Official Star Wars Thread

I seem to recall the teaser for Force Awakens dropped first, then we got the behind the scenes stuff at Celebration in 2015.
 
LooseCannon said:
I seem to recall the teaser for Force Awakens dropped first, then we got the behind the scenes stuff at Celebration in 2015.
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First teaser for TFA was very early - November 2014. The second one was Celebration 2015 (April) and the behind the scenes was at Comic-Con later that summer. For Rogue One the first teaser dropped in April 2016 (right after TFA landed on Blu-Ray wrapping up its marketing run) and during Celebration 2016 in July they showed BTS stuff. So it's logical to imagine a similar scenario (month-wise) now - release Rogue One on Blu-Ray in the first week of April (rumoured) and then hit hard with The Last Jedi teaser at Celebration 2017 (April 13-16). Showing BTS before any teaser is a bad idea, even if both of them will be shown during one panel.

Beauty and the Beast (March 17) is a good opportunity if they would want the teaser to sink in before Celebration and then show something more. Like said BTS footage. But the report that "BTS will be first" is puzzling (I hope it's wrong).
 
They started promotion for TFA early, so you can't really use it as a reference for this since all we've gotten so far is a title. Rogue One might be similar but I expect the promotion to be more frequent and in your face.

I agree that BTS before a teaser would be weird, but if anyone can get away with it it's Disney Star Wars. I still think it will be Beauty and the Beast because it'll likely be a short teaser and they'll have something more substantial for the hardcore fans at Celebration.
 
If anyone's interested in boardgames, there's a wonderful Star Wars game called Risk: Star Wars Edition out there now. It's not a Risk game in any real sense, but a really nice 30 minute game for 2 players detailing the battle for Endor at the end of Return of the Jedi. Pick your side, and play the three battles simultaneously - each side with their own asymmetric winning conditions. Takes 5 minutes to learn, and it's not expensive. :)
 
Star Wars: Rebellion is infinitely better. And more expensive, and time consuming. But Risk: Star Wars Edition is a nice light piece of board game fare for people who aren't really into more complex games.
 
Watched TFA again last night (first time since the original release when I saw it a couple of times in the theater).

Loved every single minute...until they introduced the Star Killer base. I still enjoyed the story and the characters, but I wish Abrams/Kasdan would have come up with a different McGuffin. I know it's a tired criticism, but damn, it was too much of a callback (I could handle every other reference). Which is a shame because I forgot how cool the new characters were.

But I will say the scene with Rey and the lightsaber at the end of the movie still gave me chills. That was wonderfully done.
 
The new Death Star would've been justified if they didn't blow it up at the end. As it was, including it was pointless and contributed nothing to the story besides allowing for a cool space battle at the end. It was the only major callback to the OT that I found lazy.
 
Mosh said:
The new Death Star would've been justified if they didn't blow it up at the end.
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This is my opinion as well. Have the Rebels win a Pyrrhic victory. Maybe disable it for a period, but destroying it was just...dumb.
 
Devil's advocate: it wasn't completely pointless. Starkiller Base contributed to the story by blowing up the Republic's government, which sets up the political/military situation for VIII and IX. That being said, they could have come up with something else than another superweapon... Just a massive surprise assault for example.

You seriously think destroying the Base was a bad idea? That favour on the script's part is the whole consolation! Now we don't have to deal with that rehash anymore. And a fourth Death Star is extremely unlikely...
 
Srogyy said:
Devil's advocate: it wasn't completely pointless. Starkiller Base contributed to the story by blowing up the Republic's government, which sets up the political/military situation for VIII and IX. That being said, they could have come up with something else than another superweapon... Just a massive surprise assault for example.
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Well sure, but that could've been at the end of the movie to set the stakes for the next one. Something similar to Return of the Jedi where the mission is to prevent the weapon from becoming operational, but they fail. Plus in context of the movie, destroying the Republic does level the playing field but then the advantage is quickly given back to the Resistance when Starkiller Base is destroyed.

I think Starkiller Base shouldn't have been in the movie period, but if they needed a 3rd death star it would've been better to have it play a bigger role in the story than yet another super weapon that needs to be blown up at the end. I would've liked to see them do something different with it. But yes, I'm glad it's gone either way. Just don't get why it was there to begin with. As you said, there were plenty of other ways to get rid of the Republic.
 
That's an interesting perspective, Srogyy - I expected the rebellion/republic to suffer a major setback at some point in the new trilogy, though I didn't expect it to get clobbered by yet another super weapon...and that it would be beat down so quickly in the new trilogy (it felt 'cheap' to me that the heroics of ROTJ were basically nullified/reset without much context---we never did learn the extent of the rebellion's victory post ROTJ).

I think it would have worked if Ren took Rey back to the snow forest planet as a captive. Instead of being a super weapon, it could have just been a large base where they were amassing a fleet to assault the republic. They still could have had the cool space battle/rescue at the end, but they could have just dropped the entire "the Death Star is rounding the planet and is almost ready to fire!" retread from Episode 4.

Though you do bring up a good point that hopefully the Death Star motif is now exhausted for Episodes 8 and 9.
 
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Hopefully they ease off on the callbacks for 8 and 9. I actually think the title The Last Jedi is a good sign on that end, that they're not mirroring the title of 5 in any way.
 
Yeah, I think any further overt callbacks would be taking the piss at this point.

In fairness to Abrams, he did mention that he felt like he was in an impossible position. How do you continue a story that is completely connected with the psyche of an entire generation of kids (now adults)? He did admit that he took the safe route. I'm hoping that now the stress of reintroducing the franchise is out of the way, they can take some risks.
 
Maturin said:
So I've watched the film twice, and I still have no clue as to what planets the Starkiller base destroyed.
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It destroyed the Hosnian System. After the formation of the New Republic, they brought back the Senate and moved it from Coruscant. Different planets were hosting it one after another. You know, something like the World Cup. :P During the events of TFA the Senate happened to be on Hosnian Prime.
 
This is why TFA worked as well as it did. The name of the system or what planets were destroyed is minutiae. Show don't tell. What matters is that the Republic was destroyed and that's what they showed. The prequels would've had some convoluted political exposition for all of this instead.
 
TFA lacked political exposition. They brushed over the whole thing, which left people confused and made the destruction of Hosnian System unimpactful. There's a scene in the novelisation where Leia sends her representative to Hosnian Prime to warn the Senate about the First Order, so it explains some political stuff. In the film that representative is the woman in that shot of people looking at the incoming laser. I think that conversation from the book would add a lot to the film.
 
Mosh said:
This is why TFA worked as well as it did. The name of the system or what planets were destroyed is minutiae. Show don't tell. What matters is that the Republic was destroyed and that's what they showed. The prequels would've had some convoluted political exposition for all of this instead.
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Have to disagree - didn't get that the Republic was destroyed until someone told me afterwards - and neither did my friends or family. No one had any idea what they were looking at - except planets getting destroyed. With Alderaan it was very clear what was at stake.
 
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