The Force Awakens discussion thread (spoilers)

[FunkyFreshMan]

In a galaxy where the response to the destruction of a Death Star is to build a BIGGER Death Star, where capital ships start pushing the limits of being "cities in space" but can be knocked out by a single snubfighter crashing into the bridge, and where exposed chasms are everywhere yet protective handrails are curiously few and far between, I doubt practicality is high on anyone's list of priorities.

Kidding aside, I had originally thought that they did blow up Coruscant; I had to look it up later on. That brief planetside shot looked awfully similar....

I re-watched it the other day, yeah Poe mentions Mag-Pulses when telling Finn how to work the turret on the TIE

Somewhat amusingly, Mag Pulses actually seem play a big role in the new canon. Both the Special Forces TIE Fighter and the T-70 X-wing are equipped with them.

I grinned a little bit when Poe mentioned Mag Pulses.

[Reimar]

Just imagine playing "Rebel Assault 2" before watching the movie like I did. It was a bit much, because it felt like _everything_ in Star Wars gets blown up by destroying some reactor...

[Tuskin]

In a galaxy where the response to the destruction of a Death Star is to build a BIGGER Death Star, where capital ships start pushing the limits of being "cities in space" but can be knocked out by a single snubfighter crashing into the bridge, and where exposed chasms are everywhere yet protective handrails are curiously few and far between, I doubt practicality is high on anyone's list of priorities.

Kidding aside, I had originally thought that they did blow up Coruscant; I had to look it up later on. That brief planetside shot looked awfully similar....

Well, the new TIEs have shields and Life Support, and the Special Forces TIE has a Hyperdrive.

They added safety there. Something about not having enough pilots.

[Vince T]

Well they'd be really dumb if they hadn't learned from their errors over the past 30 years

[Jaeven]

Well they'd be really dumb if they hadn't learned from their errors over the past 30 years

Starkiller base?

[Vince T]

OK admittedly enough they probably didn't consider the possibility that anybody would ever be so suicidal enough to hyperjump into a planet's atmosphere 50 meters above the ground.

[Marcos_Edson]

OK admittedly enough they probably didn't consider the possibility that anybody would ever be so suicidal enough to hyperjump into a planet's atmosphere 50 meters above the ground.

Oh, man... Putting aside this idea was recycled from Star Trek 2009, how's that nobody seems to know about such flaw when using a planetary shield... and Han seems to be the only one crazy enough to have ever done it...

[BattleDog]

To be fair, the first Death Star was only blown up because the Rebels had a Jedi and because Tarkin didn't order a general scramble.

The DS II needed Han AND Lando to pull it off

Starkiller Base only got blown up by sheer dumb luck, it took Poe the Pilot, all his wingmen, Han, Chewie and Finn the ex janitor.

[Marcos_Edson]

and Finn the ex janitor.

Boy, I know Finn is a great comic relief but really... These new stormtroopers are supposed to be risen since children to be top of the line soldiers but also do sanitation work? I guess all the First Order's budget went into the Starkiller so no maintenance droids... He could have said he only did patrol duty on low levels and Han's reaction would still be the same, too good Captain Phasma was an easy catch AND easy to convince, too, I expected she would not drop the shields so easily even at gun point... Now, if Chewie were the one "working" on her... you know, "let the wookie win" and whatnot...

[The Saxman]

It's actually realistic. The real-life military assigns low-ranking soldiers to latrine duty and KP. It keeps the troops occupied and saves money.

[BattleDog]

I don't think it fits for Star Wars. You want droids doing sanitation, and you want to give them regular memory wipes.

Remember Star Wars is built on droid-labour.

[FunkyFreshMan]

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[BattleDog]

HEH

[TheMidi-ChlorianHoax]

I just saw the movie today, I tried to take my lowest expectations just in case but it still disappointed me really bad. It started great for the first scene but then soon turned around and I hated it with a passion and I feel horrible after watching it. I could make a list of reasons I didn't like it but it would be too long. No Star Wars movie ever made me feel this bad. I wonder if it's the same way people who hate Episode 1 felt like (I liked Episode 1 a lot but maybe because I was really young back then). The fact that so many people loved Episode 7 makes me feel even more alienated.
I really wanted to like this movie.

[Darksaber]

People have a far to high expectation of films these days, why not just sit back and try to enjoy it for what it is!

