Star Wars SPOILERS ALLOWED

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Star Wars SPOILERS ALLOWED

Post by fredgiblet »

So anyone else but me think that Rey is Luke's daughter?

Overall I give the movie 7/10, better than the prequels, but not up to the OT that it so slavishly references over and over.

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Re: Star Wars SPOILERS ALLOWED

Post by dragoongfa »

With a railroaded Mary Sue as a protagonist I don't see a way that this will pull an Empire Strikes back with the next installment, in fact the odds are that it will pull a Star Trek on us.

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Re: Star Wars SPOILERS ALLOWED

Post by fredgiblet »

I'm not sure I'd call Finn a Mary Sue. He's a good shot, but that's basically the extent of his skills, and he doesn't APPEAR to be force-sensitive, so he's not apparently special in any way that I can see.

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Re: Star Wars SPOILERS ALLOWED

Post by dragoongfa »

I was talking about Rey and her ability to do fucking everything.

spoilered as a last warning:
SpoilerShow
I mean come on, she is so Mary Sue that it actually hurts.

She is an innocent, naive and good looking young woman who is thrown into the midst of war
She is great combatant
She is a mechanic that can fix a ship
She is a pilot that flies said ship that she just fixed
She is force sensitive that is capable of using mind tricks without ANY force training
She is a capable light saber user the first time she picks one up, actually managing to beat a trained light saber opponent the first time she fights with a light saber*

*Who was admittedly wounded but Kylo Ren was trained in the force from child hood by Skywalker himself and both Sith and Jedi have demonstrated repeatedly how dangerous opponents they are until their last breath. Someone who hasn't touched a light saber before should NEVER hope to win against a fully fledged Sith with his arms and legs still attached.

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Re: Star Wars SPOILERS ALLOWED

Post by Sprawl63 »

SpoilerShow
I thought it obvious that she was trained by and/or is related to Luke in some way. That would explain some of her Force related feats. Definitely could have done without the mind control and beating Ren in the forest. Far better to have her beaten by him and have the ground open up between them in order to save her. The fighting skills, sure she looks like she needed to know how to fight on Jakku, the repair skills yeah she's a scavenger that needed to survive on her own merit, and piloting sure almost all force sensitive people are crack pilots.

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Re: Star Wars SPOILERS ALLOWED

Post by fredgiblet »

Oh yeah, her, that makes sense, and I put spoilers allowed in the header specifically so that no one will come in not expecting spoilers, so feel free to leave stuff exposed.

The fact that she's that good at using the force in a matter of days, when Luke took months including actually being trained is...yeah.

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Re: Star Wars SPOILERS ALLOWED

Post by sunphoenix »

Much as I'd like to disagree... I have to give credit to dragoongfa's point... that IS a bit much for one 'supposedly' starting untrained character.

I...view things in game terms as I own all three versions of the Star Wars role-playing game... West End Games {D6 Star Wars}, Wizard's of the Coast {D20 Star Wars}, and the WotC {Saga-system 'proto-4th Editon' Star Wars}... my point being that Affect Mind... the ability to cloud people's minds is one of the hardest force powers to master. Albiet it did not work immediately... the fact that she Even KNEW she could try that is inconsistant... why did she not try to use it on the 'cheating' scrap-dealer when she KNEW she was being cheated by him? Yeah.. bad writing that part.

As for her light saber skills... I took her momentary pause while her and Kylo were saber locked.. as if she were calling on the force letting it flow through her. In the RPG's doing that temporarily boosts one's abilities ALL of them to a phenomenal level..for about 10 to 15 seconds. That is usually enough for a jedi to pull off superhuman feats that defy logic as the universe basically bends to their will. It is more often associated with the use of the light side of the force.. though Dark side wielders can do the same... the darkside is not entirely pleased when dark side wielders do so...preferring those enthralled to its quick easy power to be reliant on it all the time. The dark side gives them access to force abilites based on rage , and fear to offset dark side wielders usual lack of light side force to draw upon as it takes deeds of selfless heroism and compassion to gain such 'force points'. I took Kylo's faltering in that fight because his driving rage was spent killing his father.. his anger and fear were unfocused. The dark side does not deal with capture without harming very well.. it is all about crush and destroy.. so Kylo was sort of at a loss of how to deal with Rey when he clearly wanted to 'take' her alive. If she had not ended that fight soon or that ground would not have split open.. the wound she gave him would have certainly empowered the Rage and fear in him to kill her .. had he had the opportunity.

