Slashdot Mirror
Star Wars Pulls In $1 Billion At Record Speed (reuters.com)
New submitter henrydan798 writes to note that Star Wars: The Force Awakens has set a new record for ticket sales, becoming the fastest movie ever to earn a billion dollars at the till. As the L.A. Times reports, The latest installment in the "Star Wars" franchise grossed an estimated $153.5 million in the U.S. and Canada in its second weekend, beating the lower end of analyst expectations of $140 million. This drives the J.J. Abrams-directed picture to a to-date domestic gross of $544.5 million.
"The Force Awakens," which cost an estimated $200 million to produce, debuted last weekend to record domestic ticket sales of $248 million. It also grossed $281 million overseas for a global total of $529 million, topping the previous worldwide debut benchmark set in June by "Jurassic World" ($525 million). This week, with an international estimated gross of $546 million to date, the film became the fastest to surpass $1 billion globally.
Were any of those dollars yours? If so, do you think they were well spent?
Congratulations on the successful marketing! And still, I'm in no rush to see this movie. I'll wait until I can rent a BluRay in my local video store, to watch it at home, where already for significant time the image and audio quality is more pleasant than in most public theaters, not to mention the comfort of having control over volume, play/pause etc., and the absent mob of other people.
but props to Disney. i've never seen so many people i respect so bought-in to a franchise brand event as this.
Tag all timothy articles with timothyarselicker
Fuck J. J. Abrams and everything he stands for!
I might not read any replies until I see the movie. Just in case someone tries spoiling it for me. But...
What about when adjusted for inflation? Does anyone know how long it took Gone with the Wind took to get to $58,566,760?
http://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl
I hope I did the math correctly.
The new film was (a) far better than the train wreck of the prior three, (b) essentially identical to the first (1977) Star Wars plot, (c) decently acted, and (d) a mediocre movie, but one that felt better than it really was in comparison to the horrors of the prequels. It worked on a nostalgic level: it felt like the Star Wars universe again, and it didn't totally fuck it up. It didn't so well work on the level of being original or even fully making sense within its own universe.
Mixed bag. Not as horrible as the naysayers claim, but not as awesomely great as the fanboys claim.
But does the viewer?
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
Of the three times I have been to that movie in cinema so far I regret no dollars.
Ok, the story is somewhat simple - but so what? It simply works as a "Star Wars" movie.
I think they captured the feel of the older movies well.
I liked the banter and the action.
I wish the script and main story was a bit more thought out.
Worth watching? Yes, but don't expect any oscars.
No doubt the film was popular. How to get all those people in and out a a record pace? Squeeze the theaters by requiring them to show the film on the largest screens for a long period of time, pushing out any other movies. The Hateful Eight was to be shown in a special 70mm roadshow presentation. The problem though was that it could only be shown on smaller secondary screens. Disney required their new movie to show on the largest ones, or else not show the movie at all, on any screen.
So while their film is popular, it's not just the marketing hype that got it the numbers. A bit of strong arm tactics to push aside other movies seems to have contributed.
And I do not regret a cent.
1) That was nice present for kids.
2) I enjoyed it no less than any of 6 previous star wars movies
3) My wife also said that she liked it much more than last "Mad Max", which she finds disgusting. While I must say "Mad Max" was impressive, but I would better watch more "Star Wars" movies that "Mad Max" movies.
This was right movie in the right time for merchandise.
Come on, they blatantly rehashed the most well-received scenes from the original series and filled the rest with a whiny "villain", a female "Luke" (because women), an orange "Yoda" and random action. I wouldn't exactly say I was disappointed, because I didn't expect much more from Disney and J.J. Abrams, but that really was unimaginative and bland, even for them. 5/10, "saved by production value".
