58 minutes ago, Gadgetron said:

In legends, the imperials have massive fueling ships, these ships dwarf the ISD. And the ISDs, according to cross sections, have nuclear reactors that use fuel at almost conventional levels due to the full power requirements. TIE fighters (originally) used fuel, mind you they used to also be the equal of an X-Wing, the chin guns being as powerful as all 4 on an x-wing, and they rocked shields, same as everything else. It was later that they became solar powered, in part to reduce fuel consumption in the Imperial Navy.

My memory must be from the transition stage then. I remember solar panel TIEs and nuclear power Star destroyers. Which seemed appropriate for a space fantasy movie that doesn’t need to be bogged down with Han Solo finding a Sunoco in the middle of a chase sequence.

On the subject of fuel, people usually forget in space you might be using two kinds of fuels: reaction mass and fuel for the reactor. Because engines and power are two separate things: your ion thrusters have to shoot something back for the ship to move. while reactors may use matter fusion, antimatter or hypermatter as some cross sections say, but that is definitely an other thing, used to generate all the power onboard.

Think like uranium/plutonium that power probes in space and rockets /ion fuel to propel them.

The rebel fleet might have been low on conventional fuel but have loads of power to spare for the rest, like the shields during all the hours of bombardment.

On 12/22/2017 at 11:33 PM, ryanabt said:

If you think that Luke was a legend, meaning capable of anything, then you watched 4-6 wrong. He was a scared young man who had enough love for his father to overcome his own ineptitude to defeat evil. What happens when it isn't his father? What happens when he is on the other side of training? That is what this movie explores.

I say this again...Yoda (a legend) fled and his and never came out to save the universe. Obiwan (a legend) hid and only came out because he lucked into finding Luke. There are no perfect legends in Star Wars. Unless you mean the false things people say about those who are foisted into that position by the stories told about them. That is what this movie is about.

This movie doesn't "explore" anything. This exploration is what is required to justify having Luke hiding out on that island in the first place.

I don't mean legend as in capable of anything. I mean legend in the sense that I should care about his deeds and doings and get behind what he stands for. Why should I care about the man in this movie? I shouldn't. He was going to murder his nephew in his sleep because of evil he might do. He didn't quit on his father who had done evil, he isn't going to quit on his nephew because of evil he might do.

Star Wars is a story about good and evil. And murdering a boy in his sleep before he's committed a crime is the very definition of evil. This was "Man of Steel" level misunderstanding of the characters involved and what they stand for.

They're the Jedi Knights. Knights like those of the Round Table "Might for right." (The Jedi Council even sit in a circle.)

Yoda was an old man. Past his time of coming out to save the universe. He fled because the entire universe was in arms against him. By your own argument legends aren't capable of anything.

Obi-wan didn't luck onto Luke. He knew right where Luke was. And Luke was already wondering if the girl in the message was mentioning the crazy old hermit.

The Jedi Knights are far from noble Round Table Knights. The Jedi knew about and allowed slavery in the galaxy. "I didn't actually come here to free slaves, you know" - Qui-Gon Jinn

That's the problem and the point. Legends are wish fulfillment. Luke had become a legend and could never be, in person, what people imagined him to be. He's an old man who is tired of the burden his legend created. And he's not infallible. He is human. A moment of weakness led to the tragedy of Ben/Kylo and it destroyed Luke's confidence in the rightness of his cause.

This is why Yoda tells him that failure is okay, because it's how we learn and grow.

39 minutes ago, Democratus said:

The Jedi Knights are far from noble Round Table Knights. The Jedi knew about and allowed slavery in the galaxy. "I didn't actually come here to free slaves, you know" - Qui-Gon Jinn

So we're taking quotes from a bad movie to justify why a movie is good?

I think it all depends on what the knights of the round table were doing. Serfdom wasn't any better than slavery from a modern viewpoint. It's all ownership of persons. Unless I missed the story (which I could have) where Galahad was running around knocking off bad knights, it seems they aren't clean either.

