Star Wars Episode VII - The Force Awakens discussion thread NOW WITH SPOILERS NOW THE FILM IS OUT.

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Selkadoom
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Post by Selkadoom »

Cyberstrike nTo wrote:Well David Gaider and Patrick Weeks are also pretty good. Marc Walters is good at smaller quests not the overall arc. Casey Hudson should never be allowed to write a story for the rest of his life.
What did Hudson write again?
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Post by ganon578 »

Can't believe I'm the first to get to post this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sGbxmsDFVnE

Can't even wait for this movie. Amazing trailer all around.
SPOILER! (select to read)
The most impressive part is hearing Han, who didn't believe in 'hokey religions' the the Original Trilogy telling the newbies that it's all real. Dark side, Jedi, all of it. Like the Original Trilogy events are all conceived as myths and stories. Amazing.

And Rey, climbing in and investigating a crashed Star Destroyer is fantastic.

And Kylo Ren's voice. Awesome.
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Post by Summerhayes »

The best thing about the trailer is that it showed enough to make me very excited but not enough to ruin the film. Even though the first trailer was a year ago, two months suddenly feels like way too long.
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Post by Selkadoom »

Summerhayes wrote:The best thing about the trailer is that it showed enough to make me very excited but not enough to ruin the film. Even though the first trailer was a year ago, two months suddenly feels like way too long.
I enjoyed it as well but damn was I bothered by the lack of any Hamil in the trailer
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Post by Cyberstrike nTo »

Selkadoom wrote:What did Hudson write again?
He co-wrote the endings to ME3.
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Post by ganon578 »

Selkadoom wrote:I enjoyed it as well but damn was I bothered by the lack of any Hamil in the trailer
They definitely seem to be keeping him under tight wraps. As I understand it, there was a leaked photo of Hamill in Jedi robes, which was quickly removed. Perhaps there's a quest to find him, like he has gone into hiding for some reason? That ties into Han's discussion about the Jedi being real, not a story.

I'm not really worried that he hasn't shown up in the trailer, more encouraged that he will present an interesting plot point for the movie.
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Post by inflatable dalek »

I was a little amused to see the new Royal Mail stamps don't have a single image from the Prequels on them, it's all OT and new film only (with even Yoda carefully surrounded by Empire imagery as if to say "THIS ISN'T PHANTOM MENACE YODA"). I think that rather sums up the Prequel attitude.

In fact, has any of the new merchandise been based around the more recent three films other than stuff based on the cartoons that's reused from them?
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Post by ganon578 »

inflatable dalek wrote:I was a little amused to see the new Royal Mail stamps don't have a single image from the Prequels on them, it's all OT and new film only (with even Yoda carefully surrounded by Empire imagery as if to say "THIS ISN'T PHANTOM MENACE YODA"). I think that rather sums up the Prequel attitude.

In fact, has any of the new merchandise been based around the more recent three films other than stuff based on the cartoons that's reused from them?
I enjoy the prequels for what they are, but there's no denying they don't have the impact that the OT does. Though it would never happen, they almost need to do like Marvel has recently done and 'redo' them much like they did with Hulk, Fantastic Four, Spider-Man, etc. The stories themselves aren't bad, but they could have been done much better.
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Post by Summerhayes »

I can enjoy each of the prequels if they're on, but they don't have the same impact the original trilogy does. I am intrigued to know how much that feeling is shared by laymen or children who grew up with them as their Star Wars films. I've always assumed that us geeks are less forgiving of bad CGI because we spend so much time looking at it; be it in videogames or just copious sci-fi and fantasy. If somebody only saw a little CGI in an average year, would they notice the little things that bother us?

On the subject of Luke, I'm kind of glad they're keeping schtum. Its nice not to know anything other than "he's in the film."
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Post by Cliffjumper »

My biggest problem with the prequels is that they make The Empire, the scariest ****ing thing ever in the world, spring up so they're the same age as Luke and Leia. Which means it's lasten about 18-20 years, which doesn't really fit into the epic mythos. What's really promising about VII is that they're going "You don't think a bit of a kicking on some backwater moon is going to do for a ****ing empire, do you?".

That and Samuel L Jackson playing himself. Actually, everyone bar Liam Neeson's shite and he cops it at the end of the first one (and has the old Alec Guinness thing of clearly having utter contempt for every single word he's speaking going for him); Ian McDerpderp is especially bad. Cute choice for the fans but there's a reason he was smalltime enough to only creep into the old stuff when enveloped in slap; might as well've got Prowse to play Anakin.

And the storylines were all really bad, and the characters were all terrible. And the effects were dodgy. And they were really, really boring even though they thought they were the main event in all cinema.

And of course they basically inspired Twatbeard to go back and **** the proper films with Christensen and all that other shite.
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Post by Summerhayes »

McGregor was alright.
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Post by Cliffjumper »

Summerhayes wrote:McGregor was alright.
McGregor? I thought that was John Culshaw #doinganimpressionisnotacting
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Post by Summerhayes »

Maybe not in the first two, but in the third one when he was given a bit of material he was good; a bit of bond here, a cheeky twinkle in his eye there and some emotion towards the end, even as he chewed his way through some pretty awful lines.
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Post by Cliffjumper »

Do we know for a fact that it's not the world's greatest Joker voice artist ever in the world ever and thus best actor ever in that helmet near the start?

Maybe he's just going to be doing stuff like that now proper actors like John Boyega are involved...
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Post by Warcry »

I don't care enough to watch the trailers but I do suspect that either Luke is secretly the new bad guy (which would be a terrible decision), or that they're working very diligently to make us think that Luke is the new bad guy by excluding him from the marketing.