Although I don't find the movie that good. Too action packed, a lot of special effects, but painfully lacking story and character development. After seeing this new film I have watched again the original trilogy. Oh, my, they were works of art compared to this one! You could actually find a scenario in those movies, the characters really had clearly defined goals (other than "shoot'em all"), there have even been some plots and clever schemes on both sides, and most important, characters really talked to each other during the movie! And this is talking about a trilogy that was essentialy commercial and not-that-deep compared to the well developed SF literature of the time.
Mild spoiler warning.
Of course it made a billion dollars, it's a decent Star Wars movie. They could have made a great Star Wars movie if they didn't just remake A New Hope. Of course that would also risk a bomb that would kill ticket sales for the further installments.
Better to shoot for mediocrity and guarantee billions than to shoot for greatness and risk the cash cow. Hopefully the next non-Abrams director will be willing to make a new movie.
I stole this Sig
I dont know what I saw? It may have familiar props and actors in it. But it wasnt star wars.
It is amazing what a big marketing budget can do to brainwash consumers. Light side or dark side doggie biscuits even. But phantom menace was God too when it first came out and no one would dare say anything bad due to death threats. Even Slashdot talked about how cool that prequrl is.
It didn't become OK to say it sucked until later.
The fact even Finn could defeat a dark Lord of the sith shows how much of a joke it is.
If it wasn't Star wars no one would see it. It's all branding
http://saveie6.com/
Don't want to sound....whatever.....put any qualifier that comes to mind here....but I am done with cinema going in general and Star Wars in particular!!
I see now that the whole idea of what movie and movie going is, has changed. It is a much larger "consumer experience" that involves merchandizing, social media, a plethora of buttons being pushed cleverly on kids and their parents, social engineering, social media, stiffing political correctness.......and the quality of the actual film is not significant anymore! It is a product, not a movie!
The actual movie [only a part of the product]....ouch! Let's not bother repeating the obvious - just go to IMDB and read the top 50 "non-professional" reviews. 47 are negative and the points why TFA sucks tremendously are explained eloquently and in detail. The official reviews are an insult to our intelligence....my the gods even the guy who [hilariously] destroyed Ep 1-3 (red letter media) is buying the crap...I cannot continue...only curses come to mind :(
But man, the product worked like a charm! I watched it on 25th at 11:00 AM in the one of the only two places in NL where you get the 3D IMAX stuff. I had the best seat in the whole theater and was prepared to love the film. I did Ep.4-6 marathon the previous day, brushed my figures (R2D2, Imperial walkers) and posters - we are talking about a boy who saw the originals at age of 7 - a life time devoted fan!
Every family took a picture of their kids next to the model of BB-8! Merchandizing was everywhere....Every family kept on taking pictures inside the theater and sharing them in the last few minutes before the show. The cinema cleverly had a gallery of images form the trailers flashing on the screen starting from 10 minutes before 11. Guess what - everyone took a snapshot the moment they appeared like they'd been force mind tricked - I am sure that was the intention of showing the images. I honestly felt alien, like being surrounded by a herd of strange animals and you are not sure what they'd do next...
The show started at 11:00. Sorry , wrong, wrong , wrong....there were ....wait for it....25 minutes of ads of which only 3 for movies the rest was beer, the cinema chain, Coca Cola.....I got crazy!!! You pay premium for this and they give you half an hour of ads!!! Also - politically correct BS as beer ad that says to drink responsibly and that women do not like drunken men (fuck you, you are a beer manufacturer!).
And then the show starts and I realize that I cannot bare the loudness of the sound. Surely I am partially to blame - for some inexplicable reason my hearing has grown more acute in the last year or so (go figure!) but still I am sure it was already at the the very edge of what is tolerable...I though why are not the parents worried about the kid's ears?!? So I watched the show with my in-ear headphones plugged in and the sound was just loud enough (no kidding).
Shame on JJ, shame on the official reviewers for buying this (hey, Empire magazine, do you remember your wall of shame, giving Attack of the clones 5/5 (WTF!!) - you are about to repeat that if you are not honest), shame on the whole industry for turning movie going into this....I don't know what this is..., shame on all of us for still supporting this, shame , shame, shame...
