STAR WARS: DISNEY UNLEASHED (TRIGGER WARNING : SPOILERS)

[Timbrewolf]

Bottom post of the previous page:

I'm sorry, apparently fantasy syfy can only exist if everything is explainable and makes sense in the real world

I know you're being sarcastic but that's kind of the whole reason it's SCIENCE fiction and not just fiction.

It's supposed to be somewhat realistic.

[Luke Cox]

It's not Science Fiction, it's a Western set in space.

[lumipharon]

There's a difference between hard science fiction and SCIENCE MAGIC.

[Timbrewolf]

This aspect of this debate is pointless given the subject matter.

Star Wars isn't a science fiction series, it's fantasy set in outer space.

[XSI]

Force is pretty much just magic
So this makes sense

[Cheimon]

Yeah right, and Dune isn't science fiction because Paul can see the future when he snorts Space Cocaine. The battle for "science fiction" meaning what's now thought of as "hard science fiction" and not just "like fantasy but with future tech" was lost years ago. Maybe even basically at the start of the genre.

Speaking of magic, I was assuming Kylo Ren's mind reading was a bit like the legilimency in Harry Potter (or was it occlumency?). You could read someone's mind, but if you overstretched they'd start to see your memories too. That's why Snape (despite being an experienced legilimens) put his most private memories in the pensieve, and that's why Rey could see Kylo's thoughts, mind reading is a two-way street.

Also, yeah, that audio at the start was really terrible. I literally couldn't tell what they were saying, I got really worried when Kylo started mumbling through the mask, but then it cleared up enough later on to be fine.

[Zellion]

http://imgur.com/gallery/w5MHii8

[Timbrewolf]

-snip-

You're missing the point.

In Dune, Paul gets visions when he uses spice because it's a mind expanding drug. It's a drug, a chemical having an effect on his brain and sensory organs. In fact it has pretty similar affects on a lot of people, because that's what spice does to people.

This is a science-y substance that is also required in-universe for space travel.

In Star Wars, Kylo is able to read Ren's mind because of a mystical energy that is radiated by all life and is somehow affected by whether you're a good person with good intentions or a bad person with evil intentions, that normally takes special training from other experienced mystical energy users to use.

This is magic. At one point they try to dress it up with science and claim that it comes from special midichlorians that live inside people but at different points the story contradicts or ignores that.

If there's no science to it, it's not science fiction. It's just fantasy or whatever in a different setting.

Think about it this way: when our society has progressed to a point where we do have space ships and are flying around the galaxy do you think people will still be having this argument or will people just regard Star Wars as a fantasy series?

[Screemonster]

I'm reminded of an article about willing suspension of disbelief that was written by one of the Dark Horse comics guys.

He posited that in general terms, authors get to break reality exactly once in the course of any given story. Comic book fans are perhaps a little more forgiving than that, but that's the general rule - but there's a trick.

The trick is that if you make your initial premise, your "big lie", so massive, so huge, so balls-to-the-wall ridiculous, audiences will swallow anything that comes afterwards so long as it's a logical extension of that lie.

"This man can fly because he's an alien from the planet Krypton."
"This mask has the power of a trickster god."
"Toons are real and live among humans, one of them just commited a murder."
"We all work for a faceless megacorporation with a monopolistic stranglehold on a stupendously toxic material with fantastic scientific properties."

[Cheimon]

>implying humans will ever travel faster than light

Paul do way too much stuff that's just explained as "he's the chosen one". Navigators see a little bit of the future, right? But Paul gets whole damn paths, overwhelmingly so, the whole book becomes about how he's this messiah, a totally unique prophet to lead the fremen out of the desert, and about how he's terrified he'll get the wrong branch of the future and not the right one. His mum gets this whole mind link to every past wizardess, and then her daughter gets it too and ends up talking to people normally and acting all weird and deadly. Yes the drug works on other people but it never works anywhere near like it does on Paul and his family, and that's just explained as "lol kwisatz haderach".

