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Now that THAT'S out of the way ... what did you all think of the new movie? I also just wanted to point out this post I made from late October:



Not 100%, but pretty dang close!

Overall, I thought it had it's drawbacks and such, not to mention relied really heavily on the plot from the first movie. But it was still miles better than the prequels and a good movie. Will likely see it again.

I wanted more info on why the First Order wants Luke dead.

Also, who is Snoke?!

I'm quite certain Rey is Luke's daughter, but no clue as to who the mother could be.

Yeah, this movie left a ton of unanswered questions. That's JJ Abrams for ya. Hopefully this won't be like Lost and they'll thought of how to answer all of this ahead of time.

Rey is most certainly Luke's daughter though ... the mother, I guess will be explained at another time.

As for wanting Luke dead ... Darth Plagus *ahem* Snoke, just wants all jedi exterminated. so that's their motivation. The bigger question is who is Snoke and is he a hologram or maybe even a force ghost? The theory is that he looks exactly like Darth Plagus, who was Palpatine's master. Maybe he recreated himself as a force ghost to train Kylo?

Jedi are not supposed to have wives and offspring. They are supposed to be celibate monks. It would make more sence for Rey to be Han and Leia's daughter that was supposed to have been killed by the Knights of Ren.

Luke hides her with "an old friend" of Leia and leaves a star map. The old friend just happens to be on the same planet as Rey....to watch over her.....with the Millenium Falcon......she has a "father" figure moment with Han...Rey and Leia's embrace at the end was like one of a mother and daughter.

Signs point to her being Rey Solo IMO.

Oh and the old friend talked about "making things right" after saying Leia will always be a princess to him......could he be talking about hiding Leia's daughter from her?

I think Han would of been a lot more excited to see his daughter if that was the case and even mentioned something.

I thought Leia's embrace was more of an aunt than a mother, and Luke staring at her at the end as if it was his long lost daughter, not his a niece or something. The Jedi order has been gone for awhile, so I don't think Luke would necessarily obey or even know their archaic "monk" rules.

It does make for an interesting debate for another 2 years though.

Han didn't know it was his daughter. She was a little girl last he saw her and thinks she died.

Which is why he took a liking to her because he was thinking about the daughter he lost.

So Luke had a daughter, kept her a secret from his sister and friends and abandoned her on Jaaku?

Well, same as your theory, he hid her on Jakku to keep Ren away from killing her. Leia might of known about her and helped to hide her after Han had already left her. It might also explain how Rey is able to wield the force so quickly. Luke might have been training her as a child.

Either way, whoever child she is, wouldn't have been better if Luke had hid her with him and been training her all these years? (That is if Luke had a hand in hiding her)

Kinda like Obiwan...hid Luke with Anakin's half/step brother....on Anakin's home planet....kept his name "Skywalker".....and never thought "hey....this could be the last Jedi and one that could defeat the Sith., naw....no reason to start training him when he was old enough.

How about this ... since this new set of movies relied so heavily on the original plot of Star Wars, Rei is none other than the daughter of .... Snoke!

Just curious if we're going to have a spoiler thread

Because ...

I wish you would have added some spoiler warnings to this thread.

I rolled the dice and won. I was oncall for work this week, so I didn't think I'd get to see it until later this week. Tried to avoid spoilers(succeeded) but knew the longer I waited, the harder that would be. I took a chance and went today and hoped my phone didn't go off(it didn't).

Okay, here's my way over-thought review of the movie ...


THREE GRIPES:

1) The pretty much completely recycled the plot from Episode 4. Droid has vital information, gets stuck in a battle and is sent off by itself to get help, only to run into a desert dwelling protagonist who will soon be strong with the force. Bad guy wears a mask, talks deep, kills people to get info and runs around with nazis-in-space while wielding a big death-star that explodes all too easily.

2) Too many unanswered questions. I get that they want to have some suspense for the next movie, but they still had a lot of back-story that was left completely unexplained. Squires mentioned a few. It's possible that much of this is explained in the 2nd episode, but I better never hear the phrase, "This is explained in the book".

3) The concept of the Star Killer base. You'd think the empire/first order would learn from their mistakes and quit building Death Stars. Didn't any of them read Empire history books or watch Independence Day? But the whole idea of a planet that sucks star's energy and then blows up entire other systems was kind of eye-roll inducing. They didn't even mention or show how the base got from one system to the next to "recharge" the gun.



