Star Wars : Into Spoilers - The Spoiler awakens.

[HaemishM]

Yes. It would basically validate the prequels and return us to midichlorians.

[Lakov_Sanite]

(unlikely, but still possible)

It's as possible as episode 8 being a two hour horse scat film. Stop.

[Margalis]

"Let's double down on the dumbest part of the prequels" is probably not an idea that made it through.

[jgsugden]

(unlikely, but still possible)

It's as possible as episode 8 being a two hour horse scat film. Stop.

Given your history of dismissing things that turn out to be true, I wish you'd not be so opposed to this idea.  It might force it into existence.

[calapine]

(unlikely, but still possible)

It's as possible as episode 8 being a two hour horse scat film. Stop.

Given your history of dismissing things that turn out to be true, I wish you'd not be so opposed to this idea.  It might force it into existence.

Suuure...more Midichlorians..

And 'Politics' claims Trump will be president in 2016.

Occam's Razer says this forums is full of idiots.

(No offence meant! I am just drunk. *hugs all around*   )

[Tannhauser]

What?  Why are you drunk and posting in this thread?  Star Wars is srs bsns!

[Malakili]

It just seems so pointless from a business standpoint.  With all they went did to use this movie as evidence that hey star wars is back, it would be shocking to see them build that bridge to the prequels.  They may as well find a part for jarjar at that point.

[Abagadro]

If so, why would Han and Leia think of him as "their" son?  Nah, they totally went to bonetown.  Nerds just want to think they are the only ones who could possibly have sex with Leia.

[Merusk]

True.  But let's not discuss that it goes bad places.

Ben was a love child.  Anyone trying to introduce otherwise was missing just how hard the script ignored almost everything prequel related.  The bit that WAS in there was a sarcastic barb.

[jgsugden]

If so, why would Han and Leia think of him as "their" son?  Nah, they totally went to bonetown.  Nerds just want to think they are the only ones who could possibly have sex with Leia.

I don't believe in the theory, but if true, Han and Leia would not necessarily know that Han isn't the papa... Maybe Luke figured out it, but didn't share the information (by the way, Han, yo Baby Daddy is an infestation of Force Bugs) and Supreme New Jersy Snookie used that information to turn Ren...

And as long as we're dismissing anything prequel oriented, we're dismissing the idea that Supreme Leader Snoke might be Darth Plaugeis, right?  The Sith Lord that Palpatine struck down that had mastered death (and who's secrets were the main reason Vader turned... to save his love)?  We're going to discard the similarity in the music when Snookie was on screen and the music played in Episode 3 when Palpatine describes Plagueis?  The links between the newer novel by James Luceno (Tarkin) that is canon and his prior novel (Darth Plagueis) which is no longer officially canon, but for which there are direct references in Tarkin to events in Plagueis?

The Art of Force Awakens book showed a few more ties to the prequels that were dropped - Force Ghost Anakin... but it also showed Snoke as a female, which kind of potentially nixes the Plagueis idea...

[Threash]

One of the curious side effects of humanizing the Stormtroopers via Finn, though, is to slightly complicate the complete lack of a moral concern on the part of the good guys about killing tons and tons of them. If Finn can shake off the programming maybe others can, assuming there isn't something unusual or special about him.

I see it the other way around.  If they really can shake of their conditioning then the fact that they don't makes them even more fair game than if they were mindlessly obedient clone troopers.

[Malakili]

One of the curious side effects of humanizing the Stormtroopers via Finn, though, is to slightly complicate the complete lack of a moral concern on the part of the good guys about killing tons and tons of them. If Finn can shake off the programming maybe others can, assuming there isn't something unusual or special about him.

I see it the other way around.  If they really can shake of their conditioning then the fact that they don't makes them even more fair game than if they were mindlessly obedient clone troopers.

The fact that some people get better from an infection without medicine means fuck the people who need anti-biotics. 

[jgsugden]

Infection doesn't invoke culpability, generally.  You don't choose to be infected.  You choose to follow orders.  If you want to argue that most Storm Troopers lack free will, that makes it more like an infection, but Finn, Phasma, and the two troopers that turn tell during Ren's tirade demonstrate they do have free will.

[Lakov_Sanite]

If child soldiers in Africa are shooting at you of course you defend yourself but outside war would you try them for war crimes?

[Malakili]

The movie makes it pretty clear they are conditioned to behave, follow orders, have their names taken away, etc.  Finn managed to break that conditioning, but that doesn't mean it's just as easy as choosing to.

[jgsugden]

Please insert 8 pages of Brown Shirt discussion here and then move on to the next topic. 

[Lakov_Sanite]

Yeah let's go back to midochlorians 

[Merusk]

Trying to find grey areas in a story with defined Black & White evil and good lines is a sure sign you might be overthinking things.

Goddamn, get a hobby.