I am so sorry that one of my most precious dreams is being destroyed....the kid from the former communist state walking with his father in the streets of Sofia in 1980 (that's the delay you got back then) and we see a poster with stormtrooper firing the rifle and the title Star Wars. My father goes "this seems like a movie in space, you like this kind of things, what with reading Jules Verne and such...shall we try" [no ads back then, no reviews - you go "blind" to a movie unless someone has seen it and tells you]. ....we watched it sitting on the stairs between the rows - there were no chairs left. We went out and I said "again"...and we went on the other side of the cinema to join the line for the next performance...RIP!
Not to mention standing in line, dodging the trails of popcorn on the floor before the movie had even begun, the lengthy commercials, those blasted 3D glasses.
All perfectly good reasons for taking my kids with me and gratefully spend my money on this whole circus. Plotholes and other nitpickings about the movie taken aside, I wouldn't hesitate to go again.
Jurassic World had been released in China when it opened. TFA isn't released in China until early Jan. So breaking this record is only the beginning.
What's always bugging me is that those numbers have no real relation to other movies (except for "We made X dollars!"). What'd really enable movies to compete with each other is numbers of tickets sold. Prices can change. Let's say an indie movie charges 5 dollar per ticket and a highly anticipated movie charges 10. Attaching dollars made in total to this obscures the real numbers of popularity. This gets worse when comparing the box office over time (say, gone with the wind vs star wars).
You can either get on the ride and enjoy it or not, but once your done none of your whining about how the movie and your expectations don't align matter.
Your money is gone and it ain't coming back.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
>Were any of those dollars yours?
Nope. This was the movie which crystalized in my mind the basic movie watching conundrum of "I'd prefer to see it at home, yet I can't".
For most movies I get around this by watching it at home or sometimes on a plane. For the occasional one I'll see it at a theater, but that would be for something I'm looking forward to. For instance, I watched the recent spate of Bond movies at the movie theater.
This movie is different in that I kind of would like to see it, but certainly not enough to put up with a movie theater, yet it isn't available through the internet without resorting to hackery that I don't do. Most movies are either good enough, or available. This one is neither.
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
People wonder why we get so little new movies. This is the reason. Because they make money.
Their marketing departments understand something that e.g. banks also understand: getting new customers is hard. They also now understand how they can use social marketing to up the hype.
I expect to see more repackeged material with Newer/Faster/Better on it. Oh well, as long as the massses are happy, who cares. At least Disney now has a bit more money to invest copyright laws.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Forgot to expand that part....so the message to the new generation is that if you are born proper (jedi) no training or effort is needed to master anything. The girl in the movie did not require any mentoring and in a few hours learned how to beat a Sith and knew better the Millennium Falcon than Han Solo! This drivel is a very poor and damaging attempt of PC girl-power shit. Listen, idiots, the female lead of all time and space is Ellen Ripley! We have done it many years ago, why is everyone hailing TFA for it?! Breaking such major Star Wars universe rule [you need to learn to use the Force and light-sabres] for the sake of PC points (but also financially rewarding, get it;) is...cynical to the extreme.
And I thought Lucas went senile with the whole "Han shot first" stuff...telling the kids that they should let hired assassin kill them for the sake of not appearing...what...bad?!? Who in their right mind would blame someone in this situation for taking a chance at Greedo?!
JJ outdid all this easily...I have the nagging feeling that a large group of marketeers was set to work and they scrambled "action points" - stuff that needs to be in to please this group or the other. At the end all the points were ushered in the script and the plot was twisted to accommodate them regardless of what it did to consistency with the SW universe rules...give it to bean counters to make...well...anything and watch the world burn!
A droid in distress? Yes ... ...
A damsel in distress? Yes
A even bigger, deadlier "deathstar"? Yes
Planets exploding? Yeah
Stupid flying inside the "deathstar"? Yes
A new, deep voiced, sith lord? Yes
A new sith apprentice (new anakin)? Yees
A even bigger mainline star destroyer? Yeah
So whats new here? Nothing? Bits and pieces of every star wars movie put together in "new soup"?
