The Force Awakens: Spoiler Thread

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Re: The Force Awakens: Spoiler Thread

Post by Dalty »

A lot of people are saying it was better second time round - like the first time was some kind of mental overload that they were watching Star Wars again on the big screen and it didn't fucking suck! Second time round they could take their time with it and pick out lots of new things they didn't catch first time round.
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Re: The Force Awakens: Spoiler Thread

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Re: The Force Awakens: Spoiler Thread

Post by Mal Shot First »

Finally saw it last night.

Because I wanted to make an event of it, I went out of my way to get tickets at an AMC theater for the first time since we moved to the Boston area. So far, we had relied on the local six-screen multiplex in our town, which is part of the Landmark Theatres chain. The AMC we went to was in a town about 12 miles away. I took an opportunity to use a $15 Fandango gift card and a pre-charged VISA gift card, both of which I had received years ago, in order to pay for the tickets. I was waiting to use them for a special occasion, and this seemed the perfect time to do it. Thus, my wife and I were able to see the movie for free.

When I was buying the tickets online, they seemed a bit on the expensive side (I think $14 each), but I chalked it up to it being AMC and the fact that we now live in one of the most expensive areas of the country. I realized two things when we got there. First, it was a 3-D showing, which I usually don't go for because I wear glasses and putting the 3-D glasses in front of my regular glasses is super-annoying. They also make everything darker. Second, it was a really fancy theater! All the seats were essentially padded reclining armchairs that let you determine exactly how far you want to recline and how far out you want to extend the footrest. I don't know if all the rooms in the theater have this type of seating or if management just decided to give the fancy room to The Force Awakens. It was pretty awesome, in any case, and made up for the disappointment of having to watch it in 3-D. The 3-D itself didn't end up being so bad, actually, but I still don't think it adds that much to the experience. Yes, there was that one shot of the Star Destroyer that Spacey mentioned (and my wife did the same reaching-out with her hand that the kids did in Spacey's theater), but I don't think the movie would have suffered without the 3-D. And that's the thing: If the best thing you can say about the technology is that it didn't get in the way of the movie, then it may not be a worthwhile addition to the medium.

About the movie itself: I really enjoyed it! Yes, it retreads a lot of the same ground as ANH and RotJ, but it feels like it does it for the sake of creating something like the OT for a new generation. They're re-calibrating the franchise, so they need a common denominator that both old and young fans can get behind. I remember Goiter telling me about his experience of watching The Phantom Menace and thinking, "I guess this is Star Wars now" (I'm paraphrasing from memory, so I hope I remembered Goiter's words correctly). I think that's how a lot of fans felt with the prequels. They resigned themselves to the fact that this is now part of their favorite fictional universe. With TFA, the "this is Star Wars now" thought occurred to me as well, but in a much more positive tone. The Force Awakens is literally a new hope for the Star Wars fan.

And just to address Goiter's theory about Star Wars virgins, I'd say he's absolutely right about the accessibility of this new series of movies. I think Vespa is the best proof of that. The only Star Wars movie she had seen was ANH, I think, and that was years ago, so she's nowhere near as fluent in the Star Wars universe as even those of us who are the least familiar with it. That didn't stop her from thoroughly enjoying herself, though. She knew enough about Leia, Han, Luke, and Vader in order to appreciate the meaning of their legacy in the new movie, but TFA manages to stand on its own without feeling like it's not Star Wars. Vespa also enjoys stories with strong female protagonists, so that was an added bonus.

Speaking of Rey, the entire time I kept thinking that Daisy Ridley reminds me a lot of Keira Knightley. The resemblance is not all that obvious, but I think it's mostly the shape of her eyes and the way her face looks when she smiles. Oh, and her voice sometimes sounds a lot like Keira Knightley's. Anyone else got that impression?

One thing that didn't quite make sense to me is the naming of the two battling factions. Well, it's more the Resistance rather than the First Order. While watching the movie it's kind of hard to keep in mind that the Resistance is actually a military force aligned with the galaxy's ruling government. I get that the Republic is still relatively young and might not have had the time or resources (or the interest) to establish a large standing army, so the force defending the new government is more like a militia, but to name this militia "the Resistance" seems like the type of misleading propaganda one would expect from a more insidious government. In my mind, a resistance force is usually part of an opposition movement, often operating underground, that's working to undermine and overthrow the ruling government (I guess I'm thinking primarily of the French Resistance during WWII, but also the Rebellion in the OT). In that sense, "the Resistance" would actually have been a more appropriate name for the First Order, which in this movie looks a lot more like it is the establishment. I don't know, it just seemed a little off.
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Re: The Force Awakens: Spoiler Thread

