The Force Awakens Discussion -There Be Spoilers Here

I'm not sure how close they would have been. My personal theory is that Kylo/Ben is around 30 (it fits Adam Driver's age and it would have meant he would have been born only a few years post-ROTJ) and Rey is 18-19 (she's described in the book as "just under twenty"). So if they are cousins, he's around 10-11 years older. If he went bad around the time when she was a toddler, or even push it and say 5 years old, he would have gone bad around the age of 15 or 16 (late teens at any rate, which makes sense). So I'm not sure if they would have been close, but he would have certainly known her well.

I just refreshed the page before posting and saw Ewok Poet's comment - we aren't given an age for Kylo/Ben. I do agree that Driver does NOT look 32, BUT, that's the only age range that makes sense to me that would have Rey young enough to not remember him, but have him old enough to lead the destruction of Luke's Jedi.


Edit: The ABY system versus the battle of Endor system is messing me up. Pablo Hidalgo confirmed that Kylo was 29-30 in TFA. So I edited the above.

 

If there is a dead wife to Luke they better name her Mara...but I know they won't. They will probably name the dead wife Jaina just to piss me off.

 

Briannakin thanks for elaborating on that, I'm yet to read the book.

He looks over 40 when not under Kylo make-up and barely of Anakin's age in ROTS at the time of the fall to the dark side; so I wonder if they wanted to make him look about thirty because he otherwise looks older, *or* if he's meant to be younger...hmmm.

Jedi_Lover She does not technically have to be a wife as we know it - it could be a case of just wanting to breed another Force-user, without attachment involved...and then it went bad. For some reason, I'm inclined to believe that whatever happened may have been messed up - to the point where the mother could have been as threatening as Kylo, if not his victim already. The whole business with leaving a little girl on Jakku to completely take care of herself implies a lot of possible scary things behind it.

Side note: some of us born in 1983 actually do look about 20.

 

I just edited my above comment, but apparently the whole ABY vs using the Battle of Endor system of measurement is confusing me. Kylo is supposed to be 29-30 in TFA. But if you say Rey was younger (3 or 4) when it all went down, it still kinda makes sense.

 

So, now it's ABE?

And, in that case, the dude definitely had to be made look his actual age....which is hilarious in some way. Pretty sure they tried to make him as close to Christensen as possible in terms of accentuating some facial features.

 

I finally got to see TFA, this afternoon. I was much more impressed by the film, than I ever thought I'd be. I loved the new characters. All but for Ben Solo/Kylo Ren. Kylo Ren, seemed very villainous, with the mask on. But as soon as it came off, all I could compare the character to was Lord Voldermort. Villainous, certainly. But kind of over-dramatic. Then I just hated him, when he killed Han. I loved when Chewbacca got a shot off on him though. I also thought they should have had Han and Leia say a few lines, explaining why they named their son after Ben Kenobi. I thought if they would have named him for a Jedi, they would have named him for Luke. Neither were close to Ben, to the point where you'd believe they'd name a child for him. Kind of a lazy choice there. Over all, great new beginning in bringing Star Wars back. Well worth watching.

 

Saw it for a third time today. I liked the orchestration the first time, but the more I hear it, the more I fall in love with it! We got it last night and I plan on listening to it in depth on a plane tomorrow. So far my favorites are The opening shot right after the theme (Attack on the Jakku Village) and Rey going to find Luke (The Jedi Steps)

I'm really sad the song playing in Maz's cantina isn't on the official soundtrack.


I'm trying not to judge any of the characters on just what we know right now, there's so much we don't know and I think it's kinda unfair to say someone is a Mary Sue/Gary Stu at this point. There could be perfectly plausible explanations for everything. And while we wait for those explanations, we write fanfic!

 

To be clear, I was absolutely not saying Poe is a Gary Stu - I just think its interesting how we generally seem to accept male character's brilliance as normal and constantly question a female character's brilliance.

I was actually shocked at how much they'd succeeded in making Adam Driver look younger than he is. it's not easy to make a 30+ year old man (who in RL looks his age) seem like an emotionally stunted teenager, but he did it.

Eh, I can't see Luke ever doing this - he's all about embracing his attachments.

 

Pablo Hidalgo confirmed on Twitter that Kylo is supposed to be 29-30, and was born not long after Endor.

 

True. I came up with a plot bunny that Rey underwent something similar to Jane Doe in the TV series Blindspot. She is a trained Jedi but her memories are altered... but her decades of training are still intact although they don't rise up into her consciousness until she needs them. Luke trained her and used this missing map piece to lure Ben Solo out in the open. False memories were implanted in Rey's mind making her think she had been on the planet for a decade, but perhaps it was only months. Max Von Syndow's character was there to protect her. The Falcon was left there for her to use. It was all part of a master plan to lure Ben out in the open and have him drop his guard.

