STAR WARS: THE FORCE AWAKENS: rambling first thoughts/comments *SPOILERS*

Just gonna rattle off some random thoughts and comments on/after my first screening of STAR WARS: THE FORCE AWAKENS. If you haven't seen the movie yet, STOP NOW, FOR HERE THERE BE SPOILERS!~

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I do *not* love Supreme Leader Snoke. He appears via hologram to Kylo and Hux. He has a humanoid appearance, but his projection makes him appear as a giant. But these Dark types seem to enjoy magnification, right (see Emperor's holograms)? He looks maybe a little REBELS Inquisitor-y. He's played by Andy Serkis. I wonder if there's a Great and Powerful Oz thing going on here, y'know? That the hologram is a facade, hiding a less imposing figure, or someone who's leading a double life, a la Darth Sidious / Palpatine, perhaps?

But it seems implied at least that Supreme Leader trained Kylo Ren, seduced Ben Solo, so that would have happened in person. And he asks some First Order goon to bring Kylo to him, altho maybe he meant into his holographic presence? Bleah.

Would be interesting if he has not been seen in the flesh by First Order minions. What if he's an AI? Could he be the Emperor, re-animated or inhabiting a spare cloned body?

Maz says something interesting. She's lived a very long time and says there's always evil, in different faces. She mentions the Sith, then the Empire, now the First Order. Differentiating the Sith and the Empire was interesting to me. Also the notion of a repeating cycle or pendulum of history. Maybe a little bleak, too. Would've been interesting if she mentioned a memorable period of peace, tho, wouldn't it?

Only mention of clones/cloning: Someone—Kylo? Hux?—scolds his troopers by threatening to replace them with clones.

Kylo's tantrums are fun.

Han mentions to Leia that Ben had too much of Vader in him. Kim suggested that that might've manifested itself as hurting his sister. That's kind of perfect.

Han calling out to Kylo Ren—"Ben!" *That* really got to me.

Han's death didn't really. For a little kid sitting near Jeff and Kim, tho, it was devastating. I saw it telegraphed in the movie a few minutes earlier. Some bit of dialogue that ended w something like "It would take a miracle…" led into a shot of Han and Chewie making their way into the StarKiller facility they want to blow up. In that moment, I knew he'd die. *sigh*

I immediately flashed ahead and questioned how/whether Rey would get to pilot the Falcon. Am I a cold hearted bastard for that?

Gotta say, as natural a pilot as she is, she failed to follow proper Falcon protocol—she wasn't wearing Han's clothes!

What's up w the blast from StarKiller Base? It seemed like it erupts as a beam of supercharged plasma, but when it got close to the target planet, the beam split, its branches tagging and destroying moons and satellites along with the planet itself. Weird, that. Is it a missile? With warheads? Maybe ammo HAS changed since ROTJ. Heavier on the particle and lighter on the energy? Is there such a thing as "stun" with the First Order's blasters? I would've been just fine with bloodless injuries and deaths caused by blaster fire. Nix that and the land Sarlacc's on Han's freighter and maybe the movie could've gone PG, right? Or are the Force torture scenes on their own enough to warrant the PG-13?

I would've liked more over-the-shoulder looks at just how that base got around and how close/far away it had to be to destroy a planet. STAR WARS gave us the progress of the DS around Yavin when it was getting into position to destroy its fourth moon. Somehow, the Resistance on the ground on Maz's world were able to see the destruction of whatever planet it was (seemed pretty heavily developed) that StarKiller wacked.

The wacked planet was the seat of the Republic, right? (Sorry, can't remember these planet/location names yet.) That's pretty F'd up. So, that was basically Alderaan again (keeping in theme w the movie and callbacks/echoes/deja views), right?

And did StarKiller kill that planet's sun? Was it in the same system at the time? What would we see from Earth if Jupiter exploded or imploded (without creating a singularity). Actually, I guess we'd want to see a planet burnt to a crisp, not exactly explode.

I think that Kes was not on Jakku by chance. He's there to watch over Rey from afar, the way Kenobi watched over Luke. Poe is a most-trusted pilot. Kes is his father, and of Luke and Leia's generation.

Saw a headline about Daniel Craig having a cameo in the film and guessed that he must've been the Jedi mind-tricked trooper!

I knew Simon Pegg was in it as a creature, but did not recognize him as the junk merchant, whom I wasn't all that impressed with, actually. Foo.

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More later. Maybe sooner. May the Force be with you~
aka
Keep on keepin' on~

STAR WARS: 11th hour pre-show rambling…

My first screening of THE FORCE AWAKENS is about 4 hours away. In this post I'm collecting/copy-pasting some bits and pieces of STAR WARS crazy talk rambling I've posted away from wuzzon…

A Disney-Fox-Lucasfilm ident mashup fix that works for me…



How do you kill a StarKiller (base)?

