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Star Wars VII - Open spoilers

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I hope that Snoke guy turns out to be a product placement for e-cigarettes

The apprentice will be called Darth Vaper

Spoilered the offensively mature cheese of a dad joke there.

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I went to see this again today with my family, and I think I might have assumed a wrong thing about the plot?

 

I thought General Ginger said something about how his clones were perfect, and that Phasma made such a thing out of taking off the helmet because of some kind of clone code of customs or whatever. And that one Stormtrooper recognizes him on a busy battlefield and yells, "Traitor!" so I assumed it was because he would know exactly what he looked like because they uh... all look the same? And Finn makes those awkward jokes about, "This is what a Resistance fighter looks like. I mean, not all of them, obviously. Some of them look different."

 

I thought it was pretty openly stated that Finn was a clone and the Stormtroopers were a new clone army, but my sister very vehemently disagreed with me! Am I wrong?

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I think I remember Finn saying he was taken from his birth-parents and raised as a stormtrooper. Maybe I'm mistaken though.

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That's a fair point, I guess it's ambiguous until the next movies come out.

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It's not ambiguous. Phasma would like to bring an elite clone army in, but the blond baddie general insists his brainwashed from birth regular folk army is just as good.

I wonder if the clones are old guys and there are only a few left.

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I wonder if the clones are old guys and there are only a few left.

 

That's addressed in the second season of Star Wars Rebels actually (which is set in between the prequels and the original series).

 

The clones were adults during the Clone Wars, so I doubt there would be any left by the time of the events of The Force Awakens.

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I went to see this again today with my family, and I think I might have assumed a wrong thing about the plot?

I thought General Ginger said something about how his clones were perfect, and that Phasma made such a thing out of taking off the helmet because of some kind of clone code of customs or whatever. And that one Stormtrooper recognizes him on a busy battlefield and yells, "Traitor!" so I assumed it was because he would know exactly what he looked like because they uh... all look the same? And Finn makes those awkward jokes about, "This is what a Resistance fighter looks like. I mean, not all of them, obviously. Some of them look different."

I thought it was pretty openly stated that Finn was a clone and the Stormtroopers were a new clone army, but my sister very vehemently disagreed with me! Am I wrong?

I remember at one point someone saying "still think it was a good idea to stop using clones" and he replies

"My men are solid, trained from birth"

That's the gist anyway. Seeing it again on Tuesday will listen out

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I re-watched RotJ and I had forgotten how much if that movie takes place on Tatooine and the forest moon of Endor, and how bad that stuff is. All the space stuff is great but it's such a small part of the movie. TFA is definitely better.

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I remember at one point someone saying "still think it was a good idea to stop using clones" and he replies

"My men are solid, trained from birth"

That's the gist anyway. Seeing it again on Tuesday will listen out

 

Yea, it was said that Storm Troopers like Finn were kidnapped from their families and brainwashed into subservience.

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Yea, it was said that Storm Troopers like Finn were kidnapped from their families and brainwashed into subservience.

 

Speaking of which, this is one of the more irritating aspects of Finn's character.  Finn could have been a substantive character with a lot of conflicting emotions.  But he was just an incompetent goofball.  What part of the way Finn acts screams "brainwashed storm trooper"?  In the film itself, one of the New Order guys even claims some absurdly low defection rate.  If their brainwash techniques are so damn good, why does Finn appear to be utterly unaffected?

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Yea, it was said that Storm Troopers like Finn were kidnapped from their families and brainwashed into subservience.

So stormtroopers are basically spartans now. Are we going to see some Halo crossover?

Speaking of which, this is one of the more irritating aspects of Finn's character.  Finn could have been a substantive character with a lot of conflicting emotions.  But he was just an incompetent goofball.  What part of the way Finn acts screams "brainwashed storm trooper"?  In the film itself, one of the New Order guys even claims some absurdly low defection rate.  If their brainwash techniques are so damn good, why does Finn appear to be utterly unaffected?

Maybe he'll end up being force sensitive and that somehow makes him different? or it's a very low defection rate, and not a 0% defection rate, so he's a part of the 1% I guess.

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Speaking of which, this is one of the more irritating aspects of Finn's character.  Finn could have been a substantive character with a lot of conflicting emotions.  But he was just an incompetent goofball.  What part of the way Finn acts screams "brainwashed storm trooper"?  In the film itself, one of the New Order guys even claims some absurdly low defection rate.  If their brainwash techniques are so damn good, why does Finn appear to be utterly unaffected?

 

I'm sure other people think this too but Me and my sisters theory on this is that both Finn and Rey were (very young) pupils at Luke's Jedi academy who escaped the slaughter.

 

Rey is obviously the more force sensitive of the two but Finn has a affinity too, which partly explains why he's partially resistant to brainwashing. If he has been present at the slaughter this would also give another reason for him not being able to bring himself to slaughter civilians, not only is he free of the brainwashing but that he also has a repressed trauma of surviving such a slaughter. It would also explain his "love at first sight" reaction to rey, because it would actually be him remembering a connection he had rather than a overwhelming reaction to someone he's never met before. Just because he doesn't remember having a proper name doesn't mean he never had one, it depends what age young storm troopers are taken at. 

