Star Wars SPOILERS ALLOWED

Discussion regarding the Outsider webcomic, science, technology and science fiction.

Moderator: Outsider Moderators

fredgiblet
Moderator
Posts: 983
Joined: Mon Mar 21, 2011 4:02 pm

Re: Star Wars SPOILERS ALLOWED

Post by fredgiblet »

Agreed. Personally I know there's a LOT of love for the movie right now, but I honestly expect it'll end up being another Avatar, beloved in theaters, but rapidly fading away in the collective conscious.

User avatar
cacambo43
Posts: 301
Joined: Wed Oct 31, 2012 11:39 am
Location: The Space Coast
Contact:

Re: Star Wars SPOILERS ALLOWED

Post by cacambo43 »

fredgiblet wrote:Agreed. Personally I know there's a LOT of love for the movie right now, but I honestly expect it'll end up being another Avatar, beloved in theaters, but rapidly fading away in the collective conscious.
I agree, too. I was just putting forth a scenario if you really really felt it necessary to piff the Senate.

CJSF

User avatar
icekatze
Posts: 1399
Joined: Sat Mar 05, 2011 8:35 pm
Location: Middle of Nowhere
Contact:

Re: Star Wars SPOILERS ALLOWED

Post by icekatze »

hi hi

After letting it sit for a while, I think I can safely rate Star Wars VII at a solid "The Dark Knight Rises," out of 10. Didn't feel like I wasted my time or money, but I don't have any great urge to see it again. Maybe it was an excess of subplots muddling things up, maybe it was the tone of the movie just didn't mesh as well as it could, or the awkward moments of exposition about the distant past, but while still enjoyable, it just didn't capture quite the same spark as some of its predecessors.

Percent of movie spent per engagement level:
Oh yes, I am totally on board with this: 22%
Yeah, I gotta say that was pretty cool: 52%
I've certainly seen worse than this: 19%
Okay, getting a little weird right there: 5%
What the heck am I watching now?: 2%

Karst45
Posts: 785
Joined: Sat Mar 05, 2011 4:03 pm
Location: Quebec, Canada
Contact:

Re: Star Wars SPOILERS ALLOWED

Post by Karst45 »

dragoongfa wrote: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.
That the force for you. Space wizard and thing like that. When you cant explaine something "the force" When thing go so wrong you dont know how you can make it out alive "the force"

The force is one easy and annoying device (just like your Mom!) They drop it juste to fix broken plot. That annoy me highly. But if i ignore that the movie is really good.

User avatar
Count Casimir
Moderator
Posts: 217
Joined: Sat Mar 05, 2011 7:50 pm

Re: Star Wars SPOILERS ALLOWED

Post by Count Casimir »

The main thing that annoys me is the thing that annoys me about most Star Wars stuff--I just don't find the Jedi to be even close to the coolest part of the setting.

Give me my snubfighter jocks, my ridiculously impractical capital ship battles. The X-Wing Series by Michael Stackpole and Aaron Allston is my favorite EU series, and it seldom even mentions actual Force users.

In this movie, we had a handful of X-Wings and basic TIEs. No B-Wings, A-Wings, Y-Wings, no Interceptors or Bombers, ALL of which were in the original trilogy. No Star Destroyers or Mon Cal cruisers. We barely even saw space!

I had fun with the movie, but I actually prefer the state of the EU, where I could ignore the stuff I didn't like and cling to the things I did as "real" canon--just because the galaxy felt so huge.

Hopefully Fantasy Flight keeps their Edge of the Empire game in "Legends" territory.
Ashrain is best rain.

raistlin34
Posts: 270
Joined: Sun Nov 08, 2015 3:46 pm

Re: Star Wars SPOILERS ALLOWED

Post by raistlin34 »

Arioch wrote:I think the superweapon was largely unnecessary to the plot; the map to Skywalker was what was mostly driving things anyway. Rey being captured was sufficient to compel the heroes to assault the enemy base, and you could have had an ESB style ending where the victory is that the heroes escape to fight another day. You could remove the Starkiller entirely from the movie and have it play out almost exactly the same way.
I never liked the Death Star in the first place; not only for the lack of sense of scale or the logistics to build and maintain such monstruosity.... but because blowing up habitable planets is not only evil, but downright stupid even in a Galaxy with many of them. You cannot create more to replace those.
That´s the main reason in real life we stopped using nukes in military conflicts after WW2.

