H.I. No. 54: Star Wars Christmas Special

"H.I. #54: Star Wars Christmas Special" is the 54th episode of Hello Internet and the podcast's first annual Christmas special, released on December 25, 2015.
==Official Description==
Straight from the theaters and into the podcast, Brady and Grey give their first impression on Star Wars: The Force Awakens (once Brady finishes his gambling).
==Show Notes==
You know how I love a little bit of fate and coincidence and stuff. I had been of a crazy idea today. So I just want to put it in there because I know you like new and unpredictable things. Yeah, that's what I love. I love the stuff that's off schedule. I did something I do maybe once every few months. That is I bought a scratch ticket. Oh yeah? I usually do it as a little surprise present for my wife because she's not particularly into scratch tickets. But she finds it funny that Australians call them scratchies. So ever since then I sometimes I sometimes I'm it's she thinks it's funny because it is funny. You have Australians and your little names for everything. No, no, we love putting little ease on the ends of things. So sometimes I come home and bring a scratchy. So anyway, I brought a scratchy for myself and I thought I would do the scratchy like on the podcast because I could win one million pounds and I thought if I won one million pounds while we were like live recording that would be an amazing piece of podcast. Don't you think it would be pretty cool? It would be astounding. Do you think if I win one million pounds that would change the topic of today's podcast and we would just talk about how I'm going to spend this million pounds? No, because honestly I would much rather talk about our intended topic than your million pounds. It would be like that's great Brady. I'm really happy for you. But let's get on with the show. Really? Do you think I could do the show if I just won a million pounds? I mean you're a professional podcaster. You should be able to soldier on with that one. Or would you just you would just run into the street screaming? You wouldn't have to do this anymore. Be I'm free of grey. No, but I think I think it would be unprofessional to win one million pounds live on a podcast and then not talk about it and just crack on with other banal subjects. There's always follow up Brady right? We can talk about it and follow up on the next episode. You've got a adapt to circumstances and you've got to go with fate takes you. You've got to be as adaptable as a swiss army knife as we've previously discussed. You can't just have your notes and think like like if I was looking at the window right now and a comet came and smashed into the sea do you think I'd be thinking would I be thinking oh that that's a good topic for next week. I must put that in the show notes or do you think I'd say grey you're not going to believe what just happened? Of course if you wildly change the scenario then yes I'm going to agree with you that we're going to talk about a comet smashing into the earth. If that happens outside your window. I'm not having that. I'm not wildly changing the subject. I know there was a... No, no, no, no, no. I'm wildly changing the scenario. I admit a comet crushing into the earth is pretty significant and more significant than me winning a million pounds but me winning a million pounds is still like a big deal. It's like more interesting than talking about Star Wars. It is not. It is not more interesting. Grey if you want a million if someone walked into your office right now and gave you a suitcase with a million pounds in it I would say let's talk about that. Star Wars come white. That is quite an unusual scenario. Why did someone give me a suitcase full of a million pounds? Now the suitcase is a thing to worry about like sitting here at my feet as I'm trying to record. All right. Let me make this really easy for you. If you had a scratchy card in front of you and you scratched it off and you won a million pounds I think that's more interesting than talking about Star Wars. Okay, you know what? I can prove to you it isn't because here's what we can do if you really want. That can be my scratchy ticket and you can scratch it off. And if I win a million pounds then we keep going on with the show and I'm right and it's great. No, no, no, no, no, no, we're not doing that. No, no, I think that's definitely what we're going to do. We're not doing that. If I can prove to you how correct I am on this one. I would rather be wrong and have a million pounds. Are you ready to scratch off? Are you ready to scratch off the ticket? Well, I'm going to give you a final choice here in the scenario because my wife believes that it's lucky to use a golden coin to do it with a coin of high value. But just for you, I also have a penny. I'm going to let you decide if you want me to use a lucky golden coin or a penny to scratch you to do my scratchy scratchy. I mean, which one is more satisfying to hold because obviously they're not going to change the numbers in the ticket. I've actually always slightly disagreed with my wife on this because I think the gold pound coin is a little bit thick for doing a scratchy. Oh yeah, pound coins no good. That's no good to hold at all. You need like a two-penced