Post by The Swollen Goiter of God »

I got the impression that the First Order actually does have something of a hold on the Outer Rim and that the Resistance is intent on keeping the First Order from pushing inward. I don't know if that makes the name choice any better. I'm sure any number of other names might have worked. Something like "Vanguard" probably would have worked. Or "First Line." (I almost said "Avant-garde," but I guess that term means something else for most people. Also, if you take it at its original meaning, it might make people think of it more in terms of its being a loan word, which might make them start thinking about etymology, which might take them out of the movie. Unless I'm overthinking things, which I almost never do, so never mind.) "The Defenders" probably would have worked, but Disney/Marvel has already reserved that one for a Netflix show.
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Re: The Force Awakens: Spoiler Thread

Post by Space Tycoon »

Maybe the Resistance are kinda sorta like the Free State of Jones? An insurgence against the insurgency.

Soon to be a major motion picture starring Matthew Maconnuhay.
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Re: The Force Awakens: Spoiler Thread

Post by The Swollen Goiter of God »

I have some new things to say, but I'm going to break those things up into two posts. Here's the first one:

Saw The Force Awakens in OMNIMAX today. Wanted to see what it looked like in 70mm. Probably the last time I'll go see it in a theater. For the first run, anyway.

I've seen a Star Wars movie in OMNIMAX before. It wasn't a great experience. Part of it, I'm sure, was that the Star Wars movie I saw in OMNIMAX was Attack of the Clones. It was a better version of Attack of the Clones than the regular theatrical version. They had to trim some stuff to make it under two hours long, since OMNIMAX and IMAX theaters couldn't hold more than two hours' worth of 70mm film in the projection rooms. That was the claim. Maybe it was true back in 2002, but they've clearly learned how to cram more than two hours' worth of 70mm film into modern OMNIMAX and IMAX projection rooms. This version of The Force Awakens was uncut.

The stuff they cut out of Attack of the Clones was good stuff to cut out--mostly Anakin and Padme romance bullshit. The cut wasn't what made it an un-great experience. There were two things.

The first thing was that the OMNIMAX screen is hemispherical. Unless you're watching something tailored to that kind of screen, it kind of sucks. (If you are seeing something tailor-made for the OMNIMAX screen, though, you're in luck. That shit's magical.) Things warp along the outer edges. Also, only a part of the screen is filled up. You have wasted space at the top and bottom. It's like a letterbox, except with a rounded screen. It's more like a striped pool ball, I guess. Not exactly. There's a larger unused space up top than down below.

The other thing that compromised the Attack of the Clones experience was that there's only a small cluster of seats--three or four in the center of the aisle just below the projector (the projector is in the middle of the audience), and three or four in the row immediately beneath that one--where things look their best. If you're too high up, you're looking down at the screen. If you're too far to the left or right of the projector, you're going to be turning your head a lot. If you in the bottom row, you're going to be straining your neck to see anything (and to a far greater degree than you'd have to strain in a regular theater), and you're going to wind up having to turn your head even more often than the people to the left or right of the projector. (I did Space Academy at the Space & Rocket Center in Huntsville, AL. They had an OMNIMAX theater. They showed four shows a day, and it was always offered as an evening elective. It was always the elective I chose. I tested every seat.)

They didn't tailor Attack of the Clones for OMNIMAX beyond shortening it. It didn't fill up the screen, and there was a lot of warping along the outer edges. It was particularly noticeable with the ships and the lightsabers. Lots of awkwardly curving blades. And my friends and I had to sit to the side.

I was hoping The Force Awakens in OMNIMAX would be a different experience. I hadn't heard if they'd done any tailoring. I was hoping they had. Turns out they hadn't. Same bars as with Attack of the Clones. I was also hoping to get there really early so I could get one of the 6-8 good seats. That didn't happen. I wound up getting there super late. I was at the very end of the line. Got the bottom row. Worst seats in the house. My neck is still smarting from it.

On the upside (that's the side that's not the side Darth Helmet got), I still enjoyed the movie. Screen was big. It was still immersive. Painful to look at and warped to high hell, but still immersive. People laughed and cried. I ain't people, but I also laughed and cried.

