Eauxps I. Fourgott

Resisting Kylo Ren's force abilities, particularly the interrogation, seems reasonable enough to me, especially seeing as he's not fully trained yet.

I get exactly what you mean, and that was the point that I was trying to make. Unfortunately, I don't think that this particular argument can be entirely resolved until/unless specific information on the weight of the lightsaber blade is canonically given. If it is weightless, though, perhaps Doc Evil can understand it this way: Imagine swinging a real sword, that does actually weigh something. Now imagine doing the same thing, with the hilt perhaps a bit heavier, but the blade weightless. Would it not have a different feel to it?

You might be right on that one. I don't think that this really needs any further discussion, but the trip to Alderaan was of an unspecified length, and it's not certain how long they were actually training...

Huh, okay, guess that's not actually canon. I think I read it in the KOTOR manual, and it certainly makes sense... Also note that Luke was being trained by a Jedi Master at that point.

Yes, but the sword blade weighs something -- probably quite a bit -- and the lasers weigh nothing. I do believe that this would make it quite disorienting for an experienced melee user.

I agree with the point about it being sort of weird that Han doesn't ever use Chewie's bowcaster until now. Maybe I'm "not a true Star Wars fan" or something, but I didn't see Han's death coming, which helped with the emotional impact. It also helped that he was the only OT character who really felt like a major part of the story and not more of a cameo. I do think that Rey's Force abilities seem to manifest themselves a bit too quickly. As for the lightsabers, I don't think that Force Sensitivity is necessary to use them, but realistically some training would be necessary due to the weightlessness of the beam (which would particularly throw off experienced melee users such as Finn).

You gotta wonder how much he got paid to just stand there and turn around enigmatically...

?????????

I think there's merit to both sides of the argument. As for me, no opinion.

As I said, I'm not going back to read through the stuff again, and I'm not trying to cast blame on anybody. Just trying to keep the peace a bit here..

From what I've observed, both sides tend to accuse the other of not addressing their points. I don't have the patience to go back and read these arguments again, but I'd guess that there's probably some wrong on both sides. In my case, most of the points addressed at first were obviously subjective in nature, and I acknowledged them as such. I addresses the others back and was left alone after that (although that may be because I was ignored; I don't know and don't want to cast blame). Just try to be respectful and listen to the other side, okay?

I might point out that it would theoretically be possible for love to have led Anakin to the dark side without it automatically leading everybody to the dark side... In Anakin's case, I think that he failed to take Jolee's advice of controlling passions while being in love. There were also other factors that went into his fall, such as his distrust of the Jedi.

So another thought that occurred to me is, how exactly did Anakin end up bringing balance to the force at the end of Ep. VI? I know he killed the Emperor and ended the war and so on, but just thirty years later, the force seems to be rather unbalanced to me. Kinda makes the whole prophecy thing a bit pointless. On a different note, did it occur to anybody else that when Ren said that he had killed Ben Solo, the producers were retroactively justifying Obi-Wan's "certain point of view" from the OT?

I would beg to differ on Han. I really can't see the Han Solo from the beginning of A New Hope doing what he did to lead to his death. He might have been spending most of his time smuggling, but he did go with the plan to save Rey, and then to try to destroy Starkiller Base, and he tried to turn his son back, which cost him his life. I would say that those are the marks of a still-heroic character. Meanwhile, with Luke, I think his self-imposed exile is reasonable enough. He had spent who knows how much effort trying to rebuild the Jedi Order, only for it all to be destroyed by one of his trainees. Moreover, I believe the case is that he blamed himself for what went wrong. I would want to just run away and hide after something like that happened, and he also probably thought that it was the safest thing to do for the galaxy, as that way he couldn't cause any more destruction like that.

As I said before, I got it from the KOTOR manual, when it says about lightsabers, "Only Jedi have the skill to use these weapons. Any other users would be more likely to injure themselves than their opponents." I think the difficulty might come from the fact that a lightsaber beam is weightless (at least according to the KOTOR manual), which would especially throw off those used to other melee weapons.

Agreed. It didn't exactly take a lot of skill to cut a hole in something, and Han wasn't exactly wildly swinging it around.

Evidently I need another playthrough of Kotor... It just looked a couple of times like he was going to slice himself in half and I commented on that during the movie. It wasn't really a complaint.