But somehow i am utterly non-interested.
there are so many childish fuckers called adults these days.
Star Wars is not a movie anymore. It is a heavily marketed brand. It can't even qualify for the label "science fiction", compared to the truly good SF movies around. Heck, Interstellar is a lot better than that, even with the hole(s) in the plot and the "Amurrica yeah!" spirit. I mean - I'm an adult. You'd literally have to drag me to a Star Wars movie, kicking and screaming.
Religous speak to God. Insane are spoken to by God. When all shut up, one can finally hear Shostakovich in peace
or some studio accountants are getting fired in the new year.
Imagine how much useful work could of been done for a Billion dollars, like developing a new version of Linux without systemD or sex robots.
But the net profit is still in the red for Star Wars...
CAP === 'spatula'
Could you elaborate on what didn't suck about the cinema you went to?
I watched Star Wars 1, 2 and 3 when they came out. When they released 4, 5 and 6 and called them "1, 2 and 3", I decided these couldn't be worthwhile. No way I'm going to see this new film, created by Disney.
no, I don't have a sig
This is like $100M in 2010 dollars
BO performance is average in India because of Indian movie "Dilwale".
it will still "lose" money for tax purposes.
Not trying to sound like Jay Sherman, but if we keep going to bad movies, they will keep making them... I read all the reviews first, and went confident I was going to see an entertaining movie. I do not go to see a movie called 'Star Wars' hoping to it to be a philosophical experience, but man, it sucked big time... My main complaints: 1.) It is almost identical to the first movie. Desert planet? Check. Young, force-sensitive user that's unware of it? Check. Stranded, cute robot with a secret message to deliver? Check. Escape from said planet trying to deliver message? Check. Han Solo and Chewbacca conning the wrong guys? Check. 2.) The bad guys suck. In the first movie, Darth Vader intimidates. He is strong, powerful, and no one messes with him. Kylo Ren? A weak crybaby that is hit SEVERAL TIMES by a stormtrooper that never held a lightsaber before!!! And he is prone to tantrums. Even worse, when he removes his helmet, he looks like an idiot. I have the perfect Sith name for him: Darth Dumbo. You're welcome, Disney! 3.) The Emperor is replaced by Gollum. Enough said. 4.) Can someone explain to me why the zero-calories version of the Empire bother building a planet-sized weapon, and have thousands of armed soldiers, if they are going to leave the most vulnerable part of their humongous weapon completely unattended? Not a single guard? Han Solo & Co. just waltz in, plant bombs and there it goes! These guys are the galactic equivalent of the Dodo. I was 8 when I watched the first movie. I should have know better than to go to this kind of movie at my current age.
I think arse is the same as ass in the UK. Kind of like mum is mom.
But only because I don't have a 3D setup at home. Over 6 months I will just torrent the DVD.
I wonder if it actually made a profit , though. :S
My eyes cannot repel crap of this magnitude!
I agree the best episodes were 4-6. 1-3 were pretty bad. Bad story telling, bad acting (Ewan McGregor did ok). I didn't think episode 7 was bad. I enjoyed it. Where I differ from many people is I take the position that it is not my story. I just listen to it. If I didn't take that road, then I would've left during Wolverine when they claimed hydrochlorothiazide slows your heart rate. If they make episode 8 a film about Jesus, then fine, but I'm not buying it. I take no loss when it comes to my memories of the first films Lucas released. Actually, I'm pretty thrilled this gets my sons into Star Wars and I can watch them enjoy it and see it for the first time vicariously.
I realize it may make your cereal taste better this morning, but get over yourselves. So you haters may have paid $100 for a night at the movies with the family and were disappointed. Guess what, you spent some time with the family. If you showed up with a sour-puss mentality "this better be fucking awesome and rock my world" then you deserved to get your feelings hurt. It isn't the first time you saw a bad flick at an exorbitant price.
