Star Wars Episode VII - The Force Awakens (SPOILERS)

OMFG, that looks awesome!

There are several things that I noticed right away that vastly differ from the prequel trilogy:

- The sets look big, I mean really big! I know they still used blue-screen for set extensions, but they also focused on physical sets this time around and it shows! The world looks dirty and lived in.
- Unlike the PT, the CGI looks photo-realistic.
- Unlike the PT (and even the OT), it looks like people have real emotions. You can already start to sympathize with characters just based on the trailer alone, which means it's doing its job.
- There is a sense of fun and adventure that was completely absent in the PT. I found myself giggling like an 8 year old.

I hope to never see that many dancing cocks again.

Did I mention that Daisy Ridley is fucking hot?

https://instagram.com/p/9CzDvblE6W/?taken-by=daisyridley

I've now watched that trailer at least twenty times and I'm still giggling like the kid I was when I first saw Star Wars in theatres in 1977.

Let's not get carried away now.

Watching this movie in Dec. 2015 is not going to mentally teleport you back to age.....whatever you were.....in 1977.

Burdening the movie with fulfilling those kinds of expectations is just setting yourself up for disappointment. That's what happened with Phantom Menace. People thought it was going to be some kind of life-altering religious experience. It wasn't.

It will be highly entertaining, with stunning visual effects, and a nostalgia factor with seeing the Holy Trinity of Luke/Leia/Han that the prequels didn't have. It will make a gazillion dollars and there won't be a father who isn't in prison who won't be taking his son(s) to see it. This Star Wars is not going to rape your childhood.

Beyond that.....if it's at least as good as nu-Trek 2009, I will leave the theater a very satisfied customer.

Someone asked me last night "Do you think it will live up to the hype?" My response: "No movie could live up to this much hype."

I'm cautiously optimistic that this will be a terrific, entertaining film; it certainly looks good from the trailer. If it's better than the prequels (and, hey, RotS wasn't bad), it will be a win.

I looooooooooove that shot of the Millennium Falcon going into hyperspace. Retains the aesthetic of the original, but adds a dynamic new perspective.

Well, yeah, the Imperial March is a very entertaining piece of music to listen to, and there's no corresponding "Rebel Alliance" March. But I don't think his music was meant to get the audience to cheer for the Empire.

Palpatine didn't "overthrow" the government. He manipulated galactic events to get himself appointed Supreme Chancellor, using the rationale that the Senate was too corrupt and gridlocked to function. Kinda like how Presidents threaten to use "executive orders" to bypass a "do-nothing Congress."

He later dissolved the Senate, something I assume he couldn't have done without the support of his newly created clone military force. There were obviously other military commanders who agreed with Palpatine & Vader's vision of establishing peace & order via dictatorial rule.

The story of the prequels isn't about how Palpatine "overthrew" anything, it's about how the Republic, in it's hubris, supported and voted in favor of it's own downfall.

All I know is, JJ Abrams saved Star Trek (fuck you, haters!) and I'm sure he'll save Star Wars.

Will it live up to the hype? Probably not... but I can dream. All I know is that none of the trailers for the Prequels got me this excited. I do remember being jazzed for TPM but nothing like this.

But while he was the head of a the duly elected government, Mace Windu took it upon himself to assassinate him because of wacko religious reasons. Fortunately he failed, but Palpatine was forced to respond. There's the rub. How do you govern a society that's full of violent religious fanatics with super powers and a god complex and who think love and affection lead to the ultimate evil? You have to crush them and root their backwards religion out by the roots.

While I appreciate the different perspective, wasn't it because his machinations had already caused a Galactic Civil War?

Max von Sydow's character has yet to be revealed, but J.J. said that he was a character from the prequels, and was a "broken man."

That got me to thinking.

The character is called Lor San Tekka.

Now, maybe this is just a gobbledygook name. But "San Tekka" makes me think "sans (without) tech." And "Lor" is part of the word "Mandalore." So...

Of course, Lor can also be a part of the word "lord," so...

Or, perhaps, the character is totally an invention of Episode VII. I guess we'll see.

I think we already theorized about the first possibility. The second is also quite intriguing.

That wasn't really a civil war, it was a revolt by the trade federation and other business groups who could not longer countenance all the stupidity about money, finance, and free trade. The Galactic Senate lived in fear of the Jedi, who were self-appointed moral enforcers who took vows of poverty (judging by their robes, lodgings, and monastic lifestyles). Money may not buy happiness, but it certainly helps, and the Jedi weren't keen on happiness. Heck, the only two times they ever smile are to exult after a battle where they slaughter hundreds of thousands or to greet a Jedi who's still able to swing a lightsaber.

