Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens

[Raithe]

On the random Star Wars related trivia..

 

Star Destroyer CPU

 

 

This model of a Star Destroyer has a lot more under its hood than you might think. On the outside it looks like a Venerator-class Imperial starship, but the chassis of 2mm steel sheet is so much more. The casing of the Venerator-class is a shell for the computer within.

 

The fully functional computer and casing were designed by a 3D Printer, which is one incredible leap in technology. The Star Destroyer includes a USB port and SSD slot. It required 2 years of modeling to put it together for designer Sander van der Velden, who did not even know what he was doing when the idea originally popped into his head back in 2011. He studied CNC and cutting technique to learn how to even make the concept a practical reality.

 

 

 

The link has a bunch more pictures of the whole thing in stages...

[Hurlshort]

I am a huge fan of Star Wars and the most recent movie, but some of you spend way too much time thinking about this stuff. Take it less seriously, it is space fantasy. You will enjoy it more.

[Malcador]

Pft, should have made the case shaped like an SSD.

[Elerond]

I am a huge fan of Star Wars and the most recent movie, but some of you spend way too much time thinking about this stuff. Take it less seriously, it is space fantasy. You will enjoy it more.

 

That is just heresy. Analyzing fictive universes with magnifier is part of the fun.

[Drowsy Emperor]

 

I thought Kylo Ren was done quite well. It was the "unreveal". We think he's a badass like Vader because he presents himself as a badass like Vader despite not even coming close. Throughout the movie he just unravels completely, getting more and more distraught because nothing he does works out the way he wants.

 

Exactly.

 

What people seem to not understand about Kylo Ren even though the movie signals it very, very carefully is that he's basically an angsty teenager with little to no self-control and an unhealthy dose of hero worship towards Vader, who has somehow managed to skid along on sheer force talent alone, but never had the training to make real use of that talent, or a need to step up his game. I think he was the best part of the movie, honestly.

 

 

Cool story bro, but what you describe is un-watchable if you're over 16. Angsty teenagers leading galactic empires is a show for angsty teenagers.

Edited January 2, 2016 by Drowsy Emperor

[Hurlshort]

 

 

Cool story bro, but what you describe is un-watchable if you're over 16. Angsty teenagers leading galactic empires is a show for angsty teenagers.

 

 

The world must be filled with angsty teenagers, because this movie is a monster hit in every way.

[CoM_Solaufein]

It is obvious that Ren has some emotional problems. Its beyond me why Luke would even consider showing him the ways of the Force. As the past has showed us, training those with emotional problems, self control, lead to nothing but problems.

[HoonDing]

They should've cast Ramsay Bolton as the bad guy.

 

Kylo can't be taken seriously as soon as he takes off the mask.

[CoM_Solaufein]

They should've cast Ramsay Bolton as the bad guy.

 

Kylo can't be taken seriously as soon as he takes off the mask.

I don't know who I hated more him or Joffrey Baratheon. The actors would have made good deviously evil bad guys than Darth Emo.

[Drowsy Emperor]

 

 

 

Cool story bro, but what you describe is un-watchable if you're over 16. Angsty teenagers leading galactic empires is a show for angsty teenagers.

 

 

The world must be filled with angsty teenagers, because this movie is a monster hit in every way.

 

 

Anything with Star Wars in it would have been a monster hit. Not denying that the film is palatable, the exact same way the Star Trek reboot was. But Kylo Ren wasn't the best thing in it.

 

I feel the old Star Wars film was primarily a movie for children, but also a film for everyone. I don't think that's the case here - that the appeal among adults won't be as universal a few years down the line.

Edited January 2, 2016 by Drowsy Emperor

[Malcador]

It is obvious that Ren has some emotional problems. Its beyond me why Luke would even consider showing him the ways of the Force. As the past has showed us, training those with emotional problems, self control, lead to nothing but problems.

Desperate for Jedi and better to get hooks in him as a raw user rather than risk any dark side people pick him up.

 

Well could kill him in that case, but that is not light side.

[Raithe]

For the #shotsfired on the internet..

 

[Raithe]

[Bartimaeus]

That's a pretty lame gimmick account.

[Rostere]

Movie does piss poor job to show Kylo Ren's inner struggle and it gives very little reason behind that struggle. Especially why he fears succumbing to light side, it's not ever explained why Kylo Ren thinks that light side is bad or powerless.

Snoke motivates Kylo Ren to kill his father by doubting Kylo Ren's commitment to dark side, but movie gives no explanation why it works..