Absalom
Posts: 718
Joined: Sat Sep 24, 2011 4:33 am

Re: Star Wars SPOILERS ALLOWED

Post by Absalom »

Count Casimir wrote:The main thing that annoys me is the thing that annoys me about most Star Wars stuff--I just don't find the Jedi to be even close to the coolest part of the setting.

Give me my snubfighter jocks, my ridiculously impractical capital ship battles. The X-Wing Series by Michael Stackpole and Aaron Allston is my favorite EU series, and it seldom even mentions actual Force users.

In this movie, we had a handful of X-Wings and basic TIEs. No B-Wings, A-Wings, Y-Wings, no Interceptors or Bombers, ALL of which were in the original trilogy. No Star Destroyers or Mon Cal cruisers. We barely even saw space!
It's in line with episode 4, but yeah, Big Destructive Objects can be cool, but even Episode 1 gave us bigger war scenes than these small skirmishes. This would be a neat level (or even campaign) for a modern X-Wing vs TIE Fighter / Star Wars: Jedi Knight game-crossover, but Starkiller Base is frankly akin to some really big lawn ornament. The first Deathstar had more presence than Starkiller base.

raistlin34 wrote:
Arioch wrote:I think the superweapon was largely unnecessary to the plot; the map to Skywalker was what was mostly driving things anyway. Rey being captured was sufficient to compel the heroes to assault the enemy base, and you could have had an ESB style ending where the victory is that the heroes escape to fight another day. You could remove the Starkiller entirely from the movie and have it play out almost exactly the same way.
I never liked the Death Star in the first place; not only for the lack of sense of scale or the logistics to build and maintain such monstruosity.... but because blowing up habitable planets is not only evil, but downright stupid even in a Galaxy with many of them. You cannot create more to replace those.
That´s the main reason in real life we stopped using nukes in military conflicts after WW2.
Actually, if they're willing to wait while the planet cools down, in the Star Wars universe (EU or Canon) they probably can build them. It's a flagrant waste of resources, but I suspect that the planet-killer beam was always intended as a terror weapon rather than a real weapon: the thing was presumably built well-armored, and every bit as armed as it's surface area would suggest: it probably could have taken out any fleet that didn't run away fast enough without any support ships.

User avatar
Arioch
Site Admin
Posts: 4486
Joined: Sat Mar 05, 2011 4:19 am
Location: San Jose, CA
Contact:

Re: Star Wars SPOILERS ALLOWED

Post by Arioch »

Absalom said everything I was going to say.

fredgiblet
Moderator
Posts: 983
Joined: Mon Mar 21, 2011 4:02 pm

Re: Star Wars SPOILERS ALLOWED

Post by fredgiblet »

Count Casimir wrote:In this movie, we had a handful of X-Wings and basic TIEs. No B-Wings, A-Wings, Y-Wings, no Interceptors or Bombers, ALL of which were in the original trilogy. No Star Destroyers or Mon Cal cruisers. We barely even saw space!
Because it's largely a rehash of 4. Also because, unknown to the viewer since Abrams didn't see fit to explain it in the movie, the Resistance isn't actually the New Republic, they're literally a new rebellion against the Imperial Remnant in the form of the First Order. That handful of X-Wings is all they have.

When you're grabbing ships to start a rebellion you want commonality if possible, it significantly eases logistics. Also Y-wings were obsolete in 4, by now they're probably useless.

Nemo
Posts: 277
Joined: Tue Apr 26, 2011 1:04 am

Re: Star Wars SPOILERS ALLOWED

Post by Nemo »

fredgiblet wrote:
Count Casimir wrote:In this movie, we had a handful of X-Wings and basic TIEs. No B-Wings, A-Wings, Y-Wings, no Interceptors or Bombers, ALL of which were in the original trilogy. No Star Destroyers or Mon Cal cruisers. We barely even saw space!
Because it's largely a rehash of 4. Also because, unknown to the viewer since Abrams didn't see fit to explain it in the movie, the Resistance isn't actually the New Republic, they're literally a new rebellion against the Imperial Remnant in the form of the First Order. That handful of X-Wings is all they have.

When you're grabbing ships to start a rebellion you want commonality if possible, it significantly eases logistics. Also Y-wings were obsolete in 4, by now they're probably useless.

Actually, no. If you're an empire or other force maintaining a standing army you want commonality so as to reduce ongoing costs. Rebels take anything they can get their hands on. Thus the rag-tag nature of the Alliance fleet and its snubfighter escorts. Also irl - Toyota trucks AKs, Mosins, M-4s. You don't care what you have so long as it shoots. Beggars and choosers.