In the meantime, some parallels popped out up in my head... We have a new set of heroes start on a new saga, but with some old familiar faces and using the exact same freighter as before. One of the primary antagonists is skilled at using the Force to probe others' minds and find stuff out. At the end, the female (canonically, at least) protagonist goes off to find the main Jedi protagonist from the original adventure. Sound familiar? There's also the part about the last of the Jedi. On a different tack, as my brother pointed out, why can't these movies ever have the good guys and bad guys on equal footing instead of the good guys always facing seemingly impossible odds?

Remembered one other annoyance in the movie, which is the sound effects they added when somebody did something with the Force. Would have preferred to not have that. Not a major issue, though.

Not going to bother addressing most of these back, since they're obviously subjective things. By redeeming qualities, I meant something that made the character somehow positively contribute to my viewing experience (I know that sounded a bit weird, but I couldn't word it any better). Han's death was fine as a dramatic moment or whatnot, but it's also quite tragic to lose him, and Kylo killing him in that fashion makes me dislike him (Kylo) more. I simply don't enjoy Kylo Ren. At all. Snoke at least seems like he might be sort of a "cool" villain. I might point out that if they die in the first film, they're probably not going to be considered mainstays (though I don't know if that would apply to Obi-Wan or not). I suppose Finn probably has some important role to fill, though it's hard to tell what at present. Kylo's death would work fine, though, as he wouldn't necessarily (at least IMO) need to be an essential member of the First Order for Snoke and could have theoretically simply been the big bad for just the first movie (similar to Darth Maul and Grand Moff Tarkin in their trilogies). But I do think that they're planning a redemption arc for him, as long as Leia stays alive. I think it would have been just fine if Poe had actually died when he seemed to. I dunno, I guess that's just the general impression I got. Could theoretically just be me expecting one -- but I'll go on the record as saying that there will be more in that direction as the trilogy continues. When did Obi-Wan ever get romantically involved with anyone, especially as he was a Jedi back when marriage was generally forbidden among them? Not to mention the fact that he was already quite old thirty years before and Rey is certainly not very old. That was another very minor issue I had -- the similarity between Rey and Ren's names can make things confusing when reading about them. I think that came from something I read in the KOTOR manual about how those not trained in their use would be just as likely to hurt themselves. Which then begs the completely unrelated question of why Sherruk was using them... More than just telling them of the Force, he's basically the mentor character here, though perhaps not quite as much as Obi-Wan. And he's also killed by someone formerly very close who is now the dark Force-user serving only the big boss (although Obi-Wan actually meant to do that, but that's not the point). EDIT: Both also happened to be my favorite characters from their respective movies, although Han might be so partially because he dies and we don't get to see any more of him. EDIT: I finally remembered the last, very very small point that bugged me: What the heck happened to Luke's green lightsaber that he made himself? Of course if he still has it and that's shown next movie, then that will be all right. ONE MORE EDIT (I wish I could double-post): I wasn't specifically referring to Tatooine and Coruscant as much as any planet that wasn't invented for this movie. Plus Coruscant didn't even show up in the original trilogy.

Got it. (That voicing is by no means terrible, by the way -- but he probably shouldn't sing too much.)

What, you did all of the voices from that mod? I intended no offense. I guess there's just a higher level that I expect from professional movie-makers.

