Welcome to Thunderdome

Posted: **Wed Dec 23, 2015 8:56 am**

Brian Wiliams's daughter is pretty hot.

Posted: **Fri Dec 25, 2015 1:03 am**

J. J. Abrahms picks up where Lucas left off, stealing other people's ideas, putting a new coat of paint on them, and merchandizing the shit out of it. The flick got worse as it went on, and it felt like a fucking rail shooter as soon as Kylo took off his mask. I could have left the theater at that point and guessed the rest. It was like a boxer telegraphing punches after the second round.

To sell shiny action figures? She could have easily done any of the cool things that were handled by a regular storm trooper. Kicking Finn's ass with the chainsword, maybe?

Was that the aluminum trooper or the one he lost the duel with in spite of having a weapon that can cut through a ship's bulkhead? Speaking of the AT, wtf? You only need one person from any random command console to shut down a critical planetary shield?

Loved Kylo's villain.

Much like KISS, he started off strong, then he removed what hid his face and it went to hell.

The dumbest part of this dumb movie is that they cast Lena Dunham's goofball boyfriend as a Sith Lord.

I literally cracked up laughing in the theater.

I didn't know who he was. All I knew is that he was possibly the last person on this planet, except for Jack Black, that should've gotten that role. Holy fucking dear jeebus goddamn christ. He looks like a trust fund baby or the little brother of the dude from American Psycho, the type of rich douchebag that wears a business suit and gets foiled by the A-Team. He's fucking awful and conveniently half-trained, the Sith version of Sergeant Schultz. The First Order needs to promote the super-genius that turned an entire world into one large intergalactic shotgun. Find that dude and he'll have a plan to crush the Resistance by the time happy hour rolls around the next day.

I need more info on Finn, I'll defer until if/when they give him a backstory, but he felt very meh. Really? You just decided to go rogue one day?

Rey ... oi. Just goddamn. It wasn't enough to dress her like the female Luke, but they had to give her his lightsaber, make her an orphan, and kill off her idol in the first movie? Fuck, why didn't they have her scavenging some moisture vaporators, too? Is Finn going to be her brother? Her surprise command of the force is also about as convenient as Kylo's incompetence.

BB-8 is Bill Hader? Wow.

Looks like Harrison Ford finally got his wish after thirty-five years. I thought he might stay on until the third flick but soon as he split from Chewie, I figured he was dead.

And...

Malcolm's theory: Luke trained Kylo Ren...

Boom, motherfuckers. I should've doubled down and called out it being Han's kid but I didn't think they'd have the balls/lack of creativity to rip that off.

This flick was Ep IV: the Remix. I wanted a new fucking movie.

Edited By Malcolm on 1451025256

Posted: **Sun Dec 27, 2015 11:46 am**

After a bit more thought, if Rey isn't Luke's relative, I could see her being Obi-Wan's grandkid.

Posted: **Mon Dec 28, 2015 3:41 pm**

Before I read this thread my initial notes:

This is fundamentally a better movie than A New Hope. The characters are more interesting, the acting is better, the plot is more complex (but not too complex), the direction is stronger, the writing is tighter ... it is just slightly better in all ways, and much more nuanced. I think it's tied with Empire for my favorite. Depends on if some of the things I think I saw being set up for the future installments were really there or just my imagination.

But it's not perfect, of course. No movie is.

Specific thoughts:

1) I do wish Kylo Ren hadn't removed the helmet in the interrogation scene. It was a bit of a letdown to see a teenaged Snape-looking kid in there at that point. It would have been stronger to save it for the bridge with Han, when the surprise about how young he looked would have better fit the scene.

2) Why was the Falcon just sitting there like that? Sure, sure, junk heap, whatever, it clearly was flyable and/or had a ton of parts that could be stripped and sold. I don't know how it wasn't sold off to someone who would use it or scrapped for parts already by the time of the movie.

3) I like the wrap-up for Han. I know it's what Harrison has wanted for a long time, and really Han was getting a bit old to be running around like that. It felt right. Still sad. And I'm quite sad for Chewie; I'm surprised he didn't stay and die tearing up the place by hand, but I guess we need him for more movies yet.

4) I found the theme of being "tempted" to turn to the light side to be interesting. Makes me wonder just what Snoke is up to. Traditionally if a Sith apprentice were to show such "weakness" they'd likely be dumped on the spot. Maybe the Ren are much more flexible than Sith were. Or maybe the fact that Kylo is still around makes me wonder if Snoke has a very specific long term plan involving his relationship to Luke, so he'll put up with things he probably wouldn't from other Ren.

5) Luke needs to man up and not run away from his responsibilities for thirty years. Still a whiney little bitch after all these years? Yeesh.

6) If Anakin Skywalker would just show up as a force ghost to Kylo and tell him to chill the fuck out it would save everyone a lot of trouble.