Star Wars is totally science fiction, it's just pulp science fiction. Most things have a technical explanation, just not a very long one. The force is an energy field connecting all living things, like Obi-Wan explains, and people with unusual sensitivity to it (which is later repealed to apparently be genetic, given Luke and Leia and Kylo and Anakin all have it) can manipulate it to do things like move things around, sense the energy's presence in thoughts, and make people way more suggestible. Lightsabers are plasma in a magnetic shield. FTL travel occurs by going through hyperspace. I mean sure, if you take something like Robert Heinlein's definition of science fiction it doesn't count, but it's as legitimate a piece of sci-fi as Dune. Most of Star Wars' galaxy isn't about the force either, just like most of Dune's galaxy isn't about Paul being Space Moses.

[Timbrewolf]

For me it's the difference between what the focus of the story is and how things are presented to you.

There are extended universe bits of Star Wars that are definitely pure science fiction. Stories about Lando or Han just adventuring around the galaxy doing shit? Totally sci-fi through and through.

But the stuff the films focus on are the Jedi and their crazy force-fueled conflicts that shape the universe.

And in my opinion those are pure fantasy. Just set in space.

[Wyzack]

My buddy has a functional vcr so we started watching the unedited original trilogy. Shit was cash before Lucas rammed his CGI chode into it

[Steelpoint]

Just find and download a copy of the Star Wars Despecalized Edition's, its essentially a big fan project that updates the film to a high quality blue ray version while also reverting most of the shitty changes made to the movie.

[LiamLime]

I'd expect Disney to release blueray quality versions of the originals at some point in between episodes 7 and 8, probably once the fervour from episode 7 dies down. It's quite clear that there is a massive market for them and Disney does like profits.

[Screemonster]

I would absolutely go for the original releases.

Hell, even some of the minor cleanup stuff from the special editions was fine, just not the "hey let's just insert a wacky cgi cutscene where some jawas fall off a dinosaur" shit

[Actionb]

I remember pretty much everything that happened in the first three SW movies (episode 4-6 or whatever). All I remember from the new flicks was jar jar bings being in the movie and Anakin murdering a bunch of children.
I doubt I will remember a whole lot from this movie either. It was just explosions everywhere. I almost fell asleep half way through.
Don't get me wrong, the effects and scenery were truly fantastic. But that's not what I came for.

I never was a big star wars buff, but the first movies always had something fascinating about them. One the one hand everything was awful for the rebels and pretty much everyone else; people were barely getting by or were getting shat on by the empire. But then there was also the magic force, a glimmer of hope.
It was gritty but hopeful. A space western.
You can see Disney had their hands in the new one. Carefree entertainment, light comedy. Pretty boring. You wouldn't see Han Solo just blasting a guy in a bar, or him covering Luke in space polar kangaroo guts to keep warm.

The original movies put some effort in building believeable characters. You could tell what the main characters are like and how they might react in certain situations. They weren't the most suprising characters in the history of film making, but at least they had a character.
In the farce awakens you have that stromtrooper guy randomly becoming conscious of his employers being space nazis. Why and how exactly he became aware of this isn't further detailed. Has he had doubts before or was it just a sudden realization? What exactly is his role in the story aside from being the shallow comedic relief? Maybe he is vital for cleaning the falcon's toilets later on? That's all I could think of, really. Finn was just there, nothing more.

Also, there's angst-man. Wearing a cool mask for the sake of being a badass. He was a badass, stopping a laser beam with his brain and all. But then he became angry at daddy loving him so much. And everything went downhill from there. I've had high hopes for having such a conflicted antagonist in the story, but the execution of it was awful. Everything angst-man did felt forced to progress the story. I'm aware they are not going to reveal everything about a character in the first movie, much like they did with Vader. But give us something to work with other than: here's the bad guy, he's not that bad actually, but he's pretty bad. They're doing the reverse of how they've built Vader: he started out as the ULTIMATE EVIL, but over the course of the movies, we gained a lot of insight into his mind. With angst-man there's only one way to go now as an antagonist and that's by making him more evil. That's not how you build an interesting villain.
And don't get me started on his boss, holo-gollum.