Chewbacon
The Bible is like Wikipedia: written by a bunch of people and verifiable by questionable sources.
When all is said and done, they'll only have a few hundred million $ loss.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
You described two things going on in movies: international appeal and merchandising.
Lucas perfected Disney's merchandising back in the late 70's. Lucas is a great marketer and deal maker.
Movies have to be made with international appeal. Action! Action! Action! That doesn't have to be translated or put into cultural context. That's why shit like the Transformer movies make a shit load of money. The Star Trek reboots were crap compared to ST:TOS because of this. ST:TOS has the cultural context of the US during the 1960s. Much of what went on goes over the head of the younger generation. Shit, I didn't get the significance of Kirk kissing Uhura and I grew up in the late 70's! Whereas; the vapid action of ST:Reboots has very little cultural context.
In other words, if you want know why movies suck now - besides having to use them to market toys and other shit - is because they need to get Chinese people to watch it - movies need to have a World wide non-cultural specific appeal to make it big these days.
Me? I'm waiting for the DVD to come out and if it's less than $20, I might get it.
Having said that, this one leverages on the fan base, its speculation about possible connections between the characters. Back in the 1970s no one asked "Who is Luke Skywalker?" or speculated he could be related by blood to super villains. Despite being hinted at as Darth Vader = Dark Father in German.
This time the net is abuzz with speculation about Rey. Everyone has all but concluded that Rey is the daughter of Luke. Some people hoping for a twist think she could be a grand daughter of Obi Wan. Or Obi Wan might have had a daughter who married luke, thus Rey could be Rey Wan-Skywalker.
I hope they pull a totally unexpected twist and make Rey an aunt of Luke and Leia. Anakin's father is left dangling in the canon, with some vague hints by Shmi that Anakin had no father. Anakin's father could be from a long living tribe (Yoda was 900 years old), well endowed with the Force who go into suspended animation who wake up time to time to create off-spring to bring balance to the Force. "To eradicate the Evil, and to establish Righteousness, I will return to the Earth from time and again" said Krishna Geetha 4:8
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
elevate my Disney stock which is up over 300% since I bought it back in 2009.
It was an extended trailer for the next movies. They barely managed to introduce all the characters.
It's the beginning of a long lived Disney(tm) franchise.
While Lucas went batshit insane with episodes 1-3, and shouldn't be allowed to write a script ever again, all of his movies at least had memorable scenes. It appears JJ Abrams can't do that, I don't remember any specific scene after seeing episode 7. None. And that goes for the other film by him that i tried to see, the Star Trek reboot a couple years ago.
Saw this one in cinemas, not sure I'll bother with the next 12 to 20 episodes.
I apologize for the lack of a signature.
Way off-topic, but: In English, ass means either donkey or (colloquially, and less common now), stupid person. Arse means backside (Saxon derivation, as I recall). some time under 100 years ago, Americans started substituting ass for arse and now use ass to mean all three things. I'm not sure exactly when this happened - the two English definitions of ass are in the 1901 edition of Websters.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
I thought piracy was supposed to be killing the creative industries?
For months you can not escape the Star Wars marketing. On every single radio station, on every single television station. It doesn't matter what store you go to, there was always some obnoxious message about Star Wars, whether it was in candy, in sports articles, in toys, ... That last weeks they even dared to set up light shows and even statues/living statues in my local city.
I've never watched any Star Wars movie. I've seen a few shots, but I never felt the urge to continue watching a movie about people in plastic helmets or in pyjamas waving fluorescent light sticks. But now it has become all too obnoxious. Where is my right to not see what I don't want to see? At work you hear small talk about this movie, I'm made fun of because I've never watched the old movies as if I'm a hermit who lives under a rock and who has to be avoided at all cost.
This brainwashing has gone too far. Star Wars is a movie for kids that might be enjoyed by some adults. But it is not Culture with a big 'C'. It is Marketing with a big 'M'.
