17th Dec - Star Wars: The Force Awakens

[seremtan]

In the cinema now homos... scared?

no but the guy in front of you probably should be

[Flex Donkey]

but was it awesome?

Yeah I loved it, but it's not perfect. 8.5, maybe 9 out of 10. Will watch again in a couple of weeks.

If you aren't a big fan of the originals you probably wouldn't think it's anything too special though.

But yeah I loved it.

[scared?]

What a moronic review... Lol dumb ppl...

[Flex Donkey]

You're just upset I didn't say it was shit.

[seremtan]

was there excessive lens flare, or did JJ control himself this time around?

i don't think this would count as a spoiler

[Flex Donkey]

Nothing excessive.

[scared?]

BANNED!!!...

[Captain]

I'm seeing it on Tuesday.

Nerd frenzy.

You paid money for rickety football stadium seats that a million pear-shaped mongoloids have shuffled their swamp asses across.

[phantasmagoria]

You gonna stay seated during the creditroll so you can show all your bros that you post on a 15 year old message board with the guy who sculpted Kylo Ren's helmet and all first order designs? That's cool bro, I don't mind :up:

fucking hell you are awesome! :up:

i mean that!

love you too plained <3

[scared?]

Okay I saw it... This is what happens...

The emperor almost kills Luke than his dad grabs him and throws him over a railing... The emperor dies and the ewoks rule the universe... The end...

[shaft]

I would give it a solid 8/10.

Also I think we should use the spoiler tag in this thread for another week. If you haven't seen it by then you probably don't care.

[spoiler]How long should Memphis be banned for posting a major spoiler pre-release out of spite?[/spoiler]

[shaft]

It's really good!

You did a great job, congrats.

[U4EA]

Just saw it today, I thought it was great. Some fan service but still a solid film in its own right. Love the new characters too.

It's really good!

You did a great job, congrats.

Aye, well done phant

Did you really sculpt Kylo Ren's helmet? Any other noteworthy things that felt the delicate touch of your hands?

[shaft]

Some thoughts.

[spoiler]Wasn't a huge fan of Death Star part 3. A lot of it felt like A New Hope rebooted. Part of me wonders if Kylo and Rey are going to turn out to be twins.
Was let down by how little Phasma was in it considering the hype from the trailer and Gwendoline Christie doing the press-junket. Seemed like a character to sell another toy at this point.
BB-8 was great and im glad they kept the kiddie cantina ewok shit out of it.[/spoiler]

[U4EA]

[spoiler]Wasn't a huge fan of Death Star part 3. A lot of it felt like A New Hope rebooted. Part of me wonders if Kylo and Rey are going to turn out to be twins.
Was let down by how little Phasma was in it considering the hype from the trailer and Gwendoline Christie doing the press-junket. Seemed like a character to sell another toy at this point.
BB-8 was great and im glad they kept the kiddie cantina ewok shit out of it.[/spoiler]

[spoiler]Agreed about the similarities with the Death Star, down to the method of destroying it. That was the weakest bit of it for me.

I think Rey's vision when she first touched the light sabre sort of indicated a connection to the Skywalker family. I think she's pretty much either got to be Leia and Han's kid [perhaps her and Kylo are just siblings and not twins?], or Luke's daughter [but then who's the mother she was separated from?].

This article has a bunch of speculation and theories.
http://www.vox.com/2015/12/18/10513896/ ... s-rey-luke

I didn't realize Brienne was the silver Storm Trooper. She looked pretty bad ass but didn't really do much.

BB-8 is super delightful. He carried the mantle of lovable droid very well.[/spoiler]

[scared?]

Is shaft banned now?...

[phantasmagoria]

Did you really sculpt Kylo Ren's helmet? Any other noteworthy things that felt the delicate touch of your hands?

Yeah man :). I sculpted it in zBrush and we got it SLA 3D printed, I cleaned up the print and made a silicone mould so we could have multiples. I prepped it for the chrome and put all the internals in it too, another guy did the paint tho.

Working with a 2D concept artist I did all the 3D concept sculpts for the troopers, the flame troopers, the snowtroopers and the fighter pilots (both xwing and tie). I moulded the tie, snowtrooper and flametrooper helmets as well as stuck at least 50% of them together and applied the vinyls, I made quite a few master patterns for their armour too.

Erm, I did the chest box on the x wing pilots and shitloads of stuff that isn't worth mentioning too.

It was fun (and still is - on Episode VIII now). Dream come true job.

[U4EA]

Nicely done man. So happy for you. Not many of us can truly say that about our jobs.

[xer0s]

Only guy on here I'm envious of...