The only redeeming features were Rey's acting (not her character) and ball-borg-8. Although BB8 was obviously disney-overthetop-super-cute, I couldn't help but like him. Strange, how I liked an animated robo-ball more than any of the other characters. Isn't that a bad thing?
Whoever played Rey did a great job, aside from the unbelievable things her character pulled off 24/7 that would make MacGyver look like drooling retard, her emotions always felt real and she had a real presence when in picture. Unlike the stormtrooper-janitor that was just 'there' most of the time, tagging along for the ride - always prepared to clean any clogged toilets, to give a shallow one-liner or the be the useless damsel-in-distress.
Solo and Chewbacca were obviously great. Solo's death was stupid as fuck, but what can you do when you cannot avoid it by script. Chewy by virtue of being a yeti can't do anything wrong acting wise. Solo+Leia's chemistry had nothing compared to the earlier pictures and felt once again forced so they can give angst-man even more reason to be unreal by having a fairly intact family.
Oh and that yoda granny was great. She had only 15 minutes of screen time and is not real, but that still was enough to build a more interesting character than almost everyone else of the cast.

Less explosions more story next time, please... you have one of the biggest sci-fi universes to play with, don't waste it on 120 minutes of mindless CGI.

[Ricotez]

Strange, how I liked an animated robo-ball more than any of the other characters. Isn't that a bad thing?

when Portal 2 came out people lauded it for having a cast of robots with more personality than any other character in any other AAA game that came out that year, so no, it's not a bad thing

[Jazaen]

Well, Portal 2 had two talking robots, two mute robots, one mute human, one old-timey talking human, one old-timey backstory cameo human, one automatic announcer and one nanobot. And a bird.

[Lumbermancer]

Strange

No, not at all. 90% peoples will tell you they care more about animals than humans. Humans can die left and right but when a doge dies it's a tragic tearjerker. Robots are the same as animals, they are dumb and they don't know anything. They are like children.

I analyzed BB-8 with a team of emotion scientists, and we came to the conclusion that it was brilliantly designed to make you feel feelings. From the soft sounds imitating dog whining , to moving head that could be lowered in sadness. R2D2 didn't have moving head, but it had sad beeping. That means BB-8 has at the very least twice as many feelings as R2 had.

[Cheimon]

I thought Finn was good for giving us more insight into the stormtroopers and First Order training, he acted as a competent fighter, and he gave them all the important information about the Death Planet. He did the whole briefing there, explaining where the vulnerabilities were and how to exploit them, even spearheaded the team that took down the shields. Sanitation was a good choice in that (a) janitors get to go everywhere and (b) it looks like there weren't any civilians at all on the base, so the whole thing probably was built by stormtroopers. Oh, and he helped the pilot escape, which gives the setup for the Rogue One film. I thought he actually did quite a lot, given he was the one character without a clear original trilogy archetype.

[Ricotez]

Also Portal 2 was just a Valve game in, if I remember, a not so significant year for game releases with characters. How could it not get a bunch of people liking it especially the people who jumped on forum rooftops and confessed their love of the original to the heavens above?

it finally said goodbye to the stupid cake memes

(and in its last moments replaced it with something even more obnoxious)

[Zilenan91]

spaaaaace

[Ricotez]

[Actionb]

Finn... references to the old stuff.

See, I can understand how they'd put references to the old stuff in the movie. But it doesn't have to be so in-your-face obvious most of the time. Everyone knows the trash compactor scene. Subtlety wasn't an important factor for the writers that's for sure. Most of the jokes fell flat because the film practically went 'JOKE HERE; LAUGH!' in big fat neon letters whenever a pun was due. Or they felt just completely out of place (Finn asking Rey if she has a boyfriend, wtf).
A great exception was the scene were they enter yoda granny's bar. A short moment of silence. Like in the bar in the very first movie. Everything looked and felt like just that moment. And thank god, Han didn't give a corny line to remind even the slowest of the viewers that this is a reference. Sadly, due to disney, we couldn't have Rey cut off somebody's arm - then again, it would have been too obvious.

I didn't care about Finn at all, because a:

and b: because he surely drew the shortest straw on most of the writing for his character. The premise is very interesting, a rogue stormtrooper! But the script didn't deliver a whole lot more. And over the course of the movie I felt his main purpose was to make everyone else look better.
To be fair, Rey's character development did not get much love either. She began the movie as the resourceful wonderchild and ended it like that. But at least the actress had more charisma than a mossy wooden log. When she ran into Kylo in the woods and was immediately force-choked, you could see her being scared shitless. Kylo's actor also did a great job, considering the difficult/confusing to play role he had.