FIVE THINGS I WAS ACTUALLY ALRIGHT WITH THAT OTHER PEOPLE HAD ISSUES WITH:

1) Han's Death. I think Harrison Ford was ready for Han to be killed off anyway. He had talked about not even wanting to do the RotJ, so he was probably ready to be done with this franchise. You know they probably needed to kill someone off to help transition the old to the new, so I was fine with it. Although, you sort of could see it coming from a mile away.

2) BB-8. Not sure why some people were complaining about him. I thought he was a good new addition to the cast. He brought back all the original fun of R2 without being a slap-stick, cartoon annoyance like Jar Jar. He made the movie much more enjoyable to watch.

3) Rey figuring out the force in a matter of minutes. Okay hear me out ... this is HIGHLY dependent on what happens in Ep 8, but if Rey is the child of Luke (as I think) or even the child of Leah, then it's possible she got some early (uggh, don't make me say it ...) "youngling" training from Luke as a child. The "awakening" could be her remembering the lessons she was taught as a young child and had since forgot.

4) Finn. Outside of complete racists, people worried about Finn being a Jedi, because he didn't exactly fit into the possibly linage of other known force-users. It turns out he was pretty much a red herring this whole time, but his character still fit into the story well. I really liked his character, I just worry that he's worn out his usefulness now. How does he fit into Ep 8? He's an ex-storm-trooper who's afraid of fighting and is not a jedi (well, maybe ...)

5) Lack of the original cast. Face it, it's a new generation of players here. I thought they worked the old guys in perfectly to introduce the new crew and get us on board with them. Sure, we see Luke all of 10 seconds, but I think he will be featured far more in Ep8. (My guess is he'll see a Ben Kenobi like death too). The old guys had their grand entrances and then it moved right back to the new cast. I thought the character development of all the new guys was great as well. That was the big flaw of the prequels, in that they were all cardboard cutouts with no real character. One game you can play to see how good a character is in a movie is to describe that character in words, without saying what they look like or what their job is. The easier you can do that the better. You struggle to do that with anyone in the Prequels. Here, you can do that pretty easily.



EIGHT HUGE QUESTIONS MOVING FORWARD:

1) Who is Rey related too? Luke or Leah, or even a third party? I was joking with my wife that they totally made this a Hunger Games/teen-girl type movie by casting Rey as the "finding her powers" female teenager, and then giving us two camps to pull for, "Team Luke" and "Team Han/Leia". Couple that with the Star Wars angle for teenage boys and this movie will make trillions.

My own personal opinion is that Rey is Luke's Daughter. She spent most of the movie wishing she could re-connect with her long last family again. She finally meets up with Leia and all she does is give her a quick sympathy hug, only to hurry off to see Luke? Like I mentioned before too, it would make a lot more sense as to why she would know how to use the force to defeat Ren at the end. Luke is stronger with the force than Leia and he would probably be training his daughter when she was young as well. The "awakening" is her remembering all that long forgotten Jedi training.

2) Why did Luke isolate himself and abandon Rey? He wasn't even nice enough to drop her off at an uncle's farm before running into seclusion. Sure, this might make more sense if Rey is not Luke's daughter, but why wouldn't he take her into seclusion with him and train her from a young age until she was older? Maybe he felt ashamed from his failure with Ben Solo? Maybe he wanted to hide her as he knew that Kylo and company was trying to hunt him down and he didn't want her to get killed in the process if they did find him? My guess is a lot of this part gets explained in the next movie.

3) How does Finn hold his own while dueling Kylo Ren? Finn is supposedly nothing more than a storm-trooper. Ren force-froze a blaster blast from Poe and froze Rey herself when he captured her. Then he gets into a duel with Finn, contracts Obi-Wan Kenobi-disease and forgets he can use the force outside of swinging a sword. Even after that, Finn hits him a few times before Kylo eventually wins. Is Kylo really that bi-polar with his force ability? Did he skip class the day they taught light-saber fighting in Sith Lord training?

4) Why does R2D2 randomly wake up? My guess is that he detects Rey in the room, and his mission is to help her find Luke when she is old enough to do so. However, I read an article where writers of the movie said, "He woke up because he detected BB-8, and it just took him awhile to reboot the system." Okay, never trust writers ...

5) Who is Snoke? Again, will probably be explained more in later episodes, but I guess the bigger question could be: Is he real? Or is he a force-ghost of some kind? The prevailing opinion is that he's Palpatine's original master, Darth Plagus, who has somehow cheated death again to come back and train Kylo Ren. If that's the case, where has he been for so long? And why isn't he fighting the Jedi himself? It almost seems like a more feasible plot if he's a "force-ghost" similar to Obi-Wan, who's come back to train Kylo.