If I ever force myself to watch Attack of the Clones again, I'd rather it be the IMAX cut. I don't think that cut exists for the home market, but it should. It's superior. It's still a shitty movie, but it's slightly less shitty. Maybe it exists as a bootleg or reconstruction. Maybe one of the Phantom Editors made it happen.
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Re: The Force Awakens: Spoiler Thread

Post by The Swollen Goiter of God »

The second one's mostly scattered thoughts (like a number of my posts in this thread, the bulk of this one is taken from a Facebook chat):

(1) People focus on how Rey is "special"/Force sensitive and how it's mostly her movie. Max Landis has gone so far as to say that she's *too* special and that this factors into how, according to him, she's a Mary Sue. (I'll have more to say on this later, maybe. I'll need to check and see if it's something I've already brought up in this thread. I don't want to retread over well-trodden ground if I can help it.) I think Finn is a special case in his own right, whether or not he's Force sensitive. The thing about him that is most special is that he counters a lifetime of programming. This programming runs so deep that his former comrades feel a sense of real betrayal. (He's called "Traitor!" by two different people, and both of them have a good bit of passion in their voice when they say it.) It was, we're told, his first offense. They make it sound like these things happen on occasion but are relatively minor and are either conditioned out or considered cause for termination. Finn went whole hog, and he went hard.

(2) I think it's significant that Finn is recognized without his helmet by his former fellows. It suggests that things aren't quite as impersonal in the First Order as they were in the Empire. That they've opted for conditioning over clones already suggests this.

(3) Rey probably would have killed Kylo Ren if not for the ground splitting apart. There's some irony to this. She's about to kill him, and he's actively trying not to harm her. It's a subversion of the Dark/Light norm.

(4) Rey thinks of Han first as smuggler. Finn thinks of him first as warrior. It's a tiny detail, but it helps illustrate the difference in their raising.

(5) When Poe mentions needing to get back to BB-8 so the Resistance can find Luke, Finn says, "You've got to be kidding me!" It's occurred to me on subsequent viewings that he's not just saying this because he thinks it's dumb for them to risk their necks to find this one guy. He's saying it because Poe may as well have said they were looking for the Loch Ness monster. Finn knows the name as myth and thinks it's absurd to try to track a myth down.

(6)Han and Finn were close enough to the destroyed planets when they were coming out of Maz's to be able to see those planets destroyed. It makes me wonder if Maz's planet was on the chopping block for destruction until it was revealed that BB-8 and Rey were also on it.

(7) I'd like to know where things are in relation to other things. How far is the Starkiller away from the system it destroyed? How far is it away from the second sun from which it drew its energy? How far was it away from the first sun? How far apart were the two suns? How did it travel from one to the other? Were they both part of a binary star system? How far would the Starkiller have to have gone to get to another power source after destroying the system it destroyed? Were there plans to destroy any more, or did they just want to destroy this one specific seat of the Republic? Was it all just to show what they were capable of? Was the plan to let the destruction sink in and wait for the Republic to throw up a white flag? (Sort of like U.S. did with Japan and the atom bombs. I always saw this as Lucas's intention with the Death Star in ANH. Couple that with his using the Empire's presence on Endor to mirror the U.S.'s presence in Vietnam, and you have an ideology many would consider un-Amurkan.)

(8) Like Finn, Rey's also running. In different ways and from different things, but it's still a parallel between them.

(9) Rey gets knocked unconscious two different times by Kylo Ren. I don't mean to make any point by pointing this out. I guess I could come back to it if I go back to discuss Max Landis and his Mary Sue charge. (I'll say up front that I don't think she's quite a Mary Sue. I'll also say that it's lost some of its usefulness as a descriptor at this point. Same as with "hipster." "Hipster" has become meaningless. It's used to get a negative knee-jerk reaction out of people. The same could be said for "Mary Sue." I don't think a character should be considered an inherently bad or poorly written character simply because the character has been deemed a Mary Sue.)

(10) Here's a silly detail I noticed: Rey's progression mirrors the Starkiller's. In a way. Both are seen as ticking time bombs. (Kylo Ren points out that the longer it takes to find Rey, the more powerful she will have become. The Resistance points out that the longer they go without destroying the Starkiller, the more dangerous it gets/the closer it gets to firing off new shots.) Both draw power from the light. (Also, of course, "Starkiller" was the original surname for the central family back when Star Wars was still called The Star Wars.)

(11) BB-8 would have been stolen and Rey probably would have been killed if Finn hadn't shown up and "marked" her. So he saves her life twice... from a certain point of view.