I don't like pop culture. What's wrong with that? I don't know what is the right music to listen to for the snobs. I also don't know what is the wrong music to listen to for the snobs. But there apparently is a list with songs/artists that are 'right' and that are 'wrong'. I don't like either. They all sound the same to me. I've the same feeling towards those 'must see' movies. They are all the same to me. A style that has been developed to be enjoyed (read paid for) by as many people as possible. Music, movies, TV shows, books, they all suffer from the same problem: it are clones of what was done before.
Where is the theater that was still alive in the 80's? The local theater with local talent and writers are gone. They have been replaced by multinational productions with a multi-million organization behind it. Those organizations have gone so far that they managed to close the local theaters because their writing was so general (but still copyrighted), that everybody was 'plagiarizing'. Where are the many local music groups? Just the act of making music is enough for the local syndicate of RIAA to extort money from them and to funnel the money to the US.
Literally nothing of our culture that has persisted for thousands of years has survived the Anglo-Saxon imperialism. And now I'm being made fun of for not embracing this meaningless pop culture?
Saw it in 3d IMax - great flick. Expensive (over $13USD / ticket), but great fun, and true to the original movies. My only unanswered question is, is Rey Luke's daughter, or Kylo's?
We're not making fun of you. We'll keep ignoring you. Nobody cares, you can emarginate yourself as long and as much you like.
Did it occur to you that if you could recite the lines before they happened, maybe the force awakened in you while you were watching the film?
Hey everyone, my money is on this padiwan taking the gold in olympic fencing!
"Liberalism is a very noble idea, currently controlled by some very bad people. Be sure you do not get the two confused.
"12!!" Somebody make a list of all the "callbacks," in fact.
Luke had daddy issues, which was the plot of episodes IV-VI. The big disappointment here is that Ford did difficult daddy better in Cowboys and Aliens than in this film. Basically a throw away.
The next one should be directed by Whedon and be call Scruffy the Vampire Slayer, with vampires of course. People would still go see it.
Don't know about you but when I'm dragged to the theater I always bring earplugs. You hear the movie fine and cut out the noise of everyone around you. I hated sitting through the ads but didn't pay attention (because they're ads) so I didn't know what they were about. Someone I was with said it spoiled who was a good guy and who was a bad guy in the movie.
Anyway I'm usually just talking with people during all that crap and just pay attention when the movie is on. Normally I check those sites that tell you when e movie actually starts and the preroll ends but we were with someone who really had to see the trailers and garbage. (Personally I find trailers are just condensed spoiler reels so I never watch.) Yeah going to the movies blows. I would have rather waited for the home video but by then I imagine the whole thing would be spoiled, not that I heard anything about the movie until I got there. It was fun. A New Hope but for a new generation.
Twinstiq, game news
Only reason to see the film is for the inevitable Plinkett review.
I thought it was a good movie. Action, some drama, hell we at least get some 'character' in the characters this time.
Even my wife liked it.
It was just fun...
And star wars was never science fiction, it was always science fantasy.
where I took my son and we paid $20+tax for two tickets and another for popcorn and drinks, I said fuck it no more of this BS. Got a large screen tv and a media players and never looked back. Just hit the pawn shops a few weeks after a movie comes out and then get it for $4 actually now don't even care I just free load when I can with torrents. I gto 800+ dvd's to got plenty of re-watch material.
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
I think that it was worth it to see the Force Awakens in movie theaters. J.J only pulled off one universe defying trick (which is way better than what he did with Into Darkness), by allowing Han to hyperspace past planetary defenses and come out of hyperspace well into the planets gravity well. It's been well established in Star Wars that hyperspacing doesn't work once you're close enough to a strong gravitational pull. And if you could all weapons would become hyperspace rockets. The movie is fun, though one thing that myself and all of my siblings agree on was that the character that we all liked the most was Poe. He was kind of over powered in the middle battle, but we still like him. The big disappointment is how powerful they made Kylo Ren at the beginning; stopping a blaster bolt he didn't even see coming with the force, while concentrating on something else; and then near the end couldn't seem to not get hit. The next beef with the movie was with how fast Rey took to using the force as good or better than Anakin, Luke or Obi-wan after they had years of practice. One thing which was introduced that I really liked, was how Kylo was feeling a pull from the light side of the force. That certainly never came up as a possibility in the movies, and I never saw it in the Extended Universe. I hope they explore that more.