coin. That's good. It's nice and thin. It's probably the only thing that a two-penced coin is good at. It's big enough to hold thin enough to scratch. Well, now you've said that. I've got to go and get a two-penced because now I feel like it's bad. Like if I don't use a two-penced. Okay, but there is no luck in this scenario. I'm going to go and get two-penced coin. Hang on. Okay. Bye Brady. How you doing, listeners? Brady's getting his two-penced coin. He probably has it right at hand. He's going to be sitting back down in like two seconds. I'm back. Oh, he is right back. Okay. Hello. Do you know I keep my copper coins in a, you know, old World War II like mortar shell. Then a huge big gold mortar shell. Uh-huh. Is it within arms' reach essentially? It pretty matches. Hmm. That's so figured. It's on those bookshelves next to my desk. All right, right. Of course. Okay. Oh, it sounds good. Yeah, it does sound very nice the way they are. Metal in there we go. Two-penced. Okay. See if you can guess what you're my two-penced coin is from. Uh-huh. Go on. 1990. Oh. Now in your 95. What do you mean nowhere near it? We have what, like, 50 years of two-penced coins. I think that's pretty close. Five years. Yeah, five years. How long, how long have two-penced coins currently in circulation been made? Hey, let me, let me say something again, Gray, so you can do an edit. Oh, my goodness, Gray, that's amazing. You are within five years. No, I'm not editing that back in. You could insert that in there. No, I'm not going to. Exactly because it would be ridiculous because being five years is nowhere near. I think it depends entirely on how many years worth of 50-penced coins are in circulation. And I bet there's like 50 years worth of 50-penced coins in circulations. Oh, no, wait, maybe not because there's decilization in the 1970s. Didn't the UK change all their currency in the 1970s? I think they did. 66, I believe, was the year they did it. Oh, okay. Yeah, so it's still like 50, that's basically 50 years ago. I don't know that it was 66. It's just on my head because that's also the year they won the World Cup. I could be wrong about that. Yeah. But anyway, there's many, many years I'm within five. I'm impressed by this random coincidence. Oh, you're impressed by coincidence. Yeah. Yeah, totally am. You like that? There you go. That's for you, really. I'll tell you what you will be impressed by. My million pound win that's about to happen. Merry millions. I'll put a picture of the card in the show now so people can have a look. What's the maximum on that scratchy ticket? Well, maximum is a million pounds. So it's not really merry millions. It's a merry a million. Well, for four people, it's a merry million. Therefore, it's a merry millions. Or is it merry's million? There's a million pounds. The next price is 25,000. Then five, one, then 200, 100. And then there's the little ones. If I win 25,000, I don't really know what we're going to do. I think, I mean, that's, that's a lot of money. This is a lot of wondering, right? Where is that boundary of when it becomes uninteresting? Yeah. We've got a milk this grade because that's the whole thing with like scratch cards and lottery. It's before you inevitably lose. It's all the dreaming of what will happen if you win. So I'm trying to mucourse. That is what this thing is. So I'm not even dreaming of what I would do with the million. I'm dreaming of what we'll podcast about if I win the million. So I've got like, it's like, there are levels of abstraction getting on here. I already know what we're going to podcast about. We're going to podcast about Star Wars. Now here we go. There are four gingerbread men. In a little cluster. And apparently, if I, if when I scratch away these gingerbread men, if I find a little Santa Claus face, I win a prize. I'm sure the listeners are holding their breath. The first gingerbread man had a bobble. So I don't win the second one. A globe, no win. A sweet no win. And holly, no win. I won nothing. How unlikely. So it looks like today's podcast is going to be about the new Star Wars film, The Force Awakens. So great. What's the, I mean, the most important thing before we say anything about The Force Awakens, the new Star Wars movie, Out and Cinema's, is what is our spoiler situation here? Because spoilers are very important when it comes to this. There can't not be spoilers. This episode is going to have many spoilers starting essentially immediately. So, so if you don't want spoilers, stop now. We are recording this. What is it? It's two days after it came out in the UK, I think. If that's about right. And I know many people who have taken the last couple days to basically hide from the internet because they are terrified of receiving spoilers. So I know a lot of people were like, I can't go on Reddit, I can't go on Twitter. Because if I go on, I know I'm going to see a spoiler. And so many, many people are hiding. But as always with this podcast, people could be listening in the far, far future. Gray, I have a story. Yes. Exit relating exactly to that. Obviously we'll come to it soon. But obviously we can now start with spoilers. Obviously a very major character dies in this film. And I was spoiled. No. Yeah, I was. It doesn't