On 4/16/2017 at 11:58 AM, ThalanirIII said:

2 days later, I just want to say, that is utter garbage. Actually horrific. I've never been more glad to see TFA as a reboot of ANH than after reading that.

Nerdy geeks don't like something? Especially something involving change from what they know? Color me shocked

It's not for everyone, but nothing ever is. No worries. No one will ever write a story all fans love. Nor will they ever write something all fans hate.

PS: I think there's actually a non-zero chance that Snoke is Palp/Plagueis, so here's hoping Episode 8 does not disappoint.

4 minutes ago, AllWingsStandyingBy said:

Nerdy geeks don't like something? Especially something involving change from what they know? Color me shocked

It's not for everyone, but nothing ever is. No worries. No one will ever write a story all fans love. Nor will they ever write something all fans hate.

PS: I think there's actually a non-zero chance that Snoke is Palp/Plagueis, so here's hoping Episode 8 does not disappoint.

It's just a shoddy story. Badly written.

21 minutes ago, ThalanirIII said:

It's just a shoddy story. Badly written.

Badly written? Bravo to your trolling.

It was a 10-minute outline for an alternative overall plot that could have happened instead of TFA, since the request for any possible storylines different to what actually happened in TFA. Why would it be well-developed or well-written? The task wasn't to write a goddamned story. It was to toss out possible alternative over-arching plotlines that could have been explored instead of "TFA has mysterious Snoke and Death Star III."

But hold on, I'll get you a 125,000 word fully annotated screenplay real quick, so then you can **** all over it more fairly.

35 minutes ago, AllWingsStandyingBy said:

It was a 10-minute outline for an alternative overall plot that could have happened instead of TFA, since the request for any possible storylines different to what actually happened in TFA. Why would it be well-developed or well-written? The task wasn't to write a goddamned story. It was to toss out possible alternative over-arching plotlines that could have been explored instead of "TFA has mysterious Snoke and Death Star III."

But hold on, I'll get you a 125,000 word fully annotated screenplay real quick, so then you can **** all over it more fairly.

LOL. The point goes to AllWingsStandingBy.

1 hour ago, Frimmel said:

What I would NOT have done is take away the entirety of the happy ending of ROTJ.

Han would not have broken up with Leia and gone back to being a bad criminal hustling other criminals. Leia and Han would still be together and devoted to each other especially if one of their kids had gone off the rails.

Han and Leia's kid would not be "Ben." It would be "Bail" or some other name important to Han and Leia. Leia didn't even meet Ben.

Luke would not have gone to hide in a cave leaving a force wielding malevolent child to wreak havoc especially if it is his nephew.

I would not have done Death Star III and most certainly wouldn't have done it as stupidly as TFA did. (I'd make a bet that JJ kept that from a story he wrote as a kid.)

The Resistance would be the bad guys trying to bring back the tyranny of The Empire and we'd have The New Republic still struggling with unraveling what The Galactic Empire had wrought and the messes created by the fall of Palpatine. The Resistance would be made up of planets full of corrupt officials under the thumb of corporate conglomerates who'd stepped in or kept their power despite the fall of The Empire.

Han and Leia being estranged doesn't bother me that much; it actually makes more sense than a scoundrel and a princess being able to find common ground for the long-term.

Agree with "Ben." Personally, then only reason to avoid "Jacen" would be that Rey then needs to be "Jaina," ruining the surprise (maybe?).

Yeah, the politics of TFA is just dumb. The FO is a leftover of the Empire, fine. But the Resistance? A legitimized vigilante force so that the Republic can pretend it is a peaceful political organization?? I had to look it up because I couldn't figure it out just by watching the movie.

In the long run, TFA appealed to my inner 10-year-old, which made my Star Wars-deprived outer 49-year-old very happy.

EDIT: I suppose another factor is that I met my Star-Wars-fan-wife after both the OT and the Prequels. So, TFA, RO, and Rebels is "our" Star Wars that we discover together.

OTOH, I would like to see a lot more "adult" SW movies like RO (no one gets out alive, Rebel agents kill in cold blood) and Rebels (Bindu refuses to fight for the Rebels, phewy on the notion they are the "good guys." War is war.)