Is it a movie to be seen on theaters? Absolutely.
Now, is it a good movie? So... no. Not by a long stretch, i might add. Looks great, Harrison Ford is fantastic and it is loaded with iconic scenes... but man, the script is a poor rehash of EP IV, and ridden with glaring plot holes as well.
as far as i'm concerned this first billion comes from curiosity and die hard fan , but this one is even worst then the ewoks , that sith apprentice would be more at his place trying to subdue chicks by flexing his biceps on a guess bilboard then at the helm of an evil empire and army , not even going to go on "this new starwar taste like a reheated week old microwave dinner" the story is a bad mashup of previous starwar movies , a desert planet orphan discover he's a jedi , deathstar 3 , death of said jedi-to-be mentor , cute irreverent robot ....... i could go on a long long time
This movie sucked, was worse than the prequels and it is shameful that it got made in the first place.
I am surprised critical opinion did not pan it outright. Boy was I fooled.
Star Wars as a franchise though may have some merit. The fans have more imagination than the makers.
Please go on being a true believer if it makes you happy.
"J.J only pulled off one universe defying trick"
What about looking up in the sky and seeing in realtime a the destruction of [important planet] from light years away? That kind of proliferation of scientific ignorance drives me crazy. Thanks for making us all dumber for having watched the movie Mr. Abrams.
I was surprised when they said the movie started at 11:00, and the actual movie didn't start until almost 11:30. They showed a bunch of ads for phone companies, cars, all sorts of crap, then the damn previews started AFTER all that. Finally 5 minutes after they said "now for the feature presentation" I got to watch Star Wars. I'm never going to the theatre again, what did my admission pay for if I had to watch all those ads?
It wasn't bad, but it wasn't good either. C+ is the best I think its worth. It sort of reminded me of a tv episode... I was underwhelmed really. I wouldn't go see it again.
On the good side the casting and acting were exceptional, except for Kylo Ren(Adam Driver), but you already knew that. The space-chases, gun fights, light-sabre fights, etc were good.
The bad side? The Story. But that is what we've come to expect from Abrams. The not-so-subtle "were too lazy to come up with our own ideas so lets re-use plot points from the first film(Ep IV)". I think you know what I'm talking about. That was really sad, and yes, lazy. These guys were given the keys to the kingdom, and what is the best they could come up with?
We play the game with the bravery of being out of range
disclose due to spoilers.
There were a few things that didn't make sense such as the lightsaber in Bespin and how that can't be explained... I might be giving too much away already.
There were a few emotional scenes and I almost cried even when I went with other people to see it I was still a little embarrassed.
I think anyone should see it, provided they watched all the previous installments, or at least A New Hope, Return of the Jedi and Empire Strikes Back.
http://gamehacking.org/vb/threads/12747-nensondubois-codes http://twitter.com/nensondubois_
Don't bother.
It's not a bad film., but it's mediocre at best.
JJ Abrams box ticking plus some awful writing. It's just... meh... the writing is lazy and sloppy. It's like a bunch of old Star Wars scenes stitched together loosely with a half-assed framing story, a Mary Sue lead and some disposable sidekicks. And no, zealots, neither Luke nor Anakin were Mary Sues.
The story in the prequels was actually better - even if they were a trainwreck due to bad acting and George Lucas's tin ear for dialog. The new film is, at least, not risible... that's the most you can say for it.
Perhaps you need to just go back to 8-chan where people will believe your pesudo-intellectual bullshit.
As usual, it's another case of the Americans getting the English language wron,g and then accusing the English of getting it wrong instead.