[jgsugden]

Trying to find grey areas in a story with defined Black & White evil and good lines is a sure sign you might be overthinking things.

Goddamn, get a hobby.

Again, Jedi morality is black and white historically (although there is a note in the Artbook that indicates that maybe Luke has decided that things are not so black and white - it refers to him accepting his Dark side and being "new entity").

“When you light a candle, you also cast a shadow,’” McCaig says in the book, quoting Ursula K. Le Guin. “That inspired me to propose, for the first time, that Anakin’s ghost could come back […] If we see Anakin Skywalker, because he does flow back and forth between Darth Vader and Anakin, let’s see him as a character with a dark and light side. The reason Luke is this whole new entity is because he was the first to acknowledge his own dark side—that it was not separate from him.”

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/12/29/how-anakin-skywalker-and-the-prequels-factor-into-star-wars-the-force-awakens.html

Many other characters have more diversity in their actions.  Han, Lando, Finn, Chewie, C-3PO ... all have actions under their belt that are not exactly heroic - and some of them are murderers from a certain perspective.  
 

[Pennilenko]

If you find yourself making comments about jedi morality, you have gone off the deep end and applied too much nerd to the movie.

Honestly, the first thing I thought after viewing the movie was how much I was going to enjoy how bad ass Rey is going to get. I mean, come on, its a fucking movie series about space wizards. I enjoy my lead characters being bad ass. If I want a dose of reality, I just go outside. To me, movies like this are about excursions into the impossible.

[Sir T]

We have already had pages of speculation about the parentage of what is effectively random Stormtroooper #730,874,398,453,948,930 (Token Black division) and how the genetics of the entire known bloody universe must flow through his Y chromosome, I think we are WAAAAY past being horrified at them nerding over their EU version of Rambojedi morality.

[Surlyboi]

So...

I'm overthinking this and nerding out big time here, but stay with me for a moment.

Rey was possibly the original Master of the Knights of Ren and had her mind wiped and was dropped on Jakku, while Luke worked on some way to fix her and Kylo. She'll find out halfway through and go dark, potentially killing Kylo and Finn helps bring her back. All this a-la Knights of the Old Republic's Revan story.

Yeah, too much whisky.

[Riggswolfe]

So...

I'm overthinking this and nerding out big time here, but stay with me for a moment.

Rey was possibly the original Master of the Knights of Ren and had her mind wiped and was dropped on Jakku, while Luke worked on some way to fix her and Kylo. She'll find out halfway through and go dark, potentially killing Kylo and Finn helps bring her back. All this a-la Knights of the Old Republic's Revan story.

Yeah, too much whisky.

I'd be shocked if Rey goes dark. At most she'll have a moment of choice like Luke did in Return of the Jedi. I do think, however, she was likely mind wiped following the attack on Luke's academy and she may just be his daughter. Kylo Ren clearly knows who she is and seemed alarmed when he heard she was involved.

[eldaec]

I saw this yesterday and liked it as far as it goes, in particular

A live action Disney film with a proper female character - they really should send a copy of the script over to the Marvel department.
Everything on Jakku is awesome especially the IMAX bit.
Han Solo and Chewbacca were as good as you could hope for.
But most of all it sets out a position on what Star Wars is, and mostly makes good choices that increase confidence that better films can be made once out from the crushing necessity of following the OT and removing the aftertaste of prequel. I'm sure Star Wars will get straitjacketed by the formulaic committee storyboard process that Marvel films are subjected to, but so long as they remain fun I'm ok with that.


Inevitable nitpicking and missteps :

Pacing & the death of billions - the whole thing went at one speed, which was fine when focussed exclusively on Rey and Finn running and shouting, but the destruction of the whatever system lacked any impact as a result. It also meant the film was never properly able to deliver the whole 'choose your destiny' theme that it was aiming for (and which original Star Wars manages).

Darth Emo - I see what they wanted and it kind of makes sense, but of the scenes without a helmet, only the one with Han actually worked.

Luke Skywalker - Why was he in this film? It trivialised the search and ate minutes that could have helped fix the pacing problems. Also why was he standing on a hillside in Wales looking like an idiot?

Pandering to 3D - Want to guess why every damn scene is so brightly lit, even those set at night or when the fucking sun burnt out?

[MediumHigh]

A live action Disney film with a proper female character - they really should send a copy of the script over to the Marvel department.

Black widow judo flipping the hulk. Cause pressure points and shit.  

[CmdrSlack]

the destruction of the whatever system lacked any impact as a result.

Even telling us what was getting destroyed would have been better. I was watching and wondering if this was some "Let's blow up Coruscant" move, but I'm assuming not because nobody cares about the whatever system.

[jgsugden]

A live action Disney film with a proper female character - they really should send a copy of the script over to the Marvel department.

