Star Wars 7 Spoilers Thread: This SPOIL bath is going to feel so good.

the imperial fragment that thought they needed a dark side leader has struck a bargain with something they did not anticipate and it's going to backfire

Yeah, it seems kinda likely that Snoke is not what they think he is, and that he has other plans than merely becoming Emperor II. His whole ridiculous image, being a giant sitting on a throne of shadows, and the fact we never see him in flesh and blood, makes it seem that it's all an illusion, and in reality he's something unexpected.

Maybe Snoke is Luke?

Nah I bet he's like three feet tall

Snoke is Yoda Jr!

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/c/c1/Watto_EPI_TPM.png

Or this guy, finally getting his revenge on the Skywalker family after all these years!

so that speech Luke gave in the trailer.. what happened to that?!

the snow-y sabre stuff looked absolutely incredible in 3D.

the 3rd best SW movie though no doubt. *flew* by too.

Seriously though, I think it's perfectly possible that Snoke is actually a member of the same race as Yoda. They've thrown everything else from the original movies into the blender, so why not have an Evil Yoda as well?

(xpost)

I thought Kylo Ren removing his helmet was a great move. It brought sexual tension to his conflict with Rey without making it too rapey.

*flew* by too.

It's rare to say this about modern action movies, but I think this one could've benefitted from being a bit longer... If they'd fleshed out the X-Wing pilots a bit and made the infiltration and attack on the Death Planet feel more dangerous, with setbacks and reversals of fortune, it wouldn't have felt so weak compared to the episode IV and VI finales. Okay, the personal drama between Kylo/Han/Rey/Finn was reallly the meat there, and that worked nicely, but in VI they were able to do both personal drama and good space action at the same time, and they kinda failed at the latter in this one.

I thought Kylo Ren removing his helmet was a great move. It brought sexual tension to his conflict with Rey without making it too rapey.

Oh yeah, that one I actually liked. When they kidnapped Rey, and Finn was set on rescuing her, I feared they would go into Damsel in Distress territory, so it was cool that Rey actually saved herself. And there definitely were some intentional abusive vibes in the interrogation scene, so it was a great moment when Rey stood up against Kylo.

But IMO the confrontation with Han, and particularly the final lightsaber fight were the parts where seeing Kylo's emo face diminished him as a villain. I understand that he had to remove his helmet when he saw his dad, but I think it would've worked much better if he'd remained stone-faced throughout the scene instead of all this ACTING! And in the final fight, seeing him look so sad and scared, combined with the fact that he lost to a first-time light-saber user, just made him feel like a weak villain.

Thinking they're trying to say something about the nature of evil here that kinda goes against the prequel trilogy, no?
Adam Driver's Kylo Ren, lashing out at his equipment when the world doesn't fall into place for him seems so much more relatable than the stiff turns of Anakin Skywalker.
You could argue that it's all a bit too much of course but there's something refreshing about the fact that you get a real sense of this guy needing his mask to be truly evil. What we're seeing is him trying out what it would be like to be deliciously evil even without the mask hiding his true face - an internet troll's naked dream - but even with the patricide it feels like his plan doesn't work. He's still too vulnerable and passionate. But he'd prefer a life without the mask.

There's something about the naked quality of Rey's face - it's so open! - that goes into this tension too, I think. Kylo really wants to be like her, only bad.

Yeah, I can see what you're getting at, and like I said I can still imagine them building an interesting character arc for him, but the fact still is that he's the only villain in the movie who does anything important, so he needs to carry its conflict on his shoulders, and it doesn't quite work. If they'd given either Gollum or Tarkin Jr. more screentime, made either of them into the big baddie with Kylo as his right-hand man (like Tarkin/Vader in IV and Emperor/Vader in VI), then him being such a tragic and human character would've worked. But since he's the only significant villain, it fails, because a movie like this needs a proper Threat Personified.

But they want a vulnerable young man to be the face (!) of evil this time around, not an immovable old stone faced bastard. They're going for an Anders Behring Breivik kinda villain, obviously. And Breivik - a huge LOTR fan btw - didn't need a giant gollum to give him orders, outside of the projections of his own mind.