If you can point me to a scientific in-universe explanation of the Force, I'll recant.
Altering events and the actions of others by personal force is unproven, but far from impossible.
I like the explanation that the force is an ability to predict the likelihood of near future events, possible because of an altruistic parasitic life form.
It is in line with the present tilt of research that seems to indicate we are a macro-organism made possible by many contributing and formerly uncredited life forms.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
The 'non-canon' post-ROTJ universe had a lot better plotlines they could have followed instead. Even some of the dumb and hackneyed ones were better than the reviews I've read of the new movie.
Most importantly though: A whole generation of Star Wars fans grew up with Jacen Jaina and Anakin as the Organa-Solo offspring, and they just throw it all out because of 'NIH' syndrome, similiar to what happened in the prequel era (Hint: Boba Fett got a backstory that neither made him the prototype for a clone army, nor a Mandalorian, but rather a perfect fallen lawman, the sort who would make an excellent bounty hunter.)
The prices are much higher now than they were in 1977, when the original movie came out. The Imax 3D prices in 1977 were between 1.25 and 2 dollars. They are closed to 20 dollars now.
Has this gotten my money? Not yet. I plan to watch the Darths and Droids version of this movie first.
Now, I'd like to discuss two things that were mentioned in Reddit. I'm not asking for spoilers, I just want to open up some wild mass guessing.
First, what is the likelyhood that episode 8 will reveal that the guy whose name translates to a type of fish will turn out to be Sith-lord Binks, having stayed in the background since Palpatine double-crossed him way back in episode 3 by promoting Doku instead of him.
Second, how likely is it that Luke -- and yes, I saw while skimming through that he is missing (or otherwise out of the way) at the start of the movie will turn out to have turned dark at the end of 6 (after all, Yoda made a prophecy about him, etc. -- all the pieces are there, he could just have been acting "good" with the goal of Father+Son ruling the galaxy ... but darn it, daddy died. Hmm, maybe Luke + Binks as episode 8 lords?)
Yea, I know, but I said: Wild mass guessing.
(I think Binks as Sithlord would make a great plotline; I don't know if that's what will happen. Luke having turned bad at the end of 6, and hiding it from those near him at first, only to get away to found his own Evil Inc.? Until I found out that he starts this movie off in hiding, I didn't think that was possible. Err, did I just say "No, that's impossble"?)
"Finn, raised as a soldier his whole life, suddenly grows a conscience and quits after slaughtering a village. Doesn't stop him from killing a shitload of his old mates afterwards. Isn't he a bit too self aware?"
He says that was the first battle he's been in... which is a bit odd, as he admits to be taken as a child and trained as a soldier by the empire his whole life... yet they decided to train him for what 20-25 years prior to him seeing any action? I guess they have so many soldiers they can take their time apparently and I guess the loss of two deathstars and like 30 years of war with rebels didn't make enough of a dent to force the empire to perhaps fast track some soldiers into battle...
Also the purpose of Kylo's mask is what? To make him look and sound scary? I mean Vader had one, but that was to breath,,, If it is supposed to be just a combat helmet, why doesn't he just sound like a stormtrooper. That in itself seemed to make him a bit lame. Other possible explanations are that he is just so much of a Vader fanboi that he just "liked" it, also lame. Of course it is probably meant as some sort of stupid metaphor or something...
As for some of the things mentioned, I can forgive him wasting his mates, as it could simply be explained that they were trying to kill him first, so survival is a more a motivator than morals. As for the Kylo fight, I can excuse it, as 1) he did get his ass handed to him eventually, and 2) he is supposedly trained as a solider is whole life so has some martial training, and it does show him going up against another trooper with a melee type weapon, he perhaps also had training on, so not outrageous he might get a few lucky licks in. Also I think they made Kylo wounded to account for it also prior. Ray's 7 second jedi abs is a bit much, at least Luke had a bit of training on the falcon, and then a puppet montage later on,,,