So... Star Wars [Spoilers]

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So... Star Wars [Spoilers]

Post by Username17 »

No, I don't intend to give away any particular spoilers in this post, but I figure that it's virtually impossible that spoilers won't happen in this thread, so I labeled the thread [Spoilers] just in case.

Star Wars Episode VII is scientifically designed and mathematically calibrated to not disappoint the fans like those fucking prequels. Every part of it, and I do mean every little bit of dialog or piece of background scenery, has been carefully focus grouped to properly callback to the good Star Wars movies and reject the bad Star Wars movies. All the action scenes are properly and precisely placed so that the movie maintains tempo and doesn't get bogged down in shitty "I hate sand" lulls.

There is something clinical, even boring, about the way the dialog, the action, the everything is put together. When a character calls time to declare very specifically that we are using the Force as described by Yoda in Empire Strikes Back and not those fucking midichlorians from the prequels, it's almost enough to provoke eye rolling. I mean, yes that's the correct answer, and yes that's the answer fans have been waiting for for more than a decade. In more excited fan-crowds that was probably an applause line. But that's all it is. There isn't really any reason for the dialog to be where it is, it's just a point in the movie where there was room to put in the appropriate fan affirmation.

The action is beautifully choreographed, but I was not really on my seat for any of it. I pretty much knew what was going to happen the entire time. Every part of the movie, from the dialog to the characters to the pacing itself is made out of callbacks to the original trilogy. Even the "twists" are careful to be exact mirror images of first trilogy events and are in that manner completely unsurprising. I'm not sure it's even possible to spoil this movie for people who have already seen New Hope, Empire, and Return of the Jedi.

Without getting into any of the things that happen later in the movie, I'm just going to harp on a bit from the opening story crawl. Why the fuckity fuck are the good guys called "The Resistance?" They work for the Republic. Explicitly. That is not a name that people who work for the legitimate authority have. You're only the resistance if you aren't in possession of the capital. You can be the resistance if you're the rightful government if and only if some assholes have conquered you and your government is in exile.

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Post by PhoneLobster »

It would have been nice if it were more like a kinda Mad Max: Fury Road only for Star Wars, you know, a just plain massively awesome movie seemingly out of nowhere with pretty close to no shortcomings. But Disney knew that something of that quality was at best a gamble if not impossible for them to produce at all.

But a very careful, excessively fan service heavy thoroughly original trilogy based run of the mill action movie with some expensive special effects sequences? That they knew they had a reliable shot at making. And it is something that is good enough to revive the franchise.

And not just something that can revive the franchise with new and casual fan interest. They want the sorta crazy star wars fan boy following that star wars used to have. They want that core of fanatics promoting their movies and buying their merchandise. They want those guys to get out there on the internet reminding us of god damn star wars twenty four seven until the next movie comes out.

And what we have, even in it's shortcomings, is exactly what THAT audience wanted.

Still, for me, it was OK. On par with say, the marvel movies. Good enough to go back and see the rest of.

There was oh, pretty much one spoiler thing I'm... uncertain about...
What's up with the darth vader fan boy?
I don't know if they are throwing hints around for a moderately reasonable twist with this guy, or laying the unneeded ground work for some seriously boring nothing.

So either this kid cut some sort of deal with Skywalker, and is using Darth Vader's ghost as an advisor to snuff out his light side (and as a role model) for turning on his evil master and has been all along including the bit where he stabs the guy who lets face it did OK but was really too old for such a big part in this one.

OR he is just stoopid evil and his Darth Vader worship isn't anything subtly to do with Vader's ultimate redemption and possibly quietly rebellious role prior to that and is just part of being stoopid evil written with the assumption that darth vader was always stoopid evil and even his redeemed ghost skull REMAINS stoopid evil no matter who's ghosts his ghost partied with in whatever version of that other movie. And even if they mirror the original trilogy right down to him pulling a vader at the end it's going to be a last minute relenting thing instead of a cunning plan all along thing.

My hopes aren't high.

