Star Wars VII - Trailer Discussion

[Havok]

And as I watched clips it occurred to me... "DUH! The Falcon lost it's round disc in the Death Star. New square one." Which makes perfect sense as the Falcon is always put back together with what ever Han can find.

[Iroscato]

And as I watched clips it occurred to me... "DUH! The Falcon lost it's round disc in the Death Star. New square one." Which makes perfect sense as the Falcon is always put back together with what ever Han can find.

I quite like it - shows that they're actually paying attention to little details of continuity like that. My god...I'm actually...hopeful for this film.

[Crazedwraith]

And as I watched clips it occurred to me... "DUH! The Falcon lost it's round disc in the Death Star. New square one." Which makes perfect sense as the Falcon is always put back together with what ever Han can find.

Presumably he's blown out the engines at some point as well, then.

Not sure about the design the new thin engines made me think the falcon was ridiculously thin, like not big enough for people thin. But it has got more stuff under the engines before, still looks off to me.

[Rogue 9]

On reflection, I think the appeal of the trailer is as much in the sound design as the visual effects - you hear an Imperial probe droid in the background when the guy in stormtrooper armor jumps up and turns to look down the dune in the first scene, the droid sounds like an R2 unit, and the X-wing, TIE fighter, and Falcon engine sounds took me right back to A New Hope. It was really masterfully put together on the sound front.

[Havok]

The whole thing, as I was telling Starkles, is just to say "Look! It's Star Wars!"
Lightsabers
X-Wings
Droids
Speeders
Tattoine
Stormtroopers
The music
Millennium Fucking Falcon...

It's all there brand new, yet you recognize at the same time what you are going back into. Perfect teaser.

[Adam Reynolds]

The voice is definitely Andy Serkis, not Cumberbatch.

[Iroscato]

The voice is definitely Andy Serkis, not Cumberbatch.

Called it

[SpottedKitty]

Not sure about the design the new thin engines made me think the falcon was ridiculously thin, like not big enough for people thin. But it has got more stuff under the engines before, still looks off to me.

It's easy to underestimate the Falcon's size; think of all the scenes set on the boarding ramp, or the fact that the little stalk sticking out with the cockpit at the end is big enough to stand up in (as long as you're careful not to bang your head on the door frame...).

[JLTucker]

It looks like a fan film shot on a small budget rather than feeling like a 150 million dollar Sci Fi blockbuster. The cinematography feels extremely out of place for a Star Wars film. Too much shakey cam, weird camera moment and too much quick edit

By that logic, this teaser trailer for The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo means the movie was quickly cut. It's a trailer, and a teaser one at that. They aren't going to show a lot.

[amigocabal]

Never been blown away by a trailer like this before. My thoughts:

1. Unmasked stormtrooper - Either it's a good guy who pulled a Han and Luke, or a bad guy who lost his helmet. Hoping it's the latter...because that will add a human aspect to stormtroopers that we haven't really seen since the Clone Wars.
2. Stormtroopers preparing for a combat insertion - That gave me shivers. I never liked the idea that Stormtroopers were idiotic mooks who couldn't hit the broad side of a barn door, but alas there was very little in the OT that made them seem dangerous. This one scene in the drop ship however, adds a whole level of badassery and implies you don't want to fuck with them. I can't wait to see more about that.
3. Scene with the Sith in the forest - Don't care either way for the lightsaber...we've seen wackier designs over the years, so this one isn't bad. It does imply home-built rather than a professional, polished design. But the whole environment seems downright spooky and I like it. Reminds me of Dagobah to an extent...without the snow, of course.
4. Flight scenes in the atmosphere - Jaw dropping. The X-wings flying over the lake was very well done and realistic. The Millennium Falcon was always stated to be the fastest ship in the galaxy but only a few times have we actually seen that. In the Hoth asteroid belt we see the Falcon maneuvering like a bat out of hell but that's about it. In this trailer, we see that the Falcon practically turning on a dime and surprising the hell out of the TIE pilots. I almost heard Han muttering under his breath in the cockpit at that point.

Plus, I agree fully with the decisions to use CGI to augment the physical ship models instead of going 100% CGI. The X-wings, TIES and Falcon have never looked so good.

Overall...god damn it, I have to wait an entire year?

In reply to your comments.


1. Woul;d the splinters of the Empire necessarily be the bad guys? I would expect, post-ROTJ, that some of the high ranking Imperials would at least want peaceful relations with the reconstituted Galactic Senate, even if they were ruling their own fiefdoms.
2. The stormtroopers won in Hoth. It would seem in the OT, they were very effective in huge numbers if they could all work together as a large group, with them being able to cover each opther and stuff, with big guns to back them up, but they are not so good as small squads against other small squads or individuals. (Death Star I, against Luke and co., and Endor, where the thick forest divided up the stormtroopers into small squads and diminished their capacity to cover each other.) then again, post-ROTJ, the successors of the Imperial stormtrooper leadership may very well have changed battle tactics.

