Which is more convincing:

http://vignette3.wikia.nocookie.net/starwars/images/2/22/GeneralHux-DB.png/revision/latest?cb=20151219191912

or...

http://www.starwars-universe.com/images/encyclopedie/personnages/empire_galactique/Ozzel_furieux.jpg

Why?

Lets try to see the big picture.

In the first picture I see a man without fear of defeat. He never lost because he never fought a battle. All he knows about is from the book. He might be intelligent and well-educated and to me he would be perfect in the role of a Lieutenant fresh from the academy, ready to do anything to get his first command to prove his worth. Maybe this is even his background. Maybe Snoke just promoted Hux right away to use him for a very risky play. Snoke himself is well hidden somewhere in the galaxy and thus he is not playing at his own risks. If Hux fails, Snoke could do another attempt to gain control over the galaxy in a few hundred years or so.

In the second picture is see military organization at his best. And I see fear. The fear to be not successful within the imperial military force. They know what happens to those who are not succesful. There are so many others that could take over their place. there is only one one thought in their heads: "No mistakes". And under this preassure they DO mistakes. Because that is what happenes. Especially if Lord Vader is around...

So in the second thought, Hux might be well plausible. We just don't know enough about Snoke and his master plan.

Thanks for the discussion.

I think Hux looks and acts like a Cosplay fan's amateur creation.

But that's part of who he is. He's a man who idolizes the Empire, but actually has no idea about what it was. He's been indoctrinated about how great Tarkin, Piett, etc. all were; how powerful and great the Empire was. And he thinks he has to act certain ways in order to replicate that. Almost to a degree that it is a parody.

Wow, you are tremendously attuned to Domhnall Gleeson's acting if you've managed to get all of that from his screentime in TFA. I am much impressed.

Or perhaps I just don't need to be spoon fed, and can read the context between the lines...

HaHa! Touche!

Is there an actual video for this grab? Are they dancing to something? Pharrel's 'Happy' per chance?

That's all I got. Someone posted it to FB. Rumor has it that this is the cast dancing when filming ended.

As for telekinesis, again that is something which maybe possible

Since humans only use about 4% of their brain, if we evolve and in the far future are able to use a higher % then maybe.

Some people believe that poltergeist activity is actually caused by humans. Not an evil spirit using... Telekinesis, but not actually knowing they are doing it. If you believe that sort of thing.

I wanted to post something about TFA but then I read this.

NO. NO. NO.

Humans do not use only something like 4% of our brains. We use something like ALL OF IT (just not all the time).

The Brain accounts for 20% of our daily energy usage but only accounts for 2% of our body mass.

The Brain has constant activity, all across it. When you are listening and watching, multiple regions light up. Up to 30% of the Brain can be active at once. When you tell a story, many disparate regions activate. When you access long term memory, you are delving into a different part of the brain than you use when you are speaking, or watching. Music lights up large swaths of the Brain. While you sleep, short term memory is processed into long term memory. The Brain is amazing, and we are constantly learning about it. I suggest by actually reading some Neuroscience journals.

It is an outdated urban myth that humans only use X% of their brain (usually the myth states 10%).

I'm not even going to address your belief in ghosts.

Man I wanted to talk about TFA... but I think it is far more important to stop this urban myth from spreading any further - here and now.

A better example is the way that, to me, the First Order and its personalities and military forces feel very 'flat' compared to the OT's Empire. Hux and Ren fall very short of Vader and Tarkin.

I felt the opposite. In particular, when comparing Tarkin to Hux I got the idea that the latter was more breaking the mold of his archetype. Because of that, I'm actually more interested in who he really is.

That's very interesting, Lingula. Would you be able to elaborate?

I think most viewers experience this in some form. A telling clue came from someone who actually didn't like TFA because Kylo Ren was too 'emo'. He wrote a piece (you may have read it) about Kylo Ren cutting himself, complaining that nobody understood him...except his Hux, with whom he went to school.

Why is this funny? Because we can easily imagine Hux as a kid who goes to school. We can imagine him as a petty officer, and as someone with his own hopes and failures. Tarkin never was young, or held any rank apart from 'Grand Moff'. Tarkin does not have a mother, he embodies the tyranny of the empire and as such is hardly human.

For me the franchise will likely just run downhill

Death to mickey

You must be a ton of fun at parties....

Which is more convincing:

http://vignette3.wikia.nocookie.net/starwars/images/2/22/GeneralHux-DB.png/revision/latest?cb=20151219191912

or...

http://www.starwars-universe.com/images/encyclopedie/personnages/empire_galactique/Ozzel_furieux.jpg

Why?