Black widow judo flipping the hulk. Cause pressure points and shit.  

There is a comic from the 80s (when Hulk was separated from Banner and just a huge mindless rage monster) where a little old lady scientist proceeds to own the Hulk with a little martial arts... you made me have a total flashback to it...

As for Rey going Dark: I think the next movie is going to be about a different view of the Force and the Dark Side.  Based upon the quote from the Artbook about Luke being a new entity that embraces his dark side, I think we'll see Luke's trip to the first temple to be one in which he goes back to the roots of the Jedi, before the Dark Side was considered only to be a tool of the Sith.

[BobtheSomething]

Serious question: If you hated the film so badly, why are you still posting in this thread? I mean, it doesn't need to be a circle jerk echo chamber, but you seem to have really really disliked/been horribly disappointed in the film, and now mostly seem to be dedicated to shitting on it rather than discussing it.

What it comes down to is that some of us enjoyed a movie that you didn't. Why so upset with that?

Don't you understand? ALL OF US ARE WRONG AND HE NEEDS TO FIX US!

Will lights guide us home?

It was fun.  The pacing was terrible.  Han's death was actually boring.  Rey, Poe and Finn are all written as contrivance characters who know or can do whatever a scene requires in order to move the plot immediately forward.  There was more homage and call back than original material.  Abrams had to one up the OT with a bigger Death Star that blows up more planets, an older Yoda, a Sarlacc pit that walks, no two walking Sarlaacs, and not two Greedos, not three Greedos, but two teams of Greedos.  Every single part of the movie involving Starkiller base and its destruction was equally dumb as the Wall in Pacific Rim.  Pacific Rim asked the audience to accept one stupid premise (the robots) and then ran with that with only the wall standing out as an aberration from the basic premise in stupidity.  TFA has stupid characters (Does Ren always take the sanitation department on I portent raids?  Aren't there special forces troopers to go with the special forces TIEs?), a stupid plot (a map of a completely charted Galaxy missing a piece, and neither the map nor the piece have enough I for to find the location?  How many coincidences does it take to tell a story?  I could go on), a completely stupid inability to deal with scale or even the basic premise (Starkiller base, coincidences, Han Solo the super famous smuggler putz, Luke quitting and running away like a Jedi), and a stupid resolution.  There really is far more about TFA that is stupid.  Pacific Rim had a more competent director and got more out his giant robot story even with a mediocre cast.  TFA had an amazing cast who were a joy to watch on screen.  They deserved a better director.

See, here's the thing, Mr Probable Sockpuppet. A couple of the things that you wrote make sense, but you lost me in your desperation to tie every fucking thing that you saw in the new film into the OT as a throwback of sorts.

I didn't tie everything in.  However, there were tons of callbacks and reused story elements from the OT.  The stormtroopers raid at the beginning was different, and awesome because of it.  The escape from Jakku was original.  Kylo Ren's conflicted nature and incompetence were a bold new direction for Star Wars villainy.  Poe Dameron was more Ace Rimmer than Wedge Antilles, but it worked.  The banter and humor felt modern and natural, much better than the humor in RotJ.  Still, from Emperor Snoke to the Starkiller Base to Grand Moff Hux to Alderaan Prime, there really was a ton of playing it safe with the franchise, keeping things familiar.  That isn't even really my complaint.  My complaint about all the callbacks was Abrams' approach to them.  Bigger Death Star, bigger star destroyer, bigger emperor, more criminals coming after Solo to collect debts in order to establish him as scoundrel, older wise old short alien, even the totally sweet azathoth aliens were callbacks to the Sarlaac in that they had tentacles and dentata and swallowed their prey whole.  No time to absorb anything new, therefore use established tropes as a crutch.  It robbed many elements of their impact, replacing actual tension with nostalgia, spectacle and flash-bang pacing.  But I admit I really detest Abrams' style as a director.

There was a lot to love in the movie, and I plan to see it again because I had fun, but I really don't consider the film to be good on its own.  It's for Star Wars fans who want another fix, and it works for that.  The Star Wars brand and the sheer effort put into it by the actors and SFX guys because of its legacy are the only reasons this isn't considered just another disposable sci fi action movie.

[Lakov_Sanite]

My only problem with the sameness complaint is that nearly everything about star wars in the past, from the EU books to the games has been about sameness. Fuck man, knights of the old republic which is widely loved by nearly every star wars fan, rips off the original trilogy left and right.  Nothing here is out of line with what has come before and then fresh stuff was added on top of it.  At least we didn't get fucking lightsaber knees.

[kaid]

Just re-watched it and I guess I can see Rey more as Mary Sue now.  So I concede the point.  I just never thought one of the two main heroes would quality as a MS.  I was thinking of it if Wesley Crusher captained better than Picard, fought better than Worf and fixed things better than Geordi.  My main nitpick about Rey is not how she can Jedi, but how she can fly a ship; surely her 'captor' would not let her near a ship?  So maybe MS there.

