RPG Superstar 2008 Top 32, 2011 Top 16
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That's pretty much it. Vader is the Villain Realized, while Kylo's story appears to thus far be a Start of Darkness. This movie was him vacillating between either the Light or Dark Side, and he made his choice upon that bridge. The Force is strong with him...but he is not a Dark Jedi yet.I realized something that has been bugging me about the movie yesterday (in addition to the things I've previously listed). One of the big reasons that the threat of Kylo Ren seems diminished is that he was beaten pretty handily at multiple points in the movie. Ren turned his force mind probe back at him, Chewbaca bowcasts him, and then he's beaten in the climactic lightsaber duel and is only saved by GM fiat (crevasse opening between him and Rey).
In comparison, Darth Vader is never beaten until the end of RotJ, and every time he appears the good guys are in serious trouble. Even when his TIE fighter is hit at the end of ANH, he's sent off away from the battle, but he's clearly out there and not injured or beaten.
They've said that Kylo Ren will grow into a more serious villian, but at the same time, Rey and company will be growing in skill and experience as well.
While he's on the Dark Side and wear a mask, I wouldn't put Kylo Ren on the same level of Vader. He's presented as a more sympathetic character right in the first movie, and I don't think he'll be as much of a big bad as the series goes on.
Vader was a guy firmly on the Dark Side who had a tiny spark of light in him. Kylo is much more conflicted and seems to be more of a hostage of the Dark Side than anything else. I think that will play a big role in future movies, and I welcome the shift - it would be a shame just to copy the story beats of the first trilogy, after all.
I get that, and if this were the Kylo Ren spinoff movie, that would be neat to see. However, he's TFA's big bad, even if the pulls a Vader at the end and redeems himself and kills (urban legend) Snopes (which I fully expect at the end of ep IX). And as a big bad he just wasn't that badass. Sure, it would be hard to surpass Vader as a legendary big bad, but even Darth Maul was pretty intimidating and badass - he fought two jedi, and killed one before being taken down. Kylor Ren is about as intimidating as Dark Helmet in Spaceballs.
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Oh for god's sake can't two men be friends and develop a bromance without everyone screaming GAAAAY? You know straight men exist. And they have friends. And they love each other.I think the answer has become NO. Heterosexual males in fiction can't display any emotion to anyone the are not trying to hop into bed with, male or female. This is not a good thing.
I see that as the prominent media trend (esp now that the big push is to have non hetero represented in every media), but there was 0 gay vibe Bt Finn and Poe. Finn was puppy dogging the hell out of damsel in "distress" Rey though.
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Oh for god's sake can't two men be friends and develop a bromance without everyone screaming GAAAAY? You know straight men exist. And they have friends. And they love each other.
They absolutely do and absolutely can. But there are already tons of bromance movies. It would be cool to have a canon gay couple in Star Wars, don't you think? Why expend hate on shippers?
Poe and Finn have about as strong an established bond as Rey and Poe (give or take one "Do you have a boyfriend?" line that comes so early it's not necessarily indicative of any major connection). I wouldn't say no to either romance, but it would be neat if they dodged the more "traditional" pairing and went with the other option—or, of course, with "neither". Finn and Rey can care deeply for each other without hooking up.
People complaining about the idea of Poe and Finn being a couple confuse me. There is not a current bloat of gay couples in movies. There's a lot of "subtext", and stuff that gets read as subtext (which is probably what Grey Lensman is talking about), but it would actually be a very big surprise to me if they actually came out and showed a homosexual romance in this series.
Anyways, moving on, I'll get to what I came here for. Here's a quote about Finn I rather like.
If Finn has a defining attribute, it’s caring about other people, as people. Kicking ass is not the priority. Winning is not the priority. His own ego and his own insecurities are not the priority. When Rey is thrown against the tree by Kylo Ren, Finn turns his BACK to the enemy, DROPS his weapon, and runs to her to make sure she is okay. It’s endearing; it’s wonderful. It’s human; and, in creating a hero that subverts society’s typical, aggressive expectations for masculinity, it’s feminist. And he does this, in spite of years of conditioning to kill — instead, he affirms that caring is what’s most important to him. In another movie, he would have fought Ren immediately without a second thought, springing into attack mode.