7) The plot has some serious problems with time, space, or both. If it was close enough to the Resistance planet to fire on as soon as it finished charging, what star was it sucking up for power? It didn't seem to effect the sunlight where the Resistance was, so it couldn't have been their star. But it also wasn't light-years away because that beam was not faster than light. Yet it was far enough away that everyone went to hyperspace to go home at the end. It makes no sense spacially. But whatever, this one I'll just let go.

I need to go watch it again soon. And now to read the rest of this thread (and certain other parts of the internet I've been avoiding).

Posted: **Mon Dec 28, 2015 3:47 pm**

Oh, I forgot to mention three other things:

What was with Pharma? The trailer made it look like this would be a main bad guy, but any officer could have done that stuff. Hopefully Pharma is going to be a bigger part of the next movies to justify her existence in this movie.

9) Who is Rey? She's almost certainly related to someone we know. Especially with that flashback to her childhood in there like that.

10) Someone kept cutting onions in the theater. Made it hard to read the opening crawl. And they did it again with the sudden reveal of the Falcon. And a couple more times. Damn onions.

Posted: **Mon Dec 28, 2015 3:48 pm**

Luke needs to man up and not run away from his responsibilities for thirty years. Still a whiney little bitch after all these years? Yeesh.

Just like that other pussy, Obi-Wan.

Traditionally if a Sith apprentice were to show such "weakness" they'd likely be dumped on the spot.

Maybe there aren't a lot of potential candidates around after Kylo/Ben iced the new blood.

If Anakin Skywalker would just show up as a force ghost to Kylo and tell him to chill the fuck out it would save everyone a lot of trouble.

Unless the ghost also has the cybernetic getup, he wouldn't buy it.

Why was the Falcon just sitting there like that?

Convenient plot device.

Posted: **Mon Dec 28, 2015 3:58 pm**

...or the one he lost the duel with in spite of having a weapon that can cut through a ship's bulkhead?

There's precedent for that sort of thing. Looks like it was similar to the electric quarterstaffs that showed up in Ep 1 that couldn't be cut through. Rediscovered tech, I guess.

I need more info on Finn, I'll defer until if/when they give him a backstory, but he felt very meh. Really? You just decided to go rogue one day?

Apparently it was his first battle, so not just "one day". Guess the indoctrination didn't really stick.

You only need one person from any random command console to shut down a critical planetary shield?

Like you said about the Falcon: "Convenient plot device." There's a lot of that in this movie. But then there always has been in Star Wars, so I'm willing to try to make up something in-universe to explain it.

For this one I'll go with why should the First Order bother with more complex security when everyone on the planet is indoctrinated into their cult of evil? No one could possibly have passed through their shield and infiltrated the place, after all.

Posted: **Wed Dec 30, 2015 12:57 am**

Edited By TheCatt on 1451455096

Posted: **Wed Dec 30, 2015 9:42 am**

Posted: **Wed Dec 30, 2015 12:43 pm**

Finding the Falcon was pretty convenient. But I loved the misdirection with the other ship that got blown to hell. Ok - let's take the piece of shit!

A lot of the opinions of Kylo Ren seems to pretty much be the point of the movie, imo. He's supposed to be a whiny, childish, shitty Sith. He could barely even beat Finn who wasn't (yet) force trained, much less wonder girl. He still has tempter tantrums with his dumb as hell light-saber which also reflects how much he's overcompensating for being a Force pussy - the dude is shit.

If he was just another badass Sith Lord, I would have found things pretty dull. Instead he's an interesting character that will grow over the series. When he eventually turns into some Sith monster, will that make him a better character?

And I too watched Girls. It's about a bunch of 20 something women being good/bad/naughty in NY. Lena sure as hell doesn't do it for me, but some of the other girls do, and there is plenty of sex going down, main characters or not. There are some interesting guy characters, Ray for example. Once you get over that you are supposed to dislike the main female leads - it goes much better. They seemed pretty accurate to me - I know a few similar characters from the last few years.

Some of the sets/locations are pretty cool - similar to why I watched "Master of None" with Aziz, or Seinfeld for that matter. I remember the episode: ""Welcome to Bushwick a.k.a. The Crackcident" being one of the better Girls eps out there.

Edited By Troy on 1451498165

Posted: **Wed Dec 30, 2015 12:57 pm**

And I too watched Girls.

You lose a bet with the wife?

He's supposed to be a whiny, childish, shitty Sith.

No, fuck that because there shouldn't be any of them left alive. Dudes who built their religion on "only the strong survive" are making that guy the Crown Prince? He goes from stopping a blaster shot dead in its tracks to getting bloodied by a reject storm trooper. When Snoke talks about "completing" Kylo's training, I assume he's talking about surgically inducing Kylo's balls to drop.