Plus, kylo was indeed trained in the lightsaber... but consider who his teacher was and what likely Luke's focus was in his training? Mastery of the force not combat. With the Emperor dead and likly the last Sith lord also dead.. Luke probably trained his student to become closer to the force to let it guide their actions rather than teaching them to be combat Jedi. You see some evidence in how Kylo did things.. he used the force quite a bit and his mastery of energy even to 'freeze' blaster bolts int he very air was clear evidence. Not to mention.. Finn even struck him once with luke's saber in the fight before he was defeated. Vader Never even once nicked Luke in the saber battle in the Second Death Star's throne room! So I'm thinking that Kylo is definitely skilled with the lightsaber.. but he's no young Anikin or even Luke... he seemed to focus more on use of force powers.

Game wise... Luke was training his students in the Jedi Consular tradition as opposed to the Jedi Guardian tradition that Yoda trained him. Kylo had NONE of the crazy acrobatics that even Luke displayed in his first fight with Vader in the Bespin Cloud City!

At least, this is how I see it~ but its is not the only way too! :)
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Re: Star Wars SPOILERS ALLOWED

Post by dragoongfa »

fredgiblet wrote:Oh yeah, her, that makes sense, and I put spoilers allowed in the header specifically so that no one will come in not expecting spoilers, so feel free to leave stuff exposed.

The fact that she's that good at using the force in a matter of days, when Luke took months including actually being trained is...yeah.
And Luke was a force prodigy that paralleled his own father to begin with.

Normal Jedi and Sith have to be trained from very early childhood in order to become attuned to the force and they touched real light sabers far later, having to make do with harmless practice swords until they could build their own.

Suspension of disbelief is one thing but this actually breaks the established lore, being force sensitive is supposed to be like being athletically gifted. Yes someone who has the talent to be an athlete will stand above the average joe but he would never be able to compete against professional athletes. Even cheap manga know to put in some expedited but harsh and effective training in order to explain why the gifted rookie is able to beat veterans.

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Re: Star Wars SPOILERS ALLOWED

Post by Siber »

But how much of that established lore is still canon after the great EU purge? What she does isn't particularly inconsistent with anything in the movies to my eyes, except maybe the glimpses of training in the PT, but a lot of that seems to be an effort to instill mental serenity before teaching anything else. The mind trick was rather much, but I am of the opinion that Vader's plan in ESB to freeze Luke strongly suggests that even a barely trained Jedi really can't be expected to stay in a prison for long. A plan admittedly trampled by the PT and Clone Wars.

She does tick a lot of boxes on a Mary Sue check list, but misses some important ones imo. Her refusing the call and running into the woods and subsequently getting wrecked and captured by KR does a lot to help her avoid that categorization for me. And back on the subject of the final fight, I feel as though KR was trying to recruit her, not kill her, and that Han's death did not give him the clarity he sought either.

And please, please don't let her be a skywalker. if her parentage has to be significant and tied to a character we've already seen, make it Hux or Phasma. Ugh.
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Re: Star Wars SPOILERS ALLOWED

Post by sunphoenix »

I DO however believe she IS Luke's daughter though...
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Re: Star Wars SPOILERS ALLOWED

Post by dragoongfa »

The prequels, although rightfully hated, do repeatedly point out the fact that one need training in order to harness the force. Anakin for all his faults in the Phantom Menace was a monstrous force sensitive but he still couldn't use it like a Jedi. The pod racing and space fight aside, his interview by the Masters clearly shows that what can be expected even from a monster in the force is clairvoyance and maybe sensing disturbances.

Furthermore he had the open mind of a child, able to grasp the whole concept early; the Masters objected to him because they thought that he was too old and as thus his mind would be both contaminated by 'darkness' and quite possibly somewhat closed to the force. A young adult like Luke who had his mind closed off to it had to be taken by hand by Obi Wan in order to just deflect the laser blast from a training droid and then had to fully open his mind to the force in order to get the shot that destroyed the first Death Star.

