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  1. #16
    Ultimate Member ChrisIII's Avatar
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    Rumors about a possible "Dark Empire" weapon being used:


    https://www.cbr.com/star-wars-episod...w-superweapon/


    Although I wonder if true, it'll draw comparisons to Spaceball's "Mega Maid".
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  2. #17
    BANNED Starter Set's Avatar
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    A big ass machine of doom once again?

  3. #18
    Ultimate Member ChrisIII's Avatar
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    The Devestators are generally smaller than the other superweapons, for the most part (The EU did have the "Sun crusher" which was a small ship that could destroy suns though). I think they're generally star destroyer sized.
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  4. #19
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    The idea of an underwater base seems cool. I really am not keen on seeing Rey spending more time with the rebels though.....TLJ was at its best when she was alone with Kylo.

  5. #20
    Anyone. Anywhere.Anytime. Arsenal's Avatar
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    Not another damn super weapon.

  6. #21
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    World Devastators might be fun but I suspect that they are holo projections only. If used at all.
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  7. #22
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    Quote Originally Posted by motherofpearl1 View Post
    The idea of an underwater base seems cool. I really am not keen on seeing Rey spending more time with the rebels though.....TLJ was at its best when she was alone with Kylo.
    I'm of the exact opposite opinion; Rey felt like she was being written so much worse around Kylo, to the extent that she wasn't so much a character as she was a prop to support the story of the unabashed and unapologetic space fascist who tortured her, killed her friend/father figure, maimed her other friend, and for whom the only marginally less evil information she recieved on him was that he was once rightly frightened by his uncle igniting a lightsaber over his bed... And then his immediate reaction was to kill most of his fellow innocent students and take others to Snoke.

    There is room for more Kylo and Rey interactions, but Rey actually has to have her perspective written well, and that's going to require doing a ground up reinterpretation of how they should interact to make sure he's actually somewhat sympathetic and not the walking personification of myopic white male rage. Getting her back with the Resistance should help her actually be *good* again; Ridley and Biyega have electric chemistry, Isaac can have chemistry with a rock, and we could even have a well-structured and fun friendship between Rey and Rose where they talk shop about engineering.

    As to the World Devastators...

    ...They were actually always my low key favorites for how to do a "Superweapon" concept without being repetitive: they don't immediately destroy a planet and can't do it just on their own, but are instead just a weaponized version of slowly strip mining a planet to supply the Imperial war machine. They'd be a good weapon to use to explain First Order resource adavantge while trying to conquer a Galaxy that has experienced roughly 30 years of peace because of ROTJ, have a more creepy vibe than a planet killer since they take a lot of time to do their job, and could still be taken out in a relatively short amount of time.
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  8. #23
    Extraordinary Member Jokerz79's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by godisawesome View Post
    I'm of the exact opposite opinion; Rey felt like she was being written so much worse around Kylo, to the extent that she wasn't so much a character as she was a prop to support the story of the unabashed and unapologetic space fascist who tortured her, killed her friend/father figure, maimed her other friend, and for whom the only marginally less evil information she recieved on him was that he was once rightly frightened by his uncle igniting a lightsaber over his bed... And then his immediate reaction was to kill most of his fellow innocent students and take others to Snoke.

    There is room for more Kylo and Rey interactions, but Rey actually has to have her perspective written well, and that's going to require doing a ground up reinterpretation of how they should interact to make sure he's actually somewhat sympathetic and not the walking personification of myopic white male rage. Getting her back with the Resistance should help her actually be *good* again; Ridley and Biyega have electric chemistry, Isaac can have chemistry with a rock, and we could even have a well-structured and fun friendship between Rey and Rose where they talk shop about engineering.

    As to the World Devastators...

    ...They were actually always my low key favorites for how to do a "Superweapon" concept without being repetitive: they don't immediately destroy a planet and can't do it just on their own, but are instead just a weaponized version of slowly strip mining a planet to supply the Imperial war machine. They'd be a good weapon to use to explain First Order resource adavantge while trying to conquer a Galaxy that has experienced roughly 30 years of peace because of ROTJ, have a more creepy vibe than a planet killer since they take a lot of time to do their job, and could still be taken out in a relatively short amount of time.
    What father figure was killed? Not Han Rey knew him for like a day maybe two.

