Even though he was in sanitation (Clerks Reference?) he was still a trained Storm Trooper, so I'm sure he was trained in the use of a blaster rifle. And we saw that many troopers also got training in melee weapons. You don't -need- the force to hold a lightsaber, it just really helps in not chopping your own limbs off.
[Movies] Star Wars The Force Awakens SPOILER THREAD!
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What I'm hearing is I need to cut Oscar Isaac's head off...
GasBandit
Staff member
He's not. And he's not just a janitor, he's a full fledged stormtrooper, with combat training and everything. There's supplemental canonical material that covers stuff leading up to the movie.
Using a lightsaber isn't hard. Even Han Solo figured it out pretty quick when he needed to cut open a Tan-tan.
Tauntaun.
And Han only needed to make one, slow horizontal slice. Not quite the same as wielding a lightsaber in combat.
Not sure if it's canon any more, but the old explanation was that the blade of the lightsaber is weightless, and the magnetic sheath that enclosed the plasma inside the lightsaber blade would create gyroscopic forces that would make the lightsaber move in counter-intuitive ways when you swung it. Picture it like you're swinging a misbehaving flashlight handle. Thus, if you don't have lots of training and Force-enhanced reactions, you'd likely cut yourself on the first swing.
GasBandit
Staff member
That's fanboy equivocation. The first time Luke was handed a light saber he had no trouble turning it on immediately and swinging it around like a kid would.
fade
Staff member
Okay I get that he was a soldier trained in combat, but he seemed to have an intuitive knack for fighter controls on both the TIE fighter and the Falcon. And I don't mean that he turned on the saber and swung it around a little--he held his own in a fight against New Vader, even injuring him. And then there's clearly something different about his birth. And Mas (?) was pushing him toward the saber as if he should use it, and she seems to have some intuitive understanding of the Force.
GasBandit
Staff member
As we said earlier in the thread, this was really because Kylo Ren really isn't that good a force user, definitely not on the level of a Jedi Knight or Sith. He has the skillset of a sophomore padawan, and being in turmoil as he is hampers force ability (even the Sith push focus as power). On top of that, he had just taken a shot from a wookiee bowcaster to the midsection - which would normally be (and was repeatedly) fatal not only to anyone else who had been shot thusly, but often anyone standing nearby. So yes, Finn was able to briefly stave off the inevitable against a seriously injured and poorly trained force-sensitive, for a while. That doesn't make him a skywalker.
That said, the Force is everywhere, in everyone and everything. Yoda even described it as flowing through trees and rocks. If the force is awakening, maybe it's paying more attention to such things as this conflict?
Dave
Staff member
Okay, I'm back after FINALLY being able to see this. Not being able to go to the in-laws for Christmas had this one single redeeming quality. Anyway, my thoughts.
All in all I liked the movie. I thought it went by incredibly fast and it didn't seem like it was 2+ hours. The next two should be epic!
- I knew Han Solo was going to die as soon as Ben told the GIANT HOLOGRAM DUDE that he knew how to handle his father. Yes, I guessed it that soon. So it was not a surprise when it happened.
- I thought the acting in this one was SO much better than any of the other ones. Even the original.
- Parsecs are still a measure of distance, not time.
- Ships still make no fucking noise in space! Ever since Firefly and Serenity this bugs me.
- I hope Rey is not Luke's daughter but I think they are trying hard to make us think that.
- Gasbandit has Ben's character down pat. Best explanation.
- I hated the last shot. They should have ended as soon as Luke threw back his hood.
- I snickered that the old characters got top billing in the credits. Mark Hamill's name was second and he was in the movie a grand total of like 20 seconds. I understand it, though.
- Unlike R2-D2, I could actually almost understand what BB-8 was saying.
- I love the fact that this was Fin's first mission. Had it not been I don't think he'd have so easily thrown off the yolk of First Order conditioning.
- Yeah, the Chromed Captain turned really fucking fast. I don't quite get that.
All in all I liked the movie. I thought it went by incredibly fast and it didn't seem like it was 2+ hours. The next two should be epic!
As well as the pilot's nerve and the quality of the navcomputer.
As for noise in space, this is a fucking fantasy story about wizards and knights, not a sci-fi. Wanting scientific accuracy leads to shit like midichlorians.
Also, serenity had sound in space, because it was a movie and wanted to be exciting.
Applying science rules to Star Wars breaks so many things. It just doesn't work as sci-fi and honestly never has. It just takes sci-fi concepts and uses them in a fantasy story. It's a story about wizards in space.
And I don't think there's another movie series that does this, which may explain why people keep coming back even when they've been burned.
I love science fiction, but Star Wars isn't it.
And I don't think there's another movie series that does this, which may explain why people keep coming back even when they've been burned.
I love science fiction, but Star Wars isn't it.
My 1st idea was she's Vader's 3rd kid... now that would make Kylo Ren truly jealous.