really bother me. But I, and it was, do you know what does bother me? It was the method in which it was done. Okay, so tell me, how did this tragedy happen? I was in the comments section of one of my videos, just like I do for work. And it was one of those people who just wants to be a bad person and just wrote. So and so dies and is killed by so and so. No, prelim. No, basically the whole purpose was for people to stumble over it and have it ruined incidentally. And can I say, and I've been thinking about this, and I don't want to sound too extreme. But I think people who do that, I don't want to judge them. Because I don't know what's going on in their life. They could have had a difficult childhood. They could have, they could have, they could have stuff going on. And I've lived long enough to know when people do bad things. Sometimes there are other things going on. So I don't want to, I don't want to judge the person. But can I say that act, the act of spoiling, say a film or a TV show in that, I don't know if there's a word for doing that. I'm going to call it flash spoiling. Yeah, it's like a drive by spoiling it's what it is. I'm going to call it a flash spoil because I think it's a little bit catchier. But I think the act of doing that is one of the most pure, despicable things. You can possibly do. Because there's nothing but evil about it. Like there's nothing but taking pleasure from evil. There are many worse things that people can do, right? For example, crimes and terrorism, they are, they are worse things, right? But somehow many of them can be justified. Like you can say, well, okay, this person maybe had, they had warped beliefs or they thought they were doing the right thing or they were motivated by a need. And then they did a really bad thing. But it's people who are doing these flash spoils. There's none of that going on. There's no construct you can make where there's like a justification other than them taking pleasure from ruining something for other people. And I think that's a really despicable act. And you can sit there and laugh and think, I've ruined the film for X number of people. And you have. But can I just say, that's a despicable thing you've done. And like, pfft. Yeah, that's as loud as you can get. I've got no time for you. I know it makes you happy that that, and that just makes me feel a bit sad for you. I can't imagine that sort of person takes a lot of pleasure. Like there's something about this which is like asymmetric warfare. In that I imagine the person who does the spoiling gets maybe five seconds worth of very minor enjoyment. They're going like, huh, everyone that movie for some people. But the damage done is enormous. Right? You ruin the movie for a large group of people. Like you take away such a huge amount of joy for what is a very probable, very small increase of pleasure to yourself. So that's one of the things that's even worse about it. It's like the asymmetry of it. Well, I mean, that's the case for most crimes and things, isn't it? But what you say is true, Gray. I just think, I guess they've just said. But it's sad. They've had a sad crap life and they maybe they feel like the world's been bad to them. So they want to do something bad to the world. I'm just thinking of like the damage done in terms of like human hours of enjoyment. You know, when someone sees a spoiler like that on one of your videos, like it's possible, you know, many hundreds, maybe thousands of people see that. Let's multiply a thousand human hours of spoiled movingness against the persons fleeting seconds of enjoyment. That is the tremendous asymmetry of it. That means there are a lot of people who kick puppies, aren't they? As far as bad things go that are not illegal, it's up there. By the way, I am only talking about these flash spoils. Like, I mean, people may be pointing out that in our recent vote counting video, the face of Gray appeared a few times. I'll point out why this is different. Why it was accidental. Right. Why it was you editing the video? Yeah, why it was me. But also, I mean, that video was very long and we went, you know, I didn't go through it frame by frame and it had to be done a bit of a hurry. Also, if you're watching that video, you probably know you're in a, you're in a risky zone. But if you're like somewhere unrelated and someone does that, does that flash spoil? I think that's a bit worse. I didn't quite realize that there actually are a tremendous number of comments on our flag video about spoilers for my face. But one of the things is I didn't see very much of that because as soon as we put the video up, I was precisely afraid of the thing that happened to you happening to me if someone leaving just a random comment on that video to be a jerk about Star Wars spoilers. So this is why I was looking at so little in the last couple days leading up to this movie. And then after I saw for the first time, I went back to look at that video and I said, oh boy, there are lots of comments about CGP Gray face spoilers here. Like, I need to add an annotation or something to warn people about it because of how many comments there have been. Anyway, enough about that. It didn't, I don't think it affected my enjoyment of the film. I didn't, you