As a reckless fanatic indoctrinated by a real leader? The first one. As competent military staff? The second one. I think that Hux is apropriate for the First Order.

Almost nobody who was a competent member of the imperial navy survived Endor. And the ones who did would want to be as far away from the F/O zealots as possible.

It's a solid 3/5 for me.

Highly entertaining to watch but played it WAAAY to safe.

Felt far to much like a reboot of the original film rather than doing it own thing. First two films leave it in the dust and Jedi would but for them **** Ewoks...

I like this First Order/Hux Discussion! Very interesting

I personally saw the First Order as a group of people who felt "oppressed" by the New Republic, young men and women who heard from their Ex-imperial parents of the glory days of the Empire when Humans felt safe and free, and were on top. This grew a new era of disillusioned and radical humans who wanted nothing more then to see the order of the galaxy restored, to them, the "First order". They were of course brought in by a crazy Sith with plans of his own, and we got ourself a dissident faction!

They remind me of Skin Heads, or Urban american terrorists. Truly an unnerving evil more then an oppressive and all powerful one.

The biggest hangup I have with the film is how many Stormtroopers would actually know the definition of "acquiesces"?

VaeVictis, on 05 Apr 2016 - 2:20 PM, said:

When she needs to fly, she is an ace. When the spaceship breaks, she is an engineer. All of this learned while picking up trash on Planet Afghanistan, apparently. When she gets captured, she learns to Force. When she has to lightsaber battle, she learns to Jedi.

This. Second your post.

XBear, on 05 Apr 2016 - 2:28 PM, said:

but this movie, it had none of that galaxy exploring, and still had a rather nonsensical plot. I have a PhD in physics so when I don't understand something I generally think it's not a fault in my intelligence, but a fault in exposition. what on earth is going on with that planetary weapon, are all the planets in one system? why the evil stormtrooper captain agrees to their demands so easily? are we supposed to care when the capital world is shown for 1 second and immediately destroyed?

why Han, whose character is all about being Han Solo, walks over to obviously be killed immediately? are we supposed to believe that Han didn't know what would happen? are we supposed to believe he was blinded by "fatherly love"? Han? after his son killed young padawans? we're supposed to believe he rides around the galaxy and never goes back to see Leila.

it seems they just brought Han back to kill him off so there could be space for the new characters, which to be honest weren't so memorable anyway.

beside, the exact thing happens over and over. giant death star, even bigger this time, needs to be blown up. boring

Also this.

No phd here but a big fan of hard science fiction (science fiction based around realistic tech/science). Why did Chewie not rip the emo kids arms off?

I predicted Solo had to die because A, he wanted to be killed off in Empire. B, is one of, if not THE, highest paid male actor. C, is too old for Disney to make Star Wars: Land Before Time XIV.

Jo Jo, on 05 Apr 2016 - 3:14 PM, said:

I'm also a bit miffed that the Bluray has a whopping 4 minutes or so of deleted scenes. I've read there was about 40 minutes to nearly an hour of footage cut from the theatrical release. Where is the uncut version?

This is the MOUSE your talking about. It will be released in 4min increments over the next 25 years in various editions that you must buy all of to combine into super mickey go-go-gofo-tron.

Jo Jo, on 05 Apr 2016 - 3:14 PM, said:

I'm also a bit miffed that the Bluray has a whopping 4 minutes or so of deleted scenes. I've read there was about 40 minutes to nearly an hour of footage cut from the theatrical release. Where is the uncut version?

This is the MOUSE your talking about. It will be released in 4min increments over the next 25 years in various editions that you must buy all of to combine into super mickey go-go-gofo-tron.

Yeah, Lucas would never have done stuff like that. Except he totally did.

Watched it with the kids last night. Loved it yet again!

The ONLY thing that bothers me is that Phasma lowered the shields for them. That's the only thing I have a problem with. Would have much rathered Finn just took her "keycard" or something and used it to do it, this way she facilitated the breach, but didn't cower.

It's going to be interesting how they deal with that for episode 8. Will Phasma say something like "I HAD to lower the shields, if I didn't they'd have taken my key card and they would've had access to all our secrets... and that would have been even worse!", like, she picked the lesser of two evils?

Or will they humanize her - maybe she admits that she was scared. Maybe this was the first time her life was actually in danger and she screwed up royally. Maybe that can be a driving force towards her trying to improve herself?

"Why would we expect the guy who made Lost to have good answers to any of the questions" TFA left us with...

Watched it with the kids last night. Loved it yet again!