[Transient]

Some thoughts.

[spoiler]Wasn't a huge fan of Death Star part 3. A lot of it felt like A New Hope rebooted. Part of me wonders if Kylo and Rey are going to turn out to be twins.
Was let down by how little Phasma was in it considering the hype from the trailer and Gwendoline Christie doing the press-junket. Seemed like a character to sell another toy at this point.
BB-8 was great and im glad they kept the kiddie cantina ewok shit out of it.[/spoiler]

[spoiler]I couldn't shake the feeling that I had seen this movie before. I still enjoyed it, but it was all too familiar. When the Rebels finished expositioning how they were going to blow up the Death Star 3 in that War Room, I half-expected them to all turn and look at the camera. [/spoiler]

[Whiskey 7]

Nicely done man. So happy for you. Not many of us can truly say that about our jobs.

Yes, I am a closet fan phantasmagoria

[MKJ]

I'll post some more thoughts later, but for now I'll just have to say two things.

[spoiler]1) excellent how they gave us trailers to analyse only to find out those were doctored.[/spoiler]

Since I can't speak to JJ or Kasdan directly I'll settle for the closest I'll ever get and turn myself to phant when I say
[spoiler]Fuck. You.
You know what you did.

CUNT.[/spoiler]

[MKJ]

Alright so.
This movie is good. It reminded me of Guardians of the Galaxy, in that it's a good movie regardless of the IP it's based on. Funny, dramatic, tense, and in the right balance.
As an actual Star Wars movie it does hold up pretty well.

[spoiler]Things I liked:
- Excellent use of used future. Noone looks twice at all the tech and environments. As it should be.
- The subtlety of some one the references to old movies. The way the Falcon is introduced is topnotch and compliments the point above. The original targeting computer and Finn's reaction to the now clunky controls is great.
- Finn and Poe's chemistry. Shit these two are awesome even for the short while they're doing their thing together.
- Rey, Finn, BB8.
- Finn. So awesome.
- The way we don't get told certain things, but shown. The First Order is really evil (opposed to the Empire where we are just told that they are). Poe really is a great pilot. That shot where he takes down four TIES and some ground troops in one run. Yes.
- Kylo. Great villain with obvious conflict. Contrary to most people I liked that this guy was just some nerd underneath. He's obviously seduced by the Dark Side but doesn't really know why. Instead of following Vader's footsteps he's copying him. This guy has no idea of the power he's dealing with. Won't be surprised if he gets betrayed by his master after his role - whatever it might be - is fulfilled.

Stuff I didn't like
- Starkiller base. This thing came out of nowhere and is destroyed 20 mins later. Also, rehash much? It also seems like a very unwieldy piece of hardware. Building such a weapon in a space station makes sense. Converting a planet? What? How do they propel that thing to where it needs to be? Or are they saying it can only fire when its orbital position is optimal. "We will target the T'choori system! OK we just have little under a year before we can. Cool?"

- Too many locales. I get that they have to tick all the Star Wars boxes: sand desert, jungle, cantina, rebel base, enemy base. But I honestly couldn't remember why they were suddenly in a snowy environment, plotwise. It made for a cool landing scene with the Falcon sure, but it felt like a forced Hoth throwback.

- Supreme Leader, a little too LOTRy for me.

- The musical score was generic IMO. None of the themes really stuck other than the revisited classic themes.

- Leia. I get why she's there, to cement the bond between Kylo and Han. But let's face it, Fisher did not age well. That would've been ok if her acting didn't suffer, but it did. It was very distracting.

- Forced references to earlier films. Mentioned before the oldschool targeting computer was cool and subtle. The targeting ball (he kept this thing over 40 years?) and chess game not so much. Artoo, very much not.

Look, can we all agree that Threepio and Artoo should be retired from the series? They had zero role in this movie other than fanservice.
And Artoo going in "low power mode" after Luke disappeared? A mourning driod, really? Realistically, Artoo is nearing 80 years old now. Droids are disposable objects as we've seen numerous times in the series. Sure it's in good hands and he had a crucial role in the past but it makes no sense to keep this piece of (now most likely) obsolete tech around for so long. Even more so after it powered itself down for arguably 30 years. BB8 took over his part with bells on, it's time to pass the torch.
Not only that. If we look at the amount of time Artoo spent with Luke vs the amount of time he has been in existence (~3 vs ~80), there's no way this thing would attach itself so emotionally to Luke. He didn't go into mourning when ObiWan was killed did he? And he was right there when it happend. JJ pls.