I mean if they were going to give us interesting twists then Fin would have been the one to force grab that light saber in the forest fight, and, the virtue of strong (but kinda generic) prominent female action heroines aside, the movie is less than what it could have been since he didn't.
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Post by Mechalich »

PhoneLobster wrote:They want the sorta crazy star wars fan boy following that star wars used to have. They want that core of fanatics promoting their movies and buying their merchandise. They want those guys to get out there on the internet reminding us of god damn star wars twenty four seven until the next movie comes out.
The only time Star Wars didn't have a crazy fanboy following was in the period from about mid 2014 to mid 2015 - between Disney's announcement destroying the EU and the trailer for Force Awakens dropping. And destroying the EU permanently destroyed Disney's hopes with many of the former rabid fanboys (speaking as one here, one who won't be seeing this movie in theaters).

This movie is totally about maximum nostalgia-based mass appeal - a huge call-out to casual older fans with fond memories, their impressionable kids, people with a long-simmering moderate interest in the franchise, and the weird subset of OT movie only pursuits. It's the exact same formula Abrams used for Trek, so it's not like it wasn't seen coming.

Which isn't to say it won't work or was the wrong decision economically - I'm bitter but not blind to the realities of modern franchise development - but it does seem weird to consider these 'new' films, when by all accounts its way closer to an OT reboot in spirit.
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Post by PhoneLobster »

They aren't aiming at the deluded subset of fanatics that kept the faith post shitty prequels.

They are aiming at the fanatics that abandoned the faith in dejection because of the shitty prequels.

If the only thing that alienated you was the ejection of the EU then you aren't the loser they want promoting their film. You are the tiniest of sub minorities of a minority of a minority.
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Post by Kaelik »

PhoneLobster wrote:They aren't aiming at the deluded subset of fanatics that kept the faith post shitty prequels.
Uhh... If someone was a fan of the X-Wing series, why would they have suddenly abandoned the concept of reading Legacy of the Force because of the prequels sucking?

Like, I know you were never a fan, but pretty much by definition the fans to look for are the ones paying money, which for Star Wars means that in 1998-1999 they were reading I, Jedi, and X-Wing: Isard's Revenge. From 1999-2005, while they were hoping the next movie wouldn't suck, they were reading just... so many Yuhzan Vong books, and then in 2006 after it was confirmed all three of the prequels sucked dickface, they started Legacy of the Force.

Now you could say all kinds of things about the quality of those respective series, but saying "People who enjoyed X-Wing and New Jedi Order should have abandoned the Franchise because some movies set 60 years in the past sucked" is just weird.

And saying that Disney should alienate those people because they have terrible taste because they liked Star Wars after the prequels came out is double weird.

The reason they should alienate those people is because the books series would make terrible movies, so a cannon reset was necessary for commercial viability, not because they liked books set 60 years after the prequels and that proves that they have bad taste because the prequels sucked.

Let's remember, they threw out all the cannon since 1983 except the shitty prequels. They kept that. Keeping the prequels as cannon but throwing out everything else is not the action of someone trying to punish people who liked the prequels.
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"Hey those guys from the Raid are awesome at action scenes, lets hire them and have them do nothing"
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Re: So... Star Wars [Spoilers]

Post by Blicero »

FrankTrollman wrote: Without getting into any of the things that happen later in the movie, I'm just going to harp on a bit from the opening story crawl. Why the fuckity fuck are the good guys called "The Resistance?" They work for the Republic. Explicitly. That is not a name that people who work for the legitimate authority have. You're only the resistance if you aren't in possession of the capital. You can be the resistance if you're the rightful government if and only if some assholes have conquered you and your government is in exile.
http://www.bleedingcool.com/2015/12/18/ ... e-awakens/

Apparently "The Resistance" is not officially supported by the Republic; they were formed specifically to fight "The First Order". Not that you get any of what is in this link from the movie itself.

Sidenote: According to the above link, the rise of the not-Empire and formation of the not-Rebels have been a relatively recent phenomenon. I did not get that at all from the movie itself and watched the entire thing under the assumption that both sides had been at war for thirty years.

It's difficult to think back to a time before I had seen New Hope, but I am wondering if the political situation in that one (minus the added detail of V and VI) was as ambiguous as the one in VII.
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Re: So... Star Wars [Spoilers]

Post by Josh_Kablack »

FrankTrollman wrote: Why the fuckity fuck are the good guys called "The Resistance?"
-Username17
Because it's phonetically very very close to "The REbel alliANCE."
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Post by PhoneLobster »

Kaelik wrote:And saying that Disney should alienate those people because they have terrible taste because they liked Star Wars after the prequels came out is double weird.
I'm not saying they should. I'm saying they ARE.

