Yup.

Pulsar wrote:And regarding Snoke, he reminded me of Voldemort. Yes, his cgi really stood out, and it could've been done with practical effects.

We never saw Snoke. We saw holograms of Snoke, and in the Star Wars Universe, holograms kind of suck. The way Snoke looked was consistent with this- and I think his evil makeup was way better than the crap they slapped on Palpatine at the end of the prequels. Of course, I object to evil people being ugly. I've always felt that attractive evil people would be more effective and more disturbing.

So, is he really that big?
I didn't care for the title "supreme leader".

The_Piper wrote:So, is he really that big?
I didn't care for the title "supreme leader".

Probably not, but who knows? You can do whatever you like with a hologram. He could even be pulling a Wizard of Oz sort of deal and look like a normal guy. I doubt it, though. Star Wars Universe doesn't look terribly friendly to my attractive baddy preference.

It would be cool if he was that big.

There are some limits to physics of humanoids

Not in science fiction, and certainly not Star Wars type scifi.

There was something about the way they pulled off the hologram scenes that had me thinking he really was that big. Either way my guess is Snokes is old. Older than Maz or whatever her name is. The Yoda clone.

I totally agree with this review from Tony Zhou (his youtube channel is Every Frame a Painting, highly recommended):

https://medium.com/@tonyszhou/the-force-awakens-is-a-deeply-broken-film-b-c-one-character-shouldn-t-be-there-spoilers-b31e33a44ee6#.pli8zuh5l

Han is a great character. He’s an iconic character. He deserves a fantastic death scene. He just shouldn’t be a part of this film.

As soon as you remove Han Solo, you remove an entire storyline that is irrelevant to our protagonists. In fact, you’re left with four characters and a far better, more interesting story:

• Rey, a young scavenger, waits on Jakku for her family to return. One day, she discovers a lightsaber that gives her visions. The lightsaber provides clues to finding its original owner, the man she believes to be her father, Luke Skywalker…
• Finn, a Force-Sensitive stormtrooper, can’t bring himself to murder innocent civilians. He abandons his post, goes AWOL, and vows to fight for good. Hearing rumors and following his Force-guided intuitions, he seeks the last remaining Jedi who can train him…
• Poe Dameron, a Resistance pilot, finds part of a map to Luke Skywalker’s last known location. Unable to communicate with the Resistance headquarters, he follows his most recent order, to find Skywalker and convince him to return…
• Kylo Ren, a Sith Lord and Luke’s nephew, wants desperately to live up to Darth Vader. When Kylo receives news of his uncle, he ignores the orders of his master Snoke and goes in search of Luke, to defeat the Last Jedi and take the glory for himself…

Pulsar wrote:I hate the prequels as much as anyone, but underneath all that cgi and horrible acting there was a compelling and original story.

Was there? Where?

I'm With Stupid wrote:

Pulsar wrote:I hate the prequels as much as anyone, but underneath all that cgi and horrible acting there was a compelling and original story.

Was there? Where?

I'm wondering the same thing. The stories might have been there, but if they were, they were on the cutting room floor, not on the big screen.

How Palpatine rose to power, deceived the senate and the Jedi counsel, and turned Anakin to the dark side. The execution was piss poor, but its scope was much grander than "oh, there's this evil empire and they have a super weapon that we need to destroy".

Badaboom

Star Wars: The Force Awakens blasts off with $529M opening weekend
Shattered records in Canada, the United States, Britain, Australia, Russia and beyond

http://www.cbc.ca/news/arts/star-wars-f ... -1.3375290

Pulsar wrote:How Palpatine rose to power, deceived the senate and the Jedi counsel, and turned Anakin to the dark side. The execution was piss poor, but its scope was much grander than "oh, there's this evil empire and they have a super weapon that we need to destroy".

You don't need to tell a big story to tell an interesting story. That's what made this movie better than the prequels. Lucas tried for a larger scope than this sort of movie can manage. Then, while we was abandoning a character-driven format for an events-driven format, he compounded the problem by leaving us with really shitty, partially rendered characters.

Star Wars was little more than a spaghetti western in space and that's the formula that worked.

dam Driver was terrific as well. I was worried they would turn him into another Vader, but I'm glad he isn't. He stands on his own as a vulnerable, conflicted character.

That would have been fine if he wasn't the central bad guy in the movie or it was a story about how he became the central bad guy but it was a story about good versus evil with evil being a bit crap. I can't decide he is just a crap bad guy or just the writers trying to be too clever and failing. The prequels were about a vulnerable conflicted character but you still had a very evil not vulnerable or conflicted pope (sorry Emperor)

I loved the movie, but was disappointed that they retreaded the 'X-wings taking out the death star' trope. Again. I don't think it would have been that hard to come up with a different catastrophe to be averted. Han's death was a good twist. But Carrie Fisher - too botoxed and photoshopped. A pity.

Made of Stars wrote:I loved the movie, but was disappointed that they retreaded the 'X-wings taking out the death star' trope. Again. I don't think it would have been that hard to come up with a different catastrophe to be averted. Han's death was a good twist. But Carrie Fisher - too botoxed and photoshopped. A pity.

We can only hope that they explore a little new territory now that they've treated the die-hard fans of the original trilogy. I do understand their reasoning. Lucas boned the films and then there was a lot of apprehension about them going to someone else. I see this film as a promise that they'll try to do better by the fans as well as the quite enjoyable romp that it was.

Next time they owe us more romping and less promising.

Just posting here to say that I would never post here just for the sake of saying that I'm not interested in Star Wars. That would be rude.

_&*(^(^__+Y^*&%({{PTYUO

I am currently reading the novelization of the film by Alan Dean Foster.
It seems he might have been given an earlier draft of the film, some of the dialogue is different, the Star Killer works through dark energy instead of drawing the power of the sun, and there are a few more scenes with characters that answer some of the issues that I had.
Might be they will appear on the DVD.
One of the things he states in the book is that Ren is very much unstable.
If things go his way, he has his control and he is powerful.
But if they don't, his control slips and he is weakened. The more things are out of his control, the less capable he is.
It also implies that rather than making him stronger like he believed, killing Han made him weaker.
So from having complete control of the troops to the series of failures at the end of the film as well as being shot, he is much weaker than he was when we see him at the beginning.
Though he couldn't really make a good case for Rey's sudden control of the force.
A podcast I was listening to also made the case that what may have snapped R2 awake was Rey showing up at the base, as the last time the group was there they had been captured.

Does anyone know who the StormTrooper was that Rey beguiled ???


http://www.cnn.com/2015/12/22/entertain ... index.html