Official Star Wars: The Force Awakens ABSOLUTELY NO SPOILERS Thread

Alright, let's make one thing clear: if you film a dog turd for two hours and you do a 500-million-marketing campaign for it, you'll get your money's worth. If you have the Star Wars name on it too, you'll rake in a billion before anyone notices it's a turd. SW runs by itself, unlike, say, Star Trek. It doesn't have the reek of nerds to it.

That's what JJ did with Trek. He got that nerd smell out of it somehow by making it completely mainstream. He didn't have to do the same with Star Wars - that already was. He didn't have to kill its soul to achive mainstreamdom. I mean, even the prequel trilogy took in a cool billion each and nobody said those were good movies.

I wonder if they can keep up the momentum. There'll be a minor Wars film in December 2016 and Episode VIII is planned for May 2017. That's crazy. But it works for Marvel so why shouldn't it work here for a few years. However, Disney will milk it until there is nothing left. That much was clear from Day 1. That timetable just confirms it.

In other news, I have not seen it yet. The little one is annoying though. Want, want, want. I refuse to stand in line. Enough time during the holidays.

You can't buy tickets on the Internet? I've seen it twice without any lines. Austria needs to step up its game.

I didn't see it opening day but I did finally see it yesterday. Bought my tickets online with reserved seating. No line-ups and the cute waitress took my popcorn and beer order right from my seat.

It's actually a re-imagining of Castaway. The story simply shows the bizarre things that happened while trying to deliver a package to a remote customer. They could have just had Maz drop Luke's light saber into a Fed Ex box and saved a lot of screen time.

Tom Hanks agrees!
Wilson disagrees!

Ahem. Thread title?

I don't think that's a spoiler since I didn't say who the customer was, but what tipped me off to the connection was a cut scene in Castaway where Tom Hanks balanced a small rock on top of Wilson and said "I think I'll call you BB and put you in a Star Wars movie."

Yeah, and actually, his spam doesn't need to be tolerated here, it's against the rules in Media Central. Post warned.

It is a spoiler because

No, it's not a huge spoiler. But it is a spoiler, nonetheless.

Of course we buy theater tickets online. D'oh. I was just being metaphorical. We agreed upon certain things beforehand and there will be no Star Wars until it's all done to the last comma. Too stubborn to do the kitty litter today? Too bad, gotta wait until we are at 20 times. I allow absolutely no wiggle room in such matters. Effort comes before gratification without fail

Good thing she doesn't know how bloody proud I am of her being such a little space nerd.

Doesn't a list usually have a last thing that comes after the last comma?

It's probably one of those European things, like mixing decimals and commas in their numbers.

It's like when Christoph Walz says in Inglourious Basterds:

"...and nine-nine-nine-point-nine-nine-nine times out of a million, you would be correct."

Yea, I used a Germinsm there. Obviously, this doesn't exist in English. Oops. Because, like, I've been using the phrase for 30 years or so

Pacta sunt servanda sounds better anyway.

Just having some fun. The Americanism used for basically the same thing is "follow it to the letter."

Uhm. What is the equivalent in German? Only thing I can come up with is "down to the last iota", which works in both languages and refers to neither of them.

I've forgotten, but I used to know a German expression for this. Could it be something like "bis ins letze Detail?"

My manager is a big fan of the German designer Dieter Rams and we have his design rules (in English) on posters around the office. I learned them in German just for giggles, and the one I'm thinking of is: "Gutes Design ist konsequent bis ins letze Detail."

So, I had to take off work for some electrical work and it couldn't have happened on a better day since San Diegans become reverse vampires when the slightest bit of rain hits, let alone this usually wet December we've had (a whopping four days of rain!). This means my dealership is dead and now that I've got some free time I'm gonna get to see the movie tonight

Yes, that works ('letzte', not 'lezte'); but it does not mention commas.

There's a fan edit called "The Blackened Mantle" that combines Episodes I, II & III into one movie. Probably the best of any edit I have ever seen. It used the Japanese dub for vocal audio and then subtitles new English dialogue to allow for major changes to the story. It's actually very good. Anyway, both Jake Lloyd and Hayden Christensen come across pretty good in it - leading me to further lay all of the blame for the prequels on GL.

I have friends who were fans of Hayden before Episode II who tell he he's a far more capable actor than Star Wars shows. Lucas has been known to stifle actor creativity well before the prequels, so I can believe it.

He had Ewan McGregar, Samual L. Jackson, Natalie Portman, Christopher Lee and Liam Neeson for those movies so we know that Lucas had actors capable of shining if given decent dialogue.

But Lucas doesn't do decent dialog. He's claimed that Star Wars was supposed to be an homage to badly written sci-fi schlock of the 1930's, 40's, and 50's. I think that's a psychological defense mechanism, perhaps a conscious one, because it means no matter how badly a critic might savage Lucas's films, the critic is obviously missing the point, which is that Star Wars movies are supposed to be cheesy because they're actually a spoof of bad sci-fi movies with really bad dialog and stupid plots. After enough bad reviews that view would have twisted Lucas's mind into purposefully and angrily making crappy scenes.

Without giving anything away to those of us who haven't seen Episode VII yet, what are the prospects for Episodes VIII & IX, based on what you think of TFA?

I'd say really good. They have the new characters and major elements already introduced, which is probably the hardest part.

As gturner said, the character framework is largely in place, as are the battle lines. They will need to flesh out some details about the protagonist and antagonist organizations, but otherwise, it's all set up quite nicely.

One wildcard is the JJ factor. He won't be directing episode 8, so if that is an important aspect of TFA's success, we'll have to see I suppose.

Have they named the director for VIII yet?

ETA: WaPo article

Why J.J. Abrams now regrets deboarding Star Wars before Episode VIII

J.J. ABRAMS recently read the script for Episode VIII of Star Wars. And he had a reaction to it that his lifelong friend, “The Force Awakens” actor Greg Grunberg, had not ever heard from the director over their decades together in the industry.

“He read it and said something he never, ever says,” Grunberg, who plays pilot Snap Wexley in the new film, tells The Post’s Comic Riffs. Grunberg said that Abrams called the Episode VIII script “so good” that he wished he had written it.

“He may have said something one time on ‘Lost,’ wth Damon [Lindelof, the co-creator],” continues Grunberg, whose credits on Abrams series include “Lost” and “Felicity,” “but I never hear him express regret like that.”

Abrams’s remark serves, too, as a ringing endorsement of the new script and its filmmaker. The writer-director now inheriting the Star Wars franchise, of course, is Rian Johnson, the USC film grad who made “Brick,” “Looper” and “The Brothers Bloom.” Abrams has said that he shared early cuts of Episode VII with Johnson, to help make the transition between the two Star Wars films more seamless, ahead of Episode VIII’s scheduled 2017 release.

And Abrams, as we know, isn’t leaving Star Wars altogether. As he’s done with the Star Trek franchise, Abrams will remain on as a producer (in the case of Star Wars, as an executive producer).​

So it sounds like we could just kidnap J.J. and beat some spoilers out of him.

Rian Johnson (Looper, Brick).

Yes.