Rey doing what she did is actually undoing the established need for training of the prequels and belittles to the point of ridicule the growth of Luke Skywalker in a New Hope. This is the epitome of what makes her a Mary Sue in my eyes, she completely overshadows Luke Skywalker who had an arguably better start in force training. A character doesn't need to tic all of the boxes to be a Mary Sue; hell making sure to avoid the boxes is itself a trope. The fact is that this newly introduced character is better than Luke Skywalker in the force by such a ridiculous margin that isn't even funny.

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Re: Star Wars SPOILERS ALLOWED

Post by fredgiblet »

sunphoenix wrote:I DO however believe she IS Luke's daughter though...
MY question is, will we find out next movie, or the movie after. I'm assuming it'll be a "big reveal" at the end of 8 (possibly with Luke's death?) since they seem quite happy to try and hit the same notes as the OT so far.

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Re: Star Wars SPOILERS ALLOWED

Post by Siber »

I'd love if it weren't true, but given how AbramsTrek 1 and 2 progressed I have a had time not believing it. Time will tell. One idea I've heard that has potential but would be damn tricky is for Rey to fall and KR to rise by the end of the trilogy, not sure how that'd conclude ultimately.
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Re: Star Wars SPOILERS ALLOWED

Post by fredgiblet »

It would conclude with the NEXT trilogy kicking off of course.

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Re: Star Wars SPOILERS ALLOWED

Post by Absalom »

dragoongfa wrote:I was talking about Rey and her ability to do fucking everything.

spoilered as a last warning:

I mean come on, she is so Mary Sue that it actually hurts.

She is an innocent, naive and good looking young woman who is thrown into the midst of war
She is great combatant
She is a mechanic that can fix a ship
She is a pilot that flies said ship that she just fixed
She is force sensitive that is capable of using mind tricks without ANY force training
She is a capable light saber user the first time she picks one up, actually managing to beat a trained light saber opponent the first time she fights with a light saber*

*Who was admittedly wounded but Kylo Ren was trained in the force from child hood by Skywalker himself and both Sith and Jedi have demonstrated repeatedly how dangerous opponents they are until their last breath. Someone who hasn't touched a light saber before should NEVER hope to win against a fully fledged Sith with his arms and legs still attached.
I'm confused: when does Kylo Ren display any major talent beyond freezing blaster bolts? Even that was just fallout of his Force-Freeze on Poe. It's mentioned in the movie that he isn't fully trained, he implies himself that Rey is much more powerful than him (so powerful that she not only blocked his mind-reading, but once she'd had some time to contemplate it, turned it back on him), and his ability to detect is fuzzy at best, as demonstrated by the fact that unlike Vader, he had to use stormtroopers to do his searching for him.

Quite simply, the Midichlorian thing has been retained, and Kylo Ren doesn't have impressive numbers, nor enough skill to compensate. Also, he probably isn't a Sith. Chances are that this is coming from the Inquisitor lineage, and you never give the minions the really good stuff. On top of that, his physical skills doesn't seem spectacular either: I dare say that Finn and the stormtrooper he fought against showed about as much skill in sword fighting as Ren did.