The big problem I have with it (and it goes with the prequels as well) is that they took a huge story revelation of Luke almost killing his nephew and made it a bullet point in the story. That's a huge ******* deal! What brought Luke to that point? Make that movie! At the end of Jedi, Luke's facing the two baddest dudes out there and he tosses aside his lightsaber saying he's a Jedi who doesn't kill a defeated person. What changed? I'm fine with him changing stances on killing someone in cold blood, but I want to SEE what changed his attitude on screen. Don't point me to a paragraph in the visual guidebook or some crappy "official" novel. The movies are the movies and should tell the story in its entirety.

STOP TELLING AND START SHOWING.

Very good point, @ricefrisbeetreats .

Where we differ, I think, is that I believe they did "show". It was done with acting.

Just looking at old, tired Luke - I could see the weight of years and pain. I could see that it had all been too much to bear.

Hammil gave us the best performance of his career. He told in tone of voice and expression everything we needed to know.

Sometimes you don't need the blunt instrument of a scene explaining everything. Sometimes a single phrase or the look a character has in their eyes is plenty.

Sometimes, in storytelling, less is more.

And sometimes less is the film-makers asking you to do their work for them.

1 minute ago, Frimmel said:

And sometimes less is the film-makers asking you to do their work for them.

Or asking you to read supplemental material and books for information....

5 minutes ago, Frimmel said:

And sometimes less is the film-makers asking you to do their work for them.

Agreed. That's the problem with art. One person's not enough is another person's too much.

For example: I'm fine that they didn't make a Cassablanca spin-off movie showing Rick Blaine and Ilsa Lund's time in Paris - despite the fact that their time together in Paris was critical to how their characters behaved. It was enough that they mentioned it.

@Democratus

I gauge my movie watching on my wife. I was the one that introduced her to Star Wars and she's seen them each twice. I spent my free time in high school making movies with a couple of handycams and Adobe Premier then took college classes on film making as well. I tend to be overly critical of movies because of this.

So when she starts asking me a ton of questions about why a Jedi Knight would murder a kid, I know something went wrong. I care about why a 3.4km battleship is putzing about using gas instead of full nuclear power. She cares about understanding what the **** is going on in the movie. lol

And I do think Mark Hamill had an excellent performance. My argument is that the story of how Kylo Ren meets Snoke and drives Luke to consider murdering his nephew would be far more engaging. Adam Driver's performance is great. He's exactly what I want to see out of a conflicted, dark side wielding force user. If they could cut out all the other characters and just tell me what's going on with him, I'm game.

I can see it now: Ben Solo starts having dark dreams. His friends (future knights of Ren) are all students at Luke's academy. As they train, Ben talks to Snoke in his dreams about misplaced potential and how great he could be. That he is from a long line of powerful Jedi. Eventually, Ben's crew start picking on the other students, one of them is a very young girl with buns on her head. Ben takes a shine to her. Ben starts calling him and his posse the Knights of Ren and Luke takes notice. He calls Ben out and they argue. Ben is Luke's best student and heir to the Jedi school. That night, Luke does his "should I cut him wafer thin?" routine. Then Ben flips, his crew kills the whole school except a single girl. She is about to be killed when Ben stabs one of the Knights of Ren through the chest. The girl is then swept off to some backwater planet to protect her. Blah blah. Story. Space battles. Etc Etc. Luke thinks he should have been more vigilant and runs off to milk some sea cows that secrete alcoholic milk or something.

Just now, Frimmel said:

And sometimes less is the film-makers asking you to do their work for them.

Agreed. If people aren't sure why Luke is potentially murdering his nephew, you failed in your pursuit of storytelling.

Wonder if they will do a "New Jedi Academy" animated series to fill in the backstory, like they did with Clone Wars.