6 minutes ago, Darth Meanie said:

OTOH, I would like to see a lot more "adult" SW movies like RO (no one gets out alive, Rebel agents kill in cold blood) and Rebels (Bindu refuses to fight for the Rebels, phewy on the notion they are the "good guys." War is war.)

I'm really hoping the Battlefront 2 campaign can add to that feeling and give us a look at Imperials who actually believe in the peace and security that Palptine promised.

21 minutes ago, Darth Meanie said:

LOL. The point goes to AllWingsStandingBy.

Han and Leia being estranged doesn't bother me that much; it actually makes more sense than a scoundrel and a princess being able to find common ground for the long-term.

Agree with "Ben." Personally, then only reason to avoid "Jacen" would be that Rey then needs to be "Jaina," ruining the surprise (maybe?).

Yeah, the politics of TFA is just dumb. The FO is a leftover of the Empire, fine. But the Resistance? A legitimized vigilante force so that the Republic can pretend it is a peaceful political organization?? I had to look it up because I couldn't figure it out just by watching the movie.

In the long run, TFA appealed to my inner 10-year-old, which made my Star Wars-deprived outer 49-year-old very happy.

OTOH, I would like to see a lot more "adult" SW movies like RO (no one gets out alive, Rebel agents kill in cold blood) and Rebels (Bindu refuses to fight for the Rebels, phewy on the notion they are the "good guys." War is war.)

I, too, didn't mind the estranged nature of Han and Leia. It makes sense that two people who were so very different and who had so much tension during their brief interactions in ANH, ESB, and RotJ might not make it in the long-term. Especially because they've gone through the painful process of losing their child. And Leia is trying to run a "Good Guy" Resistance which doesn't have a lot of need for a scruffy smuggler (let's be honest, someone like Han would get painfully bored of living the 'straight and narrow' life).

Still, I think TFA starts to go downhill the moment Han and Chewie step onto the Falcon. Until that point, I think TFA is a phenomenal movie, but then shoe-horning Han into everything derails it and takes its focus off of the new interesting characters it had been developing up until that point. It's also when the pacing of the movie just gets super rapid and schizophrenic, like Han finds the Falcon within minutes of it leaving Jakku. Then within minutes of that Han is found by debt-collectors ... not just one group, but two separate groups...seriously one wasn't implausible enough? So they rush right to Maz's castle where, within minutes, the First Order attacks. Minutes after that, the Resistance counter-attacks. etc. etc., and we get Han's silly and easy "through the shields" resolution to their problem, needless jokes about the bad-assed nature of the bowcaster (after over 40 years together, Han had no idea what the bowcaster could do?? okay...).

I would have rather seen a little more of Han's new life than the marathon ping-ponging around that happened in the movie. Simple, small changes could have helped. Like, let Han be "Captain Solo" again and have his freighter filled with a half-dozen or so loyal crew background characters. They don't even need names, but they could make a reference or two to some shared adventure or feat Solo had been involved in since RotJ. Also, it'd be more plausible than Han and Chewie running a gigantic freighter like that all alone. And we know Han can lead as seen in the Galactic Civil War, so let him take some of that confidence and leadership gained from the War and apply it to his life as a smuggler. Then, you can have Han's loyal crew get in a gunfight with the Debt-Collector Gang as they cover Han's escape to the Falcon (or, hell, have the First Order's Resurrgence appear and start boarding, since you'd think they'd be pursuing the Falcon from Jakku...). Either way, you don't need Silly Space Squids that only eat Minor Character Villains provide for the escape of Plot-Armor Heroes. Plus, having lots of "background" characters like Han's crew is what makes Star Wars feel so rich and lived in (like a chalk-full Cantina or a bunch of bounty huters on the Executor's bridge, or all those faces running around Cloud City). Then the trading cards and visual dictionaries and novels and toys can flush out some of these characters at will, even though none are named on-screen. Decipher's greatest contribution to Star Wars wasn't making a passable card game, but rather was deeply enriching the content of the Star Wars universe by giving names and fluff to so many things from the Original Trilogy (god bless you, Willrow Hood!). But this sort of depth and expansion isn't possible when the universe is so empty, and TFA felt like a very empty world.