But this is not a realistic terrorist drama - I don't think Anders Behring Breivik works as the villain of an epic space fantasy. Different genres require different kinds of antagonists.

Well, Lucas tried to say something about the nature of evil so it's hardly unprecedented, and right now it's the behring breiviks that are threatening the west from within, not the paternalistic figures of Lucas's youth, so...

Actually I guess why this trilogy will be a synthesis of both the trilogies. It's Anakin revised that is the true innovation, radical enough to make the stabilization of this recognizable universe into a major concern for Abrams.

This was a really fun film. I liked this star wars film. I'm looking forward to another star wars film. STAR WARS!

Saw it last night. Just some scattered thoughts:

- Shooting on film in practical locations was definitely the right call. This film LOOKED terrific, with very few exceptions. After Empire it may be the best-looking of the films.

- My wife, no prequel-hater by a long shot, said, "Wow, I can't believe J.J. Abrams made a Star Wars movie that's more Star Wars-y than George Lucas did. He really seems to understand the universe of the movies a lot better than Lucas."

- Abrams knows who the real star of these movies is, too. The applause on the initial reveal of the Falcon (especially since he cleverly hid it offscreen during the "What about that ship?" exchange) was literally thunderous.

- I honestly thought that, if they were going to kill an OG character, it was going to be Chewbacca, since Mayhew is in his 70s and isn't up for the physicality of the part much longer. Killing Han was a bold choice, but one that satisfies the story beats, the fealty to the OT, and probably Ford's stipulations for agreeing to play the character again.

- Han and Leia naming their son "Ben" makes a lot more sense than naming their younger son "Anakin" in the EU. ("Ben" is Luke Skywalker's son in the EU.)

- My initial supposition that Luke would not show up until the very end of this film, which I posted on the "Shit Talk" thread, was confirmed; although I honestly thought for a second that after Threepio said "It would take a miracle now," he would show up during the Kylo/Rey fight. Not giving him even a single word of dialogue, thought? TROLL LEVEL: EXPERT

- Threepio doing a little lean-in during the Han/Leia reunion got a gigantic laugh. God bless Anthony Daniels.

- Abrams loves that imploding planet effect. RIP, Death Planet, may you and Vulcan meet in another life.

- Daisy Ridley is going to have little girls clamoring for her autograph for the rest of her life.

I could have done without Threepio altogether. I had forgotten that Daniels had been announced and I don't remember him showing up in the trailers. I understand it was a "let's get the gang back together" kinda deal.

I had also thought - going in - that Chewbacca was going to get offed. I had privately hypothesized that as the reason for Han and Leia's sad embrace in the trailer. And when he gets shot early on, I thought Finn would lose him while Rey and Solo are trying to fly the Falcon.

A lot to process, but my main takeaway is that the Abrams team got everything about casting right where the prequels team got it wrong. That made SO MUCH difference when I realized I actually liked, or at the very least wasn't indifferent to, all the people on the screen.

Oh, I didn't finish my thoughts on Threepio. He kinda took me out of it. I loved loved loved the movie, but 100% agree that there were too many throwbacks to the old movies and when he popped out that just kinda did it for me. Han and Chewie were perfect, and Luke's appearance at the end was full of portent. But I didn't really want to be wrapped up in "oh, look who's back!" kinda shit. The new cast had a very vital energy though and I liked the movie better when they were the focus.

Btw, what was that Kylo Ren say to Rey in the interrogation: "imagine an ocean, I am your island" or something like that while he's trying to pick her brain. That line was dope as hell and quickly glossed over, but then you have Luke at the end on an island in an ocean.

I wanted more Poe Dameron too. Yeah, he's a hotshot pilot so it makes sense that most of the time he's out there dogfighting most of the time, but the quick explanation of what happened to him after the tie fighter crash could have been shown, not told. Or told differently or something.