Just now, Democratus said:

Wonder if they will do a "New Jedi Academy" animated series to fill in the backstory, like they did with Clone Wars.

The more I think about it, the more I'm beginning to believe that will be what they do.

I'm not opposed to that, either. It doesn't all have to be live-action content. I just don't want a positive movie experience to be predicated on reading 5 books and playing a crappy video game.

There was a video game prequel to TLJ?

Man, I'm out of touch.

12 minutes ago, Democratus said:

There was a video game prequel to TLJ?

Man, I'm out of touch.

No clue. I made fun of the fact the Raddus was using fuel and a guy got indignant, saying the Executor was shown refueling at an ExxonMobil© in the Battlefront 2 game.

The product placements are getting ridiculous in EA games...

If you think episode 9 will fail to tie things together and explain what happened, then your concerns about TLJ are warranted. I am confident given what I saw that there are revelations to come that will give some serious depth to what happened in 7 and 8. I'm no Jedi but I can sense a deep storyline stretching back to the prequels coming together in 9. If I am wrong I will be as disappointed as anyone here. I just think we will be very satisfied after 9.

1 hour ago, Democratus said:

There was a video game prequel to TLJ?

Man, I'm out of touch.

The single player campaign/story missions in Battlefront II start essentially at the Battle of Endor and center around the main character's father following the Emperor's last orders which we're meant to understand essentially lead to The First Order. It is more of a The Force Awakens prequel. Not all that bad a story really. I felt it suffered from some what I felt was really important stuff happening off screen.

1 hour ago, Democratus said:

Agreed. That's the problem with art. One person's not enough is another person's too much.

For example: I'm fine that they didn't make a Cassablanca spin-off movie showing Rick Blaine and Ilsa Lund's time in Paris - despite the fact that their time together in Paris was critical to how their characters behaved. It was enough that they mentioned it.

They did show Rick and Ilsa's time in Paris. They showed them falling in love and spending all sorts of time together. We see Rick asking "How did I get so lucky. How did I find you waiting for me to come along?" It is where we get, "Here's looking at you kid." We see her planning to leave Paris with him. We see him standing on a train platform in the rain with a comical expression on his face because his insides had been kicked out.

They didn't just mention it. They showed us.

Way more than "Snoke had got to him" at any rate.

1 hour ago, ricefrisbeetreats said:

@Democratus

I gauge my movie watching on my wife. I was the one that introduced her to Star Wars and she's seen them each twice. I spent my free time in high school making movies with a couple of handycams and Adobe Premier then took college classes on film making as well. I tend to be overly critical of movies because of this.

So when she starts asking me a ton of questions about why a Jedi Knight would murder a kid, I know something went wrong. I care about why a 3.4km battleship is putzing about using gas instead of full nuclear power. She cares about understanding what the **** is going on in the movie. lol

And I do think Mark Hamill had an excellent performance. My argument is that the story of how Kylo Ren meets Snoke and drives Luke to consider murdering his nephew would be far more engaging. Adam Driver's performance is great. He's exactly what I want to see out of a conflicted, dark side wielding force user. If they could cut out all the other characters and just tell me what's going on with him, I'm game.

I can see it now: Ben Solo starts having dark dreams. His friends (future knights of Ren) are all students at Luke's academy. As they train, Ben talks to Snoke in his dreams about misplaced potential and how great he could be. That he is from a long line of powerful Jedi. Eventually, Ben's crew start picking on the other students, one of them is a very young girl with buns on her head. Ben takes a shine to her. Ben starts calling him and his posse the Knights of Ren and Luke takes notice. He calls Ben out and they argue. Ben is Luke's best student and heir to the Jedi school. That night, Luke does his "should I cut him wafer thin?" routine. Then Ben flips, his crew kills the whole school except a single girl. She is about to be killed when Ben stabs one of the Knights of Ren through the chest. The girl is then swept off to some backwater planet to protect her. Blah blah. Story. Space battles. Etc Etc. Luke thinks he should have been more vigilant and runs off to milk some sea cows that secrete alcoholic milk or something.

