re: Star Wars: TFA -Official Discussion Thread - Spoilers

No. I am 35% through the novelization of the movie. His name is Lor San Tekka. He is a member of the Church of the Force. This is his first appearance in any Star Wars movie, book, or comic book, I believe.

Man I hate getting caught at the bottom of a page. So I'll quote part of it here to get some discussion on a thought.

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My question is. Why would Obi-Wan call to her in both of his voices? Or were they after-images of him, at both points in time, imprinted on the lightsaber through the power of Vader and Luke?

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Also, have we ever seen the payoff from Kenobi's line from ANH? "If you strike me down, I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine." Yes, he had been given the knowledge to allow himself to live on within the Force itself. But he doesn't really do anything with it. He throws a few extra tidbits into the Luke's training, but that's mostly it outside of "Use the Force Luke." Was he simply referring to the destruction of the death star, and Luke's ascension to Jedi? Because without his death, the first never occurs, and the second was at the very least accelerated through his death.

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It's not like it had characters from episode 4-6, 30 years later, with the events of episode 6 impacting the environment if episode 7...oh, wait.

There were maybe 2 or 3 similarities and everything thinks they are Rainman picking out patterns. This is a very different movie from episode 4, and a better movie at that.

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If this had been billed as a remake and this EXACT movie had been put out and the only difference was that they renamed Han Solo and Leia to other generic names and ended the movie with the destruction of the weapon, no one would've batted an eye.

shite. I was half expecting the Millenium Falcon to kill one of the trailing Tie Fighters in the final targeting scene.

Cmon. "Very" different? Pahleez. Different, MAYBE. VERY different. Yeah.........no.

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I was half expecting the Millenium Falcon to kill one of the trailing Tie Fighters in the final targeting scene

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Did you seriously use a similarity that did not occur to somehow prove your point?

There were more than just 2-3 similarities

Rebel droid given vital information from owner who is trying to escape imperial forces on a dessert planet, but is captured. Droid wanders and finds main character who is force sensitive, after being captured by alien creature. Main character meets up with unknown companion and escapes imperial pursuit on the Millenium Falcon. Main character and companion team up with Han Solo and Chewie and help the rebellion as well as rescue someone from Death Star. We learn a Death Star is able to destroy planets, rebellion sets out to defeat Death Star before it destroys them.

Now, which movie am I talking about?

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Rebel droid given vital information from owner who is trying to escape imperial forces on a dessert planet, but is captured. Droid wanders and finds main character who is force sensitive, after being captured by alien creature. Main character meets up with unknown companion and escapes imperial pursuit on the Millenium Falcon. Main character and companion team up with Han Solo and Chewie and help the rebellion as well as rescue someone from Death Star. We learn a Death Star is able to destroy planets, rebellion sets out to defeat Death Star before it destroys them.

Now, which movie am I talking about

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And, I think you only covered about 20% of the similarities.

Hell. I think that if posted straight up synopsis of A New Hope in the "no spoilers" thread, they'd delete you for posting "spoilers".

Something in that I wrote in a different thread, with a touch of extra thrown in.

Fisher was better than I expected, but compared to the rest of the cast she was very noticeable. Her facial expressions were actually decent, but her spoken word was...we'll say rough to be nice. 

Out of the major stars, she was the worst, and Boyega behind her. Though he really seemed to get the rhythm of the character in the third act. He was appreciably better imo. He will be good to go moving forward. 

In regards to Ford. He comes across as old at times, and yes I realize some of it was by design, but some of it wasnt. He can still act but he doesn't have the energy, nor presence, he once did. However, in certain scenes he really showed us what he is capable of. He was fairly magnificent in the third act, minus his interactions with Fisher. Those scenes with Driver were Ford at his best. Driver, despite being good there, pulled me out of the depth of the scene where Han pulled me in. Similar to Boyega having to find the character(which by the way, is a beautiful simile to the character he is playing), Ford seemed like he was in an old suit that didn't quite fit in a few early moments. 

Ridley was a revelation. She had some moments that were shaky, but she was amazing for her first major role.

Driver was as expected.

For the record, I loved it. Every second was pure delight. This is the first Star Wars I've ever seen in theaters(29). I choked up in spots, I wanted to curse in spots, and I laughed in spots. Star Wars felt good again. I can only imagine what the OT was like for children at the time, but I hope they felt what I did 100x over when watching TFA. 