What, even a cyborg has needs...[DOUBLEPOST=1451167113,1451167010][/DOUBLEPOST]
"Stop taking my hand!"
They way they're mixing it up.... i'm expecting Finn to be the one that loses a hand... while Rey gets frozen in carbonite.
I know this was a joke, but just to point out along with the theory that she could be Palpatine's kid, Vader and Palpatine would have both died years before she was ever born.
Well, she already lost a Han in the first movie.
"Stop taking my hand!"
Eh? *nudge, nudge*, Ehhhhhh? Lost a Han?
Pffft... good genes. Plus, Kylo looks like he's half her age.
They should have just have it be a thing for Kylo's saber...
....
Oh, and was anyone else anoyed that the resistance fleet was just a bunch of X-Wing squadrons? You;d think they'd have their own fleet after a few decades (the First Order managed to build a superweapon in that time), or that the Republic would not keep all of their ships in one system...
Rey has a baby face too; no way she's Vader's baby unless they had his midichlorians encased in carbonite.
Yeah, maybe it was another one of those, "Our main fleet was destroyed and the other ones won't get here in time" thing.
Yeah, but it's one of those "she has a puffy baby face but she's certainly older", while Kylo has a "i haven't shaved yet" ones...
Babies tend to be younger than puberty-beard teenagers.
As an aside, Daisy Ridley is 23, while Adam Driver is 32. That doesn't mean anything for character ages, but she isn't "clearly" older.
GasBandit
Staff member
The "Rebel" fleet became the Republic fleet, although most of their capital ships were Mon Calamari civilian cruisers which had been converted for martial purposes, and perhaps they were cashiered and returned to civilian ownership. Plus, there was a lot more fighting between the imperial remnants and the republic in the 30 years leading up to episode 7 - for example, around Jakku itself, hence the Star Destroyers and X-Wings and such littering the desertscapes. The First Order itself seemed mostly to have less than a half dozen star destroyers, and seemed to rely heavily on transports and Stormtrooper ground assaults. I get the feeling that attrition has really taken its toll on both sides of the war, and you don't really need a massive superfleet when apparently any system is in hyperjump range of any other, ranging from minutes to hours of travel time. This kind of makes garrisons obsolete when a response can be deployed anywhere in the conflict area very quickly.
Also, as other people in the thread have noted, the "resistance" seemed to be a separate, semiautonomous organization operating within First Order territory with clandestine backing from the Republic (IE, apparently the Republic did not have the political/military clout to directly contest the FO or declare them an illegitimate government, but rather had to treat with them as you would a foreign nation). Thus how the FO upper eschelons spoke of the Republic as double-dealing by backing the Resistance.
It does beg the question, however, that as the Resistance was so comparatively small, why they couldn't simply abandon their base once they knew it was compromised, as they did on Hoth and Dantooine, and redeploy to a new location.
You mean when everyone was off on Starkiller Base, trying to prevent it from destroying the Resistance base? Presumably they knew that no matter where they relocated to, Starkiller could still get them. It'd be impractical to move to a new base every time Starkiller powers up, so the only thing to do would be to destroy it.
But having a baby face says nothing of one's age... just ask Leo DeCaprio.
Well, Adam Driver is really convincing as a petulant child...
The idea is they could do the same from a mobile HQ like a space ship. JJ just wanted the same stakes as in ANH. Search your feelings, you know this to be true.
Yeah, i got that, but c'mon, a few capital ships would have really helped logistically. And with making it feel less in your face about rehashing Ep. 4. Plus, the space battle felt a bit lacking at the end... like they where over budget or something, which is unlikely imo.
Hell, maybe a few Republic ships showing up, the Order did basically declare war on them... and having ALL of their fleet in 1 system is really contrived. Actually, them showing up in the nick of time would even mirror Han coming back if they wanted to go that route.
GasBandit
Staff member
But this was the last shot of Starkiller, it drained the sun completely for its second shot.
fade
Staff member
You know what's annoying? This "open letter from a Death Star architect" making the rounds on facebook. Its "factual" incorrectness bugs me. The so-called architect complains that blaster bolts unexpectedly made a 90 degree turn. They weren't blasters, they were torpedoes, which have been able to change direction for, like, forever. Not only that, I just figured it for a quirk of the way they animated it. Then he complains that the bolts went "miles" into the death star before detonating the core. Which is also not true. If only they said in the movie somewhere that the TORPEDOES would set off, I don't know, something like a chain reaction that should destroy the station?
It's pretty clear in the war room simulation before the Death Star run that the torpedoes went to the center of the death star and caused the explosion from there.
The death star had a 120km diameter. Even if the torpedos had to go into the core, so what? The Russian Novator K-100 air-to-air missile will go 200...in one end of the deathstar and out the other side, back inside, and make it to the core. It doesn't seem such a stretch that futuristic weapons could manage such a stretch.