Posted: **Wed Dec 30, 2015 1:01 pm**

He did get shot with a bow-caster. Which they had already established wrecks shit. He wasn't exactly 100%.

And I'll bet money that Finn ends up being some kind of force user.

Edited By Troy on 1451498609

Posted: **Wed Dec 30, 2015 8:19 pm**

Second viewing today, I was able to pick up a couple new things:

- When Kylo Ren is trying to mind-rape Rey, he mentions... "I see your dreams... the ocean... the island..." So was Luke calling out to her, or was The Force connecting them, or what?

- I like Fin's... kind of fucked up headspace when he shook off the stormtrooper conditioning. He first instinct was to RUN THE FUCK AWAY, but every time after that when he saw what he perceived to be an injustice, he felt compelled to help. Three guys attack Rey to steal BB-8, and he is going to jump in to help her. Bad guys spot them and mark her as with him, and he is trying to hold her hand to help her, even though she helps him more than anything. Stuff like that. He doesn't seem to have much in the way of "past misdeeds" to feel guilty about, since he had a change of heart in "his first battle," so it seems like this is just him shaking off the conditioning. When he first mutinies and the bad guys are talking about the stormtrooper who helped Fin escape, you see a headshot of a VERY young little boy, who we assumed was the one snatched away from his parents. Sad and evil.

- So what are the chances Phasma is a Resistance deep-cover operative? She was awfully quick to drop the Starkiller shields with merely a gun to her head. One would think the head trooper in charge of conditioning would be better conditioned to not do that.

Still not thrilled with the assault on the Starkiller Base. I counted MAYBE 25 X-Wings in the entire attack group. And the Falcon got past the planet shields because it only stops stuff going less than the speed of light.... but "Interdictor" ships already existed in the Ep 6 timeframe, which is designed to snag things out of light speed, and keep them from reentering. There wasn't a massive fleet protecting this massive weapon, with Interdictors that could stop people from doing what Han did, that could throw more than 50-or-so Tie Fighters at them? I am willing to forgive "Where is the rest of the galaxy to help attack this solar-system-destroying weapon," because the events seemed to happen fast. They blew up that one system, and immediately moved to take out "The Resistance" (another name that doesn't make sense), and La Resistance had to attack fast. No one had time to organize. Fine. But one would expect a lot bigger fight at the actual base.

Edited By GORDON on 1451524846

Posted: **Wed Dec 30, 2015 9:37 pm**

The size of the first order's fleet isn't established. They dropped clone troopers. Maybe they only got a few star destroyers, all reclaimed and refitted imperial hand-me-downs. Perhaps they spent all their resources converting a planet into a gun with the least well thought out fuel source in the solar system.

Posted: **Wed Dec 30, 2015 9:40 pm**

It's the size and magnitude of that weapon that tells me they have massive funds and resources and went really top-heavy with the weapon and extremely defense-light with their fleet. It just doesn't make sense.

Also I think it would be really funny if "Snoke" was actually like 18 inches tall and felt he really needed to overcompensate with his holographic image.

Posted: **Wed Dec 30, 2015 9:49 pm**

They spent it all on shitty TIEs. I'm also thinking Finn is related to Lando or Mace. Because I'm racist.

Posted: **Wed Dec 30, 2015 9:52 pm**

Well, even the second viewing I caught myself smiling when Rey launched the Falcon and was being chased by TIE fighters... pretty great seeing that happen again. I'd like to go see it again, soon. Maybe another matinee before the kid goes back to school.

Posted: **Wed Dec 30, 2015 10:01 pm**

Ok, here's my official speculation about who Rey is:

A recombined-DNA clone of Luke severed hand. Create 2 haploid cells with the X chromosomes and combine them, and you have a female zygote. She was created by Max von Siddow's group and hidden on that planet and that's what he was still doing there, not far away: keeping an eye on her.

There.

Edited By GORDON on 1451530997

Posted: **Wed Dec 30, 2015 11:36 pm**

Malcolm wrote:
He's supposed to be a whiny, childish, shitty Sith.
No, fuck that because there shouldn't be any of them left alive.

They aren't Sith, they're Ren. Different thing, apparently. Must be in some of the new novels. Apparently Snoke is some sort of balanced force user that uses both light and dark and has been watching how things have shaked out between the Sith and Jedi for awhile now, or something like that.

Posted: **Wed Dec 30, 2015 11:41 pm**

My current best guess about Rey is that she's related to one of the Jedi from Star Wars Rebels, the cartoon series - which is canon - about Jedi that aren't Obi Wan or Yoda running around between Eps 3 and 4, having survived Order 66. If this is so there will likely be some tie-in from the cartoon series that ramps up shortly before the next movie.

Welcome to Thunderdome

Spoiler Thread for Star Wars: The Force Awakens - Spoilers!