"The Force Awakens" (with SPOILERS)

They put phasers on stun for this.

 

Is it bad form to mix franchises that way?

It's a small point, but one that gave me pause when watching the movie.

I was also left wondering how easy it was to spot the old footage woven into the battle at Scariff if you weren't looking for it. Somebody else brought up the same question about Tarkin. I thought it was a little jarring, but I knew about it going in.

 

Seriously, though, they made a point to say they didn't need to blow up a whole planet and would power down just to destroy the town after they had looted the temple and all.

 

Speaking of inconsistencies, how is it that in the Star Wars franchise, Vadar and the Emperor and Ren and the giant hologram guy could sense the force in all the folks but no one could sense it in Leia?

 

Sorry, I didn't doubt you the first time. Probably missed it one of the 15 times little OOP asked me a question. Hopefully, I will be more attentive when I watch it again without a somewhat bored 13-year-old.

That is one thing that makes me question the movie. I enjoyed it, but my sci-fi geek in training was not impressed. She liked Jyn and was excited by some of the cameos, but felt the movie was kind of slow. Star Wars in general has done a good job bringing in a new generation of fans, but I wonder how well this one works.

I know some of the kids watching would have enjoyed the references to the Star Wars: Rebels cartoon series. I've seen bits and pieces, but I did catch that the ship from the cartoon appeared with the Rebel fleet. Also, I read that the droid Chopper appears on screen in Rogue One, but missed him.

Part of me likes the connections. Part of me wants to tell the folks who tossed out the old expanded universe to kiss the business end of a Bantha.

 

There was a bit of a "get-where-you-going" aspect to parts of it. If you were into it, you were probably charmed by references and connections to the franchise movies.

 

Yeah. Presumably that was the first time they fired the main cannon.

In retrospect some of the statements Vader makes about Leia (her resistance to the mind probe, etc) indicate he knows she is unusually strong in the Force. But he certainly never gives any indication he suspects she's his daughter.

 

It's probably because George Lucas is full of shit about having it all planned out beforehand, and Leia was not originally intended to by Luke's sister, and Vader was not originally intended to be their father.

 

Agreed. I think after the success of the first Lucas got cooking on planning out the next two and had dreams of three prequels. Ep. IV always feels so self contained and complete that it leads me to believe there was no immediate plan for a second until after Lucas saw what a hit it was. Empire was so obviously supposed to carry over to Jedi that I think there was a bit of rewriting history a bit.

I really wish Lucas had either started on Eps. I-III shortly after Jedi or gotten the hell out of the way 15 years later. I know he wanted to focus on his family, but he really needed the momentum of Jedi behind him to write the prequels and he needed to not have all the damn CGI at his finger tips to do those three right. Once too much time had passed he should have given a shell for how he wanted the first three to go and left it up to everyone else to connect the dots and make a coherent story. Rogue 1 and The Force Awakens were so much better because there was no Lucas meddling.

 

It was, but they say in Rogue 1 they are only going to use one reactor to take out Jeda, so they are not hitting the planet with full power. So I guess giving the speakers a test run on 3 instead of going all the way to 11 on the first go. For Alderaan, they finally hit something at full blast.

 

OK, I was apparently confused (not hard to imagine) about what exactly was blown up in Rogue One. For some reason, I thought it was the entire planet, and not just the military base.

 

No, first one was just the city (Jedha or however they spell it) and the second was just the base (on Scariff or however they spell it).