I assume they have numbers to back that up that decision. And I do not think it is a big assumption to consider that there is a much bigger block of star wars fans disillusioned by the prequels than by the EU reset. After all, Disney certainly seems to think so.
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Post by Kaelik »

PhoneLobster wrote:
Kaelik wrote:And saying that Disney should alienate those people because they have terrible taste because they liked Star Wars after the prequels came out is double weird.
I'm not saying they should. I'm saying they ARE.

I assume they have numbers to back that up that decision. And I do not think it is a big assumption to consider that there is a much bigger block of star wars fans disillusioned by the prequels than by the EU reset. After all, Disney certainly seems to think so.
Nevermind the way you phrased it as "kept the faith after the shitty prequels" caused me to see a because that wasn't there.
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Post by MGuy »

Overall I liked the movie. Even though there are a number of questionable (and uber convenient) bits here and there for the most part I have no major complaints. Right after I saw the movie I was relieved that it wasn't terrible but as I thought about it one thing came to mind.
Am I alone in thinking that the primary female is a bit too skilled at literally everything? I could accept that she's a good (even great) mechanic, though the fact that she doesn't show this in the scenes where she's looking for and selling parts seems like a missed opportunity to kind of pre-bake the concept before it became necessary for her to be. I can accept that she can handle herself in a melee fight. I knew they were going to do this with her and I was so ready for it that the scene where Fin prepares to 'rescue' her I knew already literally everything that was going to happen from there. Even the 'sudden' appearance of the Thousand Year Albatross I was unmoved by. I also don't mind that she's super lucky (cause force or whatever). Even her sudden proficiency with mind tricking didn't strike me as strange.

What I found out of place was that she was also a GREAT pilot, a crack shot despite initially seeming uncomfortable with even holding a blaster, a better lightsaber duelist than a force sensitive guy with an important lineage who'd actually trained and defeated other trained force sensitives. Luke didn't even have all that going for him. He at best was a lucky boy who happened to be a good pilot out of the gate.

It 'feels' like she is TOO good at everything and Fin seemed to be overshadowed by her for the most part. They are both essentially noobies but it seemed as though they made Fin bumble about a helluva lot more than Ray. For her, save being captured (which only seemed to further her abilities) nothing really goes wrong. For him, everything seems to be a spinning whirlwind of chaos and he's mostly just pulled around by others until he makes the decision to put his life out on the limb for her only to find that she's already pretty much unfucked herself and ends up needing to be saved by her.

At the VERY least I feel like they could have given him the fight with Ren/Ben. While I LIKE Fin I feel like he got shortchanged in this installment.
As for EU/Legends I don't care. I have hardly ever cared about the EU outside of thinking that 'some' of the stories were neat while others were not. Disney wanting to wipe the slate clean is not only understandable but I don't see how they could begin to go in their own direction if they didn't. I feel like it was important for Abrams to re-establish the brand in this movie and so that's what he went for. I think it turned out well. Even ignoring the fact that he didn't have to do 'much' to be better than the prequels I think he made the right moves with this movie and I can only hope he continues to do so.
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Post by JesterZero »

As previously mentioned:
  • The movie wants very badly to be a ceaseless homage to the original trilogy, to the point where it actually feels that it's own narrative is clearly getting the short shrift. Maybe Disney just isn't worried running out of movies, but I've seen 40-minute TV pilots that introduced more characters, and characterized them more fully. But there simply isn't time for that in a movie with this many winks and nods to the original trilogy.
  • The relationship between the Republic / Resistance / First Order is fairly opaque. Trying to connect the dots to the Rebellion / Empire only makes it worse. Clearly some exposition was either overlooked or (more likely) wound up on the floor of the editing room.
Additionally:
  • The movie clocks in, I believe, at 2 hours and 4 minutes. It would have benefited enormously from adding an additional 10 minutes of run time that shoehorned in some exposition (see above), and an additional 5 minutes that just gave relief from the unrelenting, frenetic pacing of the movie. I mean, you have gorgeous visuals and John Williams writing your score. Let John and your set manager earn their paycheck for crying out loud. I don't want to come off like an old-man-film-snob here, but the editing / pacing was so incredibly rushed that it beggars belief.
It's absolutely a fun movie; it's not a great movie. It's also not a great Star Wars movie.
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Post by Mechalich »

MGuy wrote:Disney wanting to wipe the slate clean is not only understandable but I don't see how they could begin to go in their own direction if they didn't.
The really annoying part is not that they wiped the slate clean post-RotJ, but that they wiped the slate clean pre-RotJ as well.