This is one of the stronger aspects of Finn—he may not be exactly good at stuff in TFA (aside from "moving the plot"), but he's arguably the heart of the team. Here's hoping he gets more to do in the next movie to showcase that aspect of him. And maybe gets to be good at stuff? I dunno. We'll see. :P
You know straight men exist.
I am quite certain the moviegoing public is aware of this fact. Straight men are not being erased here. There are still tons and tons of bromance movies—from genre movies like Lord of the Rings to pretty much every bro comedy out there.
When did Finn get Poe to back him up? Finn claimed to be a member of the Resistance because he was ashamed of who he really was and wanted to feel like a hero. And, yes, to impress Rey, because somebody treating him like he was important was an amazing feeling for him. Sure, you can read into that further, but he outlined his primary reasons for lying pretty clearly in Maz's pirate watering hole place.
Finn lied because of his own personal issues. It was a lack of self-worth that Rey's confidence helped alleviate, not Rey herself. Diminishing it to "he did it to impress a girl" is actually a little bit unfair to Finn. There was a lot more going on than that.
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Oh for god's sake can't two men be friends and develop a bromance without everyone screaming GAAAAY? You know straight men exist. And they have friends. And they love each other.
Can't two gay characters exist in the Star Wars film canon without people screaming "BROMANCE", as iftwo gay people is too many?
Right now we're in a schroedinger moment, and until something happens in the films to confirm or deny the theory, I say why deny people representation?
To you they can be man pals.
To other people they can be romantic partners.
To still others, there's the distant and unlikely hope of seeing a healthy poly relationship.
It's all pretend. But straight men are hardly running out of representation in film.
Contributor, RPG Superstar 2010 Top 8
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Finn was pretty clearly into Rey though. He was worried for a while that she wanted to go back to Jakku because she had a boyfriend. A cute boyfriend.
Maybe we'll get a classic Luke-Leia-Han love triangle with Finn in the middle (hopefully without the incestuous twist :D)
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Oh for god's sake can't two men be friends and develop a bromance without everyone screaming GAAAAY? You know straight men exist. And they have friends. And they love each other.
Same complaint, but I'd love to see a hetero man and a hetero woman go through an entire movie as just friends, or equal partners, or maybe even with some sort of mutual respect, without it automatically becoming some sort of inevitable shipping event, where, because one has Tab A and the other has Slot B, it's some sort of biological imperative that they crush on each other and / or interlock naughty bits.
Male / male, female / female, male / female. All of these dynamics can exist *without* turning into romantic pairings. Rey didn't show much interest in Finn, and it might be a funky twist if she's just not all that into him (and it has nothing to do with Finn or Poe maybe being into each other, but everything to do with Rey having more important plans for her life than returning the unasked-for affections of someone who is just a little bit obsessed with her, to the point of following her across the galaxy to 'rescue' her, when she's made it *very* clear in their first meeting that she's not particularly in need of rescuing).
And that's not just a Star Wars thing. Pick pretty much any movie with guys and a girl, and who the girl 'ends up with' seems to be inevitably part of the story, as if, by dint of having girl-parts, she's obliged to share them with at least one of the dudes, because, why on earth would there be a girl in the movie at all, if some dude wasn't going to 'win' her?
Well, any movie where the woman isn't Ellen Ripley. 'Cause she's not having any of that nonsense (and was blessed with a female actor playing a part written for a man). :)
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Oh for god's sake can't two men be friends and develop a bromance without everyone screaming GAAAAY? You know straight men exist. And they have friends. And they love each other.Can't two gay characters exist in the Star Wars film canon without people screaming "BROMANCE", as iftwo gay people is too many?
Right now we're in a schroedinger moment, and until something happens in the films to confirm or deny the theory, I say why deny people representation?
To you they can be man pals.
To other people they can be romantic partners.
To still others, there's the distant and unlikely hope of seeing a healthy poly relationship.It's all pretend. But straight men are hardly running out of representation in film.
I don't know, man. Once they do that they'll introduce a romantic subplot about a brother and sister; it's a slippery slope! :P
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I'd love to see a hetero man and a hetero woman go through an entire movie as just friends, or equal partners, or maybe even with some sort of mutual respect, without it automatically becoming some sort of inevitable shipping event, where, because one has Tab A and the other has Slot B, it's some sort of biological imperative that they crush on each other and / or interlock naughty bits.
So, you skipped "Fury Road"?
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Or Captain America: The Winter Soldier?