It might have just been me, but I kept thinking about Edna Mode from The Incredibles the whole time Maz Kanata was on the screen.

i liked it but a lot of this felt like it was abrams playing with a toy set lucas gave him and doing his own version of episode iv with the action figures and vehicles rather than coming up with a new movie. the coincidences necessary to drive the plot felt very little-kid-like too which is maybe the point but also prevented me from fully immersing. oh well. i bet if i were 10 i wouldn't care one bit

yeah i agree. when the Death Planet showed up I thought "oh theyre just going to make a reboot of A New Hope then?". too much pandering to the audience and a paucity of imagination. shit, theres tons of good writers who could have done something better surely

The sad thing was that the you couldn't tell from the first half that it was gonna be such a rehash. Sure, Rey's situation and the droid with secret plans were obvious Ep. IV throwbacks, but at that point it still felt like Search for Luke was gonna be the main plot, and I was really excited, because it would've given them a chance to show some more weird planets and cool aliens. And then the Death Planet shows up, and turns out it has secret weak spot, etc etc, and most of my initial enthusiasm died.

Yeah the Search for Luke would have been cool!

so long as Dame Judith Anderson still plays the Vulcan

It might have just been me, but I kept thinking about Edna Mode from The Incredibles the whole time Maz Kanata was on the screen.

― Ⓓⓡ. (Johnny Fever), Friday, December 18, 2015 8:54 AM (32 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

This was exactly my wife's comment!

Also re: the 3-D - STAR DESTROYERS: THEY FLY @ U FACE

Who spotted the Daniel Craig cameo then?

haha, of course ilx is meh. Guys this was great. The main criticism is just how bad it makes the prequels look.

the cgi yoda lady was bad. also, the white guns are so that the kids toys won't look too realistic.

Yeah, I'm only posting my complaints because I'm terrible at remembering like, great lines and jokes and awesome scenes. Because that's when you're in it. It's easier to complain about stuff because that's what pulls me out of it. I had planned on bringing a notepad to write down my favorite shit, but forgot. So much greatness.

-Rey sliding down that sand due.
-Rey laying Finn out in the market
-"stop grabbing my hand!"
-"in that case, let's take the garbage"
-Kylo Ren throwing a fit and the stormtroopers backing away.
-What was the deal with that head that pops out of the ground when BB-8 is fleeing the village? That dude was hiding too, I guess?

dune

Abrams has been faithfully attending his Disney/Marvel/Lucasfilm Whedon classes though, both in Whedoning Han, and in Rey's whole character. (Finn getting knocked out cold, then Rey slapping him awake and him asking her, "Are you OK?" felt like it could've come right out of a Buffy episode.)

Loved Han repeatedly referring to Finn as "Big Deal."

I liked that there was just enough sense of an an entire history now that took place between Jedi and this to fill in all sorts of blanks. There weren't nearly as many exposition dumps regarding what Han, Leia and Luke have been doing for 30 years as there might have been. Just a lot of, "Things have happened, everyone is older, bad shit has gone down," etc. If he isn't a great director, Abrams is at least capable of a certain economy of storytelling.

This is exactly what a Star Wars movie 40 years on should be.

As a parent, I wouldn't mind if this is the first SW movie my kids see. I love the idea of Skywalker and the events of IV-VI as "just" a legend that they can explore further in the future. This is as opposed to always planning to shield them from the prequels.

“That’s not how the Force works.”

really bummed that han and leia couldn't work it out after ben got into death metal. puzzling that out and the relationship between rey and luke (is she his kid? will he turn her into yoda and send her back in time to train jedis?) are the main things i'm geeked for in episode viii. i like that this isn't arcing toward an inevitable tragedy everyone in the audience knows is coming like with 'phantom menace' etc. the return of a sense of possibility rhymes with the sense of cosmic wonder in the spaceways. but! it was hard to buy han's hamminess and the piling up of coincidences. the final conversation he has with his kid doesn't hit as hard as the final conversation between obi wan and darth vader, and if you're gonna bite that, jj, make it count!

man, I'm TOTALLY geeked for episode VIII.
BRING IT ON!

a few hints here and there about Rey, but I am not really seeing her as a Skywalker? could be

- her parents ditched her on jakku
- the only other person relevant to the Jedi on jakku seems familiar with Ren's fall to the dark side, and the Jedi, and also has a piece of the map to Luke

I don't think "Kylo Ren is a really scary villain" is really what the movie was going for. This is the guy we saw have multiple temper tantrums, right? Really bad at funneling his anger

i mean i don't know if it was perfect
but it FELT like a star wars movie, and that's something the last ones never did for one second
i'm happy

This is the first movie in a long time (like decades) that I sat during the credits and wanted to watch again immediately.