  9. #24
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    Quote Originally Posted by Jokerz79 View Post
    What father figure was killed? Not Han Rey knew him for like a day maybe two.
    Hey, TFA literally has Kylo, while violating Rey's mind, say "You think of him as the father you never had." And like Finn, he came back for her. TFA mostly excels at showing, not telling, but it not only showed Rey growing close with Han, and breaking down when he got killed, they also went out of the way to make it explicit in dialogue during an assault upon her mind that she has to defend herself from.

    But even regardless of that, the point still stands: Rey has every reason in the world to struggle with an unbridled, visceral fear and hatred of Kylo for his actions against her and her friends. Even if she weren't close to Finn and Han, his blunt and admitted nature as a patricidal fascist would kill any sympathy she might have for him without some kind of adequate explanation to reconfigure him in her mind, which TLJ profoundly lacks. Even a character without a personal stake in his crimes but who still had Rey's history would be horrified at Kylo murdering the one thing she wants most in the world: a loving family.

    The onus was on Rian Johnson to, at minimum, provide a reason for the audience and Rey to hope for redemption if Rey was supposed to be motivated by sympathy for Kylo to fuel her actions in act III. He failed, and because of the amount of genuine emotional investment Rey had with his victims in TFA, and the profound lack of anything to cause sympathy for him, and in fact even contradict and undermine its purposes with the school massacre following right on the heels of the hut incident, only makes the failure even worse.
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  10. #25
    Extraordinary Member thwhtGuardian's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by godisawesome View Post
    Hey, TFA literally has Kylo, while violating Rey's mind, say "You think of him as the father you never had." And like Finn, he came back for her. TFA mostly excels at showing, not telling, but it not only showed Rey growing close with Han, and breaking down when he got killed, they also went out of the way to make it explicit in dialogue during an assault upon her mind that she has to defend herself from.

    But even regardless of that, the point still stands: Rey has every reason in the world to struggle with an unbridled, visceral fear and hatred of Kylo for his actions against her and her friends. Even if she weren't close to Finn and Han, his blunt and admitted nature as a patricidal fascist would kill any sympathy she might have for him without some kind of adequate explanation to reconfigure him in her mind, which TLJ profoundly lacks. Even a character without a personal stake in his crimes but who still had Rey's history would be horrified at Kylo murdering the one thing she wants most in the world: a loving family.

    The onus was on Rian Johnson to, at minimum, provide a reason for the audience and Rey to hope for redemption if Rey was supposed to be motivated by sympathy for Kylo to fuel her actions in act III. He failed, and because of the amount of genuine emotional investment Rey had with his victims in TFA, and the profound lack of anything to cause sympathy for him, and in fact even contradict and undermine its purposes with the school massacre following right on the heels of the hut incident, only makes the failure even worse.
    I think you mean telling not showing, because we were never really shown that relationship growing before that scene and then her reaction to his death.

  11. #26
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    Quote Originally Posted by thwhtGuardian View Post
    I think you mean telling not showing, because we were never really shown that relationship growing before that scene and then her reaction to his death.
    TFA has them going from strangers to co-pilots and then he offers her a job on his ship in a scene which screams paternal subtext, and in their scenes together we get numerous shots and dialogue exchanges to show them taking an instant liking to each other, including finishing each other's sentences and both shooting each other wistful glances that clearly covey a more familial edge.

    But if the argument is that Rey's view of Han was more one of wishing for him to be a father figure because of the limited time they had together, then the argument has merit. But the two do grow closer in their time together than Han and Finn, and for Rey's character, it makes perfect sense that she'd latch onto the idea of who Han could be. And it still is Kylo depriving both himself and Rey of something she desperately desires above all else and of a friendship she formed in a high stress situation, much like the one she formed with Finn.