A couple of hours of escapism!

[Jaeven]

Can I ask you just what exactly you disliked? I mean it obviously was not ESB or ROTJ, but imo it was a very solid movie.

[TheMidi-ChlorianHoax]

Stuff I didn't like:
-It didn't introduce almost any new vehicles (loved Kylo Ren's ship though), I wish they had put more effort to this.
-The planets weren't really anything new either and it's not that hard to make new unexpected sci-fi planets tbh.
-The fact that the Expanded Universe is not canon anymore ever since this movie began production. Like many other fans I grew up with A LOT of EU stuff so this was pretty bad news for me.
-The fact that Kylo Ren kind of makes it clear old EU stuff is no longer true
-I didn't like how they found out about the new Death Star and suddenly had a plan to destroy it in a few seconds, how everything just worked out the way they wanted it to. And how it was too much like the Death Stars from the old movies. It even had a very clear weak spot for people to destroy. The whole attack plan scene felt like a joke.
-I didn't like how captain Phasma was over hyped and didn't really do anything in the movie
-I liked the first few music tracks but not the rest
-Rey was cool as long as they plan to have some character development for her in the next 2 films. Finn was cool too but it didn't make sense to me at all that he was raised to be a mindless soldier and suddenly turned against the first order, though I guess some back story can explain it. I liked Poe too but the fact that he's presumed dead and suddenly alive again with a half assed explanation was annoying. Kylo was okay but he was kind of silly to me with that helmet thing trying to be the new Darth Vader and the fact that he over writes a lot of EU stuff (his name is Ben and he's Leia's son so he kind of over writes Jaina and Jacen Solo, Ben Skywalker, and possibly also removes Mara Jade). BB-8 was super cool though.
-I hated that Snoke supreme leader thing, and I was over hyped for Lupita Nyongo's character but I didn't like her in the end either.
-I didn't like how the First Order was way too much like the Empire. I mean it makes sense but I wish they had made new stuff instead of playing it safe with nostalgia.
-I didn't like most of the dialogue, especially Maz Kanata's dialogue. I didn't like the scene where Leia and Han meet. And many scenes were needlessly long to me.
-The general plot of the movie wasn't very interesting to me. Especially how they need to find Luke with pieces of a map and then suddenly have to destroy a 3rd Death Star, which they succeed at with no problem.
-I liked how Han Solo died (though a friend accidentally spoiled it for me the day before lol). But I didn't like how he didn't get a funeral in the movie and the characters didn't really seem to mind too much about it.
-The movie in general had too many plot holes that I wish it didn't.

Some of the reasons made me not like it as a Star Wars movie and others made me not enjoy it as a movie in general.
I know many people hate Episode 1 and I probably just liked it cause I saw it as a kid but it seemed to have way more original stuff than this one (new ships, new planets, the underwater scene, the race scene, new enemies).
I'm not saying my reasons for not liking it make sense or that the movie is bad. I'll probably change my mind after a few days and learn to like it I guess. I understand that probably the majority of fans hate the prequels while I liked them, and this movie was probably made for them, to extend the original trilogy. But I wanted it to be neither like the original movies or the prequels, just something new and different. Either that or that at least that they wouldn't have said the EU is non canon (even if the movie was gonna contradict it a bit).

I tried hard to like it and kept telling myself "this is great this is great" but in the end I couldn't. Maybe I will change my mind after a while about it. I think it's gonna be a bit harder for me to accept that most of the EU will probably be deleted and replaced but oh well. But trust me I really tried to enjoy it and to have my lowest expectations for it. Maybe deep down I still had very high expectations though.
I was shocked yesterday but today the more I think about the movie, the less bad it seems.
I'm sure some Episode 7 mods for X-Wing Alliance will make me start liking the movie though
Sorry for the ridiculously long post!

[FunkyFreshMan]

I'm with you on the planets thing. If there was one thing that the Prequels did right, it was introducing a wide variety of planets. Every Star Wars movie save TFA and RotJ introduced at least one radically different planet, and the Prequels showcased the most alien and unusual ones. I do have to give a shout out to ESB for actually taking us to a gas giant, though.