That is just my theory. This was another convoluted plan like Luke did when he went to save Han from Jabba's palace. There are a billion things that could go wrong...but at least it is a plan.

Hey, I heard a rumor that the Stormtrooper that Rey pulls the Jedi Mind Trick on was played by Daniel Craig. She took on 007! That is cool if true.

 

If I say "please", do you start writing it, or do I need to come up with a witty title?

...

Kylo Ren is the ghost of Nanta.

I know - was not trying to change what you said, just adding that, according to the criteria that narrow down everything, he would be a more likely candidate.

As for the other things, not approaching those two topics, discussion would take a weird turn and mix old, new, beauty standards et cetera. Maybe some other time, some other place.

 

Fair enough. But I do think people are quicker to call Rey a Mary Sue, as compared to Poe, is because she has the "mysterious past". But, I mean, this is Star Wars. Even if Rey and Poe both fail the Mary Sue test as they stand after less than about 90 minutes and less than 30 minutes of screen time (which is not an accurate test), it isn't a bad thing. There was A LOT going on in the movie and only so much could get on screen.

I agree. Plus, Luke wouldn't bring a descendant of Anakin Skywalker into the world lightly. Not where there are probably thousands of Force-sensitive kids running around in the post-Empire galaxy.

Jedi_Lover : I'm not sure about the mind-wipe stuff, but I like the idea of Lor San Tekka (von Sydow's character) on Jakku for the purpose of watching Rey and the Falcon there not by accident. And yeah, someone confirmed that Daniel Craig did play that Stormtrooper. Ewan McGregor also had a voice cameo during Rey's flashback/vision.


Also, regarding fanfic, I wanted to do a Poe Dameron diary, but I was worried I was not going to have enough material, but I think I might do a Leia diary (that Poe appears a lot in )

 

I would like to see someone do a Kylo Ren diary that consists only of transcribed sessions with Darth Vader's helmet...

 

I got my first TFA plot bunny. Is it too early, or too late?

 

Grandfather, today I killed your son-in-law. You would be proud.

Yeah, I would read that

 

"Grandfather, Hux is being so mean to me. Why can't he see how special and awesome I am? I want to punch him right in his smug ginger face but Snoke would get so mad. No one understaaaands me!"

 

Oh, so much potential for soul-less ginger jokes (disclaimer, my mother is a soul-less ginger) and being afraid to kiss any women from desert worlds because they may be his cousin. You should write it

I'm kinda conflicted as to if I want to do a Disney canon diary. It would be a lot of work to fill in Leia's time from ROTJ to TFA, but at the same time, this is the only year we can let our conspiracy bunnies run wild because we will probably get all our answers come May 2017 (and very few answers before then).

 

29 to 30? What did Han and Leia do, conceive him during the celebration on Endor right after blowing up the Death Star and then get married when they found out she was pregnant?

 

Agree with Ewok Poet that we need protagonists of ALL ages. And, yeah, Leia is much more than Han's love interest. She does it beautifully and I hope she continues for many more films.

And I have to amend Rey's status about being a Mary Sue. One thing that Mary Sue's do that she does NOT do is hijack the plot of the story. She is part of the story, but we're don't have a lot of her backstory, so we really don't know how she fits yet.

And ROTS and ANH are my favorites of the bunch if I'm forced to choose. The prequels just don't get enough love around here and I'll stick up for them. Like them or not, the prequels have more original story and settings than all of TFA. While TFA is fantastically entertaining, it is also shamelessly derivative of ANH and TESB with a few touches of the other movies. I do NOT think they can keep that up for the next films and make it work.

Kylo/Ben really has more of his fair share of those Skywalker-whining genes, doesn't he? With a little mental illness tossed in I think. As a villian, he's very powerful and pathetic at the same time.

And can someone who might have read the novelization tell me a few things? (no e-reader) Did they really blow up Coruscant? Looks like it in the movie (Wow, I won't miss that massive eye-sore of a Jedi Temple; what were they thinking when they built that?). And does the novelization explicitly say that Kylo/Ben actually KILLED all the Jedi that Luke was training? Obviously, Kylo's been killing a lot of people, and the bad guys think that Luke is the last Jedi, but in the movie, Han only says that he "destroyed" all that.

Frankly, it would be a cheap plot twist to squeeze in some fake tragedy in the story by just wiping out everything Luke has been doing for 30 years and killing any other Jedi like a bunch of red shirts. Blah.