know, I didn't take enough from it to know exactly what and when and how and who. So there was still some doubts, but it did, you know, it, that was less of a surprise as a result. But anyway, let's talk about this film. Let's talk about Star Wars now, actually. The Force Awakens directed by JJ Abrams. Now, you've already seen it twice. The way this worked is that I saw it on the 17th as a date with my wife. I'd originally reserve some tickets ahead of time and we're going to go out and see it. Because, because we are professional movie reviewers in some way, I like this notion that everything we discuss on the podcast, we can somehow be professional in any way. It's like, oh, we get, we get money for the podcast. Like now we're professional X. So we're professional movie reviewers now. I mean, after that scratchy thing, I'm now a professional gambler. I believe you are, yes. Our Wikipedia pages are going to get very long, very long. My plan was, unlike, say some of the other movies that we have intentionally watched for the podcast, like the Hobbit movies where my expectations were low going in. When I go into the Hobbit movie, I have my phone out ready to take notes right away. Because I feel like, you movie, there's no way you're going to convince me to put down this phone because you're interesting. So I might as well start taking notes now. But I felt that that would have been deeply unfair to do to the Star Wars movie. And it was also just not something I wanted to do. And also just not something I would want to do when I'm going to see a movie with somebody else. So I booked two tickets, one which was just to see it with my wife and just to watch it. And then the second one, which just happened today, which is the day after, I booked it with the intention of going into the movie theater and having my phone and taking notes. By the way, people don't worry. I booked in the back so that nobody was getting distracted by my phone. So then the second viewing is like, okay, now I am meta-watching this. Like I'm watching me watching this and I'm taking notes on it and writing some stuff down. So that's my experience of it. Okay. And you have watched it once? I've watched it once. Yes, I watched it the day after you. Basically, my wife, you know, wants to see it. And she's booked tickets for us to see it on Sunday, which just happens to be the day after you and I are recording now. Because we're recording the podcast and we want to talk about it. And also I want to avoid any more spoilers. I want to see it a day earlier than that two days earlier than planned. But also, funnily enough, we've now learned this sound of music live event is on TV on the Sunday night. And my wife really wants to watch that. So we've actually booked tickets for Monday night now. And we're not going to use our Sunday tickets. So there will be two empty seats in the cinema for one of the screenings. So I will have bought three tickets to see it in the course of four days, but only gone to two of them. But as we talk now, I've only seen it once. I didn't take notes during. I've scribbled some notes the day after from my memories of it. All right. Well, I know, Brady, you have no patience for talking about it without saying in advance what you actually thought of the movie. So do you want to give your overall feeling, your reaction to Star Wars? Do you disagree with me? Because I know this is a point of difference between us. You're like sort of constructing this complicated web where no one knows exactly what you're thinking. I think with a movie review, it's more important for people to know what you think overall. Just say they know where you're coming from and then everything you say good or bad about it has a context. Do you disagree with that? I think talking about it is the review. Yeah. And that's what we'll do. But it is all coloured by whether or not you'd like the film, like it colours. I think it's important to do it. And that's why I will I will concede your point. Okay. I will concede your point. Okay. Well, my overall feeling about it that can be taken with everything I say subsequent and they is, I thought it was really, really good. It was excellent. Two thumbs up superb job. Wow. Hi rankings from probably the biggest Star Wars fan that I know in real life. I don't think I know anybody in real life who likes Star Wars more than you. Not flawless. And I have I have a whole page of criticisms. But I think I had I think when he was announced as director my expectations went high, then they went down and and after a few of the trailers, I began to lose a bit of faith and I began to wonder so my expectations went down a bit. So it exceeded my expectations, but my expectations weren't ridiculously high, but they also weren't rock bottom. But I think the films are very good. You know, four to four and a half stars out of five, I'd say. What about you? What's your overall thoughts before we get get down to Neatie Gritty? Yeah, so I had only watched that first trailer that you made me watch for the record and I wouldn't have watched otherwise. Like you, I was happy that JJ Abrams was selected as the director and I was intentionally keeping my expectations low and my my mental bar here was if we can get something as good