When you watch a movie and don't give a fuck what is going to happen to the protagonists, the film failed. The only time I felt interested was during the endfight, which was very well done: no anime-powerup-jumping-around-like-flubber bullshit. Just three guys in killmode at each other's throats. Sadly, Finn didn't die. Probably bad for marketing to pull another Kenobi.
Han's death doesn't count, because anyone with a braincell saw that coming from a mile away.

Yoda granny felt like awful pandering to me. If I talk about why I'll just wind up being mean.

Aaand finally, BB8 (if the second word really is borg, does that mean he has a brain inside the ball?) was half Disney, half Star Wars in his existence. If I talk about how I feel about them I'll end up offending people probably.

Lumber explained perfectly, why some people liked the ball so much. You have to give it to disney, they know how to animate. Portraying emotions. Being interesting to look at, being able to read what is going on in that thing's head without it actually saying much at all. I loved the hell out of wall-e, and I'm surely not amongst the target generation for that anymore. Yoda-granny falls into the same category. Her behaviour and motions were very detailed, I wasn't bored watching her talk. Things like these are what's important to me in a movie. I don't give a fuck about a star system exploding.

[Zilenan91]

I really liked Yoda-Granny as a character, but I still have to say that C3PO was the best character in this movie because not a single scene he was in was bad. Everything that came out of his mouth was fucking gold.

[Zilenan91]

From what I remember of the water scene with Finn he was running around a bunch of tents looking for water until he dunked his head in a pool full of it that was meant for an animal that was drinking all the water. I didn't really think that that scene was that bad, but that may just be because there was this little kid a row behind me that started laughing and it was really cute.

[Skorvold]

The only thing that I'm wondering is how did CDB get to play the main antagonist in a Star Wars movie?

[Luke Cox]

So I finally got around to seeing it and what the fuck are people on about? Only real valid criticism I see is that it mirrors the original too much

Rey cannot fly for shit. She can't even make the ship take off without nearly crashing, and she wobbles all over the place. She was already familiar with Imperial technology from scavenging their wrecks all her life, and most of her "hacking" was just ripping out fuses to trigger emergency overrides (which she even screws up horribly on Han's freighter). Somebody with her level of combat experience would be perfectly capable of beating a half-trained guy who had injuries that would have most people on the ground. My only real gripe with Rey is the relative lack of emotion she shows compared to the rest of the cast.

As for theories, I am 99% certain that Rey was one of Luke's apprentices at some point, and that Kylo Ren wiped her memories and left her on Jakku because he couldn't bring himself to kill her for some reason. Why would Ren see "an island" in her mind when he was interrogating her, and why did he flip the fuck out when he heard that "a girl" was seen with Finn and BB8. It's not implausible that Yoda-nanny is force sensitive. She's obviously not a Jedi, but she talks like somebody who's felt the same things.

Of all the characters, I feel like Kylo Ren was the best executed by far. I was initially worried that Abrams would just try to out-do Darth Vader like he did with the Death Star and Starkiller Base. Him being severely insecure and a whiny wannabe edgelord was actually kind of fitting. It would make sense that he would feel insecure having to live up to Darth Vader when he's clearly not cut out for his job. His little temper tantrums were fucking hilarious too. I love how all the stormtroopers and officers around him don't even act surprised, like it's some common occurrence that doesn't even faze them anymore.

[PKPenguin321]

So I finally got around to seeing it and what the fuck are people on about? Only real valid criticism I see is that it mirrors the original too much

Rey cannot fly for shit. She can't even make the ship take off without nearly crashing, and she wobbles all over the place. She was already familiar with Imperial technology from scavenging their wrecks all her life, and most of her "hacking" was just ripping out fuses to trigger emergency overrides (which she even screws up horribly on Han's freighter). Somebody with her level of combat experience would be perfectly capable of beating a half-trained guy who had injuries that would have most people on the ground. My only real gripe with Rey is the relative lack of emotion she shows compared to the rest of the cast.

As for theories, I am 99% certain that Rey was one of Luke's apprentices at some point, and that Kylo Ren wiped her memories and left her on Jakku because he couldn't bring himself to kill her for some reason. Why would Ren see "an island" in her mind when he was interrogating her, and why did he flip the fuck out when he heard that "a girl" was seen with Finn and BB8. It's not implausible that Yoda-nanny is force sensitive. She's obviously not a Jedi, but she talks like somebody who's felt the same things.