 

Kylo Ren's personality traits pretty much give reason enough. Although I would gladly see the sequel focus more on Snoke's philosophy.

 

Darth Vader in A New Hope had quite clear motivation behind his actions, crush all those oppose Galactic Empire, [...] he is well enough composed that viewers never questions his motivations [...].

 

Wrong. "Crushing all that oppose the Galactic Empire" is what he does, it is not a motivation for it. That's a conceptual misconception. We have no idea why Vader is with the Empire, which is all the more jarring because it is supposedly "evil". It's a fact well established that also "evil" people like people who are nice to them and not the other way around, unless they have some other good reason for supporting them. Throughout the entire OT, you wonder who Vader really is, and what the heck made him join the clearly - as established as the entire premise of the trilogy - "evil" Empire. We know that he thinks the Dark Side is powerful. But why not use it for good? And even if it is powerful, if it is inherently evil, why not fight it?

 

The fact is that Vader had pretty much zero motivations for anything throughout the entire OT. Which was pretty much THE reason for making the PT.

 

Meaning that you don't necessary need remarkable writing to make iconic character.

 

I guess this kind of betrays your sensibilities.

 

Kylo Ren is somewhat opposite of Vader in character design, he don't have clear motivations, he struggles with his identity, he is not that competent in his actions, he blames himself more of set backs than others, also his visual and audio designs aren't fully set in certain atmosphere, as we keep seeing him in and out of his mask and his voice changes depending on that and he don't have similar set in audio track as Vader.

 

I disagree on the point of Kylo Ren having unclear motivations (I think they are clear enough from his implied backstory and character traits + Snoke). I don't think he is particularly incompetent either. He is afraid of his own fall to the Light side and in that sense blames himself for his weaknesses, but it is Hux and not Kylo who tries to take the blame in front of Snoke in their first scene with him.

 

So do you think that Kylo Ren is bu definition a bad - or worse - character because of "his visual and audio designs aren't fully set in certain atmosphere, as we keep seeing him in and out of his mask and his voice changes depending on that and he don't have similar set in audio track as Vader"? I think the opposite, and the only exception is of course the Imperial March.

 

So Kylo Ren is character that is made for deeper character arc than what we saw in the movie, which does disservice for the movie, but I would guess that current writers of Star Wars follow modern block buster trend where whole movie series is seen as one piece and it don't matter if character has flaws from point of singular movie.

 

I don't agree with this. I think they set him up as an interesting character, what I'm actually afraid of is that they come up with other **** explanations afterward.

 

It's not about me thinking it, he just had one - his introduction was that of a badass who knows exactly what he's doing, going trough a powerful force questioned by his own allies, a force user who can't even keep his temper, a learned mind reader who can't penetrate mind of an untrained force user from our perspective, all the way to the final fight (so yeah, it wasn't even the final fight alone either). At the start of the movie he's set an expectation and he then kept failing to live up to this expectation repeatedly.

 

Now all of that is fine and could be an interesting character arc, both for Kylo and Rey - if the movie communicated it well. But it didn't. Which brings me to...

 

Kylo doesn't have any kind of "power curve", you should pay attention to the movie and what it conveys about the different characters. I don't even know if you have actually watched the movie or just read summaries because you don't seem to have understood anything about what was going on:

• At the start of the final fight Kylo is wounded by Chewie's bowcaster. We don't know exactly where it hit Kylo but we've previously seen Stormtroopers thrown off their feet by a direct hit. To accentuate this, Kylo is seen repeatedly punching his wound, presumably to stay conscious.
• At the start of the movie, we see Kylo sensing and freezing a shot in the air as it is about to hit him from behind. Killing Han was obviously something which upset Kylo very much, but something which he still felt compelled to do for some compulsive reason. Who knows what voices in his head he heard at that moment? Kylo expected to gain clarity by killing Han, but only got more grief and confusion. Which the director wanted to convey, and which is why, in a state of "tunnel vision" he does not avoid getting hit (as he has been shown previously to be able to do with ease). The mere fact that he survives the hit is set up to be impressive.
• Depending on how severe Kylo's mental issues are, his helmet might actually help him convince himself that he is another person, a more confident and powerful person. Why else the voice modificator? Both Rey, Poe and Han talk about his helmet in the movie, and Poe calls him out on this. Visually, him taking off his helmet signifies that he is vulnerable. He is vulnerable to the Light - to his family and to Rey. Wouldn't be surprised if he falls in love with her .