And Ewan McGregor was far and away the best thing about the prequels. I can't decide if that's because he was good or that everything else about them was just so bad, but his performance was at least enjoyable.
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Post by Cliffjumper »

Yeh, I think Luke as the bad guy might be a bit obvious and cheesy but I also, despite remaining highly upbeat about this thing, think JJ Abrams.

I think it's just as likely that he'll show up in the last scene or something after some sort of quest narrative and thus they're playing it coy to avoid an AoE/Dinobots thing and because frankly there's enough Proper Trilogy squee in the trailer to take Avatar's box office outside and do it an extreme disservice already.

Regarding McGregor, I'd agree that he was both one of the better things about the prequels and thus a sign of the problem with them. Respectable Guinness impression, looked like he was having fun (whereas, say, Natalie Portman had clearly signed the contract when worried she'd be a forgotten child star).
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Post by inflatable dalek »

I think McGregor came closest to walking away with dignity out of the main cast, even if it's not anywhere near his best performance. He'd have done Moulin Rouge just beforehand wouldn't he? Coming off a film with that much greenscreen might have left him in a better place to deal with it when Lucas' direction was clearly no help whatsoever.

I think the Emperor is easily the best thing in the prequels, insanely large ham but the closest thing to any fun in the films. The fact he's crap in Return of the Jedi (a panto dame is Darth's boss?) says it all.
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Post by Rack 'n Ruin »

OK, more crazy speculation here:

Over the weekend I saw a Lego Star Wars version of Rey with her very often seen staff. The staff was made up of a number of parts, but the end of it was a Lego lightsaber hilt. Simple part re-purposing, or a hint that the staff is more than meets the eye (to quote some other, little know franchise)? Chances that, at a critical juncture, the humble staff will be broken apart to reveal part of it is actually Rey's lightsaber?
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So the film is out!

Post by inflatable dalek »

Surprised I'm the first person to comment on here.








The film is now out, so there will be spoilers from this point onwards. Bewarned!

I'm taking extra care due to a cock up on my part on Facebook yesterday where I'd attempted to be all coy with a "This is an interesting detail about the film" style post that would up with a massive picture of the particular thing discussed coming up alongside the link. Hilarity ensued.








SPOILER! (select to read)
Really liked the first half. Yes, it was a shameless rehash of the original Star Wars (really Lucas should have got a co-writing credit), but done well and it was a good fun romp with some likeable well played characters. The first appearance of the Falcon was especially brilliant, I was half expecting her to swoop in and save the day at that point, so the sudden pan got a proper "Hell yeah!" from me.

Also, how good is Harrison Ford? Easy to say, but considering Han's rather sorry lot in life (seppareted from his misses, estranged from his son, forced to carry on as a pretty pathetic smuggler despite now being a pensioner. Though it's treated as a gag, the rest of his crew being eaten is pretty horrid as well) it'd be easy for him to be a depressing and pathetic seeming character. Ford holds it al together with a dignity and fun despite clearly struggling in some of the running about scenes.

Where it all fell apart was during the First Order attack on the place run by that woman from The Incredibles. It was here that just how crap the villains and how overpoweringly awesome the heroes were in comparison really started to sink in. Ren is a tremendous threat to any wall that might need attacking, but pretty much an inept idiot in every other way. I get they were trying to do Anakin "Right" with a confilcted not quite yet turned character, but it didn't quite work. He was most succesfull at killing a very old man putting up no fight whatsoever.

The back end was a shameless rehash of Star Wars, but all the bits people take the piss out of. The lack of CCTV in the planet base (and isn't it lucky all the places they need to go are within walking distance?) is even sillier in 2015 when cameras are everywhere in real life. I mean, Han's other ship had security cameras FFS.

The best villain was Daniel Crag's camp "I will remove these restraints" storm trooper (it's sad I could tell that was him from the way he walked out the room) and he was in it for a minute.

I could just about buy Finn managing with a light sabre on the first attempt as he was facing off against a stormtrooper with a similar weapon, so presumably he's had some training. Rey doing force mind control and managing to best someone much further along in their training in a light sabre fight (did Ren not get beyond the "Fighting a wall" stage?) seemed more unlikely and made a mockery of all the "Becoming a Jedi takes years" stuff from the originals.

Did I miss why the needed to take the shields down rather than just having the X-Wings do the same "Flying at light speed to get through the shields" thing as the Falcon? My sister in law suggested it's because the Falcon is so awesome, but it's at least 40 years old (and probably a lot more) at this point, have there been no advances in ship design in that time that modern fighter craft can't best it? Is techological research in this Universe entirely devoted to building bigger and bigger Death Stars (without ever giving any thought to resolving the "Fly down a trench and shoot to blow it up" flaw)?

By the time you got to Mark Hamil's mute drunk hobo cameo ("Hey, we've got the guy who has made a successful career as a voice actor but was never that great a screen actor. Let's not have him talk!") it had become quite inadvertently funny. I especially like how Chewbacca took one look at that cliff and went "**** that, you can go tell Luke Han's dead".

Actually, did anyone else think Chewy seemed kind of muted over Han's death? I was expecting him to kick off.

If it had continued in the vein of the first half I'd have loved it, but overall the flaws in the conclusion make it solid rather than spectacular. Guardians of the Galaxy did it better (albeit with rubbish villains as well).
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Post by Sades »

Shouldn't this be merged with that other Star Wars thread you and Warcry are going on about?
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