[Borgholio]

1. Woul;d the splinters of the Empire necessarily be the bad guys? I would expect, post-ROTJ, that some of the high ranking Imperials would at least want peaceful relations with the reconstituted Galactic Senate, even if they were ruling their own fiefdoms.

That's how it was in the EU. While many factions tried to fight over the throne on Coruscant, some just kept to themselves and had their own little empires. They even allied with the New Republic out of self-interest in some cases. But some still thought as the Rebel Alliance / New Republic were the enemy and kept fighting.

2. The stormtroopers won in Hoth. It would seem in the OT, they were very effective in huge numbers if they could all work together as a large group, with them being able to cover each opther and stuff, with big guns to back them up, but they are not so good as small squads against other small squads or individuals. (Death Star I, against Luke and co., and Endor, where the thick forest divided up the stormtroopers into small squads and diminished their capacity to cover each other.) then again, post-ROTJ, the successors of the Imperial stormtrooper leadership may very well have changed battle tactics.

Yeah they won at Hoth and in the boarding action of Tantive IV. They also supposedly are crack shots, as per Obi Wan's comment on the Jawa sancrawler. However, the huge number of character shields meant that out of the entire freaking OT, the only time a main character was in danger was when Leia suffered a grazing wound to her arm (C-3PO in Cloud City and R2 in ROTJ not withstanding). So unless one is subscribing to the theory that they were always shooting to miss, it seems that the quality of the Stormtroopers is...variable.

In this teaser, it shows them doing spec-ops style insertions which reinforces the idea that they tend to be overall badasses and the main characters just got really really lucky.

[SCRawl]

With respect to the lightsabre crossguards, I question its inclusion. In principle it makes sense, since even a glancing blow from one's opponent there would mean the end of either the sword or the sword-wielder's hands. On the other hand, the weapons have been in use for centuries; if it made sense to have crossguards on lightsabres, someone would have figured it out long before we ever met the Jedi.

It could be that the technology wasn't up to it - the standard lightsaber is a stick maybe eight inches long with a blade parallel to the stick. This one either needs miniaturisation for the crossguards or blades projected perpendicular to the emitter instead of parallel.

This is a society that has achieved technological stasis. If the modification would have been beneficial, and the will to provide it existed, the means to develop it would have been provided. I think it unlikely that a thousand years of lightsabre could go by with suboptimal tools but thirty years would be enough to produce a new, beneficial enhancement.

[SpottedKitty]

Yeah they won at Hoth and in the boarding action of Tantive IV. They also supposedly are crack shots, as per Obi Wan's comment on the Jawa sancrawler.

The Hoth base was being evacuated anyway, so I'm not sure if that should count. And I've always considered that Jawa sandcrawlers are plated with a material that attracts blaster fire...

[Joun_Lord]

1. Woul;d the splinters of the Empire necessarily be the bad guys? I would expect, post-ROTJ, that some of the high ranking Imperials would at least want peaceful relations with the reconstituted Galactic Senate, even if they were ruling their own fiefdoms.

That's how it was in the EU. While many factions tried to fight over the throne on Coruscant, some just kept to themselves and had their own little empires. They even allied with the New Republic out of self-interest in some cases. But some still thought as the Rebel Alliance / New Republic were the enemy and kept fighting.

I swear I read in something a long, long time ago probably pre-prequels a bit about the Empire not falling but it being reformed into a new Empire ruled by the Senate led by Leia as Queen. For the life of me I can't remember were I read it but I'm relatively positive it was in something official, maybe a novel or possibly one of the rough drafts.

I think it would be interesting if the Empire never did fall but just taken over by the Rebellion. The new Stormtroopers and TIE Fighters we see are actually not necessarily the bad guys, though considering they are fighting against the Falcon not the good guys either. Could be a galactic schism of normal people against force users, the New Republic/New Empire is hunting Han and Co to find and kill Luke.

I doubt thats the case, the Empire is probably the bad guys. Though I do wonder about the anti-force user sentiment, what with the movie's title and Luke supposed to be a hermit like Yoda was when he was being hunted.

[Grumman]

I swear I read in something a long, long time ago probably pre-prequels a bit about the Empire not falling but it being reformed into a new Empire ruled by the Senate led by Leia as Queen. For the life of me I can't remember were I read it but I'm relatively positive it was in something official, maybe a novel or possibly one of the rough drafts.

I think it would be interesting if the Empire never did fall but just taken over by the Rebellion.

That's more or less what happened, isn't it? The Emperor and his Moffs were removed, and control of the galaxy as a whole went back to a senate made up of representatives of each sector.

Could be a galactic schism of normal people against force users, the New Republic/New Empire is hunting Han and Co to find and kill Luke.