sunphoenix wrote:Much as I'd like to disagree... I have to give credit to dragoongfa's point... that IS a bit much for one 'supposedly' starting untrained character.
sunphoenix wrote:As for her light saber skills... I took her momentary pause while her and Kylo were saber locked.. as if she were calling on the force letting it flow through her. In the RPG's doing that temporarily boosts one's abilities ALL of them to a phenomenal level..for about 10 to 15 seconds. That is usually enough for a jedi to pull off superhuman feats that defy logic as the universe basically bends to their will.
My impression from the movies is that proper Jedi try to do that constantly, and meditation is more for added focus than anything else.
sunphoenix wrote:The dark side gives them access to force abilites based on rage , and fear
Another point against Kylo Ren: he relied on inflicting physical pain on himself during the fight. Did Vader ever need to go off on some monologue about his losses, or pain, or the state of the galaxy to fuel his power? Ren is a fly-weight as far as force users are concerned.
sunphoenix wrote:I took Kylo's faltering in that fight because his driving rage was spent killing his father.. his anger and fear were unfocused. The dark side does not deal with capture without harming very well.. it is all about crush and destroy.. so Kylo was sort of at a loss of how to deal with Rey when he clearly wanted to 'take' her alive. If she had not ended that fight soon or that ground would not have split open.. the wound she gave him would have certainly empowered the Rage and fear in him to kill her .. had he had the opportunity.
I suspect that she still would have won. Comparing Vader and Ren is pretty clear: Kylo Ren lacks the discipline needed to be a truely dangerous dark-sider, and probably never faced Luke in serious combat.
sunphoenix wrote:Plus, kylo was indeed trained in the lightsaber... but consider who his teacher was and what likely Luke's focus was in his training? Mastery of the force not combat.
However, he is also a commander with sufficient authority to give orders to storm troopers, some of whom have demonstrated training in physical combat, possibly even for the explicit purpose of defeating Jedi: he should have enough opportunity to counter his failings.
sunphoenix wrote:With the Emperor dead and likly the last Sith lord also dead.. Luke probably trained his student to become closer to the force to let it guide their actions rather than teaching them to be combat Jedi. You see some evidence in how Kylo did things.. he used the force quite a bit and his mastery of energy even to 'freeze' blaster bolts int he very air was clear evidence. Not to mention.. Finn even struck him once with luke's saber in the fight before he was defeated. Vader Never even once nicked Luke in the saber battle in the Second Death Star's throne room! So I'm thinking that Kylo is definitely skilled with the lightsaber.. but he's no young Anikin or even Luke... he seemed to focus more on use of force powers.
I agree, but obviously, I think his weakness in the force is more significant.
Siber wrote:But how much of that established lore is still canon after the great EU purge?
Actually, the EU was always of variable canon. EU writers were supposed to make at least a token effort at maintaining consistency, but I believe that basically all of the games were really only canon with themselves, and not even always each other.

This isn't restricted to just the RPG games, either.
Siber wrote:She does tick a lot of boxes on a Mary Sue check list, but misses some important ones imo. Her refusing the call and running into the woods and subsequently getting wrecked and captured by KR does a lot to help her avoid that categorization for me.
Really, until the interogation scene, Finn would make for better Jedi material than Rey.
Siber wrote:And back on the subject of the final fight, I feel as though KR was trying to recruit her, not kill her, and that Han's death did not give him the clarity he sought either.
Agreed. More than that, I suspect that his death was never really supposed to, either.
Siber wrote:And please, please don't let her be a skywalker. if her parentage has to be significant and tied to a character we've already seen, make it Hux or Phasma. Ugh.
I would guess that she's the last remaining youngling from Luke's Temple.
dragoongfa wrote:The prequels, although rightfully hated, do repeatedly point out the fact that one need training in order to harness the force. Anakin for all his faults in the Phantom Menace was a monstrous force sensitive but he still couldn't use it like a Jedi. The pod racing and space fight aside, his interview by the Masters clearly shows that what can be expected even from a monster in the force is clairvoyance and maybe sensing disturbances.

Furthermore he had the open mind of a child, able to grasp the whole concept early; the Masters objected to him because they thought that he was too old and as thus his mind would be both contaminated by 'darkness' and quite possibly somewhat closed to the force. A young adult like Luke who had his mind closed off to it had to be taken by hand by Obi Wan in order to just deflect the laser blast from a training droid and then had to fully open his mind to the force in order to get the shot that destroyed the first Death Star.
And yet, it's quite easy to take that as evidence of Luke being a Mary-Sue himself. Vader himself was in that trench, Luke's success is simply unreasonable. Similarly, in the Phantom Menace, Anakin doesn't have a minor bout of clairvoyance, but seems to almost be at one with the force at all times, even taking it so far as to almost destroy a capital ship with no assistance. Rey is just one in a long line.
Siber wrote:Rey doing what she did is actually undoing the established need for training of the prequels and belittles to the point of ridicule the growth of Luke Skywalker in a New Hope. This is the epitome of what makes her a Mary Sue in my eyes, she completely overshadows Luke Skywalker who had an arguably better start in force training. A character doesn't need to tic all of the boxes to be a Mary Sue; hell making sure to avoid the boxes is itself a trope. The fact is that this newly introduced character is better than Luke Skywalker in the force by such a ridiculous margin that isn't even funny.
No, I think she's just had an easier learning curve. Luke was up against Vader, a force user more powerful than even Yoda, with copious experience, and fully trained in both the Dark and the Light. Those Jedi that survived Order 66 he hunted down and destroyed.

