force ability?

Oh, and Kylo isn't as much of a badass as he pretends, that much is true, but in a few ways he has more command of the force than we've seen before. Using it as straight up telepathy is supposed to be a rare ability, and I don't think I've ever seen anyone simply stop a blaster bolt mid-air like that. His ligthsaber skills on the other hand are obviously lacking if he couldn't handle two rookies, injury or no.
 
A gay porn parody is being released to coincide with the new film

Here is the safe for work trailer
 
I saw the movie today. I was definitely satisfied and I thought the movie was awesome. It was also clearly a lot like A New Hope. There was enough mystery in it to make me want to see the next one.
 
Looking around on the internet, I see there is lots of speculation over who Rey might be related to/descended from. I am not convinced she is related to anybody we know. You have to remember that the Jedi were forbidden from falling in love in the first place. For thousands of years, supposedly, enough force sensitive people had been born in the general population for the Jedi to keep up their ranks without breeding themselves.

I maintain that the number of force sensitive people is pretty constant. The only difference is, when the Jedi council existed, they had resources and recruitment techniques to search for those people. Now, they don't have any resources for that search.

Of course, it would be nice to have a reveal of Rey's lineage, but for her to have an ordinary family and ordinary parents would be completely consistent with the Star Wars universe.
 
Achwienichtig said:
Looking around on the internet, I see there is lots of speculation over who Rey might be related to/descended from. I am not convinced she is related to anybody we know. You have to remember that the Jedi were forbidden from falling in love in the first place.
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Which never made any sense to me. I don't think that's ever brought up in the original trilogy. The only Jedi we see in that trilogy are Luke, who's young enough that it's reasonable that he simply hasn't fallen in love yet and Obi-Wan and Yoda who are meant to be elderly Jedi in hiding so it never seemed weird that didn't have a Ms. Jedi with them.

And Darth Vader who clearly did get it on with a woman and have children. And it was never said that was some sort of forbidden love that resulted in Luke and Leia being born.

It was only in the prequels that the idea that Jedi were forbidden from having relationships and having children. For reasons that were never explained (let me guess, in the expanded universe materials some bullshit reason is given). It just seemed to be something Lucas shoehorned into the plot because he felt it somehow should have been a plot point. We're just repeatedly told that love between Amidala and Anakin is forbidden. Just because.

As a result it made the Jedi seem creepily like Catholic priests who are forbidden from relationships and sex for weird cultish religious reasons and result in at least some of them just doing what normal human beings do and have clandestine relationships anyway. At least he didn't ban women from joining the Jedi ranks.
 
They were hammering pretty hard on the whole "The Force is strong in my family" thing during the trailers to the movie. While an argument could be made that this was referring to Kylo Ren, they seemed to be suggesting quite strongly that this trilogy is about the next generation of Skywalker protecting the galaxy and not talking about the villian. Rey being Luke's kid would fit into the family narrative which has been a central theme of the films. If Rey, who is clearly the lead Jedi hero, is just some girl, that undercuts this major theme.

I am going to go out on a limb, though, and predict that it will turn out that she's Yoda's granddaughter and the real reason that he was hiding out on Dagobah was because he'd been using the Jedi Mind Trick to coerce women into sleeping with him and there were a large number of pending rape charges out against him. It's a Bill Cosby analogy in that during the 80s, he was a surrogate father figure to all of us and now we find out that he'd really just been a sexual predator this whole time.
 
It's not bullshit EU stuff, Archimedes. The force is hereditary. Vaders kids are strong. His kids, kids are strong in the EU. With Jedi having kids intentionally how long would it take for normals to be outclassed entirely?
 
Jaecp said:
It's not bullshit EU stuff, Archimedes. The force is hereditary. Vaders kids are strong. His kids, kids are strong in the EU. With Jedi having kids intentionally how long would it take for normals to be outclassed entirely?
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I would be a shorter time than it would take for them to be outclassed by the armies raised by Sith if the Jedi hadn't artificially limited their numbers for dumb reasons.
 
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