11 minutes ago, Darth Meanie said:

LOL. The point goes to AllWingsStandingBy.

Han and Leia being estranged doesn't bother me that much; it actually makes more sense than a scoundrel and a princess being able to find common ground for the long-term.

Agree with "Ben." Personally, then only reason to avoid "Jacen" would be that Rey then needs to be "Jaina," ruining the surprise (maybe?).

Yeah, the politics of TFA is just dumb. The FO is a leftover of the Empire, fine. But the Resistance? A legitimized vigilante force so that the Republic can pretend it is a peaceful political organization?? I had to look it up because I couldn't figure it out just by watching the movie.

In the long run, TFA appealed to my inner 10-year-old, which made my Star Wars-deprived outer 49-year-old very happy.

OTOH, I would like to see a lot more "adult" SW movies like RO (no one gets out alive, Rebel agents kill in cold blood) and Rebels (Bindu refuses to fight for the Rebels, phewy on the notion they are the "good guys." War is war.)

Fundamental problem with both the premise and execution of TFA. TFA is one of the laziest things I've ever seen. Not to mention poorly directed. The climatic battle is a mess and just so poorly edited even aside from all the shaky-cam mess that is going on.

I was excited for Rogue One and then was tempered by rumors during the re-shoots about the movie testing poorly because it didn't feel like Star Wars. I thought we'd get things more like the Umbara story arc in Clone Wars with these anthology movies but all the Vader in it dashed that idea pretty quickly. It seemed to me Rogue One started out as "Full Metal Jacket" then they flinched and turned it into "The Green Berets." Not to mention having got distracted by their own macguffin in the original intention even before they tried to change the whole thing up.

Giving audiences a cynical war story when they think they are going to a black and white pulp verse just isn't in the cards. I guess we're stuck with product cinema. I have no illusions about the Han Solo movie being anything but more fan service.

2 minutes ago, AllWingsStandyingBy said:

I, too, didn't mind the estranged nature of Han and Leia. It makes sense that two people who were so very different and who had such tension during their brief interactions on in ANH, ESB, and RotJ might not make it in the long-term. Especially because they've gone through the painful process of losing their child. And Leia is trying to run a Resistance which doesn't have a lot of need for an scruffy-looking smuggler (let's be honest, someone like Han would get painfully bored of living a 'straight' life)

Still, I think TFA starts to go downhill they moment Han and Chewie step onto the Falcon. Until that point, I think TFA is a phenomenal movie, but then shoe-horning Han into everything I think really derails it and takes its focus off of the new interesting characters it had been developing up until that point. It's also when the pacing of the movie just gets super rapid and schizophrenic, like Han finds the Falcon within minutes of it leaving Jakku, and it's not like he had any real reason to be at Jakku or looking for the Falcon at that moment, since he was in the middle of shipping Space Squids. Then within minutes of that Han is found by debt-collectors ... not just one group, but two separate groups...seriously one wasn't implausible enough? So they rush right to Maz's castle where, within minutes, the First Order attacks. Minutes after that, the Resistance counter-attacks. etc. etc., and we get Han's silly and easy "through the shields" resolution to their problem, needless jokes about the bad-assed nature of the bowcaster (seriously, after over 40 years together, Han had no idea what the bowcaster could do?? okay...).

I would have rather seen a little more of Han's new life than the marathon ping-ponging around that happened in the movie. Simple, small changes could have helped. Like, let Han be "Captain Solo" again and have his freighter filled with a half-dozen or so loyal crew background characters. They don't even need names, but they could make a reference or two to some shared adventure or feat Solo had been involved in since RotJ. Also, it'd be more plausible than Han and Chewie running a gigantic freighter like that all alone. And we know Han can lead as seen in the Galactic Civil War, so let him take some of that confidence and leadership gained from the War and apply it to his life as a smuggler. Then, you can have Han's loyal crew get in a gunfight with the Debt-Collector Gang as they cover Han's escape to the Falcon (or, hell, have the First Order's Resurrgence appear and start boarding, since you'd think they'd be pursuing the Falcon from Jakku...). Either way, you don't need Silly Space Squids that only eat Minor Character Villains provide for the escape of Plot-Armor Heroes. Plus, having lots of "background" characters like Han's crew is what makes Star Wars feel so rich and lived in (like a chalk-full Cantina or a bunch of bounty huters on the Executor's bridge, or all those faces running around Cloud City). Then the trading cards and visual dictionaries and novels and toys can flush out some of these characters at will, even though none are named on-screen. Decipher's greatest contribution to Star Wars wasn't making a passable card game, but rather was deeply enriching the content of the Star Wars universe by giving names and fluff to so many things from the Original Trilogy (god bless you, Willrow Hood!). But this sort of depth and expansion isn't possible when the universe is so empty, and TFA felt like a very empty world.

