Official Star Wars Thread

[EricJ]

On the night of the film's official release, The Graham Norton Show had Daisy Ridley, John Boyega, and Carrie Fisher (along with Kylie Minogue and later David Beckham) as guests. A discussion about Carrie becoming a sex symbol as Princess Leia led to her giving Daisy a heads up of what's to come for her.

Only grumpy, sour old Carrie Fisher and anti-fanboy "They don't have SEX, like we do!" cliche' comics think "a generation of thirteen-year old fanboys masturbated over images of Slave Leia". Yes, it's a popular convention cosplay costume, but speaking as one who was there at the time, putting her in the same scene as Jabba the Hutt was a major cold shower.

And that goes for any similar nerd-bashing cliche's about fanboys having similar hormonal reactions over Angelina Jolie in "Tomb Raider"...What a POC that was, once you actually rushed to the theater.
(Now, Princess Jasmine, OTOH... )

[Dan]

According to the Hollywood Reporter, Force Awakens broke another record in scoring the biggest box office intake on New Year's Day with $34.5 million (surpassing the previous record set by Avatar with $25.3 million in 2009, interestingly the last time the holiday fell on a Friday).

It currently sits with a total domestic gross of $686.4 million, overtaking Jurassic World and Titanic to be the second highest grossing film of all-time in North America. Hollywood Reporter projects that, at its current pace, Force Awakens will dethrone Avatar ($760.8 million) as the highest grossing film of all-time in North America by Tuesday-Wednesday.

[Ben]

...and it has at least another month to play out, plus China!

[Dan]

Indeed. Box Office Mojo projects Force Awakens will be 4th all-time world-wide by the end of Monday.

If not sooner...

[Dacey]

It's worth noting that Star Wars isn't nearly as well-known in China as it is elsewhere, so it remains a bit of a wild card how it will perform there.

Still, while beating the worldwide gross remains up in the air, it's going to top Avatar's domestic gross on Tuesday or Wednesday. Impressive. Most impressive.

(And I still think that Disney is going to choose to push Episode 8 back to Christmas--to give them "more time for the special effects" or something--after this kind of success. It's true that Star Wars has always been a "summer thing," but the new trilogy could easily become a Christmas thing after this. Plus, Disney has four major tentpoles set for release during the summer of 2017 (in addition to Guardians, there's Cars 3, Spider-Man and Pirates 5), but they have nothing big currently lined up for December. So my hunch still stands, even if I may end up having to eat crow yet again on this one. )

[Bill1978]

I posted my thoughts at a different forum, I wanted to share my thoughts with you good people, but am too lazy to type up new thoughts, so I just copied and pasted my original thoughts here:

Finally found time in my life to head to the theatre to check out Episode VII. I must say it was very satsifying to return to the galaxy. But it has been a few days since I saw the film and I must say the best way to describe my feelings to the movie is that it is like Chinese food. It is satsifying while you are eating it but afterwards it just leaves you feeling a bit empty andwanting something else to feel the gap. This may sound like I hated the movie, I didn't but I don't think it is a moviethat deserves accolades being thrown on to it. Mainly because it really is just A New Hope with the characters being moved around on the chess baord a bit to make it feel like we are seeing something original.

The success of this movie does make me hope that Hollywood sits up and pays a bit of attention. I'm hoping the success will allow a return to true orchestral scores and I honestly hope the success encourages movie makers to reembrace actual sets and models and reduce their reliance on computer based effects. While I will never outright hate the PT, the main part of that trilogy that annoyed me was Lucas' reliance on the green screen for everything. It was really nice to see that the actors were literally walking around in their environment and not having to imagine where they were.

My negatives with the film include:

1) I ignored any EU stuff because to be honest I didn't like the path they took I could easily justify to myself it didn't matter because it didn't happen in the movies. And since Star Wars started life as movies then only movies were the canon in my head. Unfortunately this movie now makes it fact that main characters will have an evil offspring. And sadly, now Han will be dead. Where before this movie I could pretend everyone lived happily ever after

2) I must be the only person who doesn't like the final shot. The whole time they were circling I was thinking "Just grab the damn lightsaber Luke" I didn't like how the ending was a cliff hanger. The previous six movies all ended with a definite ending. Even Empire concluded. Even if Chewie and Lando were flying away to another adventure. The beginning of ach movie didn't need to start with the end of the previous movie. But now Rey and Luke will be standing on that cliff for 18 months, and Episode VIII needs to begin with some sort of resolution to the cliff top stand off.

3) I needed more interaction between C-3PO and R2-D2. There is that one short exchange where R2 clearly bags out 3PO. Maybe I laughed harder than I should have, but man that exchange showed me how I miss those two and their exchanges.

4) I think the most unnecessary line in the movie was 3PO pointing out his red arm to Han. I just don't think 3PO would ever say something so obvious. I think it seemed so pointless cause they never went into any detail to why he has a red arm. He never walked around A New Hope pointing out his silver leg. In fact, I was so non observant I had no idea he actually had a single silver leg until George Lucas mentioned something about its origin being explained in the prequel trilogy.