    And just to point this out, if an argument is going to be used that TFA fails to meet a burden of proof for showing why Rey might view Han as a father figure, then it's a standard of proof people won't want to apply to TLJ's take on any of Rey interactions with Kylo.

    Han at least had some stockpiled good deeds, positive reinforcement, and affectionate interactions with Rey, and she likewise, well before Kylo identifies her feelings towards Han as filial.

    Kylo's rolling so deep in the deficit department on everything that he basically has a vast chasm to either dig his way out of with Rey or the film needs to give him some believable back channel capable of matching his killing of Han, maiming of Finn and torture of Rey herself. No such attempt is ever made; the closest the film gets is him agreeing he's a monster and saying that he didn't hate his father when he killed him. That's it. Even the hut scene backstory ends up being a net negative result in that area, because as much as the film wants to brush over Ben unintentionally confirming Luke's urges, it still has Ben's fall marked more by his own school shooting rampage than any innocence he may have once had.

    Abrams may be asking a lot from the few scenes he does show, but he does show them; a general running theme of TFA as a film is scenes with either very little dialogue establishing key events or personalities, or subtext laden sequences and dialogue exchanges. And he is operating with a script that focuses heavily on the characters making sense and gelling perfectly; he even heavily reshot scenes and sequences with Finn and Rey to make sure the connection the film needed was there. Johnson, while normally great at showing instead of telling, depends quite a bit more on characters expositing on key elements, particularly when it comes to Rey. And his script is massively inadequate when it comes to Rey's perspective, and focuses on a much shallower interpretation fo her character, damaging its purposes in uniting her with Kylo even more.
    Last edited by godisawesome; 11-04-2018 at 07:11 PM.
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  12. #27
    Extraordinary Member thwhtGuardian's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by godisawesome View Post
    TFA has them going from strangers to co-pilots and then he offers her a job on his ship in a scene which screams paternal subtext, and in their scenes together we get numerous shots and dialogue exchanges to show them taking an instant liking to each other, including finishing each other's sentences and both shooting each other wistful glances that clearly covey a more familial edge.

    But if the argument is that Rey's view of Han was more one of wishing for him to be a father figure because of the limited time they had together, then the argument has merit. But the two do grow closer in their time together than Han and Finn, and for Rey's character, it makes perfect sense that she'd latch onto the idea of who Han could be. And it still is Kylo depriving both himself and Rey of something she desperately desires above all else and of a friendship she formed in a high stress situation, much like the one she formed with Finn.

    And just to point this out, if an argument is going to be used that TFA fails to meet a burden of proof for showing why Rey might view Han as a father figure, then it's a standard of proof people won't want to apply to TLJ's take on any of Rey interactions with Kylo.

    Han at least had some stockpiled good deeds, positive reinforcement, and affectionate interactions with Rey, and she likewise, well before Kylo identifies her feelings towards Han as filial.

    Kylo's rolling so deep in the deficit department on everything that he basically has a vast chasm to either dig his way out of with Rey or the film needs to give him some believable back channel capable of matching his killing of Han, maiming of Finn and torture of Rey herself. No such attempt is ever made; the closest the film gets is him agreeing he's a monster and saying that he didn't hate his father when he killed him. That's it. Even the hut scene backstory ends up being a net negative result in that area, because as much as the film wants to brush over Ben unintentionally confirming Luke's urges, it still has Ben's fall marked more by his own school shooting rampage than any innocence he may have once had.

    Abrams may be asking a lot from the few scenes he does show, but he does show them; a general running theme of TFA as a film is scenes with either very little dialogue establishing key events or personalities, or subtext laden sequences and dialogue exchanges. And he is operating with a script that focuses heavily on the characters making sense and gelling perfectly; he even heavily reshot scenes and sequences with Finn and Rey to make sure the connection the film needed was there. Johnson, while normally great at showing instead of telling, depends quite a bit more on characters expositing on key elements, particularly when it comes to Rey. And his script is massively inadequate when it comes to Rey's perspective, and focuses on a much shallower interpretation fo her character, damaging its purposes in uniting her with Kylo even more.
    It's a failure in both films, we never really saw enough to warrant the "revelation" that Rey saw Han as a replacement father figure, never mind enough to react to his death the way she did and we've never been given enough to see why she thinks Ben can be saved the way Rey so desperately wants in the Last Jedi.