Running the resistance is exactly the opposite of living a "straight" life. Now the time while they're building the new republic could count for that. And there resistance probably has plenty of use for a scruffy-looking smuggler.

I do agree the pacing and "smallness" of the galaxy in TFA was pretty terrible. No sense of scale to the galaxy at all.

As for a Han and Chewie running the gigantic freighter alone, IIRC there was a throwaway line about there having been a crew that was...no longer with them. Presumably because of the rathtars.

10 minutes ago, AllWingsStandyingBy said:

Still, I think TFA starts to go downhill they moment Han and Chewie step onto the Falcon. Until that point, I think TFA is a phenomenal movie, but then shoe-horning Han into everything I think really derails it and takes its focus off of the new interesting characters it had been developing up until that point. <snip>

I look at it this way: in TFA, Han isn't a character, he is the McGuffin. Through him, we get an unlikely pair of heroes off a backwater planet and into the Resistance, get Chewie and the Falcon back into the movie, and show that Kylo Ren is not right in the head. Once that is done, the movie doesn't even need him any more (and Ford finally gets his way and Solo dies).

9 minutes ago, VanderLegion said:

No sense of scale to the galaxy at all.

Waaaaaayyy better than the Prequels where everyone is related to everyone, you can't watch a scene without an OT character, and every important political event in the galaxy happens on a remote desert planet that we've already seen TWICE in the OT.

6 minutes ago, Darth Meanie said:

I look at it this way: in TFA, Han isn't a character, he is the McGuffin. Through him, we get an unlikely pair of heroes off a backwater planet and into the Resistance, get Chewie and the Falcon back into the movie, and show that Kylo Ren is not right in the head. Once that is done, the movie doesn't even need him any more (and Ford finally gets his way and Solo dies).

That isn't a macguffin. A macguffin is the Ark of The Covenant, or the Sankara Stones, or the solex, or the Death Star plans. We don't care too much about what it is. We care that the good guys get it and the bad guys don't.

Han in TFA is a deus ex machina. In the right place at the right time to do just what the plot needs to have done.

Luke is the macguffin in TFA.

39 minutes ago, Darth Meanie said:

Yeah, the politics of TFA is just dumb. The FO is a leftover of the Empire, fine. But the Resistance? A legitimized vigilante force so that the Republic can pretend it is a peaceful political organization?? I had to look it up because I couldn't figure it out just by watching the movie.

This is the way the original movies handled it and I've always thought it was one of their stronger points. A New Hope really did not at any point care to drop into exposition to explain the world to the audience; it just dropped technobabble and prior events casually because the characters know about them. TFA regularly does the same thing, but its a little frustrating to the audience because we have some significant prior history with these characters who are leaving unfilled gaps and we're accustomed to having every little insignificant detail of the originals completely expanded on and explained.

Personally, I'd argue the weakest scene in the whole film (except maybe Phasma shutting down the shield) is the one that breaks this tradition and goes into full exposition dump. Han and Leia's dialog is completely ridiculous, where two characters regurgitate their shared history for no one's benefit except the audience.

8 minutes ago, Darth Meanie said:

Waaaaaayyy better than the Prequels where everyone is related to everyone, you can't watch a scene without an OT character, and every important political event in the galaxy happens on a remote desert planet that we've already seen TWICE in the OT.