It was really annoying to wake up in mid-2014 to discover that the thousands of hours I'd sunk in Star Wars: The Old Republic now belonged to a game effectively missing the part before the colon. 3,500 years of time wasn't enough buffer?
PhoneLobster wrote:I assume they have numbers to back that up that decision. And I do not think it is a big assumption to consider that there is a much bigger block of star wars fans disillusioned by the prequels than by the EU reset. After all, Disney certainly seems to think so.
Nah, Disney simply thinks that the long-term monetary prospects of a durable movie franchise in the Marvel style and the attendant toys are worth more than anything related to the books/comics/video games.

Toys are actually the biggest money-making part of the franchise, with movies second, and everything else a distant third (books are actually the least valuable component, so allowing them to drive the plotline for years was a tail-wags-dog exercise). Disney is making a bet on mass-market fans versus hardcore fans. Over the long term, if they can string together 6-10 movies that each pull in a billion dollars, they're probably right. The biggest risk is that movies in general recede as a medium, or that blockbuster fatigue sets in - to which Disney is particularly vulnerable because they own both Marvel and Star Wars and are now effectively their own biggest competitor.
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Post by MGuy »

JesterZero wrote: Additionally:
  • The movie clocks in, I believe, at 2 hours and 4 minutes. It would have benefited enormously from adding an additional 10 minutes of run time that shoehorned in some exposition (see above), and an additional 5 minutes that just gave relief from the unrelenting, frenetic pacing of the movie. I mean, you have gorgeous visuals and John Williams writing your score. Let John and your set manager earn their paycheck for crying out loud. I don't want to come off like an old-man-film-snob here, but the editing / pacing was so incredibly rushed that it beggars belief.
It's absolutely a fun movie; it's not a great movie. It's also not a great Star Wars movie.
Honestly I don't know why they just didn't make it longer to get all of that in. A good run through of what the major issues are as far as the major factions running around in the galaxy would've been an excellent use of time. They could've actually cut out at least part of the scene where they go from a bigger ship to exclusively using the smaller ship to do just that. I would've cared about learning what the relationship actually is to the main factions rather than hearing some throwaway names for crime factions.
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Post by PhoneLobster »

Why didn't they actually explain the politics and factions? Why didn't they use that to slow the "frantic" pacing?

I'll tell you why. Because mission number one up front and center was "do not be the prequels".

Now we can have an argument that some slowing of the pace might have been nice (or not), we can have an argument that the politics and factions could be explained in a good and entertaining way (or at least in a less wildly nonsense and boring way than the prequels).

But the argument doesn't matter because ANY time spent digressing from the action to talk about Imperial/Republic politics would have been immediately identified and condemned as the sort of bullshit that bogged down and fatally (well, additionally fatally, it's not like it was the only problem) slowed the pacing of the prequels.

So instead they went with the original trilogy attitude towards politics and factions.

The fact is the originals didn't really spend any particular time properly defining the Empire and the Rebel Alliance, didn't really properly frame the sides as good or bad or shades of grey, and even less time telling us WTF being a space princess was supposed to even MEAN.

And in the observation of Disney/whoever took charge of this mess trying (and failing) to explain the crazy space fantasy politics was an unpopular failure associated with the prequels and just not bothering to do so was a success associated with the originals. Considering everything else in the movie are you surprised which side of that choice they fell on? Because I'm not.

