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Post by Mezzaphor on Jan 20, 2018 4:50:14 GMT
What's interesting about the First Order walker, the AT-M6, is that it's even bigger than the Empire's walker. That GIF makes them out to be the same size, but the AT-AT is only about two-thirds the height of the AT-M6. So in some ways it's the First Order doubling down on the Empire's weird design decisions ("Make it even bigger!"). But in other ways it improves on its predecessor and fixes some design flaws. In spite of being taller, AT-M6 is designed to be more stable than the AT-AT. And it has sawblades on the front legs to cut through tow cables, so the "tie it up and trip it" strategy from Hoth won't work against it. And of course, it has even more firepower than the AT-AT, what with that ginormous cannon on its back.
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Post by Applelight Limited on Feb 3, 2018 2:47:26 GMT
I had so much more to say about this subject but I’ll save it for tomorrow. In the meantime, here’s a joke you’ve probably heard before:
Ray: How are the Porgs Chewie? Chewbacca: Yes they are.
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Post by japaneseteeth on Feb 3, 2018 4:05:42 GMT
Of course, that assumes that he didn't keep getting guilt tripped out of eating them.
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Post by Mezzaphor on Feb 3, 2018 4:24:42 GMT
Chewbacca brought porgs back on the Millenniums Falcon to feed the Resistance with.
Luke Skywalker's heroic stand against the First Order on Crait inspired millions throughout the galaxy... almost as many as the legend of Chewbacca's delicious porg tacos.
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Post by japaneseteeth on Feb 3, 2018 5:15:48 GMT
It's ironic; in the original AU Chewie was the only major character to get killed, and this time around it looks like he's the only one who's going to get through the whole thing alive. Once all this resistance and First Order nonsense is done with, he'll finally retire to run his Kashyyyk Fried Porg stand.
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Post by Mezzaphor on Feb 3, 2018 15:48:28 GMT
Remember that scene near the beginning of the movie, where the two porgs are playing with Luke's discarded lightsaber? One has its foot on the trigger, and the other is standing right in front of the blade emitter. I read that in an earlier draft, they accidentally turned the lightsaber on.
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Post by Applelight Limited on Feb 3, 2018 16:56:48 GMT
Remember that scene near the beginning of the movie, where the two porgs are playing with Luke's discarded lightsaber? One has its foot on the trigger, and the other is standing right in front of the blade emitter. I read that in an earlier draft, they accidentally turned the lightsaber on. I think it’s now a deleted scene.
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Post by japaneseteeth on Feb 3, 2018 20:30:52 GMT
Yeah, I feel like that would've been a bit too dark, amusing as it might be.
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Post by Applelight Limited on Feb 4, 2018 1:37:12 GMT
What's interesting about the First Order walker, the AT-M6, is that it's even bigger than the Empire's walker. That GIF makes them out to be the same size, but the AT-AT is only about two-thirds the height of the AT-M6. So in some ways it's the First Order doubling down on the Empire's weird design decisions ("Make it even bigger!"). But in other ways it improves on its predecessor and fixes some design flaws. In spite of being taller, AT-M6 is designed to be more stable than the AT-AT. And it has sawblades on the front legs to cut through tow cables, so the "tie it up and trip it" strategy from Hoth won't work against it. And of course, it has even more firepower than the AT-AT, what with that ginormous cannon on its back. I like the idea of the Empire's gear being a sort of crazy in between when compared to the old republic era gear and the First Orders. Like the walkers. If I had my way, I'd have used one of those old concepts for an at-at predecessor that was only half the size of the empire ones but were not so easy to trip up (at the cost of being easier to blow up overall, like you said Mezzaphor) and the brand new AT-M6, which is even bigger and more powerful than the at-at and harder to trip up. I know there is the at-te but that suffers from the prequel problem of looking more advanced than the latter models. You know they can climb up cliffs? Sorry, I'm a military equipment buff and I'm fascinated by these sort of things.
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Post by Mezzaphor on Feb 5, 2018 1:04:05 GMT
I don't have a good feeling about this one, but I'm still hoping for the best.
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Post by Applelight Limited on Feb 5, 2018 1:14:50 GMT
I hear it’s already been through hell so far.