His silver armoured commander also seems to take more interest in him than perhaps a normal commander would be expected to, and since she (i think the commanders a she?) showed up in Reys vision of the massacre there's a possibility she saved the young/infant finn in a moment of humanity and had him inducted into the storm troopers rather than kill him.

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This is a bit of a generalized comment, but the part of me that loves irony in its truest definition has gotten a kick out of the people who cheered the death of the old Expanded Universe canon — because they felt that it involved too many retreads of the original trilogy's plot structure, too many uses of the original trilogy's characters as lynchpins and/or MacGuffins, and too many superweapons that functioned only to raise the stakes and to be destroyed — absolutely losing their minds at how much they love The Force Awakens... which could be said to have all of those same faults.

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Yeah but there's still less of that since there were tons of those books and only one new movie ;)

My biggest beef with that stuff was how every character in the movie had a huge backstory full of incredible stuff written for them. Of course the prequels and even the originals are guilty of manufacturing connections between the characters. Stuff like C3PO being built by Darth Vader for no reason at all.

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I was thinking the other day about how I found most of the EU stories a bit hokey and fan-fictiony, but for no justifiable reason. For example, Palpatine cloning himself. Maybe because it means there can never be a satisfying conclusion if he's got backups all over the place. I always think clones and copies and meta-mecha-versions of things are such lazy writing.

However, I had no problem with the clones and the clone wars, etc. in the films. It's established in-universe that these capabilities exist, but if Snoke turned out to be a dodgy Palpatine clone, I'd hate it. Weird.

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However, I had no problem with the clones and the clone wars, etc. in the films. It's established in-universe that these capabilities exist, but if Snoke turned out to be a dodgy Palpatine clone, I'd hate it. Weird.

 

That will be hard for me to accept too, but I have to admit that was my initial thought. I'm giving them a partial pass with all the call backs in this first movie, but I really need to see them move past Episode 4-6 if I'm going to enjoy these new movies.

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I saw this and loved it.

 

I think the original Star Wars movies were some of the first movies I ever watched as a kid and I've watched them countless times since so I am squarely in the 'lifelong Star Wars fan' camp. I appreciated all the callbacks and retreads quite a bit in this one actually because for me, those are defining elements of Star Wars. Big Death Star weapon, young person discovering the force, escaping from a miserable life on a desert planet, etc. Seeing those things just set me at ease and made me feel much more comfortable about where these movies are going relative to what happened with the prequel trilogy. I know a lot of people wanted a different kind of movie that took more risks and wasn't as Star Wars-y but I'm glad they played it pretty safe with this one. With all the super high expectations going in, it would have been pretty easy to fuck this up but I thought it ended up holding together pretty nicely.

 

I think what ultimately made it work for me though were all of the little details and plot points that were subverted within that familiar framewrok. I was actually really impressed by the big surprise that Rey was the force sensitive person. Every trailer leading up to the movie and the freaking movie poster itself shows Finn with Luke's lightsaber and from their marketing I was so convinced that that was a foregone conclusion that it wasn't until she actually started figuring out how to use the force that I realized that maybe I had been had by their marketing. I also really liked that she was able to start figuring out how to do some of these things without a Jedi master to guide her. That was actually a pretty big risk to take with this movie considering how strictly The Formula mandates always needing a master to teach someone the ways of the force (and ironically, one of the few risks they do take with The Formula is one that a lot of people seem to be bothered by because it doesn't stick to The Formula). It makes her special compared to all the Jedi we've seen before and I hope they do some more interesting things with that. Like maybe she is capable of siphoning off people's force powers (could explain how she was able to beat Kylo Ren) or is just so combat proficient already (she was pretty badass with that bo staff) that any further enhancement from the force just makes her unstoppable. And I freaking love that it is only after she discovered her powers and beat the shit out of Kylo that she finds Luke and then the movie just ends without him saying a word. As much as it stuck to The Formula, it feels like they deviated in some pretty key ways that leaves a lot of doors open for some new unexpected stuff. I have my fingers crossed that Finn and Rey turn out to be brother and sister (everyone is expecting it to be Kylo and Rey but given certain expectations that have been subverted so far, I don't think it would be a stretch that Finn and Rey are actually siblings and were separated at birth with Finn going to Stormtrooper school and Rey getting abandoned on Jakku) but it is actually the sister that has super force powers this time. 

 

There were parts of this movie that weren't great and could have been better and I think a lot of the criticisms are fair. Parts of it are corny and don't make much sense and a lot of the bad guys are kind of goofy but that's pretty par for the course with Star Wars. I think this movie did exactly what it needed to do and they effortlessly passed the baton to the new cast. I was actually surprised that, aside from Han Solo and Chewie, the rest of the original cast were barely even shown.

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I thought they were setting up romantic potential between Rey and Finn, because their being siblings would be very much a stretch, no?

Does Rey have a surname?

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I mean, I wouldn't be surprised if Rey is Luke's kid and is therefore Kylo's cousin, but sibling? I would be surprised if that's where they went for her with either Finn or Kylo.

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I just saw it for the second time.

 

I wouldn't be surprised if Rey is Luke's daughter - but I also wouldn't be surprised if she's not family to any of them.

 

I want Finn and Poe to get together.

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