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So, you skipped "Fury Road"?I'd love to see a hetero man and a hetero woman go through an entire movie as just friends, or equal partners, or maybe even with some sort of mutual respect, without it automatically becoming some sort of inevitable shipping event, where, because one has Tab A and the other has Slot B, it's some sort of biological imperative that they crush on each other and / or interlock naughty bits.
Actually, how do we know Furiosa's sexuality at all? She could be anywhere on the Kinsey scale, and it wouldn't affect the outcome of the film in the slightest.
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For all of the fan talk about Finn and Rey, it looked to me like she gave his comatose body a rather chaste kiss goodbye before flying off to join a pseudo-religious order that doesn't allow its members to have relationships.
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Just read the book adaption by Alan Dean Foster. It follows the movie pretty closely, but does show how Poe survived and got off Jakku.
It also has some dialog that was not in the movie that explains things better. I think JJ must have left dialog on the cutting room floor in order to expand the action sequences.
Also, it explains in more detail how Starkiller base works. Not only does it suck up a sun, it also sucks up dark energy. This causes a planet to go supernova when it explodes. That is how it can be seen several systems away. It also travels through hyperspace. What people saw was the energy bleed-through.
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He did indeed leave stuff on the cutting room floor, baron arem hasevaum pointed out things that went missing earlier and I am upset they were not in the movie.
I found out most of Kylo Ren and Rey toys were sold out.
Lots of Finn toys left, though, I think he didn't sell very well. Understandable, since he doesn't do a whole lot of cool stuff in the movie and doesn't have a cool armor like Phasma and the Stormtroopers. Same goes for Poe, but I think he doesn't have as many toys left because they didn't order all that many Poe toys, since he isn't one of the main characters.
Toys are pretty expensive, so if parents have to choose, it's understandable that they will prioritize Rey, Kylo Ren, Darth Vader and the Stormtroopers.
My nephew chose Han Solo, Chewbacca and Darth Vader... My niece got Rey, Chewbacca and Kylo Ren. Neither of them showed much interest in Poe or Finn. :/
Honestly, I liked Finn a heck of a lot more than Kylo Ren.
Heck, I liked the other Human Imperial officer more than Kylo Ren.
They gave Kylo Ren stupid lines (either that or the actor said them badly) and made him far too whiny for me to really like or take seriously as a efficient villain.
With how prone he is to temper tantrums...his base should have probably been blown up by a couple dozen X-wings and a small group of like 4 people..
Oh...wait...it was...
I was being honest in that I did like Finn more than others.
I don't really like how they are trying to set him and Rey up for Romance though...
I'd think figuring out his parents and origins would be FAR more interesting than the Romance option at this point to tell the truth...as they really haven't delved into his origins.
Many are pondering about Rey...but at least we have some hints through out the movie on her family. We have almost nothing on where Finn originally came from or anything!
I think they need a better villain than Kylo Ren...of course that's saying he's actually the villain of course.
On the entire two men romance idea...I don't mind it, just please don't have it shouting out what sometimes appears in Hollywood films where they make it blatantly obvious the ONLY reason it's there is to be PC and hence the relationship is VERY unrealistic.
However, I think it's more likely they are aiming for a hetero type romance.
Unfortunately, as I posted above, I find that there is far more interesting items I'd rather they explore than soap opera romance.
Sure, they could toss it in there...but have it more as a side plot that influences them rather than the main focus...
I'd rather have them focus on answers to my questions...
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Episode VIII release date moved to December 15, 2017.
The Pirates of the Caribbean Sequel will take the May release date.
I have made some calculations with my R2 unit.
Please buy Disney stock in July before heading to Gen Con.
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Episode VII release date moved to December 15, 2017.
I have made some calculations with my R2 unit.
You also need a protocol droid who speaks Latin! VII is "7" -- it's in the theaters NOW, not next year.
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Wow. Your question made me go back and look - I've been using that avatar almost as long as you've been posting.
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Holy Crap I'm Old!
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For all of the fan talk about Finn and Rey, it looked to me like she gave his comatose body a rather chaste kiss goodbye before flying off to join a pseudo-religious order that doesn't allow its members to have relationships.
Yeah, that worked out well. One of the weirdest rules introduced in the prequels. There's a long history in the EU of Jedi having relationships, children, etc. You can go all the way back to (off hand) Nomi Sunrider and all the way forward to Luke and Mara Jade.