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Post by Mezzaphor on Feb 5, 2018 1:29:57 GMT
Oh yeah. Originally, Lucasfilm hired Lord & Miller, the writers from the recent 21 Jump Street and The LEGO Movie, to direct this movie. But they didn't see eye-to-eye, and L&M were making a movie that was too much of a parody for Lucasfilm's taste. So they fired L&M and brought in Ron Howard to complete everything. That kind of shakeup could easily make this movie a complete mess.
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Post by japaneseteeth on Feb 5, 2018 4:01:05 GMT
Yeah, I really have no idea what to make of that one. I mean, Ron Howard is a good director, but that only accounts for so much. I remain cautiously optimistic until we get more info.
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Post by Mezzaphor on Feb 5, 2018 5:46:31 GMT
Upon further thought, I suspect Solo is going to be exactly the sort of by-the-book story that the loudest detractors wish The Last Jedi had been. And those same people are going to hate it.
EDIT: Another, longer trailer dropped. This one makes the movie look a bit better.
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Post by Mezzaphor on Feb 9, 2018 6:55:53 GMT
So, a lot of digital ink has been spilled about how midichlorians ruined the Force in the prequel trilogy, and how Rey being the daughter of "nobody" traders is fixing the mistake that the prequels made. And the argument I see the most is that midichlorians made your ability to use the Force dependent on having the right genes, destroying the idea that the Force was something mystical that anyone could tap into if they just tried hard enough. And then Rey, being completely unrelated to any prior Force-users, somehow made the Force egalitarian again.
And I think that entire line of thinking is completely off-base.
See, even in the original trilogy, the Force was never presented as something truly egalitarian. Maybe you could interpret it that way in A New Hope, but even there, Darth Vader's line that "The Force is strong with this one," already implies that affinity with the Force varies from person to person. Then in The Empire Strikes Back, there's the exchange between Obi-wan and Yoda: "That boy is our last hope." "No. There is another." Right from the mouths of the Jedi masters: out of an entire galaxy, only one person (or maybe two) could possibly become strong enough to defeat Darth Vader. That's complete nonsense if you believe anyone could become a Jedi with the proper training. And then Return of the Jedi introduced the idea that Force affinity could be genetic, when Luke says outright that, "The Force is strong with my family."
So the introduction of midichlorians changed the nature of Force the much less than people think. The bits everyone complains about were there in the OT all along, just glossed over at the time. What's funny is, while the PT rubbed the concept of genetic Force strength in all our faces, it also seemed to debunk the idea of Jedi bloodlines. Attack of the Clones established that the Jedi aren't supposed to form attachments, giving the impression that they're an order of celibate monks. If Force strength were purely genetic, and the most prominent order of Force-users were celibate, then how are there still Force users around after thousands of years? I think we're supposed to come away with the impression that the majority of Jedi Knights were like Rey: Force-sensitive children born to completely ordinary parents. (The Extended Universe later clarified that the Jedi are only forbidden from emotional attachments, and casual sex is totally okay. But George Lucas has frequently given the impression that he doesn't care what happens in the EU at all; I think if he wanted us to believe that the Jedi Order perpetuates itself through casual sex, the movies would have said so.)
Now, midichlorians definitely changed the flavor of the Force. I can't begrudge anyone who just prefers "a mystical energy field that binds all things in the universe together" over "your connection to the mystical energy field is mediated by single-celled organisms in your blood". And I think giving the Republic Jedi a way to numerically quantify someone's Force strength is a bad idea. Unless you're going to show that the Jedi had lost their way when they relied too much on cold numbers like that—something the PT never explored deeply enough.
So what did the sequel trilogy change about our understanding of the Force? I don't think they really changed much at all. Some people are just naturally gifted in the Force, either because of good genes (Luke Skywalker, Ben Solo) or because It's space magic, I don't gotta explain nothin (Anakin Skywalker, Rey). But if you don't have some baseline strength in the Force, you're just outta luck. It's like what Anton Ego said in Ratatouille: "Anyone can cook" doesn't mean that everyone can cook, but that a great cook can come from anywhere. Only this time, we're cooking with lightsabers.
I think Rey does shake up the status quo, but just on a meta level. She's yanking the narrative away from the Skywalker family. You can make a main-series Star Wars movie without a Skywalker as the main protagonist now! And if Kylo Ren dies without leaving any kids, we'll see main-series Star Wars movies without any Skywalkers at all, soon enough.
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