as the new Star Trek movies that JJ Abrams did, that's a win. Those Star Trek movies, same thing like they're they're like a fun adventure ride, but I've never felt really compelled to watch them again, but I would still feel like that would be that would be a win. That's really what I'm hoping for that was kind of the mental bar in my life is is okay. Maybe it's going to be like Star Wars as seen through modern action movies, genres, but like I will be fine with that if it's if it's like Star Trek, but I watched it and I would say that it passed that bar. It was a better movie than the Star Trek movie was. I really liked it. I too have a quite a long list of like things that I didn't like, but overall it almost it felt to me like this huge relief of like, oh wow, it's a Star Wars movie that I can enjoy again. Like I watched it and it was a fun adventure and I liked it and it was it was good in all the ways that I wanted it to and the thing that that I really kept feeling throughout it was like that Star Trek movie doesn't really feel like Star Trek, but watching this Star Wars movie it felt like the line that Hansolo gives in the movie of like, we're home again like this feels like Star Wars. It's hard to pin down what that is exactly, but it feels like it's in the same family as those original three movies. Yeah, I agree. I think I think there are some reasons for that too, but I agree with you. And it also it's like it's made Star Wars okay again. It's like after those three abominations it was a bit like people like you like Star Wars really, but those films are rubbish. It's a bit like yeah, but say Star Wars is okay. Yeah, yeah, it's like a healing moment, right? That's that's really what it feels like. It just it feels like oh there's been this great healing, you know, J.J. Abrams has laid his hands upon the series and it's all okay now. Maybe it's a bit like this sporting team that won a bunch of Super Bowls like in the 80s, and then they became a really rubbish team and everyone gives you a hard time for locking that team. And this year they've had a really good season and made the playoff. Some people like oh no, it's all right. They are a cool team. They're all right after all. Yeah, yeah, it was it was it was great and really just feel like I hope Disney gives J.J. Abrams all the creative leeway that he wants for whatever he's going to do with with the next movies. And I hope he's he is physically safe for the near future. Like someone get that guy a bodyguard 24-7 because I want to make sure J.J. Abrams is a okay to keep this to keep this train rolling. So I've got a piece of paper here that says the light side and a piece of paper that says the dark side for the things I liked and the things I didn't like. My dark side one probably is a bit longer. How are we going to do this? Do we go in goods and bads? Are we going chronologically? Do you want to how do you want to talk about the film? Let's just start kind of rolling through what happens in the movie and then and take it from there. I think if we go off on any we don't have to stick to chronological or anything but let's just kind of like start at the beginning. A very good place to stop. My very first note on this was text scroll. No, it taxes exclamation mark. Right away it felt great to see a text scroll in the opening part of the movie that was people focused. Like it was clear of here is the setup. Like Luke is missing. Princess Leia, General Leia now has sent off this guy to go look for something that's important. It was just it was a very good start of like okay great. There's a text scroll that I understand that's talking about people. It's not talking about trade embargoes and federations and all the rest of this. Right away very happy very good sign. Like just love it. And of course I don't think you can sit in a movie theater and not have that initial star wars sound come on and blast you with that logo and not feel a moment of just tremendous excitement. Like no matter how low my expectations were going into that theater as I'm trying to like turn down my expectations intentionally. As soon as that big star wars sound comes on you just is like oh boy here we go. I hope it's amazing. I'll go further than to say that the scroll wasn't bad. I'll go say further to say it was good. I think the first words Luke Skywalker has vanished. That's really compelling. Like that's like that's a really good first few words. Like because the first thing everyone wonders going to see that film is what's going to what happened to Luke Skywalker. Like what's he doing now? You know he was the big hero. And to start with that straight away it's like okay that sets the whole tone doesn't it you know the he's straight away is Mr. Man. It's really it was a really good start. This is sounding a lot. And they do a little bit of misdirection because they mention about Princess Leia sending her daring pilot off to go find you know whatever it is find the missing map. Yeah. And of course in your mind you're thinking oh that must be Han Solo right but I like no of course not this is a new movie there's a new cast there's going to be somebody else who is the daring pilot. By the way there was there was written obviously intentionally to make you