The ONLY thing that bothers me is that Phasma lowered the shields for them. That's the only thing I have a problem with. Would have much rathered Finn just took her "keycard" or something and used it to do it, this way she facilitated the breach, but didn't cower.

It's going to be interesting how they deal with that for episode 8. Will Phasma say something like "I HAD to lower the shields, if I didn't they'd have taken my key card and they would've had access to all our secrets... and that would have been even worse!", like, she picked the lesser of two evils?

Or will they humanize her - maybe she admits that she was scared. Maybe this was the first time her life was actually in danger and she screwed up royally. Maybe that can be a driving force towards her trying to improve herself?

Why would she be carrying around secrets so vital that they are more important than the safety of a massive super weapon?

My theory is she's a New Republic/Resistant/whateverthehelltheyarecalled double agent. At least I hope so.

Watched it with the kids last night. Loved it yet again!

The ONLY thing that bothers me is that Phasma lowered the shields for them. That's the only thing I have a problem with. Would have much rathered Finn just took her "keycard" or something and used it to do it, this way she facilitated the breach, but didn't cower.

It's going to be interesting how they deal with that for episode 8. Will Phasma say something like "I HAD to lower the shields, if I didn't they'd have taken my key card and they would've had access to all our secrets... and that would have been even worse!", like, she picked the lesser of two evils?

Or will they humanize her - maybe she admits that she was scared. Maybe this was the first time her life was actually in danger and she screwed up royally. Maybe that can be a driving force towards her trying to improve herself?

Why would she be carrying around secrets so vital that they are more important than the safety of a massive super weapon?

My theory is she's a New Republic/Resistant/whateverthehelltheyarecalled double agent. At least I hope so.

She isn't... I mean if she just unlocked the computer, they might have had access to the First Order's archives, etc... The argument could be made that she did manually lowered the shields for them so they wouldn't be poking around the databases and stumble upon the plans for the "Super Starkiller Base" or the "Mega Maid" or something more sinister.

Watched it with the kids last night. Loved it yet again!

The ONLY thing that bothers me is that Phasma lowered the shields for them. That's the only thing I have a problem with. Would have much rathered Finn just took her "keycard" or something and used it to do it, this way she facilitated the breach, but didn't cower.

It's going to be interesting how they deal with that for episode 8. Will Phasma say something like "I HAD to lower the shields, if I didn't they'd have taken my key card and they would've had access to all our secrets... and that would have been even worse!", like, she picked the lesser of two evils?

Or will they humanize her - maybe she admits that she was scared. Maybe this was the first time her life was actually in danger and she screwed up royally. Maybe that can be a driving force towards her trying to improve herself?

Why would she be carrying around secrets so vital that they are more important than the safety of a massive super weapon?

My theory is she's a New Republic/Resistant/whateverthehelltheyarecalled double agent. At least I hope so.

She isn't... I mean if she just unlocked the computer, they might have had access to the First Order's archives, etc... The argument could be made that she did manually lowered the shields for them so they wouldn't be poking around the databases and stumble upon the plans for the "Super Starkiller Base" or the "Mega Maid" or something more sinister.

She presumed a small band of starfighters couldn't penetrate the base before it fired its weapon, and she was correct.

She didn't know about the explosives and miscalculated her proximity to the trash compactor. I bet she ditches the chrome from embarrassment next time... embarrassment and stains.

Watched it with the kids last night. Loved it yet again!

The ONLY thing that bothers me is that Phasma lowered the shields for them. That's the only thing I have a problem with. Would have much rathered Finn just took her "keycard" or something and used it to do it, this way she facilitated the breach, but didn't cower.

It's going to be interesting how they deal with that for episode 8. Will Phasma say something like "I HAD to lower the shields, if I didn't they'd have taken my key card and they would've had access to all our secrets... and that would have been even worse!", like, she picked the lesser of two evils?

Or will they humanize her - maybe she admits that she was scared. Maybe this was the first time her life was actually in danger and she screwed up royally. Maybe that can be a driving force towards her trying to improve herself?

Maybe within herself she had begin to doubt the FO (a bit like Finn). Maybe she is a double agent. Her behaviour in her very few previous scenes however does not really fit well to thesetheories.Maybe she has her own agenda. We do not really know, because so little is shown. But it is one if the many illogical scenes.

Of course we then rock around to the other side, which was the hilarious lack of marketing for Rey action figures etc, which is by now infamous. It's like Disney made the conscious decision of "We want to bring in the girls by having a girl in charge, but we want to bring the boys in somehow, so lets make all the toys be aimed at them" which just perpetuates the standard "Girls play with barbies, boys play with action man" division we've had for generations.