Rey:

• In Maz's castle, she hears cries, seemingly coming from the basement. The source of these hallucinations appear to be a lightsaber - a lightsaber previously wielded by both Luke and Anakin. Why did the lightsaber give her sound hallucinations of her own moment of abandonment on Jakku? Things go bananas when she touch the lightsaber and we hear Alec Guinness call out "Rey!" and then "These are your first steps..." as she experiences a sequence of visions, including Kylo Ren killing some guy, and her own abandonment at Jakku. After this, Maz insists that the Force is calling out to her and that she take the lightsabre, and that she seek out Luke. At this point it is pretty much established beyond any doubt that Rey either has a very strong connection to the Force, and/or has a connection to the lightsaber and/or its bearers.
• It is very early on established that Rey is a capable fighter. She fights off people on Jakku effortlessly. Meanwhile, we don't know how much combat training Kylo Ren has. If he was sent to Luke because Leia was worried about him, it seems unlikely that Luke would first start training him to kill people. Snoke does not seem like a fighter either, so Kylo probably has more experience with mental aspects of the force, which is shown by his abilities (some of which have not been seen before in any Star Wars movie).
• Rey has heard "myths" about the Jedi. She probably knows what a Jedi mind trick is. There are more people who have successfully used force abilities without training. Check out Luke in the first movie when he deflects shots from the training droid blind (like Rey not on the first try), and when he gets his sabre in the wampa cave. When Rey tries to resist Kylo Ren's mind probing, she accidentally enters his mind. She probably tries to do the same to the Stormtrooper afterwards, since she know what a Jedi mind trick is. And I think it's safe to say that Kylo Ren does not have experience with mentally interrogating force-sensitive individuals, nevermind powerful ones, so I can see how things didn't work out his way. Or, Rey actually learned of the Jedi mind trick from inside Kylo Ren's mind.

Great, you (potentially) understood Kylo's character because you know what his writers knew. I don't. Good writers will write the character in such a way that after watching this movie, I will *understand* what Kylo Ren is going trough.

 

This is a legitimate criticism - maybe you thought the movie was bad because you can't relate to the things in it.

 

Similarly, Rey could have resisted Kylo because she got previous Jedi training ... Alternatively, the movie had piss-poor writing. It was never even suggested that her resisting is hugely out of the ordinary for a force user in any way, nor did an invisible Obi-One appear, saying "Use the force, Lu... I mean, Rey!" It was just a thing that happened and you need actual understanding of the previous movies to get that it's weird - what most viewers will get out of that scene is that Kylo Ren is bloody incompetent.

 

Why do you throw in the assumption that the movie had "piss-poor writing" as a reason for the plot when this is completely irrelevant for whether or not it was good?

 

If someone throws together a couple of sequences randomly and this makes a good movie, I'm not going to say it's any worse because that might not have been the author's intent.

 

This kind of reasoning reminds me of the particular kind of retard which holds that Blade Runner had "piss-poor writing" because we are left unsure of whether or not Deckard is a replicant or not. Who cares about what the author's intent was, it's the end result and how the movie has an impact on us that matters.

 

All of these ideas you keep talking about are interesting - but if any of them was the actual intention of scriptwriters, it was communicated absolutely horribly, which is kind of bad for a movie of this caliber. You can argue all you want with your interpretations of events, but it doesn't change the fact that *while watching the movie*, most people saw Kylo as an utterly incompetent fighter with no redeeming qualities to make him an interesting villain.

 

IMO this tells us that most people were not paying attention. As evidenced by the many reactions to this movie who do not appear to have caught what the director was hinting at. But "most people are stupid and don't pay attention, nor do they know a lot about Star Wars" does not seem like particularly shocking news.

[Rostere]

It is obvious that Ren has some emotional problems. Its beyond me why Luke would even consider showing him the ways of the Force. As the past has showed us, training those with emotional problems, self control, lead to nothing but problems.

But we don't know just how bad he was before. Presumably Snoke has been feeding his disorders.

 

We also just know he was sent to Luke, and that he did some training, but not exactly what and how he trained. Supposedly Luke must have tried to turn him around, and never showed him true power (it seems stupid to learn an unstable individual how to kill), which must have frustrated Kylo a lot.

 

Again, i disagree. If evil is something petty and simple, it's not frightning or something to be feared and thus, a very boring plot device in a movie.

I don't think you get the point. Evil is both powerful and frightening and petty and simple at the same time. Adolf Hitler was at some point a destitute guy who made incomprehensible rants to homeless people, a failed artist scrounging for Jewish patrons in Vienna, an accomplice in a naive and pathetic coup attempt, a member of an upstart party with laughable ufologist-tier pretentions. Then he became the leader of the most powerful country on the continent. We can't make sense out of Adolf Hitler of we don't see the crazy homeless guy, the failed artist, and his many other aspects when we analyze his personality. Similarly to make sense out of Nazism we must look at the state of the German society at the time.