Also want commonality to cut back costs on art department and special effects but thats just too cynical, right?

User avatar
Arioch
Site Admin
Posts: 4486
Joined: Sat Mar 05, 2011 4:19 am
Location: San Jose, CA
Contact:

Re: Star Wars SPOILERS ALLOWED

Post by Arioch »

As opposed to the Rebellion, the "Resistance" (despite its strange name) was supported by "legitimate" government, the New Republic. It's not clear why the Republic itself was not able to directly oppose the First Order (since they apparently did have a fleet of their own) and required a proxy, but it's reasonable to expect that the Resistance had access to the latest weaponry.

I think it may be premature to assume that the combatants don't have any more forces than we saw in Ep.VII. This would be like concluding from Ep.IV that the Empire only had 3 cruisers and the Rebellion only had about 30 snub fighters.

Absalom
Posts: 718
Joined: Sat Sep 24, 2011 4:33 am

Re: Star Wars SPOILERS ALLOWED

Post by Absalom »

Arioch wrote:As opposed to the Rebellion, the "Resistance" (despite its strange name) was supported by "legitimate" government, the New Republic. It's not clear why the Republic itself was not able to directly oppose the First Order (since they apparently did have a fleet of their own) and required a proxy, but it's reasonable to expect that the Resistance had access to the latest weaponry.
Supposedly they aren't supported by the Republic, but instead by factions within it. The Republic's government was supposedly sitting fat & happy, more interested with internal matters than with external threats that they mistakenly thought were obeying old treaties. The alien & black woman speaking with each other on that planet that got blown up were the current prime minister (or whatever the position was, basically an alternate-universe take on Neville Chamberlain), and a representative of General/Princess Leia, respectively (apparently Leia was in the dog house).
Arioch wrote:I think it may be premature to assume that the combatants don't have any more forces than we saw in Ep.VII. This would be like concluding from Ep.IV that the Empire only had 3 cruisers and the Rebellion only had about 30 snub fighters.
I'd expect that there were at least some detached elements at the very least, possibly a bunch of Wraith Squadron equivalents; probably, however, the actual size of the Resistance proper is presumably fairly small, with most of it's "membership" being more of affiliates & acquaintances (such as Han or Finn). I assume the next movie will either see a major uptick in Republic support (even if just individual planetary governments, instead of the Republic proper), or some sort of trial scene for Leia, ala Star Trek: The Undiscovered Country. Or maybe the Empire proper steps in on one side or another (
New Order vs ( Empire + Resistance ) vs Republic would be passingly amusing).

fredgiblet
Moderator
Posts: 983
Joined: Mon Mar 21, 2011 4:02 pm

Re: Star Wars SPOILERS ALLOWED

Post by fredgiblet »

Nemo wrote:Actually, no. If you're an empire or other force maintaining a standing army you want commonality so as to reduce ongoing costs. Rebels take anything they can get their hands on. Thus the rag-tag nature of the Alliance fleet and its snubfighter escorts. Also irl - Toyota trucks AKs, Mosins, M-4s. You don't care what you have so long as it shoots. Beggars and choosers.
More or less gonna restate what Arioch said but, the Resistance is pretty clearly a guerilla force made up of former Rebellion/New Republic people. They would have likely gotten all their gear from the New Republic in one way or another, thus they would likely have standardized quite a bit. Also consider as a counterpoint, in A New Hope they only had 2 types of fighters and those were actually separate roles, the X-Wing was a superiority fighter and the Y-wing was a bomber. So it's not like they had 15 differents models hodge-podged together.

On a related note it amuses me when games or TV shows or movie series have combatants coming out with dozens of models over the span of just a couple of years. Given how long the development cycles are getting for pretty much everything these days the idea of an entirely new starship with all new parts being designed in a few months is laughable.

User avatar
Arioch
Site Admin
Posts: 4486
Joined: Sat Mar 05, 2011 4:19 am
Location: San Jose, CA
Contact:

Re: Star Wars SPOILERS ALLOWED

Post by Arioch »

Especially in this Republic in which technology does not seem to have advanced very much in a thousand years.

User avatar
dragoongfa
Posts: 1920
Joined: Mon Jan 26, 2015 9:26 pm
Location: Athens, Greece

Re: Star Wars SPOILERS ALLOWED

Post by dragoongfa »

I remember reading several times that the technology in the Star Wars universe has plateaued for several thousand years; with no one really making any new innovations other than streamlining existing technology then losing that tech in war or economic downturns.