Chewie felt a lot like a throwaway character and I expected him to be offed. Seriously, he manages to get wounded only so that Rey can take over the Falcon. Come to think of it, he got cast aside at pretty much every turn. Waste of screentime really.

All in all, would watch again. Some did feel a lot like ANH Revisited but that was mostly ok. Great groundwork being laid down for the new universe and characters. Can't wait to see where they're going with Kylo and Rey. If they turn out to be siblings I'm going to flip a table though.[/spoiler]

[HM-PuFFNSTuFF]

Alright so.
This movie is good. It reminded me of Guardians of the Galaxy, in that it's a good movie regardless of the IP it's based on. Funny, dramatic, tense, and in the right balance.
As an actual Star Wars movie it does hold up pretty well.

[spoiler]Things I liked:
- Excellent use of used future. Noone looks twice at all the tech and environments. As it should be.
- The subtlety of some one the references to old movies. The way the Falcon is introduced is topnotch and compliments the point above. The original targeting computer and Finn's reaction to the now clunky controls is great.
- Finn and Poe's chemistry. Shit these two are awesome even for the short while they're doing their thing together.
- Rey, Finn, BB8.
- Finn. So awesome.
- The way we don't get told certain things, but shown. The First Order is really evil (opposed to the Empire where we are just told that they are). Poe really is a great pilot. That shot where he takes down four TIES and some ground troops in one run. Yes.
- Kylo. Great villain with obvious conflict. Contrary to most people I liked that this guy was just some nerd underneath. He's obviously seduced by the Dark Side but doesn't really know why. Instead of following Vader's footsteps he's copying him. This guy has no idea of the power he's dealing with. Won't be surprised if he gets betrayed by his master after his role - whatever it might be - is fulfilled.

Stuff I didn't like
- Starkiller base. This thing came out of nowhere and is destroyed 20 mins later. Also, rehash much? It also seems like a very unwieldy piece of hardware. Building such a weapon in a space station makes sense. Converting a planet? What? How do they propel that thing to where it needs to be? Or are they saying it can only fire when its orbital position is optimal. "We will target the T'choori system! OK we just have little under a year before we can. Cool?"

- Too many locales. I get that they have to tick all the Star Wars boxes: sand desert, jungle, cantina, rebel base, enemy base. But I honestly couldn't remember why they were suddenly in a snowy environment, plotwise. It made for a cool landing scene with the Falcon sure, but it felt like a forced Hoth throwback.

- Supreme Leader, a little too LOTRy for me.

- The musical score was generic IMO. None of the themes really stuck other than the revisited classic themes.

- Leia. I get why she's there, to cement the bond between Kylo and Han. But let's face it, Fisher did not age well. That would've been ok if her acting didn't suffer, but it did. It was very distracting.

- Forced references to earlier films. Mentioned before the oldschool targeting computer was cool and subtle. The targeting ball (he kept this thing over 40 years?) and chess game not so much. Artoo, very much not.

Look, can we all agree that Threepio and Artoo should be retired from the series? They had zero role in this movie other than fanservice.
And Artoo going in "low power mode" after Luke disappeared? A mourning driod, really? Realistically, Artoo is nearing 80 years old now. Droids are disposable objects as we've seen numerous times in the series. Sure it's in good hands and he had a crucial role in the past but it makes no sense to keep this piece of (now most likely) obsolete tech around for so long. Even more so after it powered itself down for arguably 30 years. BB8 took over his part with bells on, it's time to pass the torch.
Not only that. If we look at the amount of time Artoo spent with Luke vs the amount of time he has been in existence (~3 vs ~80), there's no way this thing would attach itself so emotionally to Luke. He didn't go into mourning when ObiWan was killed did he? And he was right there when it happend. JJ pls.

Chewie felt a lot like a throwaway character and I expected him to be offed. Seriously, he manages to get wounded only so that Rey can take over the Falcon. Come to think of it, he got cast aside at pretty much every turn. Waste of screentime really.

All in all, would watch again. Some did feel a lot like ANH Revisited but that was mostly ok. Great groundwork being laid down for the new universe and characters. Can't wait to see where they're going with Kylo and Rey. If they turn out to be siblings I'm going to flip a table though.[/spoiler]

I agree with many of your points.

[spoiler]I only had a few bigger problems with the film, another death star, destroying another death star and wtf is up with the sun draining weapon? Once the Sun is drained you need no weapon, all the planets in that system are fucked anyway... not to mention that all the energy from a sun is probably un-containable. Oh and the parallels with Kylo and Rey and their force powers and them both obviously being the kids of past characters.[/spoiler]

[xer0s]

[Serious] I really appreciate y'all using the spoiler tags. I probably won't get to see it until next weekend...