  13. #28
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    Quote Originally Posted by thwhtGuardian View Post
    It's a failure in both films, we never really saw enough to warrant the "revelation" that Rey saw Han as a replacement father figure, never mind enough to react to his death the way she did and we've never been given enough to see why she thinks Ben can be saved the way Rey so desperately wants in the Last Jedi.
    Fair enough.

    ... But I'd still argue that they are clearly *not* created equally. Han and Rey's relationship is just one of many motivating factors for her at the end of the film, and it's issues are just a matter of subjectively viewing the timeframe of the film. TLJ's mini-climax for Rey is founded and exists solely based off the idea of her having sympathy for Kylo, and not only lacks adequate time but is fundamentally empty of necessary characterization and plot to justify that element.

    To me, TFA has one very clear and extremely significant adavantge over TLJ, one that IX is fortunate to have: JJ Abrams knows how to build an emotional core for his movies. While Rey and Han may be overblown by the film, no one can seriously argue that Finn and Rey's relationship lacks depth, chemistry, or believability. I'd argue its by far the strongest single film developing relationship in the franchise; everyone else either needs more films to reach their endpoint, or is introduced as already close friends. And Abrmas has consistently shown that he both knows how to make the core friendships in his films work, but that he's even willing to modify for them.

    Abrams handling of characters gives me faith that IX, if nothing else, will probably have better characterization and ensemble work for everyone, even Rian Johnson's Rose, though that may not be difficult, since I think TLJ criminally underserved KMT's skills after her introduction scene.
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  14. #29
    Extraordinary Member thwhtGuardian's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by godisawesome View Post
    Fair enough.

    ... But I'd still argue that they are clearly *not* created equally. Han and Rey's relationship is just one of many motivating factors for her at the end of the film, and it's issues are just a matter of subjectively viewing the timeframe of the film. TLJ's mini-climax for Rey is founded and exists solely based off the idea of her having sympathy for Kylo, and not only lacks adequate time but is fundamentally empty of necessary characterization and plot to justify that element.

    To me, TFA has one very clear and extremely significant adavantge over TLJ, one that IX is fortunate to have: JJ Abrams knows how to build an emotional core for his movies. While Rey and Han may be overblown by the film, no one can seriously argue that Finn and Rey's relationship lacks depth, chemistry, or believability. I'd argue its by far the strongest single film developing relationship in the franchise; everyone else either needs more films to reach their endpoint, or is introduced as already close friends. And Abrmas has consistently shown that he both knows how to make the core friendships in his films work, but that he's even willing to modify for them.

    Abrams handling of characters gives me faith that IX, if nothing else, will probably have better characterization and ensemble work for everyone, even Rian Johnson's Rose, though that may not be difficult, since I think TLJ criminally underserved KMT's skills after her introduction scene.
    Finn and Rey do have fantastic chemistry...but I'd just put that down to the actors just having chemistry rather than Abrams as Poe fell completely flat in the Force Awakens which in turn made the focus on him in the second film a head scratcher. It's another case of telling rather than showing that these new films really struggle with, we're told again and again how big Poe is...but the scenes he has are terribly important or memorable so you're not given any real emotional tie to him that makes you care if he succeeds or not.
    Last edited by thwhtGuardian; 11-05-2018 at 07:19 AM.

  15. #30
    Ultimate Member ChrisIII's Avatar
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    There's rumors that Matt Smith might be playing a younger Palpatine (Perhaps revealing any possible relationship with Snoke?)

    I'm not sure about that. Funny thing is, I think Sylvestor McCoy actually used to look a lot like Mcdiarmid (if you look at 80's photos of both, Ian without the Palpatine makeup of course).
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