(12) Leia plain ol' sent Han to his death. I've already made this point, I'm sure, but I'm making it again. ("Bring back our son. We'll get together. Have a few laughs.")

(13) I look forward to finding out what Maz meant when she said she'd seen Finn's eyes. I want to know if it was more than just melodramatic/symbolic babble.
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Re: The Force Awakens: Spoiler Thread

Post by Dalty »

(7) is one of my gripes with the movie. No sense of scale/location/distance. Just hop into hyperspace for 12 seconds and there we go.
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Re: The Force Awakens: Spoiler Thread

Post by Drakemd »

To your point Dalty, I will say that I liked that they actually showed a dialogue in the Millennium Falcon this time while they were in hyperspace. In the past movies, going into hyperspace was quick and a moment later they were x,000 miles further in space. In TFA, we get to see them in the ship and having a conversation while they were travelling in hyperspace. They still did not address how far they were going, etc, but I appreciated that they tried to show that it isn't instantaneous.
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Re: The Force Awakens: Spoiler Thread

Post by The Swollen Goiter of God »

Well, they were clearly already fairly close to the Starkiller base when they were on Maz's planet. It wouldn't have taken all that long to get there after a hyperspace jump. And like Drakemd said, they do have another period of hyperspace travel that's pretty extended. They walk around and talk and do all kinds of things.
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Re: The Force Awakens: Spoiler Thread

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Re: The Force Awakens: Spoiler Thread

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That Starkiller thingy sure moves fast for a big fella!!!
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Re: The Force Awakens: Spoiler Thread

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The Swollen Goiter of God wrote:(13) I look forward to finding out what Maz meant when she said she'd seen Finn's eyes. I want to know if it was more than just melodramatic/symbolic babble.
You know, I was really curious about this, too, but since they didn't expand upon it (at least in this movie), I figured what we were supposed to take from it is that the resoc that Finn underwent has left traces that are somehow recognizable if one knows what to look for.
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Re: The Force Awakens: Spoiler Thread

Post by The Swollen Goiter of God »

Dalty wrote:That Starkiller thingy sure moves fast for a big fella!!!
Maybe he has a hyperdrive. How much time would Abrams and Kasdan need to spend showing people talking on him during his light speed travels for you to feel they'd represented hyperspeed travel accurately enough?
Mal Shot First wrote:You know, I was really curious about this, too, but since they didn't expand upon it (at least in this movie), I figured what we were supposed to take from it is that the resoc that Finn underwent has left traces that are somehow recognizable if one knows what to look for.
I'm guessing "resoc" is something I wouldn't have needed to look up if I had been a little more familiar with StarCraft. How do they pronounce it? Do they pronounce the last syllable like "sock," "soak," or does it rhyme with "gauche"?
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Re: The Force Awakens: Spoiler Thread

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He meant "douche"
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Re: The Force Awakens: Spoiler Thread

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Re: The Force Awakens: Spoiler Thread

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Douché.
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Re: The Force Awakens: Spoiler Thread

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The Swollen Goiter of God wrote:How much time would Abrams and Kasdan need to spend showing people talking on him during his light speed travels for you to feel they'd represented hyperspeed travel accurately
More than they did. Some, maybe.
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Re: The Force Awakens: Spoiler Thread

Post by Mal Shot First »

In case you were wondering about the Stormtrooper with the baton:
http://www.gamespot.com/articles/star-w ... QifQ%3D%3D
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Re: The Force Awakens: Spoiler Thread

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The Swollen Goiter of God wrote:I'm guessing "resoc" is something I wouldn't have needed to look up if I had been a little more familiar with StarCraft. How do they pronounce it? Do they pronounce the last syllable like "sock," "soak," or does it rhyme with "gauche"?
I meant to respond to this, but then I forgot about it.

I hadn't considered that "resoc" was a term unique to StarCraft. The game's creators borrowed so heavily from other sources that I didn't think they actually came up with anything truly original. I honestly don't know how it's supposed to be pronounced; if I remember correctly, it's never used in the game's dialog. I've predominantly encountered it in expanded universe, so I've mostly seen it in writing. It would make sense if it were pronounced "re-sauche," but I always think of it as "re-sock."
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Re: The Force Awakens: Spoiler Thread

Post by The Swollen Goiter of God »

I bet it's pronounced "re-sauché."
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Re: The Force Awakens: Spoiler Thread

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Douché??
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Re: The Force Awakens: Spoiler Thread

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BluRay today! Or was it yesterday? Or is it next week in the UK. Fuck it!
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