Oh the prequels were terrible for that. Almost all of the OT characters that got shoe-horned into the prequels would have been better of not hvaing been there. Would have made the prequels way better movies. For the basic storyline they used, you needed anakin, obi-wan, palpatine. Yoda makes sense since he was a jedi master. The droids absolutely shouldn't have been there. Chewbacca didn't need to be on kashyyyk for episode 3. Boba fett gained nothing (and lost a lot) by being in them. Personally I'd never have had Anakin be from tatooine in the first place, and would have left the planet out completely. For a backwater as far from the bright center of the universe as you can get, we've seen a lot of it.

But at least the prequels had some sense of time to travel from one planet to another.

10 minutes ago, Frimmel said:

That isn't a macguffin. A macguffin is the Ark of The Covenant, or the Sankara Stones, or the solex, or the Death Star plans. We don't care too much about what it is. We care that the good guys get it and the bad guys don't.

Han in TFA is a deus ex machina. In the right place at the right time to do just what the plot needs to have done.

Luke is the macguffin in TFA.

Ah well, a theater major I am not.

Just now, LunarSol said:

This is the way the original movies handled it and I've always thought it was one of their stronger points. A New Hope really did not at any point care to drop into exposition to explain the world to the audience; it just dropped technobabble and prior events casually because the characters know about them. TFA regularly does the same thing, but its a little frustrating to the audience because we have some significant prior history with these characters who are leaving unfilled gaps and we're accustomed to having every little insignificant detail of the originals completely expanded on and explained.

Personally, I'd argue the weakest scene in the whole film (except maybe Phasma shutting down the shield) is the one that breaks this tradition and goes into full exposition dumb. Han and Leia's dialog is completely ridiculous, where two characters regurgitate their shared history for no one's benefit except the audience.

We know about the politics in the OT because "The Emperor has dissolved the Senate" explains that The Empire is tyranny. The Republic is swept away. Democracy (Republic)=good and Emperor(tyranny)=bad.

TFA skipped a couple of steps in trying to get a these are the good guys and these are the bad guys. They painted the FO as tyranny yet they weren't in charge. The script writer just didn't seem to have been bothered with thinking about how this all came about having forgotten or not noticed the underlying paradigms at work in the OT that maybe don't apply anymore in our post 9/11 world.

IDK, I thought Hux's nihilist hate speech framed itself pretty well. I'd have preferred they actually wipe out Coruscant and name dropped it as such, but in many ways that scene is clearly an attempt to create a post 9/11 variation of the Empire. I think it could have been more effectively done, but I wouldn't go so far as to say it was ineffective either.

One of the things that I think folks lose a lot of sight of when trying to excuse the world building failures of TFA in comparing them to Star Wars is that Star Wars is a single movie. It doesn't have to elaborate on the tech or the rules or the politics too much. It just needs enough of a framework to orient you. As you make more movies and tell wider tales this framework needs to be expanded upon and consistent to keep the writers honest. If you don't have rules and stick to the rules then you get the pulling rabbits out of hats lazy cheats like exciting hyperspace inside the shields. Now there's a mess and the tech starts to feel more like whatever the plot needs than obstacles to be overcome. The audience starts to feel like the film-makers are cheating.

See: http://www.writing-world.com/sf/martin.shtml

Substitute "Technology" in sci-fi for the magic in fantasy.

"The world a writer creates may have as its laws that the inhabitants are nothing but a pack of cards, that animals converse intelligently while messing about in boats, or that a magic ring can make its bearer invisible at the long, slow cost of his soul. But once these laws are set down, the writer cannot, on a whim, set them aside. They must work in the fantasy world as surely as gravity works in ours."

This is what they did with that stunt with the Falcon in TFA to get onto Starkiller base. The rules were set aside on a whim. Lazy. This hampers every other writer to come as they now have to figure a way for ships with hyperdrives to not be able to use hyperspace to bypass shields.

I thought it just illustrated how much of a badass Han was. No sane pilot would try such a thing but Han could because he is well Han.

Yeah, I was quite happy with the idea that that's something Han could pull off with an additional 30 years of experience.

2 minutes ago, BlodVargarna said:

I thought it just illustrated how much of a badass Han was. No sane pilot would try such a thing but Han could because he is well Han.

No, that's why you've forgive the story breaking the rules of its world. That's what I mean by lazy. Han Solo can break the rules because he's Han Solo. The writer (if they even understood the rules) took an easy out to getting onto the base and took it because it also gave an excuse for a badass Han Solo "moment."