The effects of having such fanatical priests setting and enforcing the rules on business, science, and technology were far worse than any Muslim prohibition against usury or charging interest on loans. So it's natural that anyone that was versed in business and economics would feel compelled to either radically reform the Republic or abandon it. Yet almost their entire focus was on taking out the Jedi, because without the armies of mystical religious assassins, the people's of the various worlds would break their chains and start investing, trading, speculating, and building private property rights (with the Jedi never respected because property leads to worry, and worry leads to fear, and fear leads to the Dark Side). The freed people would realize that instead of autocratic Jedi assassins enforcing backwards religious codes, they could simply avoid The Dark Side (whatever that nonsense was) just by buying comprehensive auto and homeowner's insurance.

But the attempted reforms failed, and too many planets desperately clung to enforcing the Jedi dogmas that had been hammered into their heads for thousands of years. In a tragic overreaction similar to what we saw in Sunni Syria, they destroyed the old order and put all their faith in a Supreme Jedi Master, giving him dictatorial powers and dissolving the last vestiges of Democracy. But in return they would get order, sensible economic policies, and an empowered yet streamlined regulatory environment with uniform standards instead of the patchwork of ad-hoc local laws based on Jedi visions and prophesies.

Here's what I'm wondering. Kylie Ren has Vader's mask on his SD, right? Vader was burned with his helmet still on. Does that mean at some point someone came along after the fire went out, they took his head off his body and kept it? Wouldn't his partially burnt skull still be in the helmet? If so, then Kylo Ren is carrying Vader's rotting head. That's pretty gross.

Why do you automatically assume that the head is only partially burnt?

The helmet is partially melted so I would assume the skull is burnt as well.

Why you you assume it is ONLY partially burnt? Why not assume that it was totally burned away?

I still assume that Anakin's ghost at the end means he eventually ascended or whatever, probably making his body disappear like Obi Wan's, if belatedly.

Solar systems, not galaxies.
Also, really? They turned to Kevin J fucking Anderson for inspiration?

Hmm, good point.

The level of expectation that fans have built up for this is borderline absurd.

What's I am seeing is a movie that whores off the OT, even down to repeating meaning of the visual and story tropes. Hell, even the designs are mostly lifted from McQuarrie's rejected work or the old expanded universe. It's extremely derivative.

This is the movie that the fans think they want. Something that evokes the nostalgia of the originals and "feels" like Star Wars. But the truth is that the Prequels were far more daring than this movie even comes close to being. This is very much play it safe, paint by numbers Star Wars. Even the title sounds like it was offered up by a fanboy. Disney knows what it takes to get the legions of forty-something fanboys into seats and are duly obliging. At least Lucas had the balls to experiment. As much as the prequels were atrocious in terms of acting, pacing and some creative choices, what they weren't lacking is in sheer creativity. Indeed, if you look back on the OT, Empire and Jedi were very different from the first movie. But this? We have a desert planet, an ice planet, a Yavin like planet. A black cloaked bad guy with a bask as the villain. A young new hope from a sand planet. An amusing droid companion. X Wings. Tie Fighters. A mysterious big bad running the show in the background. It's all very familiar.

I expect that for nostalgia reasons I will enjoy this a lot more than the prequels. But I'm not letting my expectations run away from me, as I don't think this will come close to any of the original movies in terms of ground breaking advancement in the SW universe.

You say that like it's a bad thing.

Now we have concrete proof that El Chup is batshit fucking bonkers.

Wait, what?

Kylo Ren --> Rylo Ken
Rylos is the planet from The Last Starfighter
Ken is the name of all the aliens in Fugitive Alien

Will this movie be a double crossover?!?!?

Stormtrooper who could have shot Jar-Jar, but hesitated.


El Chup -- The prequels certainly broke new ground in terms of what we hadn't seen in the SW universe. But a lot of the individual elements were heavily lifted from other places (the culture of the pod race), playing it safe (droid army so the good guys can mow them down without qualms), or just repeated (big fish eats little fish).

Take the discussion of such to the Red Room and keep the flaming outta here, please.

That being said, @El Chup :

I can't agree with that at all. Putting aside the atrocious direction and scene blocking (something the original cut of Star Wars also suffered), there were so many elements ripped off from his own films. Jabba the Hut, anyone? R2 and Threepio? Cloning entire shots from Empire and juxtaposing onto Episode 2?

Then there's Lucas shoving so much shit into his films trying to capture so many viewers and pleasing none of them. I realize Samuel L. Jackson asked for a role in SW and thus is not a token to get black folks into theatres but his role as the robber at McDowell's in "Coming to America" had more character development.

Right now the three released trailers are a gazillion times more entertaining than the last three Prequel movies. So I can honestly say that the new movie is a success, even though I haven't seen it yet.

I took it upon myself to re-cut all three Force Awakens trailers into one, and placed scenes in their (guessed) chronological order.

Enjoy!

I think this is pretty close to the real plot:

http://makingstarwars.net/2015/05/a-compiled-synopsis-of-star-wars-the-force-awakens/