Nemo
Posts: 277
Joined: Tue Apr 26, 2011 1:04 am

Re: Star Wars SPOILERS ALLOWED

Post by Nemo »

I wasnt commenting on this 'Resistance' as I havent seen the movie, just the idea that "to start a rebellion you want commonality if possible". You can smooth out your logistics after you've grown enough to employ bean counters. Till then a rebellion wants teeth in any shape it can get.

User avatar
cacambo43
Posts: 301
Joined: Wed Oct 31, 2012 11:39 am
Location: The Space Coast
Contact:

Re: Star Wars SPOILERS ALLOWED

Post by cacambo43 »

I think the movie at least implies that post-Empire, the galaxy is very much a fractious place, and the New "Republic" is more of a confederation. I also assume there are probably many systems that aren't under any particular "authority." The imperial remnant is probably fairly strong, though small; I assume they have manufacturing facilities intact after the war and used the peace treaty to remain unmolested and probably slowly ramping up their strength.

The Resistance is probably a barely sanctioned or tolerated group that wants to take more action against the imperial remnant's actions that are likely getting more bold as the decades have passed. I can see the republic being paralyzed to inaction pretty easily.

I think the "mistake" people make is thinking that once the Empire "fell," a strong and glorious republic quickly flourished and united the galaxy in peace and prosperity.

CJSF

Sweforce
Posts: 546
Joined: Fri Mar 13, 2015 12:00 am

Re: Star Wars SPOILERS ALLOWED

Post by Sweforce »

fredgiblet wrote:
Nemo wrote:Actually, no. If you're an empire or other force maintaining a standing army you want commonality so as to reduce ongoing costs. Rebels take anything they can get their hands on. Thus the rag-tag nature of the Alliance fleet and its snubfighter escorts. Also irl - Toyota trucks AKs, Mosins, M-4s. You don't care what you have so long as it shoots. Beggars and choosers.
More or less gonna restate what Arioch said but, the Resistance is pretty clearly a guerilla force made up of former Rebellion/New Republic people. They would have likely gotten all their gear from the New Republic in one way or another, thus they would likely have standardized quite a bit. Also consider as a counterpoint, in A New Hope they only had 2 types of fighters and those were actually separate roles, the X-Wing was a superiority fighter and the Y-wing was a bomber. So it's not like they had 15 differents models hodge-podged together.

On a related note it amuses me when games or TV shows or movie series have combatants coming out with dozens of models over the span of just a couple of years. Given how long the development cycles are getting for pretty much everything these days the idea of an entirely new starship with all new parts being designed in a few months is laughable.
Design work may have taken years and still several can be completed in short order. A "new" design may also be a adaptation of an old one. And we are talking abut galactic empires here, each with potentially millions of inhabited worlds. That is a lot of room for different companies to create their own designs. It is even likely that lets say a fighter are designed locally for use by police forces and then found worthy to be adopted by the imperial forces.

User avatar
icekatze
Posts: 1399
Joined: Sat Mar 05, 2011 8:35 pm
Location: Middle of Nowhere
Contact:

Re: Star Wars SPOILERS ALLOWED

Post by icekatze »

hi hi

In a setting where a galactic power has the technological sophistication and resources to deconstruct planets and utilize the entire energy output of stars, one might wonder why human sized space craft are a significant cost in resources. (And for that matter, one might wonder why there is a market at all for salvaged bits by the handful.)

Maybe it's best to just not try to reason things out in such a situation. :P

Absalom
Posts: 718
Joined: Sat Sep 24, 2011 4:33 am

Re: Star Wars SPOILERS ALLOWED

Post by Absalom »

icekatze wrote:hi hi

In a setting where a galactic power has the technological sophistication and resources to deconstruct planets and utilize the entire energy output of stars, one might wonder why human sized space craft are a significant cost in resources. (And for that matter, one might wonder why there is a market at all for salvaged bits by the handful.)

Maybe it's best to just not try to reason things out in such a situation. :P
Simple: if you're Bill Stargates then you can have a "dinghy" that's several hundred feet long.

Some never-employed druggie that can only pay for drugs by stealing something first? Well, in that case you can steal some paper and fold it into a paper starship.

You can only take advantage of what you can personally apply some control over, so if you lack the control that's needed, then you're up a creek without a paddle (e.g. Leia was a Princess, but with Alderaan having been blown up, the majority of what she could have wielded is now gone, leaving only bread crumbs).

Post Reply