I've done my best to avoid any and all details about the new nouns we meet in episode 7, but pop culture osmosis of some facts about that big round gun in the background of the poster was apparently unavoidable. So, you’ve got a planet-sized war machine hopping around the galaxy destroying stars. What do you do?

Build a Death Star (or two - and I immediately picture Galactica + Pegasus vs. Base Star), that’s what. Wouldn’t it be something to see the Rebellion/Resistance build its own Death Star?

Maybe the Rebels have collected and saved the bits of the two blown-up ones and assembled them into a working one. Hrm… Perhaps there are significant chunks dumped or hidden on Rey’s scavenging planet? Maybe just superlaser components?

Or the Empire had another one hidden away somewhere. Mothballed in orbit around a hidden planet? Why have just one when you can have two for twice the price? Would’ve been a good jobs-creating project, too.

If we allow for Force manipulation or hyperspace anomaly or superscience device or some combo that enables time travel, a Death Star could be yanked from the past, moments before its destruction, immediately “defused” in the future (TFA’s present) to prevent its explosion, and charged up for use vs. StarKiller. Then, post-victory, rigged to self-destruct and returned to its spacetime point of origin. This could nonsensically explain the ring added to the special edition DS explosions—it’s an artifact of time displacement!

Or something.

Of course, if you can’t get hold of a Death Star, I suppose you could get an astromech to hack its navicomputer so that during a hyperspace jump it flies thru a sun or bounces too close to a supernova. Where’s the fun in that, tho?

Luke Skywalker's Jedi Correspondence School?

Luke has been on space sabbatical, a self-imposed galactic exile-slash-walkabout, composing a new Jedi practice. A study and philosophy built on that of Yoda, but not as binary as the one we’re familiar with. He returns, perhaps with students, in the Resistance’s hour of greatest need.

Luke’s marriage of the Light and Dark is what restores balance to the Force, allowing the Force to “awaken.” It’s like Kirk’s transporter accident. He’s split into what others are quick to describe as “good” and “bad” versions of himself, but the qualities of both are what makes Kirk so Kirk, and thusly, awesome.

Always thought a Star Slammers’ Silvermind (Walt Simonson) would’ve been a great weapon/power for the Jedi in the Clone Wars, but maybe there was too much ego or a certain kind of ethics built into the practice to allow that. Would dig if that was an ultimate possibility, tho. But maybe there’s a will to survive associated with the Jedi version of the ability that’s stronger than winning? Or, it could be directed by one will (that sounds pretty Dark, tho, eh?). Or maybe it’s just true telepathy, like when Professor X or Jean or Emma Frost link up the X-Men for a battle.

Perhaps there is an ultimate expression of the Force, once Light and Dark are no longer branded as Good and Evil. Something evolutionary, like Asimov’s Galaxia (Foundation + Robots series)? Is that a desired endgame for a moisture farmboy, a plucky princess, and a scoundrel smuggler? A Childhood’s End? Maybe if the kids speak for it, describe the experience as positive.

Perhaps it’s the hot dog goal—”one with everything”—and it is still millennia away.

Heh, would be great if that flipped somehow and became the fascist force that had to be overcome/reset by another band of rebels. Circle of life, dude.

Where are the Clones? Send in the Clones…

So, what happened to cloning tech in a galaxy far, far away after the Clone Wars? In the post-ROTJ/pre-prequel era, “Clone Wars” was a vague historical reference, but it revealed that cloning was possible, altho it may have been outlawed or its tech/science somehow rendered inert in the aftermath.

However, it was just the kind of galaxy-building nugget that planted the idea in my head that the Emperor didn’t truly die at the end of ROTJ. I pictured his Dark Forcey essence escaping his battered body instantly jumping into a waiting “blank” clone of himself. We didn’t have any history of the Emperor back then, so I imagined he might’ve done this regularly, and the technique (along with his Dark Forcey manipulations) did a fine job of eating away at his physical being and health. He could keep living, but wouldn’t be forever young.

I wouldn’t mind seeing cloning tech bring back a baddie or an ex-baddie in the this trilogy. The Emperor, maybe in a still youthy body. Anakin, cloned by Luke. Trippy—Luke could raise his father. No issues there, right?

Perhaps it’s a youthy Anakin clone who will finish what Vader began—which would be what, exactly? Extermination of all the Jedi? All Tusken Raiders? The boxed set of THE WIRE?

And either of these guys could be behind one of the masked baddies, revealed to be even badder, or perhaps just chaotic neutral?

A dopey thought: Luke is Kylo and he’s Kylo to play a part. To draw out and test the mettle of potential Jedi. A little X-Men Apocalypse-y, but maybe in that role he’s also mitigating the damage a First Order might do without his guiding robotic hand.

Or something…

No doubt whatever I see tonight will be way better, smarter, cooler, and more sensible than my rambling. Consider the bar set to Unreasonably High! = )

I'll leave you with a flashback to the Life Day 2014 Holidaze thingamabob, inspired by and cobbled together atop a certain teaser trailer…

Keep on keepin' on~