 

The planet blown up was Hosnian Prime. According to the novelization, it's pretty much stated Kylo and his band of Dark Side Dudes killed all the Jedi, except *maybe* Rey, if she was indeed undergoing some kind of training.

If it means anything, the Emperor took possession of the Jedi Temple. Maybe he redecorated.

 

Watched the film last night. Awesome, simply awesome.

I got spoiled by the end of SKY TV's advertising, that there was yet another spherical planet killer, which annoyed me with the lack of imagination, but on seeing the movie, I think it was okay, basically using an existing planet and fitting engines and sith to it.

The Daleks would have been sooo jealous, pointing their sucker arms, and going, "See, that's how its done."

Main criticism a few hours after viewing, is that they made the galaxy seem like a pocket universe. No time seemed to be spent in hyperspace, you fire up the hyperdrive, and boom, the starlines are going, and you are there.
Although, objectively, the Original Trilogy probably did not spend that much screen time on interstellar travel either, somehow I feel the OT and PT screen wipes worked better to convey that some distance was travelled, than what they did in The Force Awakens.

When Starkiller Base fired several shots, they did not seem to diverge much at all, striking planets that appeared in proximity to each other, and the protagonists seemed to recognise, with the naked eye, that the seat of government planet had just been taken out!

This morning, apart from that black First Order shuttle, there did not seem to be anything in the way of new vehicle design.

TIEs, X-Wings, the Millennium Falcon (loved how they re-introduced it), Star Destroyer - all pre-existing designs, though the latter's superstructure changed a bit.

Rey's landspeeder, basically a block of metal.

General Leia's ship, basically a more elongated block of metal.

The ship that Han Solo and Chewbacca were in to hunt down the 'Falcon, basically two bricks of metal, connected by a short bridge. Interior was okay though; no idea how they captured those Ranthal things with the tentacles!

 

My two cents: Poe Dameron is Wedge Antilles with a smart mouth. And what was up with Max Von Sydow's character? Who was he supposed to be? A Jedi in hiding? A resistance connection? Why would he have the data?

 

I assumed he was an Alderaanian survivor who'd been close to Leia and her family.

TFA takes place 32 years after Jedi. I imagine Leia will be pregnant within 1-2 years after the end of the OT, and wouldn't be surprised if that happens after the peace treaty is signed.

 

Although I expect that J J Abrams did this as a kick in the teeth to the whole jedi training stuff in the Prequels, I feel that there are definite Sue qualities to Finn and Rey being able to put up a decent lightsabre fight against a trained Sith, or Knight of Rey...hang on, the Emperor made reference to "the Knights of Rey", did he not? There could be some connection to the young lady, there.

Or was it the "Knights of Ren"?

Anyway, decent fight against a trained Sith, with no training of your own...what?

There was a stormie with a lightsabre-resistant weapon, so it is possible Finn had the training with that thing.

 

Sith-I-5 That was "Knights of Ren" I read somewhere (can't remember where) that Kylo Ren chose the name of the Order as his his "surname".

Regarding Finn and Rey's ability to hold their own in the lightsaber fight, I didn't find it particularly weird. On the one hand, it's said (by Snoke, IIRC) that Kylo Ren still needs to complete his training, plus the fact that the guy is clearly unhinged, and wounded, so I found it believable that at that point in the film he wouldn't be such a formidable opponent. On the other hand, Rey is presented early on as being skilled in combat with a staff, and my initial impression was that the choreography of her duel with Kylo Ren mirrored quite well her style of combat (e.g. she often tries to stab him with the tip of the lightsaber) -- I'll confirm that when I watch the film a second time. As for Finn, the scene where he is shown fighting the stormtrooper worked for me as a way to foreshadow that his combat training wasn't limited to blasters.

The bit that really, really didn't work for me AT ALL was Rey's ability to master the mind trick, just like that. I hope they come up with a reasonable explanation for that, because meh.

I'm also hopeful that they'll come up with a fascinating backstory for Max Von Sydow's character, because there's a lot of potential there. I'm pretty sure that he was on Jakku to keep an eye on Rey, Kenobi-style.

And now, my informal poll. Do you people think that Finn is Force-sensitive? My first impression was no, but having thought of it some more there were a few hints here and there that he might be after all. He's an awfully good shot with the TIE fighter's cannons and later with the Falcon's - and in that bit of hyper-excited dialogue with Rey where they congratulate each other for their escape, they both answer "I don't know how I did that" at some point and they both seem to believe that it was sheer luck. Plus, when Finn tells Maz "I need a weapon", she points at the lightsaber and says "you have one." Hmmm