So did everyone see Star Wars yet?

[Magus]

Don't even want to post spoilers in spoiler tags until everyone has had their chance in their native countries.

I figured a lot of people would go see it on New Years if they hadn't seen it in the last two weeks so I figured it might finally be time to start talking about this mega film.

But I know some members are from outside the U.S. so if anyone's country has some weird January release date please share it here.

[Magus]

Talk about unlucky.

[Revising Ocelot]

I am seeing it on Tuesday.

I am filled with dread. I am expecting worse than Episode 1.

[Bard The 5th LW]

I am seeing it on Tuesday.

I am filled with dread. I am expecting worse than Episode 1.

I saw it last week, wasn't that bad. I'd give it a 7/10.

[Revising Ocelot]

7/10.

Preorder cancelled

[POS Industries]

I've seen it. I loved it.

Ready to talk about T H E O R I E S whenever.

[tacticslion]

I've seen it. I loved it.

Ready to talk about T H E O R I E S whenever.

Yes.

[RickZarber]

I loved it pretty much unreservedly. Seen it twice now, both regular 2D, hoping for a go at the Air and Space Museum IMAX in DC--one of the few remaining 70mm film IMAX screens in the country; most have made the switch to digital 3D dual 4k laser projectors, or are your smaller 2k digital "faux-MAX" screens at regular theaters (with 1.89:1 aspect ratios) as opposed to the proper 70-foot-tall screens (1.43:1). And maybe after that I'll try out the 3D laser IMAX at the museum down the street from here... just to see what it's like.

But yes. My film geekiness aside, I'm eager for discussion. :P

[tacticslion]

Preorder cancelled



Probably not your best call... ;P

More seriously, though many will (and have) disagreed, I enjoyed it about as much over-all as A New Hope, which is the bottom of the OT for me (though still very high as far as films to). For the record, while I admit Empire' was a better film, I liked Return' best.

Of the Prequels, III is the most enjoyable, II is... meh... and I is pretty blech.

I actually like the new Main Cast better than the old Main Cast - I'm not really sure how I feel about that, but there it is.

If you go in full nostalgia ahoy, and shed your cynicism, it'll be pretty solid (though I'd also temper my expectations - I've never seen a movie live up to infinihype yet). If you go in cynical, it might take you a few viewing to shed that, if you can allow yourself to do so at all.

I'm avoiding anything else 'cause SPOILERS.

[Bard The 5th LW]

Preorder cancelled

Would've been an 8, but there was one scene that lowered it a point.

[Bum Bill Bee]

Here's the review I made of it (http://kyrtuck.deviantart.com/art/PPR-SW-The-Force-Awakens-SPOILERS-AHEAD-582413150)

But the short of it is that I liked it despite all the nostalgia copy-cat stuff.

[Arhra]

It's kind of hilarious that the weakest part of the film is the new superweapon.

The test firing was kind of.... needlessly confusing?

[Bum Bill Bee]

It's kind of hilarious that the weakest part of the film is the new superweapon.

The test firing was kind of.... needlessly confusing?

...what "test" firing? You mean the part where the beam split and blew up five planets in one go? How was that confusing?

[Bard The 5th LW]

Spoilers, guys.

The scene with the new superweapon was what dropped my rating a point. It was so pointless. I hate how every single fucking modern big budget movie insists upon having a pointless scene of gratuitous mass death and destruction. It was so bad in this movie too. That scene literally meant nothing. You could have edited it out of the movie and everything would have been exactly the same. No one in the film even fucking CARES. Leia is more concerned about her own douchebag son than the goddamn genocide of like, 4 whole planets. It just sickens me how much modern movies are trying to like, desensitize people to events of mass death by making them trivial and pointless.

[Bum Bill Bee]

Spoilers, guys.

The scene with the new superweapon was what dropped my rating a point. It was so pointless. I hate how every single fucking modern big budget movie insists upon having a pointless scene of gratuitous mass death and destruction. It was so bad in this movie too. That scene literally meant nothing. You could have edited it out of the movie and everything would have been exactly the same. No one in the film even fucking CARES. Leia is more concerned about her own douchebag son than the goddamn genocide of like, 4 whole planets. It just sickens me how much modern movies are trying to like, desensitize people to events of mass death by making them trivial and pointless.

