Still Spoiler Free! ( For the most part...)

[vynsane]

so... you're saying a second prequel trilogy is necessary?

[Diabolical]

I think the Rey-Maz exchange is two snippets stitched together. IIRC, Maz asks Finn, "Who are you," when she crawls across the table. And I think Rey says "No one," but I'm not sure where.

[Diabolical]

so... you're saying a second prequel trilogy is necessary?

Not at all. It's just a lot to gloss over and felt like an EU setup.

[anarky]

I'll be shocked if there's not a comic or novel explaining how Poe got off Jakku within a year. That was a big hole. A forgivable hole, but a hole.

I want to know how the lightsaber got into Maz's hands. Even if you don't like the Thrawn Trilogy, their explanation of how the saber was recovered makes the most sense: Vader told the Imperials to recover it, and it was in Imperial storage for ages. Simply, no one else would know to look for it, and the chances of anyone just finding it in a gas giant are remote, even by Star Wars standards.

I don't want to go all Tycho with weird conspiracy theories, but I wonder if some version of the Thrawn uprising occurred here, with the saber being recovered and then somehow put into a situation where it could end up in someone else's hands. Maybe Mara is Rey's mother. (That would be a frigging huge curveball to put her back in the SW universe like that, but it could also explain how Rey gets the visions of scenes when it wasn't otherwise present.)

I read the Shattered Empire comic. While it's good, it shouldn't be subtitled "The Road to The Force Awakens." It's about a few adventures that a pilot and her husband have during and immediately following the Battle of Endor. The only connection is that his last name is Dameron (she appears to have kept her maiden name), and they have a little boy named Poe. Which is kinda cool, but not nearly what I expected.

(With Greg Rucka writing this comic and the recent Before the Awakening novel, I'm guessing Rucka will write the "Poe's missing scenes" novel that's a given.)

There is a weird red-cloaked new (?) villain who looks a lot like the initial IDW version of Cobra Commander, who I assume will show up again sometime. Also, I think the Queen of Naboo as of ROTJ in this comic is a different character from the Queen at that time in the old EU, but I'm not sure.

[jjreason]

I read it too & promptly dismissed it, just like I did Aftermath. I might have to go back & read synopses now that I've seen the movie, but those both seemed like slapdashed together projects fully designed to take advantage of the excitement for the movie - neither one of them really providing much in the way of substantial information or "important-to-know" story.

[Ran]

so... you're saying a second prequel trilogy is necessary?

Are you saying they need prequels that go between ROTJ and TFA, before TPM, or both?

[Senor JabbaJohnL]

As far as missing shots from trailers, that does happen from time to time. It's usually because trailers are edited long before the movie is finished. Kylo Ren igniting his saber in the snow, Rey zooming off on her speeder, the X-wings across the water, Finn taking off his helmet in the transport, are all things that happened in the movie, just differently, so they may have been early alternate takes. Even Han saying "We're home" was different.
EDIT: Actually, J.J. said that's the case, and went into a little detail on the next shot I mentioned.

As far as Maz with the saber—early rumors had the lightsaber as the McGuffin, not the little thumb drive, and said that the lightsaber somehow had the map to Luke in a compartment or something. They easily could have replaced the shots of the lightsaber with shots of the drive, since I don't recall any wide shots of people holding the drive—they were all insert shots. My guess is that originally Maz went to D'Qar with the heroes, or originally Takodana (Maz's castle) and D'Qar (Resistance base) were the same planet, and Maz showed Leia the lightsaber to maybe confirm it was Luke's. That makes a little more sense than them randomly stumbling upon Luke's saber, but whatever.

Also, all the Force memories could have been centered around the saber. Anarky, you may have ignored my post elsewhere, but I mentioned that the scene of him and R2 is definitely not the scene of him watching Vader's pyre.

[jjreason]

Man would that ever be awesome if they dug up old, unused footage of (the part you suggested at the end there) and used it for flashbacks in one of the upcoming movies.

[Tom Foolery]

I just watched it.

I have questions and such.

I'll wait until more of us have gotten around to seeing it before I post thoughts.

[jjreason]

Yes then no, 100 for sure but maybe not & no. 100 percent no. Oh, and one last yes.

[Tom Foolery]

Now that I've watched it, I'm going back and reading everything everywhere.

By the way, the one thing that was spoiled for me was Han's demise at his sons hand. because a certain someone put spoilers in the SPOILER FREE thread.
But I was also thinking Luke was Kylo (which would've made that scene much more hardcore) but it turned out to be bunk.

[jjreason]

Did you like the movie or no?

[Tom Foolery]

I'm still coming down from the euphoria of watching it. I'm trying to remember how I felt after watching TPM, where I was all "YAYYYyyy...Star Wars...yeahhh..." and then afterwards started nitpicking.

I'm doing the same thing here. There are moments I LOVED during the movie, and there are moments that were underwhelming.

I guess I enjoyed it, but I wanted it to feel more epic. The original had a sense of grandeur about it that was happening throughout the Galaxy. I didn't have that here. It felt like they were trying to get to that sense of epic space opera but we're taking shortcuts to get there. In some cases those shortcuts led to interesting things for instance, Kylo Ren as a tantrum throwing villain trying to live up to the Legacy of Darth Vader. I didn't think he was a threatening villain at all, but I thought he was an interesting character. but in other cases like Rey becoming a badass force wielding lightsaber dueler in a matter of days or Death Star 3.0 blowing up a bunch of planets all at once without feeling the ramifications of that felt hollow.
And the First Order didn't feel as threatening as the Empire. When the At-Ats descended on Hoth or Star Destroyers showed up you got chills. Here, everyone from Emperor Gollum to Chrome Variant Stormtrooper Capt. just didn't worry. The stakes didn't feel high or earned.

I realize this might be a futile attempt, but I'm trying to imagine if I were watching this film as if it were the first movie in the series. Like ANH came out and teased events of the Episodes 1-3, does this movie work in that capacity of being its own movie without relying on the nostalgia factor of seeing old Han Solo and Leia? I don't think it does. I'd have it rewatch it.

I dunno. Maybe I'm just a cynical old fart now.

[jjreason]

It doesn't stand alone as well as ANH, but then it was never told it had to be its own self-contained movie. I think the feeling you have after watching it it closer to seeing ESB the first time - there are way too many balls in the air to leave feeling story-satisfied, but I certainly felt Star Wars-satisifed if that makes sense on any level. For the director's cut I would be so thrilled if ALL they added was dialogue scenes fleshing out the status of the galaxy & a nugget or two more about what we've missed in the 30 years since ROJ.

Compared to Tarkin, General Hux was like the Nazi youth boyfriend from The Sounds of Music First Order certainly did not carry the weight of he Empire.

[anarky]

The First Order isn't threatening now, but their actions here could make this an actual Star WAR between two large entities as opposed to the Star Rebellion of the OT.

I've seen it speculated that Rey mastered the Force so easily because she had previous training that's was suppressed, blocked, or just forgotten. Which would make sense. I don't recall her actually hearing a Jedi mind trick before trying it on the Stormtrooper.

And I'll think there's more to Snoke until Episode IX comes out and we find out he was a red herring all along.