Kylo Ren is not on the same playing field as Vader, and he knows and fears it himself.


None of this is to say that Rey isn't a Mary-Sue, but quite frankly she's a minor one, not major. She seems to have been going through her entire life as an untrained force sensitive, the greatest limitation of her lack of training at this point is the risk that she will stray onto the dark side.

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Re: Star Wars SPOILERS ALLOWED

Post by Siber »

I really don't think you have to resort to midichlorians to explain KR's relative weakness. Much as people love grey, everything on screen seems to indicate the force rewards pure light and dark over anything else. Hell, you can even extend that to the Vader vs Luke fight in RotJ, Vader was conflicted about killing his son and Luke was provoked to pure rage for a few moments, and Luke won that fight handily. KR emoted and even monologue conflict, he's just not as evil as he'd like to be, despite what he's done in his quest for darkness.

Really, the idea that KR must be an ultimate badass with a lightsaber because he was trained by Luke feels like a bit of a non-sequitur to me. Luke really hasn't gotten to cross blades with that many people in the material that's still canon,he hasn't even gotten that much training with lightsaber combat directly unless force ghosts tutored him a lot. Yoda didn't appear to do anything at all with it during that training. And we don't know what focus he put on the saber in his training of the new Jedi, it easily could have been very little.
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Re: Star Wars SPOILERS ALLOWED

Post by Arioch »

I just saw it earlier today, and I must admit I was disappointed. It's not "prequels" bad -- the acting and direction are fine -- but the story seemed haphazard. Stuff happened... just because. Characters like each other... because, I guess the script says they're supposed to. R2-D2 wakes from his hibernation with critical information at just right moment... because.

The whole "Rey can use Jedi mind tricks and wield a lightsaber better than Kylo Ren, with absolutely no training" is a bit lame, but is essentially the same shlock as "Cadet Kirk can be made captain of a Starship even though there are about 100 more senior officers on board." J.J. doesn't seem to have any interest in the rules of how his worlds operate. Stuff just happens.

Kylo Ren initially seemed a bit dangerous, but he's just been beaten in single combat by a complete neophyte. We're supposed to believe that this is the guy who trashed Luke's Jedi training program? The New Republic seems as impotent as the old one -- apparently they rely on an external "Resistance" to oppose the First Order. They evidently learned nothing from the previous 6 movies.

Still, I liked the new characters. I'm hoping that the next movie may be better, not having to be quite so cluttered up with the needs of cramming so many new and old characters together.

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Re: Star Wars SPOILERS ALLOWED

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Arioch wrote:I just saw it earlier today, and I must admit I was disappointed. It's not "prequels" bad -- the acting and direction are fine -- but the story seemed haphazard. Stuff happened... just because. Characters like each other... because, I guess the script says they're supposed to.
I wouldn't say it's quite that bad, given that humans naturally drift towards having a "tribe", but the film is definitely at "medium", instead of "great". Question: did it seem a bit rushed to anyone else?
Arioch wrote:R2-D2 wakes from his hibernation with critical information at just right moment... because.
I've been thinking about that, actually: did R2-D2 wake up just a bit after Rey first spoke in that room? I'm not saying JJ wouldn't do things randomly, but the timing (which I wasn't watching for when I saw the movie) seems fairly well aligned.
Arioch wrote:Kylo Ren initially seemed a bit dangerous, but he's just been beaten in single combat by a complete neophyte. We're supposed to believe that this is the guy who trashed Luke's Jedi training program?
Having slept since I saw it, I'm not sure that's what was said, all I'm certain of is that one of the students betrayed the program. It could have been several star destroyers worth of stormtroopers that performed the actual slaughter, for example.
Arioch wrote:The New Republic seems as impotent as the old one -- apparently they rely on an external "Resistance" to oppose the First Order. They evidently learned nothing from the previous 6 movies.
I'm not sure how large the Republic even is. Did the dialogue sound to anyone else as if the Republic consisted entirely of those 4 or 5 planets, which I guess are all within the same system as Maz Kanata's planet? Either JJ is thinking of a much smaller galaxy than Lucas, or someone needs to write him a Sci-Fi Glossary before he does his next sci-fi film.