Of coure there was a point. It made it 4 times scarier than the original Death Star, so to me that was actually a plus.

Also it got rid of the Senate, ensuring that this trilogy won't be so political talking oriented as the prequel trilogy

[Bard The 5th LW]

Of coure there was a point. It made it 4 times scarier than the original Death Star, so to me that was actually a plus.

Also it got rid of the Senate, ensuring that this trilogy won't be so political talking oriented as the prequel trilogy

The big Death Star failed to intimidate me at all because it in no way intimidated the main characters. You'd hardly know it even existed if they weren't apparently trying to blow it up (without any plan at all).

Also, now 3/7 Star Wars movies feature 'Blow up the Deathstar' as their main plot. The Death Star doesn't really scare me, it just makes me stop caring.

"Oh, 4 planets were destroyed in two seconds? The Republic is dead forever? Huh, well I guess the main characters have kinda lost already. Not sure what the point to continuing is. They certainly don't seem to care."

Like, I was intimidated by the First Order when they, you know, shot all those people.

[Seil]

Saw it tonight, 3/5, mediocre. Though the lightsaber fights are worth the price of admission as usual!

[tacticslion]

To me, the lack of fear in Han meant not that it wasn't scary... it meant that he was grizzled and awesome. He's been here twice: he's got this. I mean, the other leaders were flipping their lid because none of them lived through the first time. Leiah, by contrast, was just kind of Mon Mothma-like.

If I'd have changed one thing to make it better, though, I'd have edited it less. Several key moments were left out for the express purpose of increasing the mystery and/or for time. I think it needed a few short bits of explanation that it lacked. Buuuuuuuuu~uuuuut I tend to find J.J.'s works tend toward that anyway.

[phil_]

Saw it tonight, 3/5, mediocre. Though the lightsaber fights are worth the price of admission as usual!Not story spoilers, more atmosphere spoilers: I'm glad they went back to ripping off samurai movies for the sword fights. I'm not going to say that high school me didn't enjoy the swirly-whirlimagig sword fights in the prequels, but my current tastes are much more aligned to the more mundane fights in this movie. They're more human, I guess, in that you couldn't replace the combatants with bladed gyroscopes and achieve the same choreography. Plus I just like samurai and kung-fu movies; not to equate the two, but the good ones share simple yet impressive fights.

[Tev]

The things that bothered be most about the new super-deathstar were mostly just the basic questions that immediately came to mind when I found out about it and then saw it used:

1.) Why the hell does the guy in charge of rubber-stamping Deathstar projects still have a job? This is planetary obliter-antaor number three! At some point you need to start sinking galactic resources into new ideas. I've not read any of the Expanded Universe material, but I'm told there are tons of cool new ways to blow crap up in those.

2.) So did they core out a planet....or build a planet-sized space station and then terraform its surface...or what? Is it...is it even mobile like a Deathstar? I know that it revolves around a star...a star that it eats to charge its lasers! So, like I don't think it only eats one star per shot. At least it seems to not go anywhere between when it fired its maiden salvo and when it was charging up a second time to wipe out the Rebel base. By-the-by, does this thing only get two shots out of a star before there is no more ammo? If this thing is a planet, do they have to then tow it to another solar system and set up shop to munch a new star? That seems really convoluted. You'd think that twenty years of R&D would miniaturize that stuff and mount it on a more mobile ship. I've heard about things called Sun Crushers (http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Sun_Crusher), and while they look dorky as heck, they can do way more damage than this new Deathstar could.

3.) So the weapon itself...how does it work? Let's gloss over the draining the sun for power part because they at least half-ass explained that via some techno-jargon about oscillators and such, which was a major component to destroying the thing in the end. What I'm interested in is the weapon itself. Does it fire some sort of plasma-like laser from its location around its ammo-supply star, across the galaxy at what clearly must be faster than light speeds to even get where its going in time, to then split up into multiple beams/plasma globs and destroy multiple plants orbiting another star.....and all while people on other planets across the galaxy can watch the red line of death streak across the sky to its targets? I know Star Wars plays fast and loose with its hyperdrive technology, and that's fine for the kinds of stories they want to tell, but at least the original Deathstar had to get within solar system spitting distance from Alderaan before it could blow it up.