Rather than read six more pages of debates and whatnot and try to respond to that, I'll just give my opinions now that I've actually seen the film. Ever since I heard about Disney's acquisition of Lucasfilm and the new movies coming out, I was skeptical, and I decided that I would see this movie and my opinion of it would determine whether or not I saw the others when they came out. My opinion: it's good enough for me to watch the others. That said, there are a number of gripes, both big and small, that I have with it: 1) By far the biggest is that this did not seem to mesh well with the general "Star Wars-y" atmosphere that I had in my brain after six movies and two KOTOR games. I think this is a more legitimate feeling since I actually watched both episodes V and VI less than a week ago. In the prequels, I felt like Padme didn't fit into the Star Wars universe; here, I felt the same way about most of the characters. With some parts especially (especially a number of sequences featuring Finn), it seemed a lot more like people from our world getting to be in the Star Wars universe -- which, admittedly it was. The situation wasn't helped much by the returnees, since they generally looked and felt different from themselves in the OT -- although I can chalk this up to the actors being decades older. The end result is a movie that I think does a fine job of starting a new Star Wars saga, in a version of the galaxy that's slightly different than that of the preceding 4000 years (but hey, times change). However, I think I was kind of looking for more of a continuation of the the Star Wars saga, and this movie disappointed me in that regard. 2) This had better be the last Star Wars movie that culminates in a space battle-type scene to destroy the planet-destroying device. It was kind of old after the second time (in ROTJ) and my reaction this time is basically "really, you couldn't think of anything different?" This didn't feel like A New Hope all over again to me, though, but I did notice parallels. But the overall feel is totally different for me. Again, I think that's largely due to the characters. 3) They killed off exactly one major character -- and it had to be Han Solo? The iconic character who also, I might add, was doing a heck of a lot more than any other returnees? I could have taken it better if they'd taken advantage of the great opportunities to kill off Finn, or Poe, or Kylo, but it was just Han. I also would have liked it more if Han's death was a bit more blunt -- that would have taken some of the sting away from it. I hope that Luke sees a fair bit of action next film. I did note the irony that Han, who in A New Hope was mostly scoffing at Obi-Wan, ended up filling a very similar role to him in this film, rather than Luke, who would have seemed to be the logical choice for that role. 4) Seeing any familiar planets, rather than just new ones similar to those, would have been nice. Instead we just get a bunch of new ones, including those that look similar enough to Tatooine and Coruscant that I though they were those when I first saw them. I also wished that more planet names could have been given. In particular, when the bad guys blew up the Republic, I was thinking "did they just blow up Coruscant?" It would have been nice to not have to come home and consult Wookieepedia to find out. 5) Not enough exposition/too much confusion in some parts. In particular the Empire wreckage all over Jakku. Might be slightly unrelated, but I also thought that the Resistance was incredibly stupid to stay on the planet that the First Order was going to blow up and not evacuate. 6) Kylo Ren. As far as I'm concerned, there is not a single redeeming feature about him. All the other bad guys in Star Wars were at least cool in some way; Palpatine's absolute genius for most of the saga, for instance. Instead, to me, Kylo just seemed kind of lame. Some specific things against him: a) The way he killed Han Solo, obviously. Might have been better if it wasn't Han, of course. b. I didn't like the under-the-mask voice at all. It reminded me of some of the voicing from M4-78 that sounded more amateurish. c) Rather than controlling and using his anger like the Sith, he just crazily bashes stuff with his lightsaber. That makes him seem more lame to me. d) He has to force pull a dude to his hand to choke him instead of doing the Darth Vader choke. e) You are never EVER going to persuade me that his lightsaber is anywhere near as cool as the original/"real" lightsaber. I wish he had died at the end of the movie a la Darth Maul. Probably one of my least favorite Star Wars characters ever. I get the feeling he's going to be redeemed at some point, which will make some parts of this movie (killing Solo comes to mind) worse for me. 7) Crossing into minor details at this point... It would have been way epic for Wedge to come back, since we were having another battle to destroy the planet-destroying machine. (Although looking it up, I see that it was the actor's fault, so I guess this one doesn't count.) 8) Some of Rey's abilities seemed to manifest quite quickly, especially the Force-related ones. It didn't really bother me much though, and if she does turn out to be offspring of Luke (and whom?) then it makes perfect sense to me. 9) Similarly, it seemed slightly amazing that Finn didn't slice himself in half during his first bout with the lightsaber. Again, though, it didn't bother me that much. 10) Is there a requirement for every movie to have a romance or something? Was it really necessary? There was one other, very minor (as in I don't think it really bothered me at all) complaint, but I forgot what it was. But there is one point that was brought up here that I want to address, and that's that of should Luke have been found at the end of this movie or not. I think it would have been fine if it ended with Artoo coming back to life and having the rest of the map, but if it did go any farther than that, this is an appropriate place to end it. After all, this way we do get to see what Luke looks like now. If we had gone up to right before Luke showed his face, and THEN stopped... that would have been incredibly cruel. I know this looks like a lot of complaints, but I did enjoy the movie overall. It was a good movie, I think. Just had some flaws and wasn't the continuation of the Star Wars saga that I was hoping for. Admins, sorry if this post went too long.

Thanks, guys.