6) Who are the Knights of Ren and where did they all go? Possibly explained more in the book, but who are these guys? Apparently, it was Kylo's little personal clique of bad Jedi that turned on their classmates and ended Luke's Jedi Academy. We never learn anything more about these guys, or figure out where all the rest of them ran off to.

7) Who is Captain Phasma? She was supposed to be one of the main new villains. She ended up being less impactful of a character than General Veers. She supposedly survived the Death Planet destruction and is slated to be in Ep8.

8) Who was the old guy a the beginning? He was made to seem like we should of known him already. He knew Han and Leah and had a map to Luke. Was he over-watching Rey from afar, sort of like Obi-Wan was with Luke on Tatooine?

Storm Troopers still can't hit the broadside of a death star.

I am leaning towards Rey being the twin sister of Kylo Ren. After all....going back to VI; twins run in the family.

Issues I had a problem with:

1. Yeah, how can a sanitation Stormtrooper wield a saber like that against a trained Jedi? As Ex said...did Ren miss school that day? And if a Stormtrooper has the Force, why did it take Luke 3 episodes to get there? Why even fight him if he could just stop him still? Same with Rey.

2. Too much homage to episode IV-VI. At times I thought I was watching the same movies rolled into one with new effects (BUT THE EFFECTS WERE GREAT!)

3. How did Ray defeat Ren, stand over him and then a 50 yard chasm come between them?

Anyway...the effects were A+ awesome. Thank the maker someone took away Lucas' digital "film". Plot was a C, but I have to keep reminding myself that I was a 12 year old when the original came out. There will be nothing like that feeling again. The original was the beginning of something amazing in movie making.

I plan on seeing it again in non-3D. I think the 3D was too much. Not a huge fan of it unless I am completely in it such as a virtual reality setting.

I'm not sure that would make sense. I could see her maybe being a baby sister or Kylo Ren, but a twin sister? Something would of been said in their many interactions throughout the movie. Han would of also said something when she introduced herself as Rey. The only thing that would make sense is if Leah had her months after Ren turned bad. Han might not of known about her and neither would Kylo. But then that goes back to my original point: If Rey was so desperate to meet the family that had left her, why would she be so quick to leave Leia and seek out Luke?

The move starts off "a long time ago..." I'm guessing this predates independence day.






Thinking about this a little more... All we really know is what Han told Finn and Rey. Which was Luke trained more Jedi, then Kylo turned to the dark side and destroyed what Luke had rebuilt. Luke felt responsible and went into hiding. With that in mind, what if Luke had started training Rey when Kylo turned. In an effort to protect Rey, Luke hides her on Jakku and runs off.

She's definitely the daughter of Luke or Leia, why else would the skywalker lightsaber call out to her?

I will bet anything that Snoke ends up being a 3 foot tall evil version of Yoda.

Agree with all the other nit-picks. Here's to hoping it sets the stage for something amazing and MUCH more original.

I'm going towards Rey being Kylo's twin or at least sister.

1) Because I think I read in one of the books years ago that Han and Leia had two kids.

2) Rey was waiting for her "family". Not father... a bit of a distinction there.

Luke sure looked surprised to see Rey didn't he? But Rey not so much in return. Something about that scene didn't exactly scream father and daughter reunion to me. As I type this out, a thought has occurred:

Rey and Ren are brother and sister, probably twins. They showed an affinity with the force and Han and Leia sent them to train with Luke. I think somewhere along the line something happened and they all thought that Rey was killed (or kidnapped never to be seen again). This explains:

-Luke's shock at seeing her, and the absence of a father/daughter reunion feeling
-It explains why neither Han nor Leia recognized her
-It also might explain why Han and Leia were on the outs. Both to me were clearly dealing with the grief of a great loss. I don't think Ren turning to the Dark Side was that loss because a) Leia still believed there is good in him and b) Han accepted his turning to the Dark Side as something that couldn't be changed, yet he went back to trying to relive the past as a smuggler.

Overall, I appreciate the effort J.J. made, and I think it was a solid movie. The visuals I liked went back to the original look and style. The plot... meh.. but I do understand it's setting up 2 more movies. I understood some of the millennial self-deprecating humor in the dialogue, but I feel like they over did it just a tad because I found myself relating TOO much to the characters. The story kind of lost a bit of that alien feel to it, if that makes sense?

Took this from Reddit. It pretty much explains who Rey really is.

Maz dialog is telling. "That lightsaber was Luke's and his father's before him, and now it calls out to you!"... "You already know the truth - whomever you're waiting for on Jakku, they're never coming back. But there's someone who still could."