Agreed. If people aren't sure why Luke is potentially murdering his nephew, you failed in your pursuit of storytelling.

Your argument boils down to a desire that the writers had told a different story. I agree with you, the potential of such a story is compelling. And if this were solely the story of Ben Solo, perhaps it would have been included.

Instead we got two different views of the same critical event - Luke's failure and Ben Solo's betrayal.

8 minutes ago, rasproteus said:

Your argument boils down to a desire that the writers had told a different story. I agree with you, the potential of such a story is compelling. And if this were solely the story of Ben Solo, perhaps it would have been included.

Instead we got two different views of the same critical event - Luke's failure and Ben Solo's betrayal.

Just this argument. Someday, maybe I'll consolidate all my arguments to one area, but it's too much for today.

I guess my point is: it's never a good sign when people are less interested in the story you're telling and more interested in the story you're not telling.

I'll hold out til Episode 9, but when I saw the Force Awakens, I told people that 8 had some big shoes to fill specifically because 7 gave us a ton of questions to be answered by episodes 8 and 9. With 8 not providing any more detail, it's all on 9's shoulders to wrap up dangling threads and tell a story. I'm not sure they can do it.

40 minutes ago, TheBigLev said:

If you think episode 9 will fail to tie things together and explain what happened, then your concerns about TLJ are warranted. I am confident given what I saw that there are revelations to come that will give some serious depth to what happened in 7 and 8. I'm no Jedi but I can sense a deep storyline stretching back to the prequels coming together in 9. If I am wrong I will be as disappointed as anyone here. I just think we will be very satisfied after 9.

Because this is a family forum, I'll just leave it at "I don't like waiting." If you play the 'wait and see' card for two movies, you get people like my Dad (who saw Star Wars in theaters once a week until it was out of theaters but stopped seeing them after Episode 1) who lose interest due to other things going on in their lives. I'm interested to see when the Marvel movie downturn starts to happen.

I may have used the words "blue balls" on the forums previously so you can catch the direction my post would have gone on a much more relaxed forum.

2 hours ago, ricefrisbeetreats said:

Just this argument. Someday, maybe I'll consolidate all my arguments to one area, but it's too much for today.

I guess my point is: it's never a good sign when people are less interested in the story you're telling and more interested in the story you're not telling.

I'll hold out til Episode 9, but when I saw the Force Awakens, I told people that 8 had some big shoes to fill specifically because 7 gave us a ton of questions to be answered by episodes 8 and 9. With 8 not providing any more detail, it's all on 9's shoulders to wrap up dangling threads and tell a story. I'm not sure they can do it.

TFA:

TLJ:

Just now, rasproteus said:

TFA:

TLJ:

I like that. Rey passing the baton to Luke. Luke has the look of complete confusion, "What am I supposed to do with this?" Good one. lol.

26 minutes ago, ricefrisbeetreats said:

I like that. Rey passing the baton to Luke. Luke has the look of complete confusion, "What am I supposed to do with this?" Good one. lol.

I couldn't find a shot of him tossing it over his shoulder.

16 minutes ago, rasproteus said:

I couldn't find a shot of him tossing it over his shoulder.

Who knew that Luke tossing a piece of his past aside like it meant nothing would end up being a metaphor for the entire movie. Ha ha.

Ok, I'm coming around on the Last Jedi. It may be one of my favorite comedy films of all time right behind Army of Darkness, Mystery Men, and the Phantom Menace.

Gawd this thread is just 90% fanboy tears now. I get it, it ruined your childhood, you should quit star wars all together.

4 hours ago, dominosfleet said:

Gawd this thread is just 90% fanboy tears now. I get it, it ruined your childhood, you should quit star wars all together.

Done! Wait...what does that entail exactly?