In other news, wondering what JJ "that guy, really?' Abrams will do with the next movie... I'm not certain but I'm pretty sure I saw Movie Bob going on about how Abrams was only contracted for the first movie and some "better" guy is in charge for the second one.
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Post by maglag »

PhoneLobster wrote: The fact is the originals didn't really spend any particular time properly defining the Empire and the Rebel Alliance, didn't really properly frame the sides as good or bad or shades of grey,
Oh, but they did frame the sides as good and bad:

"This is the Empire. They blow up planets whose governments oppose them, plus the empire kill their own officers on the spot if they're deemed to have failed their duties, and also have torture bots. THE EMPIRE IS EVIL!"

"Those are the rebels. They want to stop the empire. They don't blow up planets neither kill their own subordinates on whims, thus THE REBELS ARE THE GOOD GUYS!"

Simple. Effective.
PhoneLobster wrote: and even less time telling us WTF being a space princess was supposed to even MEAN.
Hmm, what's there to tell? In the grimbrightness of the future, there's still royalty, like there's been among humanity ever since some humie decided that he was superior and thus you shoud obey him and his descendants. The princess is daughter of some king/queen somewhere and just happens to work as a diplomat.

At least before the clusterfuck retcon of "elected princess" in the prequels.
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Post by Mechalich »

Significantly A New Hope has - in addition to a number of key scenes of puppy-kicking by the Imperials - several expository moments regarding the politics. There's the one where an officer questions Vader about the implications of holding Leia, there's several exchanges between Leia and Vader or Tarkin, and most importantly there's the Death Star conference scene, where the major figures explain exactly what the key Imperial plan is and what the implications are - Tarkin pretty flat out says 'f--- democracy! we have a planet-destroying superweapon and we're going to rule by fear.'

Also Lucas smartly chose to have the Imperials be dressed, talk, and utilize body language and terminology in such a way that the 'Nazis in Space!' analog could only have been more obvious if they'd been carrying signs.

The OT has the advantage that the Rebellion is not a government, it is a rebel movement defined purely out of opposition to the Empire. It didn't need to explain what it was beyond that.

And if this was a pure reboot or an original property The Force Awakens could do all the same things the OT did, but this is supposed to be the sequel and it has to be the same but different at the same time, because minds naturally raise all sorts of comparative questions that you simply don't have to deal with otherwise. This is a problem inherent in sequels and prequels. It sounds like the solution utilized by Abrams and co. was to simply ignore it and have more flashy lightsaber fights, which is probably the right answer. Since this is now a comic book style alternate universe bearing franchise like all the others, the big thing to work with is lightsabers.
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Post by PhoneLobster »

maglag wrote:Simple. Effective.
... and flawed, clumsy, lazy and brief. And most of all not really the sort of thing people are calling for when they basically saying "woah woah, the movie should grind to a halt and damn well explain things to me until this shit makes actual sense".

But the factions and their actions in the new movie don't make much sense, much as the factions and their actions in the originals (and the prequels) didn't really make much sense. The originals just sorta ignored it. The prequels spent hours prattling on about trade embargoes and senate manipulation and bullshit that in the end still didn't make sense but were also giant boring wastes of screen time that only made the not making sense situation worse.
Personally I would have preferred that instead of spending time trying to explain the mess that the factions just actually made sense and didn't need as much explaining to deal with their contradictions and nonsense. It wouldn't have even been hard.

The first order could have been a rebel continuation of the empire directly opposed to the republic and the princess could have just been a minor military leader of a small unit of the loyalist republic army OR the first order could have BEEN the new republic army/government and the princess and her unit could have been actual rebel/resistance fighters.

Instead it seems they are all somehow all those things at the same time and the Republic also had some sort of other space army too. And maybe also everyone also operates as obvious fronts for Sith and Jedi cults at the same time. And that's just a pile of nonsense.
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Post by Emerald »

On the subject of factions, of the many many issues I had with the movie the thing that pisses me off the most is that they made a big deal about nuking the EU so they could "do something different" and then copied/stole a bunch of stuff from the EU and did all of it worse than the EU did, which is saying something. Movie spoilers and excessive fanboying follow:
The First Order is one of many remnants of the Empire, the others of which (and the First Order's relation to which) weren't explained in the movie and only barely in the books...but there was already an Imperial Remnant in the EU, both the actual Empire continuing on in a much-diminished form plus some warlords who grabbed a few Star Destroyers and struck out on their own.