I doubt thats the case, the Empire is probably the bad guys. Though I do wonder about the anti-force user sentiment, what with the movie's title and Luke supposed to be a hermit like Yoda was when he was being hunted.

That would be pretty awful, in my opinion. A good Force user takes out the two bad Force users who ruled the galaxy with an iron fist, and now they decide Force users are bad? I see enough of that nonsense in superhero comics, thank you very much.

[Adam Reynolds]

That would be pretty awful, in my opinion. A good Force user takes out the two bad Force users who ruled the galaxy with an iron fist, and now they decide Force users are bad? I see enough of that nonsense in superhero comics, thank you very much.

But when the Emperor ruled the galaxy at least it was peaceful. It was only when the Jedi returned that it became violent again. And without Force users, he would have never came to power in the first place. There can't be Sith out for revenge if there aren't any Jedi either. Though that new lightsaber design does seem to suggest that the new Sith are rather crude and thus free from the orthodoxy of Bane's order.

As for Luke's choice to become a hermit, perhaps he was worried about falling to the Dark Side himself and thus left to avoid such a fate. It is only when the Sith seem to reappear that things change.

[Grumman]

But when the Emperor ruled the galaxy at least it was peaceful.

Going less than twenty years without a galaxy-spanning civil war is not "peaceful".

[Adam Reynolds]

Going less than twenty years without a galaxy-spanning civil war is not "peaceful".

But it was only after Luke appeared that the rebellion really got going again. While obviously there was still resistance with or without Jedi, the main effective branch of the Rebel Alliance went from a single minor victory to a major one only with the help of a neophyte Jedi. And it only became a galaxy-spanning war after Yavin and arguably Endor. Neither of which would have truly been Rebel victories without Luke. I suppose one could say that neither battle would have happened without him but regardless the Death Star and Emperor only were destroyed and died respectively thanks to the direct actions of Luke.

It could also be the case that now he had seemed to fulfill his purpose, his order was considered unnecessary and thus never got off the ground. He might have thought this himself somewhat, hence Yoda's comments about Luke being the last of the Jedi in ROTJ. I almost wonder if Leia ever really developed the abilities herself or simply focused on being an effective diplomat and leader.

[Grumman]

Going less than twenty years without a galaxy-spanning civil war is not "peaceful".

But it was only after Luke appeared that the rebellion really got going again. While obviously there was still resistance with or without Jedi, the main effective branch of the Rebel Alliance went from a single minor victory to a major one only with the help of a neophyte Jedi.

And what was that victory? Oh yes, destroying a weapon that had already been used to murder two billion innocent Imperial citizens.

I realise that you're playing the Devil's advocate, but there is no credible way that this can be pinned on Luke.

[Anacronian]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v93Jh6JNBng

I found this funny and pretty well done.

[Batman]

The TIE spam at the end was hilarious.

[Battlegrinder]

Could be a galactic schism of normal people against force users, the New Republic/New Empire is hunting Han and Co to find and kill Luke.

I doubt thats the case, the Empire is probably the bad guys. Though I do wonder about the anti-force user sentiment, what with the movie's title and Luke supposed to be a hermit like Yoda was when he was being hunted.

I can kinda see where you're going with this, actually. In the old EU, it always seemed like galactic society was fairly stable, until some asshole with a lightsaber would step in and throw everything into chaos again.

[Gaidin]

Yeah they won at Hoth and in the boarding action of Tantive IV. They also supposedly are crack shots, as per Obi Wan's comment on the Jawa sancrawler. However, the huge number of character shields meant that out of the entire freaking OT, the only time a main character was in danger was when Leia suffered a grazing wound to her arm (C-3PO in Cloud City and R2 in ROTJ not withstanding). So unless one is subscribing to the theory that they were always shooting to miss, it seems that the quality of the Stormtroopers is...variable.

Bearing this in mind, does anybody have a damn clue how much of that rebel squad on the moon of Endor actually survived? Because...character shields being character shields. It really was kind of a last ditch con that got them into that base, and there wasn't anybody but the main characters and ewoks walking around, that I could see anyway.

[Skylon]

Bearing this in mind, does anybody have a damn clue how much of that rebel squad on the moon of Endor actually survived? Because...character shields being character shields. It really was kind of a last ditch con that got them into that base, and there wasn't anybody but the main characters and ewoks walking around, that I could see anyway.

At least a couple were visible during the celebration scene at the end of RotJ, and I'm pretty sure they are visible when Han is planting the explosive charges, and later running the fuck away from the shield bunker.

I'm gonna assume that the Imperials got swamped with Ewoks and that the commandos resorted to sniping on Stormtroopers and causing chaos for them in the woods, while Han and company tried to get into the bunker. It at least makes the defeat of the Imperials a little more palatable.

[Gaidin]

So, theoretically they're as good as Obi-wan says they are. Just not as "dramatically" good unless the story demands.