That all aside, I rather liked this new Star Wars. It had everything I liked about previous Star Wars movies in it and the switch back to more animatronics and puppets gave things a real weight of realness that I really missed after watching the prequels. The lightsaber fights were nice and there was just enough self referential humor that I could laugh along with the characters about to make the experience a pleasant one.

[Bum Bill Bee]

I assumed they just cored out a planet myself.

And yeah, I do wonder how that thing moved. I wonder how the first Death Star moved, as a matter of fact.

[Arhra]

Of course there was a point. It made it 4 times scarier than the original Death Star, so to me that was actually a plus.
Well, like Phil said. No-one actually reacted much to this happening. What did they even blow up? It lacked gravitas.

[phil_]

Bard's name is Phil? Do we need to have a thread-derailing lightsaber battle to determine which Phil is supreme?

Although, adding my thoughts to the subject, how would you even approach the gravitas of multiple inhabited planets being destroyed simultaneously without making the whole movie about it? Like, that's a big deal, and while we get some muffled screaming, all it does is remind us of Obi-wan's line in the first film (as intended). Given how character driven this movie is, maybe they could have written it without the apocalyptic genocide. It still could have worked, and then we wouldn't have to debate the characters shrugging off trillions of deaths.

[Bard The 5th LW]

I feel like the Star Killer genocide scene could have been accomplished with just, clips of Storm Troopers blitzkrieging those various planets and shooting people. It would have been a level of gravitas in line with the movie, and it wouldn't have made Leia look like a sociopath when she still thinks her son is redeemable. The threat of the Starkiller blowing up a bunch of planets in one shot would've been sufficient.

[Tev]

I feel like the Star Killer genocide scene could have been accomplished with just, clips of Storm Troopers blitzkrieging those various planets and shooting people. It would have been a level of gravitas in line with the movie, and it wouldn't have made Leia look like a sociopath when she still thinks her son is redeemable. The threat of the Starkiller blowing up a bunch of planets in one shot would've been sufficient.Pretty much this. If the first Order had rolled out some new class of fighter ships that tore through the Republic's fleet like a hot knife through butter and left the smoldering remains of their capital ships as cratering wreckage on the planets below, that would have been cool. We would have gotten a great space battle with lots of explosions, some crippling ground damage to the Republic planets as the wreckage of their fleet rained down on them, the Resistance would no longer be safe, and we could have gotten another cool space fight between the new First Order ships and the plucky X-Wing pilots led by Poe. The rest of the cast could have blown up the factory that the First Order was using to build its new fleet.

[Bum Bill Bee]

Pretty much this. If the first Order had rolled out some new class of fighter ships that tore through the Republic's fleet like a hot knife through butter and left the smoldering remains of their capital ships as cratering wreckage on the planets below, that would have been cool. We would have gotten a great space battle with lots of explosions, some crippling ground damage to the Republic planets as the wreckage of their fleet rained down on them, the Resistance would no longer be safe, and we could have gotten another cool space fight between the new First Order ships and the plucky X-Wing pilots led by Poe. The rest of the cast could have blown up the factory that the First Order was using to build its new fleet.

....That makes no damn sense. Why would destroying a factory instantly end the threat of a space fleet, unless the ships were getting produced really stupidly fast? And how would the Resistance fleet get crushed in the first place if a plucky group of X-wings were capable of stopping the First Order ships? And the Republic would have to have lots and lots of ships right next to the planets, in order for there to be "crippling" damage to the planets surface. I mean geez, Revenge of the Sith opened up more or less with the tactics you're describing, and Coruscant was less than devastated.

[Arhra]

Bard's name is Phil? Do we need to have a thread-derailing lightsaber battle to determine which Phil is supreme?

Oops, that's what I get for having a bad memory.