Just using "the Imperial Remnant" as-is, instead of changing up the name and symbols and not explaining anything, both makes things a lot clearer and continues on a lot more logically from the end of RotJ, since "The Empire's still here, but it never recovered from the Emperor's death and the Alliance has been gaining ground since" is much more straightforward than "The Empire pretty much vanished right after RotJ, but was replaced by something pretty much the same but superficially different."


Ben Solo is Han and Leia's kid who angsts about being Vader Lite while vacillating between Light and Dark and wants to kill his parents after falling to the Dark Side...but there was already not one but two plotlines about that (Anakin Solo angsting about possibly being destined to fall due to his name and heritage but actually turning out noble and self-sacrificing, Jacen Solo turning into Darth Caedus over the course of the Legacy of the Force series) which, even though the latter is viewed poorly by many fans, were both handled much better than Kylo Ren's (lack of) backstory and personality.

Ripping off one of the two backstories (either have an angsty Solo son who's obsessed with the family legacy and slowly goes dark, or have an angry one who's not "tempted by the Light" but rather thinks his going dark was totally justified) would make for a much more coherent and interesting villain than what we got out of Ren. (And on a side note, "Ben" Solo? Luke naming a kid Ben, like he did in the EU, makes sense given the Obi-Wan connection, but not so much the Solos.)


Starkiller Base is a planet-sized superweapon powered by a sun that could take out an entire star system at once...but there was already Centerpoint Station, which both functions in a less ridiculous manner (it was powered by an artificial star inside it instead of vacuuming up one star per shot) and is also a less direct copy of the Death Stars (it fired a gravity beam through hyperspace instead of shooting mini-superlasers).

Using Centerpoint Station would mean they didn't have to introduce the Republic as a separate thing from the Resistance and wipe out multiple Republic planets before targeting the Resistance planet to show that Starkiller Base is more of a threat than the Death Star; having the Imperial Remnant blow up something in the Outer Rim with a "mwahahaha, we can reach any planet in the galaxy from here!" while still sitting the Corellian System gets the point across just as well--and it's even more of a callback to the Death Stars, if that's what they want, since (A) it's a moon-sized artificial gray space station and (B) that plot point would resemble the Alderaan demonstration, with a single planet that they could give some tragic weight to instead of a handful of planets that are glossed over.


There are a bunch of other things that would have been better in their EU incarnations as well--using a long-lost/amnesiac/mind-wiped/whatever Jaina Solo instead of Rey [who might also be long-lost/amnesiac/mind-wiped/whatever as far as we know] explains the sudden Force competency, makes for a more poignant reunion with the Solos, makes the Ren vs. Rey/Jacen vs. Jaina battle more interesting, and does more Original Trilogy pandering with the "Force-sensitive twin protagonists" angle; name-dropping Black Sun and the Hutts instead of the two forgettable criminal gangs Han, Rey, and Finn run into is a better tie-in to Han's backstory and makes them seem more threatening (something they desperately needed); the Knights of Ren are basically the Dark Side Elite, but without the cachet of having been personally formed by the Emperor and without the built-in motivation to specifically hunt down Luke--but those are the big ones, and I've opened myself up to enough mockery as it is, so I'll leave it at that.
So had they just used the actual stuff from the EU directly, they could have kept the diehard fans happy, had all the backstory and exposition already done for them, and been able to basically get free money by reprinting the existing books and comics for old fans to pick up again and new fans to read as "movie tie-in novels" or the like, which seems like a win all around and much better than what we got.
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Post by Mask_De_H »

I don't give a shit about all of that spoiler, Emerald and I would bet you a non-zero amount of money that the target audience(s) wouldn't either. After a point, as a guy who makes old nerdy properties into flashy blockbusters, you have to realize who's going to allow you to pay for the hookers that lactate heroin and it sure as shit aren't the die-hards.