Of all the characters, I feel like Kylo Ren was the best executed by far. I was initially worried that Abrams would just try to out-do Darth Vader like he did with the Death Star and Starkiller Base. Him being severely insecure and a whiny wannabe edgelord was actually kind of fitting. It would make sense that he would feel insecure having to live up to Darth Vader when he's clearly not cut out for his job. His little temper tantrums were fucking hilarious too. I love how all the stormtroopers and officers around him don't even act surprised, like it's some common occurrence that doesn't even faze them anymore.

people like to complain on the internet
although i do think kylo ren looked like a fuckin dweebus

[Incomptinence]

Chomsky honks can hurt people too I think that is the point of the character.

[Actionb]

My only real gripe with Rey is the relative lack of emotion she shows compared to the rest of the cast.

It's so weird that a lot of people think that while her acting was the only thing that kept me awake through most of the movie.
I mean, C3PO's facial expressions were more evolved than Finn's...

[Luke Cox]

So I finally got around to seeing it and what the fuck are people on about? Only real valid criticism I see is that it mirrors the original too much

Rey cannot fly for shit. She can't even make the ship take off without nearly crashing, and she wobbles all over the place. She was already familiar with Imperial technology from scavenging their wrecks all her life, and most of her "hacking" was just ripping out fuses to trigger emergency overrides (which she even screws up horribly on Han's freighter). Somebody with her level of combat experience would be perfectly capable of beating a half-trained guy who had injuries that would have most people on the ground. My only real gripe with Rey is the relative lack of emotion she shows compared to the rest of the cast.

As for theories, I am 99% certain that Rey was one of Luke's apprentices at some point, and that Kylo Ren wiped her memories and left her on Jakku because he couldn't bring himself to kill her for some reason. Why would Ren see "an island" in her mind when he was interrogating her, and why did he flip the fuck out when he heard that "a girl" was seen with Finn and BB8. It's not implausible that Yoda-nanny is force sensitive. She's obviously not a Jedi, but she talks like somebody who's felt the same things.

Of all the characters, I feel like Kylo Ren was the best executed by far. I was initially worried that Abrams would just try to out-do Darth Vader like he did with the Death Star and Starkiller Base. Him being severely insecure and a whiny wannabe edgelord was actually kind of fitting. It would make sense that he would feel insecure having to live up to Darth Vader when he's clearly not cut out for his job. His little temper tantrums were fucking hilarious too. I love how all the stormtroopers and officers around him don't even act surprised, like it's some common occurrence that doesn't even faze them anymore.

people like to complain on the internet
although i do think kylo ren looked like a fuckin dweebus

But that's kind of the point. He's an insecure wannabe who wears a helmet because he knows he doesn't look the part, uses a voice changer because he doesn't sound the part, and throws tantrums constantly because he doesn't feel the part. People have negatively compared him to Anakin, but there's a key difference: Anakin's angst was the result of terrible writing and acting. Kylo's was a deliberate part of his character.

[PKPenguin321]

still though
they couldve casted the dingus that played ron weasley for all the harry potter movies to play kylo ren and he would have looked like less of a dweebus than what we got
i mean cmon

[Zilenan91]

He distinctly reminded me of Zuko from that shitty Shyamalan movie The Last Airbender. It was the first thing that came to mind when I saw it. Is it the same actor?

[Takeguru]

No, he's mostly done roles in TV series and TV movies

He was a single episode character in law and order SVU for instance

Shit like that

[Ricotez]

Star Wars is guaranteed to be a success, so they can afford to introduce actors that aren't very well known

[Steelpoint]

Its also likely a lot less expensive to use less well known or more newer actors than veterans.

Also there's the idea of wanting to push for a new ensemble of main characters, so using well known people as the new "new" people may detract from that fresh feeling.

[Luke Cox]

I like it when movies use lesser known actors. When an actor appears in every other blockbuster, it becomes difficult to separate the actor from the character, to a distracting level.

[XSI]

Found this
Enjoy more fuel for the fire

Spoiler:

[Ricotez]

[Screemonster]

harrison ford's trollface there is fantastic

[Takeguru]

Black man McJanitor is an okay character

Even if he was mostly a joke when it came to doing anything that wasn't jobbing against Sith wannabes