Star Wars Spoilers Thread [Spoilers]

So here's my review: 100% a Star Wars film which belongs with the original trilogy.

It's a transitional film, but it does it well. The new generation is really good.

I think the major death was kinda signposted a bit. You knew it was coming long before it happened. I felt worse for Chewie, but he, Rey, and BB8 make a great team.

Is this the first Star Wars film where nobody gets their hand cut off?

Luke lives in Ireland, eh?

Question: WHY was there a map to Luke, and why was it split into two? I feel like I missed something. For that matter, why a map and not just some coordinates? Seems like a random puzzle set up for the sake of it.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Note that most of Rey's focused use of the Force follows Ren's attempted Force interrogation of her, which she reverses through force of will, pulling out details from his own mind.

It's certainly not made explicit, but my immediate assumption was that she'd grabbed more than just a few flashbacks from Ren - she'd seen something of his own Force ability and how he used it.

That's more than sufficient to account for the limited uses she makes of the Force following that scene.

also note that Rey barely pushed back the mind probe and couldn't keep it going when Kylo Ren decided he'd had enough, all of which was after he probed the crap out of her mind while she tried to stop it, failed at first to mind trick the Daniel Craig the stormtrooper and only succeeded after an obvious moment of frustration and then focus, and then didn't use the force again until another moment of desperation and then only because Ren unwittingly reminded her that she could, using it to empower her strikes and still barely overpower the already near death and exhausted Kylo Ren.
At not point was any of it done with finesse, or skill, or any obvious competence. She used the Force equivelent of raw muscle power, combined with luck and good timing.

You know, like Luke being able to guide a flying torpedo while piloting into a hole he could probably barely see in the midst of his first ever space battle, after learning only...a week before, that he could use the force, and having learned literally nothing about moving things with it?

Or how Luke spent a hella short time on Degobah, ate a few Yoda meals and did a couple X-Wing dead lifts and all of a sudden he's gone from noob who can barely survive a remote to fairly skilled swordsman, reaching out with his feelings, force jumping, and holding his own for surprisingly long against the galaxy's biggest badass since...idk, probably a character that doesn't exist anymore? And intuits that he can telepathically reach out to Leia, apparently extrapolating from his interaction with Ben's force ghost?

I mean, at what point does Rey do anything as jarringly beyond her experience as half of what Luke does? Hell, he's a farmboy. A level 1 character, full stop. Rey is clearly already a couple/few levels in when the movie starts. IT would be absurd if she wasn't competent from the third dot on the ellipses.

 

[delericho]

You know, like Luke being able to guide a flying torpedo while piloting into a hole he could probably barely see in the midst of his first ever space battle, after learning only...a week before, that he could use the force, and having learned literally nothing about moving things with it?

I never got the impression that Luke moved the torpedo using the Force. Rather, the impression I got was that he used it to line up his shot, in effect replacing his targetting computer - Sense, rather than Alter.

Which was something he had long experience with doing intuitively, from back when he bullseyed womp rats in his T-16 back home.

Or how Luke spent a hella short time on Degobah

We don't know how long he spent there. But given that the Falcon had to make it from Hoth to Bespin at sublight speed, it probably wasn't a day trip. It's just that ESB didn't bother to show endless scenes of C-3P0 asking Han, "Are we there yet?"

 

[Herobizkit]

I completely enjoyed the movie... even its heavy-handed story-telling, specifically how everything went great for the heroes by sheer and utterly insane coincidence.

That final fight though... the 'DM' literally putting giant chasms in the way of the players so they don't solve main plot issues too early. I did that stuff to my players in high school as a gag.

I was worried that Finn was going to be stuck being the TBG, especially when they added in some TBG vernacular (Droid, please!), but they turned him around VERY well. Also, did Finn's jacket and attitude remind anyone of Star-Lord (Guardians of the Galaxy)?

I did get the same feel of Ep IV Redux, but I thought it was a nice way to edge folks into the new movies while remembering what was great about the old ones.

And the comedy was MUCH better, too. That's important. I'm ever-so-tired of the grimdark/woe-is-me/Crapsack World that movies have offered over the first half of this decade.

 

[Morrus]

'm ever-so-tired of the grimdark/woe-is-me/Crapsack World that movies have offered over the first half of this decade.

They have? Did you miss Marvel's 1,426,921 quip-laden movies?

 

[Maxperson]

They have? Did you miss Marvel's 1,426,921 quip-laden movies?

Is that a reference to how many movies of that nature Marvel put out, the number of quips in them, or both?

 

[doctorbadwolf]

I never got the impression that Luke moved the torpedo using the Force. Rather, the impression I got was that he used it to line up his shot, in effect replacing his targetting computer - Sense, rather than Alter.

Which was something he had long experience with doing intuitively, from back when he bullseyed womp rats in his T-16 back home.



We don't know how long he spent there. But given that the Falcon had to make it from Hoth to Bespin at sublight speed, it probably wasn't a day trip. It's just that ESB didn't bother to show endless scenes of C-3P0 asking Han, "Are we there yet?"

Weeks, at the most.
And we know he had that experience about as much as we know Rey had experience using the force to find good salvage, and influence people to keep out of trouble. IE, we can guess, because we figure latent force users use the force in subtle ways their whole lives without realizing it, but that's it.

The point is, Rey is no more inexplicably force competent than Luke. She's just generally more competent, as a person.

They have? Did you miss Marvel's 1,426,921 quip-laden movies?

A handful of marvel movies doesn't outweigh the colossal mountain of grimdark.

 

[Morrus]

A handful of marvel movies doesn't outweigh the colossal mountain of grimdark.

I must be seeing different films to you. Most of what I remember in the last decade is (mainly weak) comedies, remakes of 80s action stuff, extravagant action special effects extravaganzas, and about a billion superhero flicks.

I'd love to see a few grimdarks to make up for the intense, relentless quippyness of the 21st century.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

I must be seeing different films to you. Most of what I remember in the last decade is (mainly weak) comedies, remakes of 80s action stuff, extravagant action special effects extravaganzas, and about a billion superhero flicks.

I'd love to see a few grimdarks to make up for the intense, relentless quippyness of the 21st century.

I think you just really dislike quippy dialogue, and that is skewing your perceptions.
Also, quippy dialogue doesn't preclude a show or film being grimdark.

As for superhero flicks, Man of Steel. The Nolan Batman crap.
Superhero movies are definitely not free of grimdark.

I will say, though, that TV is much grimdarkier than movies, and has been for at least a handful of years. But still, most of those remakes you mention are darker and less optimistic than the original version, the action movies are all grey morality at the lightest, but just as often they are "watch this bad person kill lots of other bad people in a world with vanishingly few good people! FUn!"

We are not in an optimistic decade, when it comes to popular fiction. no amount of quips changes that.

 

[Umbran]

I will say, though, that TV is much grimdarkier than movies, and has been for at least a handful of years.

Look at two of the most popular shows - Game of Thrones and The Walking Dead. Both pretty grim.

 

[delericho]

Weeks, at the most.

Weeks, with the undivided attention of a Jedi Master with eight hundred years of experience training Jedi. After which he knows a handful of tricks and is wildly outclassed by Vader. Sounds about right to me.