On gravitas: I guess they could have easily reshuffled the rescue and found out the weapon's operational and charging while at the base. So then they're running off to sabotage the shields and a handful of X-wings is the only thing the Resistance can scramble in time? I mean it's a thing that can snipe planets from its hiding spot thousands of light years away. It doesn't need to be able to blow up a lot of things at once or charge fast.

[Tev]

....That makes no damn sense. Why would destroying a factory instantly end the threat of a space fleet, unless the ships were getting produced really stupidly fast? And how would the Resistance fleet get crushed in the first place if a plucky group of X-wings were capable of stopping the First Order ships? And the Republic would have to have lots and lots of ships right next to the planets, in order for there to be "crippling" damage to the planets surface. I mean geez, Revenge of the Sith opened up more or less with the tactics you're describing, and Coruscant was less than devastated.I don't think you're familiar with how the Star Wars universe operates. For a large span of time, they were cranking out clonetoopers from a factory on a single planet. The robot armies fought during the Clone Wars were mostly manufactured on a separate, but basically similarly isolated planet. The Empire as a whole seems to be a very "eggs in one basket" sort of society. "Let's build a space station that can blow up planets instead of hundreds of fleets that can orbitally bombard that planet back to the stone age." and such. It would not be out of the realm of plausibility to suggest that the First Order has some sort of Galactic Shipyard that builds a bulk of their ships. Sure, there's smaller test sites and crap on other planets, but when something is ready to be mass produced, it would go there be cranked on in serious numbers.

Anyway, the general idea of my suggestion would be that the Republic fleet would be smashed by the First Order because they were caught unaware; not because they were necessarily worse than some group of Rebel pilots lead by a main character wielding the power of the plot. Also, having your capital ships rain down on you from orbit will do some significant damage.

But yes, similar plot of Revenge of the Sith, which might have fared better than a third Deathstar re-hash.

[Magus]

Movie was 5/5, you are all a bunch of cynical fucks!

But seriously, I don't get the complaints, and this is not the only quarter they are coming from, for sure. I see the same complaint everywhere. But it was on the poster, people, and the movie treated it as a clear subplot and didn't dwell on it very much. We had months to prepare for it being in the movie. Let's all appreciate how the character drama was front and center and the most important thing.

[phil_]

it was on the posterNot to brag about my near complete social isolation, but I haven't seen the poster, let alone spent any time preparing myself for this film. I just watched it because _mike did and he wanted to talk about it.Let's all appreciate how the character drama was front and center and the most important thing.Let's do that, though, because it's nice that, while there were big explosions and such, the movie was about a stormtrooper running away from being a stormtrooper and getting caught up in a weird three-generation family squabble. And there was a cute robot that walked down stairs.

[Grandmaster_Skweeb]

Haven't seen it and at this point don't care to. All the major plot points have been ruined by incidental exposure on imgur from people doing the old reposting tumblr circle jerk for imaginary points.
No sense in paying good money for what amounts to filling in the gaps.

[tacticslion]

Haven't seen it and at this point don't care to. All the major plot points have been ruined by incidental exposure on imgur from people doing the old reposting tumblr circle jerk for imaginary points.
No sense in paying good money for what amounts to filling in the gaps.

If the only thing a story is to you is the surprise, sure. But it's a story that's worth watching nonetheless.

[phil_]

True, but for the price of a movie ticket Skweeb could buy ten Steam games on sale that haven't been spoiled for him. I have nothing against anyone who refuses to pay the modern price for movie tickets to see something they've already seen. I wouldn't have paid to watch this, even though I enjoyed it.

[Arcanum]

So nobody else is bothered that R2 has a map of the entire galaxy that's conveniently missing a section that Poe and BB8 retrieved, that conveniently has the precise coordinates to Luke (who was presumably moving around quite a bit in search of Jedi temple)? And then C3PO being all like "there's no way R2 would have data that could help us, so let's just leave him in the corner being sad and not search through his memory to double check just in case."

On top of that, when they saw the segment of the map BB8 had everyone was like "we've never seen this region of space before" which seems to imply there's uncharted parts of the galaxy, but R2 has a map of the entire friggen galaxy. How hard would it have been to have R2's map be incomplete, but there's enough of an overlap between the two maps that they can figure out where BB8's fragment goes?