The thing is, with or without deliberately calling out the EU stuff, savvy fans would have picked up or made parallels to it anyway. Which is also probably why the stuff that was blatantly calling back to the original trilogy was there; to give people who vaguely remember the movies the chance to get the smug satisfaction of recognition.
FrankTrollman wrote: Halfling women, as I'm sure you are aware, combine all the "fun" parts of pedophilia without any of the disturbing, illegal, or immoral parts.
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Chamomile wrote: See, it's because K's belief in leaving generation of individual monsters to GMs makes him Chaotic, whereas Frank's belief in the easier usability of monsters pre-generated by game designers makes him Lawful, and clearly these philosophies are so irreconcilable as to be best represented as fundamentally opposed metaphysical forces.
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Kaelik
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Post by Kaelik »

Mask his point was that using the specific EU stuff he mentions would have just made the movie a better movie for the mass market too. He's at least right to an extent, the Imperial Reminent would be a lot better than this other garbage.

That said, the names of the characters who are basically an alternate version copy/paste of two characters with different names in the EU could not possibly be a more clear "FUCK OFF AND DIE PEOPLE WHO READ BOOKS" message at all. I mean, it's literally something that people who didn't read the books aren't going to get, and people who did read the books are going to realize exists 100000000% to make sure that they are going to do the same things the books did, but different, and worse, and with absolutely no respect for the books or logical coherence.
DSMatticus wrote:Kaelik gonna kaelik. Whatcha gonna do?
The U.S. isn't a democracy and if you think it is, you are a rube.

That's libertarians for you - anarchists who want police protection from their slaves.
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Post by Mask_De_H »

I gotcha. I still wonder if that's potentially an attempt to have their semiotic cake and eat it too, being a complete ignoramus to the EU but cognizant of what directors and screenwriters do in regards to beloved nerd properties nowadays. Stupidity over malice, and all that.
FrankTrollman wrote: Halfling women, as I'm sure you are aware, combine all the "fun" parts of pedophilia without any of the disturbing, illegal, or immoral parts.
K wrote:That being said, the usefulness of airships for society is still transporting cargo because it's an option that doesn't require a powerful wizard to show up for work on time instead of blowing the day in his harem of extraplanar sex demons/angels.
Chamomile wrote: See, it's because K's belief in leaving generation of individual monsters to GMs makes him Chaotic, whereas Frank's belief in the easier usability of monsters pre-generated by game designers makes him Lawful, and clearly these philosophies are so irreconcilable as to be best represented as fundamentally opposed metaphysical forces.
Whipstitch wrote:You're on a mad quest, dude. I'd sooner bet on Zeus getting bored and letting Sisyphus put down the fucking rock.
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Post by Username17 »

Ben Kenobi was Leia's "only hope" in Episode IV, and then he died during the otherwise successful mission to rescue her from Death Star torture jail (after having disabled the tractor beam to help her escape). I would say that Leia naming her son "Ben" makes a lot of sense. Much more sense than naming a son "Jacen," which is just a fucking made up name that has no resonance to anything Leia has ever shown or done.

The male names established in Leia's family / friend circle include Ben, Bail, Luke, and Han. None of those names are Jacen or Anakin, which is one of the many reasons that the EU was dumb and all right thinking people cheered when it was de-canonized.

That being said, I'm going to be super annoyed when it turns out that Rey is a Skywalker or Solo. That is going to be super dumb.

-Username17
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Kaelik
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Post by Kaelik »

Uh... You realize that people name their kids names that are not the name of a specific person they know all the time right?

Also, I love how you rock in with "we only know four guys that Leia ever interacts with, so it makes plenty of sense that she would name her kid after the nickname she didn't know of a character that we have no evidence she ever met, because a Princess Diplomat probably never ran into anyone else ever that we didn't see, and could only name her kids after other people."

Now, don't get me wrong, Anakin is a stupid name, but let's not pick any bones, Leia is a name, Luke is a name, Jacen is a name, they are just regular people names not named after anyone. To say that Leia choosing to name her kid their own fucking name instead of her brother, her father, the father of the kid, or some guy she may or may not have ever met, and maybe just heard about is just you choosing to die on the hill that everything about the EU is terrible, even the objectively neutral things, like naming a kid Jacen.

I mean for fucks sake, your opinion would literally do a 180 if the movie had named the kids James and Rebecca.
DSMatticus wrote:Kaelik gonna kaelik. Whatcha gonna do?
The U.S. isn't a democracy and if you think it is, you are a rube.

That's libertarians for you - anarchists who want police protection from their slaves.
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Longes
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Post by Longes »

I think calling a kid "Obi-Wan Skywalker" would have broken some pretentiousness laws or something.
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