I laughed! A lot!

About half an hour in I remember thinking "should I be laughing this much?"

Also... should I be crying this much?

Anyway, my hunch is that if VII is the Han movie, then maybe VIII is the Luke movie and IX is the Leia movie - not least since we've got a female protagonist on our hands.

Sad that the returning characters failed to really adjust to life after wartime, but Han returning to smuggling was a good setup for hijinks

http://io9.gizmodo.com/an-exclusive-look-at-the-never-before-seen-concept-art-1748716406

you have Luke at the end on an island in an ocean.

robot skeleton hand all reaching up to remove his hood.

dude's gone through some serious shit

The Kanjiclub scene dangles these amazing martial arts actors in front of us and then doesn't deliver any martial arts. That's breaking some basic rule of showmanship.

Putting two Chekhov's Guns in the same situation (monsters, badasses) and then having only one go off seems like a very modern thing to do

tracer hand (and kasdan) otm re it being delightful

i think that is the best encapsulation

Darth vader is a great villain.

Was it in this thread or somewhere else that someone made the point that an evil father is also waaaay more scary than an evil son, which is more just sad

Part of the charm of Kyle Ren is that he's kind of a whiney chump. He doesn't come off as all powerful and menacing like Vader.

yeah

i love when he takes off his mask & rey is thrown, like "ooookay not hideously disfigured waht is happening"

yup, felt the same

Yeah plus Kylo works because we know and love his parents so much (compared to both Anakin/Padme and Anakin's boring Mom and her mysterious midichlorian lover). The challenge is how they provide him with something different to Vader's trajectory as a retread of that redemption is unlikely to be satisfying.

He's already had a different trajectory, to an extent, in that he wants the darkness but the light keeps/kept calling to him.

I think I probably said this upthread, but frustrated young man incapable of living up to their expectations of strength is a very Age Of Reddit take.

What with the actual vader helmet on the wall of his room, id say thats a fair take

https://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/s--1SwI03eU--/c_fit,fl_progressive,q_80,w_636/c9al0cakdacwilvoslpj.gif

xpost it's not expanded upon that specifically - here's the passage: "Aided and abetted by restless, power-hungry individuals within the government, and the massive organs of commerce, the ambitious Senator Palpatine caused himself to be elected President of the Republic. He promised to reunite the disaffected among the people and to restore the remembered glory of the Republic. Once secure in office he declared himself Emperor, shutting himself away from the populace. Soon he was controlled by the very assistants and boot-lickers he had appointed to high office, and the cries of the people for justice did not reach his ears."

― Hammer Smashed Bagels, Monday, December 28, 2015 9:50 AM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

hmm who does this sound like

Obama

the massive organs of commerce

hawt

I assume the sarlacc is constantly being used as a toilet.

― jmm, Monday, January 4, 2016 11:54 AM bookmarkflaglink

lol cackled at this classic today. thanking u

The crimes of JJ Abrams really quickly piled up into a larger heap than the cumulative crimes of George Lucas with this trilogy, didn't they

I never got round to seeing any of the sequels (Andor’s great, though). I’m not even particularly into Star Wars but I didn’t really feel like watching Luke and Han Solo die? It feels antithetical to my childhood idea of what the movies are (i.e. fixed to conclude at a particular point with a happy ending that lasts forever). Am curious about the Rian Hughes movie though

Er Rian Johnson I mean

The people who like the JJ ones best seem to hate it, which maybe tells you all you might need to know!

It was definitely my favourite, if not essential.

it's the most interesting one, though after seeing it again i wouldn't say it's really that good. what puts it above the other two is the fact that RJ is a good director and there are a couple of stunning "big moments" which are among the best of the whole franchise. But in the end virtually the entire film is cancelled out and discarded by Abrams' backpedaling in the third film. the whole trilogy is so disjointed and incoherent, it's probably safe to regard it as non-canon.