I felt that was one of the great unexplored subplots of the prequels - in that the Jedi of the day had become twisted into emotionless warrior monks.
If I were to go back and rewrite the prequels I'd make the Padme relationship the central conflict for Anakin, rather than being whiny. Have him hiding it and sneaking around. Have fear of being discovered begin to lead him down darker paths. Later have him discovered. Have him in conflict with the order, which puts pressure on him to end it and threatens to throw him out. Set up anger and hatred coming out of it. Anakin coming to believe the Jedi have completely lost their way. Palaptine whispering in his ear that it wasn't always so - that the Jedi used to embrace emotions.
Basically, give him a reason to fall into the dark side other than "I WANT TO STOP PEOPLE FROM DYING AND NO ONE RESPECTS ME ENOUGH!"
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So, you skipped "Fury Road"?
Ooh, good catch, Furiosa and Max had zero romantic subplot!
Or Jack Reacher?
Yup, totally skipped that one, so no idea.
Or Captain America: The Winter Soldier?
Was there a woman with speaking lines other than the woman Natalie Dormer played (who snogged Captain America) and Agent Peggy Carter (who was the romantic interest through the entire movie, complete with gleepy end-conversation about meeting up to go dancing after the war, in between being hit on by Howard Stark and jealous interactions ranging from her shooting at him to see if his shield works, and him totally not understanding what fondue was)?
'Cause I don't remember her, if so.
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Or Captain America: The Winter Soldier?Was there a woman with speaking lines other than the woman Natalie Dormer played (who snogged Captain America) and Agent Peggy Carter (who was the romantic interest through the entire movie, complete with gleepy end-conversation about meeting up to go dancing after the war, in between being hit on by Howard Stark and jealous interactions ranging from her shooting at him to see if his shield works, and him totally not understanding what fondue was)?
'Cause I don't remember her, if so.
Winter Solider was the 2nd Captain America movie, not the first one. Winter Soldier was not set during WW2.
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Winter Solider was the 2nd Captain America movie, not the first one. Winter Soldier was not set during WW2.
Ah, my bad. I did like how Black Widow was very much *not* 'Captain America's girlfriend' in that movie.
Or anyone's romantic focus in the first Avengers movie, for that matter.
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Winter Solider was the 2nd Captain America movie, not the first one. Winter Soldier was not set during WW2.Ah, my bad. I did like how Black Widow was very much *not* 'Captain America's girlfriend' in that movie.
Or anyone's romantic focus in the first Avengers movie, for that matter.
Dude she got friendzoned so hard it actually hurt.
Watch Jack Reacher, it's a decent movie. With an awesome performance by Werner Herzog and Tom Cruise is damn good in it.
Winter soldier was the one where there was definitely something going on with Black Widow (though WHAT was anyone's guess...) and introduced Sharon Carter as the cute neighbor nurse. Just because Cap is BAD at getting that romance going, doesn't mean it wasn't a part of the show.
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Tom Cruise in damn good in most things he does. I can't stand him when he is publicly speaking, but he is a talented actor and gives a great performance on screen.
He's only annoying when he's being Tom Cruise.
It was lightly implied in CA:TWS (and more obviously referenced in A:AoU) that Natasha had at least attempted a relationship with Steve, but that he had friend-zoned her. You rarely see that in Hollywood, it's almost always the GUY getting friend-zoned.
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Which one in The Force Awakens was Natasha again???
ROTFL
Tangentially relevant, anyway: blasters v. bullets. (EDIT: as everyone in TFA uses blasters.)
I think he's missing a very, very salient point: bullets leave holes in ships. Only suicidal idiots would carry them on ships in space. Otherwise, it could well be a solid theory. I'm curious what you guys think?
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Tangentially relevant, anyway: blasters v. bullets. (EDIT: as everyone in TFA uses blasters.)
I think he's missing a very, very salient point: bullets leave holes in ships. Only suicidal idiots would carry them on ships in space. Otherwise, it could well be a solid theory. I'm curious what you guys think?
He lost me at about the sixth time he referred to a blaster as a "laser," which it self-evidently isn't. Laser shots are not visible, have no recoil, and there's no reason for them to be pulses. Lasers also don't deliver kinetic energy, so you wouldn't see objects moved or anyone thrown back by a laser.
The cllip seemed to be saying "hey, swords are better weapons than cans of tuna, so why do we arm US Special Forces troops with cans of tuna?"