So yeah, that bothered me way more than any of the Starkiller scenes.

[phil_]

I filed that under R2 is and always has been an asshole.

[Tev]

Yeah, that, that was an equally annoying thing that the movie spent even less time explaining. It even harder for me to really dissect what annoys me more about it because even after watching the movie twice, I still am not sure about how long R2 has been dickishly running in sleep mode.

Like, I'm sure it's less than four years right? In Rei's flashback to Kylo betraying Luke, Kylo looked like he'd be not too much older than he is now. It's have been about then that Luke would have up and left everyone in search of the Jedi temple world. So up until about four-ish years ago, R2 has had a basically complete map of the entire galaxy in his memory banks. The Luke broke off a chunck of that map and gave it to some old guy on Not-Tatooine for safe keeping, which happens to be the same planet that I'm 90% sure he also dumped Rei on (who I'm another 90% sure is Kylo's twin sister) some six years before that. Then Luke jetted off to Jedi-world for a few years while everyone was busy fighting a rebellion and R2 just fell asleep in a corner of the rebel base and they tossed an old blanket over him instead of either fixing him or downloading his memory to see what was wrong.

[Magus]

C3PO is always wrong about shit, though. Obvious foreshadowing!

Haven't seen it and at this point don't care to. All the major plot points have been ruined by incidental exposure on imgur from people doing the old reposting tumblr circle jerk for imaginary points.
No sense in paying good money for what amounts to filling in the gaps.

That's just one of a million reasons to stay the hell of tumblr, duh! You don't see me on tumblr tumblogging...except for that thing in my sig I haven't updated in a year. But other than that!

[tacticslion]

Yeah, the map thing bothered me, a bit.

I ignored it for the same reason I ignore parsecs and the physics of laser swords (two things that also bother me): it's pretty cool.

My assumption, though, was one of two things:
1) That the galaxy is so large, that cross-analyzing the small bit there would be a fool's errand - effectively, it would be a complete crap-shoot, and probably at very poor odds over a long, to find out where that piece belonged, even when cross-referencing all the parts' elements. So, basically, it's possible, but it's so improbable that they'd be likely looking for a lifetime or four. And the section might be partitioned and printed in such a way as to "accidentally" lead to one of several parts of the galaxy instead (see below).
2) It's a sucky map that's missing parts in order to deliberately make things more vague; this fits with it's relatively dubious sizes of astronomical things, and is the effective equivalent of a chain of islands no one has heard of before because there are a billion different similar-looking islands; only these islands are written in crayon, exaggerated, and have "THAR BE DRAGONS" written on them. The directions, while accurate, would be something like, "Then, from that one planet I mentioned last time, punch in the following coordinates." which is great, and all, but if you're missing the planet they mentioned last time, and the entire set of directions literally hinges on that thing, and nothing in this one is named... good luck with that. And, as an added bonus, see problem number one (which may also be a thing).
3) I know what I said; shut it. It's both.

Thus, it's not (necessarily) that there were no other complete maps, but that those that were complete sucked, or had so much information that cross-analyzing would take way too long and yielded many fruitless searches, or some combination of the two.

---------- Post added at 12:36 AM ---------- Previous post was at 12:34 AM ----------

I'm just leaving this to merge on-purpose. No title necessary. (This is the title.)

True, but for the price of a movie ticket Skweeb could buy ten Steam games on sale that haven't been spoiled for him. I have nothing against anyone who refuses to pay the modern price for movie tickets to see something they've already seen. I wouldn't have paid to watch this, even though I enjoyed it.

Fair enough. I saw it twice! :D

Different strokes and all that.

That's just one of a million reasons to stay the hell of tumblr, duh! You don't see me on tumblr tumblogging...except for that thing in my sig I haven't updated in a year. But other than that!

Also wise.

[QUOTE=Magus;1255383]C3PO is always wrong about shit, though. Obvious foreshadowing![/qutoe]

Correct. And wrong about most other things. (Note that he still thanks Anakin/Vader for everything.)