The crimes of JJ Abrams really quickly piled up into a larger heap than the cumulative crimes of George Lucas with this trilogy, didn't they

― omar little, Thursday, August 3, 2023 12:34 PM bookmarkflaglink

disagree. Force Awakens is a fine movie, I enjoyed Rise of Skywalker as poorly as it was written, but ultimately these felt like star wars movies, whereas Lucas outright lost the ability to write an enjoyable tale or build engaging characters (other than the ones he'd already established in 4-6). Dialogue was execrable to the point where it spawned about 100 memes that STILL circulate to this day, Phantom Menace included the most boring trade blockage subplot in history and was abysmal visually. and Anakin's character arc was massacred. I still enjoy Ep 3 but even that one is flawed af, I just appreciate the darker tone.

I watched Eps 7 and 9 recently and they held up fine as a fun watch, but I can't even finish Eps 1-2.

yeah same

wait a minute, well *i* disagree. TFA "felt" like a Star Wars film but i think ultimately the shallowness of the narrative, the directionless tale that was told, betrayed a lack of confidence. and it was a problem to have a story that wasn't told organically from the seeds up to the top of the tree, but rather simply having new characters and different places draped ill-fittingly over the skeletal framework of a previously told tale, which was rearranged just enough that it couldn't be called theft, but not enough that it could be called original. not that Lucas didn't steal from some sources, but there was verisimilitude to his tale. the prequel trilogy is more mediocre than good, but more good than bad, and i think much of that comes from the clean, precise storyline, which has some genuinely awkward moments and not-good characters, and dreadful dialogue, but feels like the weird and pure vision of a specifically odd big budget filmmaker, and not the tale told by a focus group via a board of directors, executed by the guy who did Star Trek wrong, and made Mission Impossible boring.

BUT at least TFA has a solid first half before the derivative chaos of the second half.

I'll put it this way - can anybody summarize what actually happens in Phantom Menace outside of "Palpatine begins his nefarious work to ascend the political ladder, Qui-Gonn is killed, and Anakin is discovered?". because there's a lot of complicated, dull political mess that tbh feels like three filler episodes of Clone Wars before that show got good.

Lucas said the prequel trilogy was meant to be Anakin's character arc, which should have been great, but Lucas went and did it through a really awkward love story that didn't hold together. having Anakin be almost a secondary player in Phantom to time-jumping 10 years to teen Anakin being a lecherous perv who already seems to have demons means we never really understand why he's so borderline psychotic in Attack of the Clones, because all of that development happened off-screen. think it would have been better if they just started in the first film with him already being a teen Padawan and coming in contact with nefarious influences for the first time then going back all the way to childhood.

and as much as I do enjoy Revenge of the Sith, there were so many much more interesting angles Lucas could have taken, such as being brainwashed into thinking the Jedi were trying to take over the Republic, but instead they turned it into an awkward love story where he's so afraid of her dying in childbirth he learns dark powers. his motivation for turning is almost incomprehensible - he desperately needs Palpatine to show him the dark side powers to save Padme, yet first he decides to tell Mace Windau and go with him to apprehend Palpatine, knowing he'll either be killed, or imprisoned and unwilling to help Anakin since he betrayed him anyway. the fuck did he think was going to happen? and then after Windau is killed, he simultaneously in 5 minutes goes from reluctantly killing Windau to believing every anti-Jedi conspiracy theory. It feels like two parts of different films, like two screenplays were merged.

like one minute, he's begging Mace not to make him kill him, the next he's willfully slaughtering a bunch of kids without hesitation.

tbh they should have started the trilogy where Attack of the Clones began and put all three films in a much more compressed time period.

i don't know how sad it is that I just used my afternoon break at work to write this.

i don't necessarily think the complexity of the plot (i will also accept incoherence) is a negative counterpoint to the disjointed, made-up-along-the-way narrative of the sequel trilogy, but obviously the flaws in the prequels run deep. sometimes though i think it's a case of lucas overreaching where he should have simplified it. they at least don't feel like desperation ploys to the fairweather audience.

i'm too old for this shit though.

*breaks away from thinking about the upcoming Ahsoka series* Sorry, did you all say something?

I still wonder how things might have turned out if Lucas hadn’t backed away from the “dark Jar Jar” idea.

As ridiculous as it is I really enjoy the big pulpy space opera nonsense of Rise Of Skywalker the best out of the three sequels.