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

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.

whole lot of force visions when Rey initially touches the lightsaber, including stuff not in this film!

it was a good misdirection to throw some of those in the trailer

ending i was thinking 'wizard of earthsea' hoping luke would reveal himself as ogion after his long meaningful stare with rey

I realized what bothered me about Snoke is that he's Voldemort.

that was my biggest complaint, the big CGI dude was way too Lord of the Rings for Star Wars

Somebody suggested that maybe that's a false face or illusion. I'll hold onto that hope for now.

I really liked that he was so out of scale to Ren and Hux. Brings to mind the Wizard of Oz.

And I actually hope they get somebody else to "help" John Williams with the score for the next two - I barely registered any of the new character themes and the familiar stuff was used in ways that were a little too familiar to really add to the excitement. Basically the music felt even more mailed in than the scene where they concoct their battle plan for blowing up the base.

Seemd like the audience I watched it with last night saw Han's death coming a mile off. As soon as he and Chewie split up people were like "oh no"

Oh yeah, I knew one of them was going to get it at that point.

going off on your own in an enemy fortress where your fallen-to-dark-side kid is lurking around is trouble

I think in the last twelve hours I've gone from "man that Snoke was kind of a vague bad guy stand-in" to "who the hell is this guy and what is his deal, I really want to know"

just sent this mega-spoiler to a friend:

they reveal the secret of how Darth Vader used the toilet
that is all that survived other than his helmet, the toilet apparatus

guys, the scene where Finn gives BB-8 a thumbs-up and the droid flicks out his little lighter thing

the dumb thing is that he's gonna obviously at least be really small irl like the whole "oz great and terrible" thing which is pretty clunky.

but honestly i'm nitpicking! i loved it. great ship battles, some genuine moments w/han and leia. chewy was great.

one thing i liked and maybe this is my own weird thing but i really liked the casting for finn and poe, both those guys have "70s faces" to me in some way i can't explain but they look like 70s actors to me which added to the vibe

i have no idea why i think that

so did Captain Phasma make it off the planet or was that the shortest appearance for a cool-looking character since Boba Fett

"I can tell you that in this film, she is a Boba Fett-style character, so she’s not at the forefront of the action but she certainly packs a punch."

And I actually hope they get somebody else to "help" John Williams with the score for the next two - I barely registered any of the new character themes and the familiar stuff was used in ways that were a little too familiar to really add to the excitement.

Mostly I agree, but the tune playing during the final island scene, the one with fast-paced violins that sounded like a Celtic folk melody, that was really nice! They repeated it during the credits too. But yeah, that was pretty much the only memorable new composition in the movie.

I liked the pirate hideout music

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.