The gun destroyed five planets in a single Republic system then it was aiming at the Resistance system they say.  So the Repubic wasn't defeated, but it sure took a hit (probably their fleet manufactories/shipyards?) losing that one system.  Yes, in the movie they do say the Republic was arming and equipping the Resistance to fight the First Order.  So I'm quite happy to hear that. 

Really glad to watch it again, very enjoyable.  To those of you who aren't trolling and didn't like it, welp better luck with the next one!

Given the first six movies have pretty many mentions about how some force users are very intuitive natural pilots and her having pretty close working knowledge of the falcon and the mods on it that she can fly well is not that much of a stretch. Hell look at luke he was flying air speeders shooting at rats and then bang stick him in a high end starfighter and he is now their best pilot they have. She seems to live on her own but clearly had a lot of access to the falcon and other ships and had watched and or assisted with their repair and maintenance. It is very possible she was shown how to fly as well even if only from point a to point b as a copilot. She was not on jakku because she had to be there she was on jakku because did not want to leave it.

[kaid]

A live action Disney film with a proper female character - they really should send a copy of the script over to the Marvel department.

Black widow judo flipping the hulk. Cause pressure points and shit.  

There is a comic from the 80s (when Hulk was separated from Banner and just a huge mindless rage monster) where a little old lady scientist proceeds to own the Hulk with a little martial arts... you made me have a total flashback to it...

As for Rey going Dark: I think the next movie is going to be about a different view of the Force and the Dark Side.  Based upon the quote from the Artbook about Luke being a new entity that embraces his dark side, I think we'll see Luke's trip to the first temple to be one in which he goes back to the roots of the Jedi, before the Dark Side was considered only to be a tool of the Sith.

I am pretty Okay with revan skywalker.

[Rendakor]

There was a lot to love in the movie, and I plan to see it again because I had fun, but I really don't consider the film to be good on its own.  It's for Star Wars fans who want another fix, and it works for that.  The Star Wars brand and the sheer effort put into it by the actors and SFX guys because of its legacy are the only reasons this isn't considered just another disposable sci fi action movie.

If "I'll pay to see it, twice" isn't enough for a movie to be considered good, I don't know what the fuck your standards are.

[BobtheSomething]

There was a lot to love in the movie, and I plan to see it again because I had fun, but I really don't consider the film to be good on its own.  It's for Star Wars fans who want another fix, and it works for that.  The Star Wars brand and the sheer effort put into it by the actors and SFX guys because of its legacy are the only reasons this isn't considered just another disposable sci fi action movie.

If "I'll pay to see it, twice" isn't enough for a movie to be considered good, I don't know what the fuck your standards are.

I've seen Krull way more than twice, but I wouldn't call it good, either.  For me, a movie can be a lot of fun without being well made or meaningful.  I suppose I should instead say that it is a good movie with poor writing and incompetent direction that actively sabotages audience engagement.  If the big climactic death scene fails to move me, I have trouble calling the movie a complete success just because it had some fun action scenes and charismatic actors.

I admit I wouldn't be so harsh on TFA's faults if it hadn't been for all of my friends and dozens of posters on message board overhyping the movie and declaring it to be better than RotJ or Star Wars.  Just like the characters and their achievements, the movie didn't earn that.

[eldaec]

Regarding the Darth Plague guy theory, as there are only 4 star wars films in the canon I don't care if they reference a guy from a film that no longer matters but who we have literally no information about even if we accept RotS as a real thing. Happy to judge it on its own merits if/when it happens.

But I will say noone mentioned Sith in this film. Kylo Ren is not called Darth Kylo and the only reference to an over arching bad guy team was the Knights of Ren thing. So we don't have any direct evidence Sith exist at all. Anything that sticks two further fingers up at bullshit EU nonsense history/future of the Sith is of course, eternally welcome.

[Merusk]

No, the prequels are still canon. They're just studiously ignoring them. The rest of the EU is trashed and gone. They'll pick some stuff from it but we can already see that they're not going to take big chunks. Just little bits and side stories, maybe some settings and races.

Maz gives you the key to the evil storyline. She talks of the Sith, then the Empire, now the First Order as the face of evil. These guys aren't Sith they're something else (as eldaec notes there's no "Darth" titles in play). The Jedi are necessary to balance this evil out.

The old guy in the beginning is an adherent of a Church of The Force. Maz senses and understands the Force. We're seeing an expansion of the Force outside of Jedi/ Sith religions.

As for the grey Jedi stuff, doubtful. You can accept your inner evil without giving in to it or even needing to follow it. It's also too nuanced for a film series that uses such a heavy-handed metaphor as "the sun goes out as he stabs his father" to illustrate the death of good in a character.