11 minutes ago, Frimmel said:

One of the things that I think folks lose a lot of sight of when trying to excuse the world building failures of TFA in comparing them to Star Wars is that Star Wars is a single movie. It doesn't have to elaborate on the tech or the rules or the politics too much. It just needs enough of a framework to orient you. As you make more movies and tell wider tales this framework needs to be expanded upon and consistent to keep the writers honest. If you don't have rules and stick to the rules then you get the pulling rabbits out of hats lazy cheats like exciting hyperspace inside the shields. Now there's a mess and the tech starts to feel more like whatever the plot needs than obstacles to be overcome. The audience starts to feel like the film-makers are cheating.

See: http://www.writing-world.com/sf/martin.shtml

Substitute "Technology" in sci-fi for the magic in fantasy.

"The world a writer creates may have as its laws that the inhabitants are nothing but a pack of cards, that animals converse intelligently while messing about in boats, or that a magic ring can make its bearer invisible at the long, slow cost of his soul. But once these laws are set down, the writer cannot, on a whim, set them aside. They must work in the fantasy world as surely as gravity works in ours."

This is what they did with that stunt with the Falcon in TFA to get onto Starkiller base. The rules were set aside on a whim. Lazy. This hampers every other writer to come as they now have to figure a way for ships with hyperdrives to not be able to use hyperspace to bypass shields.

Except that hyperspace rules are never spelled out in the movies, only in now legends rpg sourcebooks and their likes. The scene doesn't break any rules established in the movies. Furthermore it isn't even in conflict with future and past work, as it is made so abundantly clear that this stunt is rdiculously unlikely to work and only barely pulled off by the best pilot of the galaxy in the ship he spend most of his life in. Only attempted because it was literaly the only way to infiltrate the base in time.

I mean, if you're going to go that route absolutely nothing in any of the movies holds up to anything. The movies are essentially nothing but heroes breaking rules to get out of far fetched scenarios. I can pretty much justify any scene in the entire franchise as lazy by that definition.

6 minutes ago, Frimmel said:

No, that's why you've forgive the story breaking the rules of its world. That's what I mean by lazy. Han Solo can break the rules because he's Han Solo. The writer (if they even understood the rules) took an easy out to getting onto the base and took it because it also gave an excuse for a badass Han Solo "moment."

1 minute ago, Admiral Deathrain said:

Except that hyperspace rules are never spelled out in the movies, only in now legends rpg sourcebooks and their likes. The scene doesn't break any rules established in the movies. Furthermore it isn't even in conflict with future and past work, as it is made so abundantly clear that this stunt is rdiculously unlikely to work and only barely pulled off by the best pilot of the galaxy in the ship he spend most of his life in. Only attempted because it was literaly the only way to infiltrate the base in time.

Excatly. Nothing in the movies says you can't fly through shields in hyperspace. No one even theorizes the possiblity before TFA. It would be almost impossible to use against another ship due to the fact that they're going to be moving, so getting a precise hyperspace jump to be inside their shields would be...unlikely. And the insane risk of trying to hyper past a planets shields means its unlikely to be used commonly there either. Han himself almost crashed and got them kiled doing it. A capital ship couldn't do it without getting sucked down by the planets gravity.

The bigger issue going from the old EU is that you'd get pulled out of hyperspace by planets' gravity well, presumably long before you got close enough to be past shields. But that was never part of what is now official canon (unless it's somewhere in the clone wars). The closest thing being the interdictor being canonized and able to pull you out of hyperspace in Rebels I guess.

It is probably better to not have Interdictors work with gravity wells, that would make them quite problematic with the large ships in the empires fleet. New canon might be something like them repulsing hyperspace from their area, so ships going through drop out and ships close to them can't enter.

17 minutes ago, Admiral Deathrain said:

It is probably better to not have Interdictors work with gravity wells, that would make them quite problematic with the large ships in the empires fleet. New canon might be something like them repulsing hyperspace from their area, so ships going through drop out and ships close to them can't enter.

IIRC, pretty sure they USE the gravity wells in Rebels, so too late to change that.