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Re: Star Wars SPOILERS ALLOWED

Post by Arioch »

Absalom wrote:Question: did it seem a bit rushed to anyone else?
It seemed very rushed. I think the story could have benefited from a few quiet moments in which the characters get to know each other. This could easily have been done during transit between planets (like in Ep.IV), which seemed to happen a little too quickly.
Absalom wrote:
Arioch wrote:Kylo Ren initially seemed a bit dangerous, but he's just been beaten in single combat by a complete neophyte. We're supposed to believe that this is the guy who trashed Luke's Jedi training program?
Having slept since I saw it, I'm not sure that's what was said, all I'm certain of is that one of the students betrayed the program. It could have been several star destroyers worth of stormtroopers that performed the actual slaughter, for example.
My point is that the guy who is supposed to be the scary villain just got his ass kicked by the young hero in their first encounter, even before she got the training which she is evidently about to receive. How is Kylo Ren supposed to be a threat when we know that Rey is already more powerful than him?
Absalom wrote:I'm not sure how large the Republic even is. Did the dialogue sound to anyone else as if the Republic consisted entirely of those 4 or 5 planets, which I guess are all within the same system as Maz Kanata's planet? Either JJ is thinking of a much smaller galaxy than Lucas, or someone needs to write him a Sci-Fi Glossary before he does his next sci-fi film.
Well, JJ and Lawrence Kasdan (who co-wrote the script) don't seem to know or care much about the scale of the galaxy, as flights between planets take only minutes, and Starkiller Base can fire beams at planets that are presumably in other star systems, and the destruction of those planets can be seen in broad daylight from Takodana, which was presumably in a different star system (the official map shows Starkiller, Takodana, and D'Qar (the Resistance base) as being thousands of light years apart). Not the biggest plot problem in the movie, but no points for technical sense there.

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Re: Star Wars SPOILERS ALLOWED

Post by Mr Bojangles »

Arioch wrote:
Absalom wrote:Question: did it seem a bit rushed to anyone else?
It seemed very rushed. I think the story could have benefited from a few quiet moments in which the characters get to know each other.
Oh, thank goodness, it wasn't just me. JJ crammed way too much into the movie. I think that it would've benefited the plot to have narrowed the focus.
Arioch wrote:
Absalom wrote:
Arioch wrote:Kylo Ren initially seemed a bit dangerous, but he's just been beaten in single combat by a complete neophyte. We're supposed to believe that this is the guy who trashed Luke's Jedi training program?
Having slept since I saw it, I'm not sure that's what was said, all I'm certain of is that one of the students betrayed the program. It could have been several star destroyers worth of stormtroopers that performed the actual slaughter, for example.
My point is that the guy who is supposed to be the scary villain just got his ass kicked by the hero in their first encounter, even before she got the training which she is evidently about to receive. How is Kylo Ren supposed to be a threat when we know that Rey is clearly more powerful than him?
My impression of Kylo Ren was that he was very much a wanna-be Sith, a poser. Even after he killed his father he didn't seem any more evil or "Dark Side." At the end, I had the impression that he was wondering "Why am I not more of an evil badass? WHYYYYYYY?!?!?!" (that should be read as "NOOOOOOO").
Absalom wrote:I'm not sure how large the Republic even is. Did the dialogue sound to anyone else as if the Republic consisted entirely of those 4 or 5 planets, which I guess are all within the same system as Maz Kanata's planet? Either JJ is thinking of a much smaller galaxy than Lucas, or someone needs to write him a Sci-Fi Glossary before he does his next sci-fi film.
I wasn't at all sure what to make of the New Republic, or even the First Order, for that matter. I think that we are supposed to think that they are the major galactic powers after the fall of the Empire, but in no way does the movie bear that out. Why does the NR rely on some Resistance to fight for it; didn't they win? If the Resistance isn't an official army, then is the FO not a full nation, but perhaps some terrorist organization? This is where I think the movie should have slowed down and actually established the state of the galaxy after RotJ, rather than just dumped us in media res.

And, now, my question for the group: Was anyone else put off by how easily everyone just ignored the destruction of the political base of the NR? And apparently a chunk of their military power (mention is made of losing their fleet)?

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