As somebody who works in marketing, honestly I think the lack of Rey merchandise was exactly the reason that Disney said. That they didn't want to spoil the surprise of Rey as the "Jedi" protagonist.

Merchandise for TFA was being developed simultaneously with the film, and being released even before the film was. Packaging Rey with a lightsaber gives that plot point away. Packaging her without one would upset people. What they underestimated was the extent to which people will get upset for no good reason. Retail companies are often dinosaurs, headed by older people who don't realize just how fussy younger buyers can be.

I really doubt that there was any conscious decision against the toys because she was a girl, but instead because they didn't want to spoil their own movie with licensed Monopoly games featuring Rey with a lightsaber.

But, like I've said before, it's not a "standard" that the market enforces. It's a standard that society creates. The reason women don't play X-Wing isn't because of these legendary Misogynist Stinkies that somebody always has an anecdote about, but few others have ever actually met. It's because women just don't play wargames in any large numbers. The best data for gaming is in the video game industry where gender is often more easily tracked through social networks. Women largely play single player mobile games, and the are vastly underrepresented in any wargames. The average female gamer is also ten years older than the average male gamer, meaning the average female gamer isn't your girlfriend, it's your mom sending you annoying invites for Farmville or Candy Crush. Women make up only about 23% of the Clash of Clans player base, and somewhere between 5-10% of the Call of Duty fanbase.

The license merchandise industry isn't a charity, and it isn't an engine for social change, lol. They're businesses looking at bottom lines. So even if the lack of Rey merchandise did in some instances have to do with a belief that girls wouldn't buy them, you can't really blame companies for not making those action figures if they don't believe they will sell as well. It's not their job to make the toys you want for your kids. It's to make the toys the most people want. It's kinda why I chuckle when something gets discontinued and somebody says "Oh, I guess they don't want my money!" No, probably not, because it doesn't justify the production and carrying cost for an underperforming piece of merchandise.

But, like I've said before, it's not a "standard" that the market enforces. It's a standard that society creates.

This is not completely true: http://www.amazon.com/Cinderella-Ate-Daughter-Dispatches-Girlie-Girl/dp/0061711535

So even if the lack of Rey merchandise did in some instances have to do with a belief that girls wouldn't buy them, you can't really blame companies for not making those action figures if they don't believe they will sell as well. It's not their job to make the toys you want for your kids. It's to make the toys the most people want.

Well, I'm not very interested in the toys anymore, but I think it's strange to say: A Rey toy won't sell, but a figure of some random blue droid? Those generic red guys who storm Han's ship? Yeah....we NEED those guys in wave 1. Rey can wait =P.

I, in general, don't trust DIsney, but I do like how they didn't spoil it. I was adamantly avoiding any and all information about the movie and got pissed when I saw a picture of Finn with a lightsaber while waiting in line to go see it. Sure, he touches a lightsaber, but he's not the force-sensitive one in the movie. Well played.

I like this First Order/Hux Discussion! Very interesting

I personally saw the First Order as a group of people who felt "oppressed" by the New Republic, young men and women who heard from their Ex-imperial parents of the glory days of the Empire when Humans felt safe and free, and were on top. This grew a new era of disillusioned and radical humans who wanted nothing more then to see the order of the galaxy restored, to them, the "First order". They were of course brought in by a crazy Sith with plans of his own, and we got ourself a dissident faction!

They remind me of Skin Heads, or Urban american terrorists. Truly an unnerving evil more then an oppressive and all powerful one.

I think this is prob the best explination (headcannon) for the FO. Where are all the Empire veteran officers. The generation serving the FO are all young. They only know what they were taught in a very biased version. Why they are so focues on destroying the New Repblic and "their precious fleet" and why they do not question the original plan to use the Starkiller weapon to kill 1 man (Luke). It's like saying "we are going to drop a nuke to kill 1 guy." I would almost say it's like nazi germany telling their people that the jews were the source of all their problems after WW1.

While it makes the FO feel less evil then the Empire, it's because they are less evil (we will see what happens in VIII). They are the post WW1 German army right as the nazi's were gaining power. A defeated, but still good military, with a major chip on their sholder from the past and they are determind to set things right.

It had some holes and some filler which I though weakened it compared to the originals, even compared to 1-3 it wasn't necessarily superior in all respects though overall it certainly was. I think taking Lucas out of the picture was not 100% positive, I would have liked to see him involved in story boarding but without creative control.