 

Evil is almost always connected with certain petty and pathetic things such as inferiority complexes, or even motivations which makes us question if evil is really so evil after all. We can't look at just the "frightening" part or we will lose connection with reality. If you do not give the complete nuanced picture of evil, then you are looking at a children's superhero cartoon. Which incidentally I think are harmful to the intellect due to the lobotimized, simplified depiction of conflicts.

 

Then we have to agree to disagree. While petty evil, like simple stealing and bullying is a part of life, it is also the most easiest to resist, both mentally and physically. Evil done well, is when it is metaphysical force of nature with a philosophical foundation that weak men are easily succumbed to, thanks to either their fears and vices. I am thinking of the Sith Academy mission on Korriban in KotOR 1, as well as the arguments used in the original SW movies about order and the allure to power.

 

Thus being a good person and doing good is inheritly inherently more difficult to be, and more difficult to overcome, which leaves it much more gratifying when it prevails in the end.

Petty does not equal simple. Someone can done something very terrible for a very petty reason - that's evil.

 

Well, based on this movie, one can easily say that the dark side, or evil itself, is not seductive, terrifying or alluring in any way. It's more like a ****roach; it's annoying, pestering and just don't go away, no matter how many times you want to brush it off.

 

Such evil is empty of any foundation and thus as interesting as the motives of football hooligans. Heck, even the Wicked Queen in Snow White had more character and motives than Kylo.

Of course it is. The Dark Side seduced Kylo Ren, and is at the foundation of Snoke's beliefs it appears. Of course everything was kept very mysterious. If anything, I'd say the Dark Side was shown to be very mysterious in TFA. Kylo Ren is seduced by both the Light and the Dark, but it is only one of them he actually wants to serve. We haven't seen the Dark seducing any characters yet, true. But believe me when I say that Rey will be tempted later on. This is left for later movies.

 

In any case, the Dark Side is even more banal in the OT. We get Vader who essentially has the personality of a robot doing his job, and the Emperor who is a cackling evil wizard stereotype. We have zero idea about why anyone should choose the Dark Side, apart from that it is supposedly powerful. But the good guys always beat the bad guys in the end anyway, so it's clearly not that powerful.

[Meshugger]

For the #shotsfired on the internet..

 

 

Why is there a lamp-post behind Kylo?

[Fenixp]

Kylo doesn't have any kind of "power curve", you should pay attention to the movie and what it conveys about the different characters. I don't even know if you have actually watched the movie or just read summaries because you don't seem to have understood anything about what was going on.

Yes. I clearly have not watched the same movie since I dare to disagree with you :-P Look, just about everything you wrote is based on speculation. There's very little evidence in the movie actually supporting it, aside from the bowcaster hit, which I never really disputed. That was my point all along - Force Awakens failed at communicating its intent properly. There's only ever so many scenarios I'm willing to construct to make a fictional story work, and for Force Awakens to fully work for me, I'd have to write an entire second movie script in my head. Force Awakens tries hard to convey concepts which were not explored in the original trilogy without realizing that you also need to divert screen time from pretty explosion to properly explore these concepts.

 

Why do you throw in the assumption that the movie had "piss-poor writing" as a reason for the plot when this is completely irrelevant for whether or not it was good?

Perhaps because I don't think it was particularly good, so "bad writing" kinda presents itself?

 

This kind of reasoning reminds me of the particular kind of retard which holds that Blade Runner had "piss-poor writing" because we are left unsure of whether or not Deckard is a replicant or not. Who cares about what the author's intent was, it's the end result and how the movie has an impact on us that matters.

Except Blade Runner actually put massive amount of effort into presenting its dilemma to the viewer before leaving itself open to interpretation. There's a huge difference between being open to interpretation and quite simply not conveying sufficient amount of information in the first place.

 

IMO this tells us that most people were not paying attention. As evidenced by the many reactions to this movie who do not appear to have caught what the director was hinting at. But "most people are stupid and don't pay attention, nor do they know a lot about Star Wars" does not seem like particularly shocking news.

*sigh* Do we really have to do this? Should I retort with "Well you're stupid and you stink because you don't think what I think" or something along these lines or can we just drop this genuinely dumb line of argumentation?

[Blarghagh]

Alright, holidays over so I guess I should do some moderating again. This thread is about 6 pages over the limit, so its closed. Make a new Star Wars thread if you want.