Rey immediately says "Luke" under her breath.

"The belonging you seek is not behind you, but ahead."

Rey knows the truth. She's waiting for her family on Jakku. They aren't coming to Jakku, even though they could. Rey knows this is Luke. Maz says the belonging isn't back there but ahead, implying the family she wants is ahead of her, not back there.

Well....as for a confrontation...what would make a better movie? Brother V. Twin Sister or Cousins? Recall that Luke and Leah were split up and hidden from their father, Vader. As much as things have paralleled the originals, why not this? What if Rey was presumed dead at birth or taken by Luke...or both? We don't know when Leah and Han split, so maybe Han wasn't around at their birth. Maybe Luke delivered them, foreseen the dark future and took the female child. I guess we have 18 months. :-)

The biggest problem with twins as that it just wouldn't work timewise. Kylo destroyed the Jedi order when he was at least a teenager or older. Rei was put into hiding at a very young age. It wouldn't make sense to do that unless Kylo had already turned bad. She could still be a sister, but twins wouldn't make sense from what they've shown us so far.

All I have to say is if I was Rey, I'd build a new Lightsaber....the last two owners of the blue one lost an arm/hand fighting with it. Anakin twice (Dooku and Kenobi).

Can Rey be a clone from Luke's hand? That's why her force is so strong and the light saber is so drawn to her?

Luke wasn't THAT feminine!

Right, but this also implies that her family isn't specifically Luke. I do believe there is some familial relationship between them, but I don't think it's father/daughter.

This is going to be a long 18 months ... I saw one article saying that Rei was Obiwan's child. The jist was that it was Ewan McGregor's voice you heard briefly in the flashback and that she maintained a British accent similar to Obiwan and not Luke. I'm not sure how that would work out unless he knocked up a Mos Eisley hooker on the way out of Tatooine before his death, but even then Rey would be in her 40's. I suppose it could be a grandchild, but that just seems a stretch.

Many people are suggesting Han & Leah "twins" because that's what happened in the old Expanded Universe. All of that lore was dismissed by Disney, so don't put any stock into that.

I thought the movie was excellent. I liked all the humor and the nods to the first movie. I was pretty upset they killed HanSolo, but I can understand if Harrison Ford doesn't want to do these movies. He is getting pretty old. And honestly I didn't like the acting job he did in this movie. It just seemed fake like he was a cartoon character.

JC

What a fantastic movie. Even if they did reuse the entire plot of the 4th, it's still amazing. Star Wars, as far as literary/plot concerns go, has never been extremely original. Trope after trope can be found within each film. The real beauty of Star Wars is how they made the tropes seamlessly interact with each other. I felt like they stayed true to that in the new one. Again, not extremely creative, but it all meshes well together. I absolutely loved the film and the settings were perfect. All around a great film.

But what if Rei spent a lot of time at light speed in relation to Kylo? She wouldn't age as quickly as Kylo. Einstein told us as much.

my biggest thing is this:

so i get in the past, all the storm troopers were clones.

but since this is a new group, with regards to Fin, is it less clones and more of them just assimilating kids at a young age now?

also, what a serious gap with Kylo being Han's kid. we definitely need a side movie to explain that one.

As for where Finn fits in as a character.... he's the replacement for Han Solo. Han *HAD* to die off; Harrison Ford had asked Lucas to kill off Han back during filming of Empire, so this is long, long overdue. Finn already has the fancy flight jacket now, and has become buddies with Chewie (who will live nearly forever, because they can just keep putting different people in that costume).

Liked the movie, don't like that Han Solo is dead. Just don't. He coulda stayed on in some mentoring role like Leia was in this one and let the younger kids do the heavy lifting.
If they wanted him in action scenes they coulda digitally put his face on a younger stunt man like they did for Ian McDiarmid in attack of the clones or something.
I know it's just fiction, but hey it came out when I was 10.

Haven't seen any of the Star Wars movies since 1983.

If this isn't a prequel, and I thought there were 3, is this the 4th movie including episode 1?

There are 3 prequels, this is not one of them, that makes this one Episode 7.

In order of release

Episode 4: A New Hope - 1977
Episode 5: The Empire Strikes Back - 1980
Episode 6: Return of the Jedi - 1983
---
Episode 1: The Phantom Menace - 1999
Episode 2: Attack of the Clones - 2002
Episode 3: Revenge of the Sith - 2005
---
Episode 7: The Force Awakens - 2015
Episode 8: (coming 2017)
Episode 9: (coming 2019)

I just hope they get all the movies done before the original cast dies of old age.

I assume they will all be killed off sooner rather than later.