The thing that bugs me the most about them de-canonizing the EU is that now you essentially have two different timelines in a franchise that, for some forty years really only had one. Alternate timelimes and "parallel universes" in fiction always bothered me. It's one reason why I could never get into comic books—all the re-writes and revisions get confusing. This particular villain might have a half-dozen different origin stories, but which one applies to the thing I'm reading now? Wait, didn't that guy die? No, that was from this storyline. This one's completely different. Wha....?

Yes, the Star Wars EU ended up getting really messy, and a lot of things ended up conflicting with earlier things with some of the attempts at retcons being...silly, but they at least tried to keep it congruous. Now I feel very unfamiliar with a universe that I knew for so long, and that feels strange. What are the "rules" in this universe? Are they different from the universe I'm already familiar with? Does X piece of technology still work the way it does? Does it still exist? Are Bothans still Bothans?

That feeling of unfamiliarity aside, it's starting to bother me less and less that they canned the EU. It hasn't actually gone anywhere. All my books and games haven't suddenly become one with the Force. There won't be any further adventures involving my favorite character (probably), but the adventures they've already had are still there. I've come to terms with it, as it were. I'm with Darksaber—I'm just going to sit back and enjoy it for what it is!

[The Saxman]

I always ROFL about people complaining about Phasma not doing anything, and yet Boba Fett didn't do anything and spawned an almost hilariously huge fanbase, to the point that the Mandalorians got turned into one of THE biggest gangs of Mary Sues outside the Bat Family.

[TheMidi-ChlorianHoax]

Hey that's not fair, Boba Fett didn't get captured and humilliated in Episode 5 like Phasma did, and he helped freeze Han Solo

[Vince T]

.... until his Jetpack malfunctioned from a lucky blind hit sending him careening against a ship hull resulting in a not so elegant pllunge right into the Sarlacc's mouth. Nuff said

I'm with Sax and DS, I viewed the film twice, laughed about the gags, chuckled at some of the leaps of logic and greatly enjoyed the whole thing.

[TheMidi-ChlorianHoax]

Agreed, his ""death"" was really stupid

I gotta watch Episode 7 again.

[Jaeven]

I was heartbroken when they made the EU to non-canon, but the more I think about it there really wasn't a choice. I mean, the three major choices I could see for a new trilogy would have been: Thrawn Trilogy, New Jedi Order and Legacy of the Force.

You can't do the Thrawn trilogy without breaking the lore or recasting Luke/Leia/Han. So they were never going to take that route.
There is no way they could have done justice to an epic 19 book series like NJO in three films, so that wasn't an option.
And if they would have picked LOTF it would have lost all meaning because we hadn't gotten Jacen's backstory to make the story meaningful. Also there would be a kind of glaring absence of Chewbacca.
Anything else, the EU was just way too clustered.

Am I still annoyed that certain parts are non-canon? Yeah. Thrawn, Anakin Solo, Jacen Solo (To name a few) are characters I don't think the new canon will ever be able to replicate even remotely. But if we're honest, there is a lot of stuff in the EU nobody is going to miss. Whether that's stuff like "The Crystal Star", Kevin J "Aka Superweapon of the week" Anderson's books or Dark Empire.

[Vince T]

Well the main issue with incorporating the old EU would have been that there would've been too much going on which the majority of movie goers have no idea about (let's face it, while a lot of people like star wars, only a comparable handful are familiar with the EU lore). So JJ would have had to spend a great deal of the movie in exposition and somehow trying to establish the state of the galaxy with all the meaningful stuff that'd happened until that point.

Also, I wouldn't really have liked them to film any of the novels as part of the core film line, simply because those stories are known and in opposite to franchizes like Harry Potter and LotR Star Wars has never been about turning great novels into movies.

There's one thing that bugged me while browsing SW.com is that they changed the background and even the name of some of the classic movie elements, the most striking instance being the Rebel Blockade Runner (aka. Corelian Corvette) now being called Alderaan cruiser.....

[XDragon]

Like many of you guys I was bummed when they killed off the EU. I still don't understand why KOTOR had to go but eh..

Still, I went into this film with medium expectations and I gotta say I loved the fact that they played off of ANH. I'm interested to see the journey that the story will take. I'm assuming we'll have parallel stroies with Ren becoming a Sith and Rey a Jedi and the evolution of the First Order as a proper Imperial successor state. I'm amazed they destroyed the New Republic so quickly honestly. I've done a little research on Wookiepedia, the old Empire still exists, limited to the core but Corescant was given to the Republic.