I would definitely recommend the movie to people but I don't think it is as mind blowingly awesome as my Facebook feed made me think it was. I honestly would place it at #4 in over all satisfaction with the movie. I think my big issue with the movie is that I don't know what the big picture is for the trilogy. Episode IV worked well as a stand alone film about a farm boy beating the Big Bad. Episode V-VI was about destroying the Empire. Episode I-III was about how Luke's father became Darth Vader. But what is the big picture for this new trilogy? Considering the new movies are designed as a trilogy, I just didn't get a big picture vibe of what was going to happen in the next two movies. Yes there are questions that need to be answered but what is the main event that is going to unfold as these answers are discovered.

[EricJ]

4) I think the most unnecessary line in the movie was 3PO pointing out his red arm to Han. I just don't think 3PO would ever say something so obvious.

He WOULD say something that annoyingly obvious for small talk (that's his habit as a protocol droid), that's the joke. And especially to Han, coming from Kasdan's running Empire jokes about 3P0 driving Han out of his skull.
("You probably didn't recognize me because of it.")

The silver leg in the original wasn't distracting since everything else in the movie's 'verse was so lived-in, we assumed spare parts were common, but the red on gold was so distracting, it would have been nice to have at least one line of explanation.

Episode IV worked well as a stand alone film about a farm boy beating the Big Bad. Episode V-VI was about destroying the Empire. Episode I-III was about how Luke's father became Darth Vader. But what is the big picture for this new trilogy? Considering the new movies are designed as a trilogy, I just didn't get a big picture vibe of what was going to happen in the next two movies. Yes there are questions that need to be answered but what is the main event that is going to unfold as these answers are discovered.

The new generation wants to bring the trilogies back to the story of Luke's destiny, so now that we've found Luke, what's he going to do? What's the ex-farmboy, now-Jedi master's destiny in the ultimate conflict?
He's obviously been away planning a great future for the resurrection of the Jedi, and now that the Force has Awakened, something's about to happen...

[Ben]

Terminator wasn't known in China either, Dace, and the new film got the best grosses there!

Besides, Disney has been on the SW offensive there, making all six previous films available digitally and really going to town on catching them up and selling them on the new one. I'd say it's going to clear a couple of hundred million there easy, if not double that!

[Bill1978]

Quick question: Was the use of the word Sith in Episode VII an acknowledgment of Episodes I-III existence or was Sith used somewhere in Episodes IV-VI?

[Ben]

I'm not sure the word itself was used in IV-VI but at least from around Empire's release there was talk in promos and things about Siths, though it was part of the "larger picture", especially around Jedi.

More of an acknowledgment came for me in the use of Ewan McGregor's voice as Obi Wan, cementing him as the character should they want to bring him back for later episodes.

[Bill1978]

If they have plans to bring Obi-Wan back it would make sense to use Ewan, because then it could justify using Hayden if they have plans to bring Anakin back into the picture. Even if I hated how they inserted Hayden into the ending of Jedi.

I know the Prequels are generally disliked, but I would still like the new trilogy to make some sort of reference to their existence. I'm not asking for Gungans on the screen, but even something as simple as referring to Naboo or even visiting it(for some reason) would satisfy me.

[Ben]

In the prequels they never visited Hoth from the original trilogy, but that didn't mean it wasn't there.

There are thousands of planets in SW...I don't think every movie has to make mention of all of them. There's no denying the events or the existence of the prequels...they just don't want to dwell on them and, to be fair, they did happen "a long, long time ago..."

[droosan]

In the 1977 novelization of Star Wars (ostensibly by George Lucas -- but probably actually written by Alan Dean Foster, using Lucas' script and story outline), Darth Vader is described as "the Dark Lord of the Sith."

[EricJ]

In the 1977 novelization of Star Wars (ostensibly by George Lucas -- but probably actually written by Alan Dean Foster, using Lucas' script and story outline), Darth Vader is described as "the Dark Lord of the Sith."

Yep, that was pretty much where we Original-Generation folks heard it, in all the descriptions and marketing--Back before we even knew what the Sith was, although it hinted there were more of them out there.

(Another odd Foster-ism of the original movie is the ambiguity of whether the '77 story was "a long time ago" on other humanoid planets, or the future descendants of Earth: As Obi-Wan is training Luke, he says "You'll soon take to it like a duck takes to water", to which the water-deprived Tatooinian Luke replies, "What's a 'duck'?" )

[Dan]

More of an acknowledgment came for me in the use of Ewan McGregor's voice as Obi Wan, cementing him as the character should they want to bring him back for later episodes.

I think it was JJ who talked about the fun he had bringing Ewan to record a few lines.

Along with the discovery of how to incorporate Alec Guinness as well.