As Han said. "We're Home"


Also,

This

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But da fuq? It was a straight up remake.

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While a tiny bit true, is also a whole Lotta false. I think this film was JJ showing the fans it's in good hands. He pays homage to the OT, shows that the OT is the benchmark, and adds in enough easter eggs for the nerded out fans to love**, all while turning the saga on its ear.

I think the movie made it obvious. This is Ridley's, and to a certain degree Driver's, trilogy. However, Rey's is this saga's Luke. The earliest scene I saw pointing to Rey as Luke's daughter was her wearing the helmet at the foot of the downed ATAT, and staring into the distance. That scene pretty much sealed it for me.

JJ gave us a bridge into the new with this movie. He gave us what every Star Wars fan wanted, and now we can move on. In some ways he even made a high priced fan flick. Hats off to him. He can't make everyone happy, and if the biggest whining is that it's too much like the OT. Well He, and I, can live with that. Because Lucas showed us what a Star Wars movie looks like when you ignore the OT, 3x over


BTW, were the only major mysteries we solved Kylo Ren's lineage, where's Luke, who from the OT dies, and what does Snoke look like? Still a ton of meat left on the bone.

**My favorite egg was when Finn threw Luke's training ball while looking for medical supplies to help Chewie.

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While a tiny bit true, is also a whole Lotta false. I

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This is the way I see it. Someone soon who has never seen any of them will start with Episode 1 and watch it all the way through.

After the first 6 episodes do you not think that they'll think, "... What the hell? Didn't we already do this? I mean, Episode 6 was called Return of the Jedi, the Empire was destroyed... and now a duplicate Empire is trying to find the last Jedi so that they can kill him."

It's almost like what the hell was the purpose of the first 6 if we're just starting over?

Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed the movie, the effects were great, and I'm glad Luke did make an actual appearance at the end (and I'm excited to see 8), but it was pretty damn similar to the original film.

Even Abrams knew it when they had the scene about the planet killer when someone said, "it's another Death Star!" and the only response was something like, "well no... it's bigger!!!"

The main plot to take down the big huge star-base was the same, sure Rey is from a desert planet just like luke, the rebels (resistance) are on a hidden planet that the empire (first order) finds out about. Yeah they are trying to find a droid who has important information in him. But there is plenty of differences to make the movie a-lot different in the future.

A new Hope was about saving princess Leia from the Death Star, then once they escaped stopping the death star from blowing up the rebel base.

In this movie, everyone is trying to find Luke Skywalker, who has gone into hiding after the Jedi he was training turn against him. Smoke wants his apprentice to find him, so that he can kill him to remove any threat against the first order. The movie starts out completely different and ends differently too.

While in a new hope the place where they find Han, is very similar to where they find this short green woman (I don't remember her name sorry) what happens there is much different.

In a New Hope Vader doesn't need any more training, in this movie Ren does.

There is enough difference for it not to be a remake but more of a movie that is new but includes elements that respect the past movies. When I rewatched it a second time the only part of the movie that seemed like a repeat of a new hope was the plot to destroy the Death Star. Which isn't too unreasonable, especially considering how the first order really looks up to the Empire, considering they use the same style uniforms (just not clones) same style ships, etc.

I think we are going to see many differences in the upcoming films, with maybe some shout outs to the old movies just like this one. We can only speculate.

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It's pretty obvious she is Luke's daughter at-least in my view. What sealed it for me was actually the music they choose to use near the end of the movie. Next time you go watch it pay attention to the melody that plays when Leia and Rey hug. It should, if you know the music from ROTJ, be pretty obvious why that certain melody is played. I could just come out and say it, but I want people looking for it, more fun that way. 

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Great, now I have to wait till I see it in IMAX next week.

Sigh.

Beyond those two, Maz's statement about the lightsaber, and her leading Rey to say Luke's name were fairly obvious as well.

Luke tearing up also kinda gave it away. I think the reason he left her on Jakku and not with Han/Leia. Was because he knew how powerful she had the potential to be, and without him there, she would be in extreme danger her entire life. So he placed her on a world in the middle of the nowhere to protect her. Seeing them togethere at the end was a more powerful moment than it currently seems. Something I don't think we will understand till after this trilogy is over.

Regarding her potential, she over powered Kylo within 30 seconds of feeling the Force in her mind. Then again in the forest. Her learning curve was incredible. I got the distinct impression she will be the most powerful Skywalker yet.