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First Star War Episode 7 Trailer Released
Midnight Thunder writes: The first trailer for Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens has been released. (YouTube link.) This is the first real opportunity to get a feeling for whether childhood dreams will be crushed or Disney, with the help of JJ Abrams, will be able to breath new life into the story without making it feel like a merchandising excuse.
Unlike most media companies, Disney takes the long view of merchandising. Anyone was can make a movie that sells merchandising for a year or so, but Disney knows that for a movie to be able to keep selling merchandise for 70+ years, like Snow White has, the movie has to have a very appealing and timeless story to it. The original trilogy has that long term appeal. That is something Disney is going to try to recapture.
Most of the trailer is CGI, which makes sense at this point. The movie won't be released for another year, so this early on most of the finished shots would be fairly generic CGI stuff that was being worked on in parallel to the main shooting. The hard part is all the editing and incorporating CGI into the shots with the actors, and they've only just wrapped up the shooting this month. That's what they'll be working on for the next several months.
One thing about the lightsaber scene, at first I was like "that's a lame gimmicky lightsaber", but then looking at it more closely, it doesn't have a pure even glow like a normal lightsaber. It looks more like fire and less refined. So my hunch is that sith guy had to figure out how to fabricate the weapon on his own without any guidance, so it's this crude, barely controlled weapon that has to vent extra energy so it doesn't blow up or melt or something. Yeah, that was a pretty geeky analysis.
Better known as 318230.
Millenium Falcon shot: I hope he's got a new pilot, because I think Han's getting too old for this. Also: 25+ years later and they're still using original TIE fighters?
Harrison Ford still has a valid pilot's license.
As far as technology goes, what I observed from the episodes 1-3 is that they had better technology available than they did in 4-6, like double bladed light sabers, unlike the paltry one bladed ones available in the future. It's almost like their society is failing and their technology is limited to only what has already been produced and hasn't been destroyed yet. They should count themselves lucky to have TIE fighters.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
That's not something you can do to a lightsaber goddammit.
Ahem. Actually, it makes a kind of sense: it always bothered me how Star Wars lightsabers didn't have any kind of hilt/crossguard, which should have made it almost trivially easy for their opponent's to simply slide their lightsaber down the blade and slice off their opponents hand. Maybe someone in the universe finally realized that with a crossguard every lightsaber duel wouldn't end with someone loosing a hand?
"None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license." --John Milton
Because you cant see the back of it, where the rooster tail is?
My though is why do the TIE's fire? blasters go straight. If you aren't lined up, what's the point of firing?
To be fair, a lot of those things actually were action figures because that's how the effects were done. And puppets probably translate fairly well. But at least they didn't come off as specifically designed to be turned into a McDonald's toy. I suppose I didn't really get that impression in the new trilogy either, although part of that may be simply because I wasn't made to care about any of the characters and am not sure why I would want them as figurines. . . .
When things get complex, multiply by the complex conjugate.
1. Aren't you a little black to be a stormtrooper?
This seems like canon, I thought all the stormtroopers were clones of Jango Fett.
I stole this Sig
I was referring to the group of Stormtroopers - with the closeups, floor angles, etc. There's a very distinct difference in the shooting style of the originals, whether intentional or not, the shots with the empire tended to be wide/mid shots and very few closeups or low shots, with the exception of Darth Vader and the Emperor. They were also often in larger sets/environments. The rebel shots on the other hand tended to be mid/close shots on smaller sets or low shots. They were often in smaller sets. This gave contrast and really supported the david vs goliath feel. When you apply "gritty" mid/close shots in a small environment with Stormtroopers then it obliterates that contrast and just doesn't feel right.
You can go off about SW nerds all you want but there's a reason they exist. They may not be able to illiterate why or go too far in trying to do so but there are reasons why those films stand the test of time and have such a fanbase.
Which is exactly WHY having a group of religious nuts running around 'guarding' the universe by wielding energy swords with no hilts was completely ridiculous in the first place, especially when that very same universe was also populated by people wielding weapons with both physical and energy based ammo that simply would beat the reaction time of any human, force or no force
I wondered why no one ever came up with the idea of a blaster that fired three bolts in a slightly spreading triangle. The lightsaber is a line - it can only block two of them, no matter who fast its wielder is.
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