think Han Solo and then like nope not Han Solo this is a new this is a new set of movie so I thought that was a nice little thing to do as well. Yeah I agree. And then the and then from the scroll obviously the camera pans down in the great style was tradition to see what a big amazing money shot's going to be you know is it going to be a rolling ship or what's it going to be you know scrolling down to a planet. I think he did I think he did well he did something new and different but incaping with the great style was tradition. Like right away I thought that was a really good sign of he's doing the tradition the move we have pan to a planet but he's doing it as the silhouette of the ship so you don't actually see the ship that is is this first one here you just see that there's some silhouette crossing the planet down go these little pods with stormtroopers in them and it's like it's okay great this this feels like we're doing the right things here we're going through all the right motions but also it's it's different and it's new so I thought I thought that that was that was really good. It's doing everything you need to do it's conveying so much information with so little effort like okay because the planet like eclipse because the planet is eclipsed by the ship it's okay this is menace this is right right this is this is big and menacing and straight all and like all of these things are being given to you straight away no confusion no no clutter just but everything is got meaning it's not only beautiful and clever it's it's giving you information all the time which is so important a start of a film isn't especially these sort of films. Oh yeah and even if even if you imagine someone's walking into this movie theater and they've never seen Star Wars before and they're reading this text crawl and they have no idea who any of these people are you still know that that ship is bad news right like it's so clear this is bad news right these are not people that you want coming to this planet just visually like they don't have to tell you anything about it yeah just there there are a lot of little moments like this in the movie where I just found myself thinking like wow competent filmmaking like you are using visual language to convey something like this yeah this is just absolutely this is absolutely a pleasure to watch when when someone is doing doing this kind of thing yeah so I think the first the first major departure in the movie is the scene when the storm troopers land they are they're on what I kept thinking of is as new Tatooine really jacquo I think is the name for it yeah but it's another it's another desert planet yeah it's another desert planet it's it's you know it's new Tatooine and they're they're landing and they're doing a raid and there's a storm trooper who is freaking out because he's this is his his first fight as you find out later and he's seeing he's seeing all the death occurring around him and he's he's almost like a PTSD storm trooper in this moment like he sees presumably one of his friends dies this again was just a great thing like let's do something a little bit different and you know the old Star Wars movies had these couple little moments where where storm troopers were human eyes like chatting on the side of the movie scene or whatever yeah but here's the moment where like we are going to focus on a storm trooper like one guy who is a real person who is going to be an actual character and I mean because I had seen the trailer that Brady made me watch I presume that that was going to be the case that like a storm trooper was was one of the main characters but I thought it was a good move I thought it's an interesting it's an interesting and different place to focus in in the movie and we have this sort of this this little battle and skirmish kickoff on the on the desert planet the same where someone fires a blaster at our big bad dude and he froze the blast about in the in the mid air I mean if you told me beforehand that was going to happen I would have said oh I'm not too sure about that but that was awesome and it was such a cool new use of the force and it was such a cool new effect to see a laser boat frozen in mid air but still sort of sizzling on the spot I thought that was that was psycho was not that blaster bolt was designed in the same way that Kylie Renn's lightsaber is done where it's like angry right it has sparks coming off the edge of it it like it feels alive because like this is this is the this is the plus side of making a movie many years later it's like we have better graphics technology we can make things look better than just lines on the screen and so yes when when that blaster bolt is fired and it stopped in mid air it it you couldn't have done that effect before because it would just feel like oh there's a glowing line in the center of the screen but with this it feels like that blaster bolt is just dying to move forward like it's giving off sparks and it's kind of moving around a little bit but but it's just casually held there by the dark side of the forest and yes it is it is just so cool like that is exactly the kind of thing I can imagine if I was if I was a little kid seeing this like you imagine yourself like stopping blaster bolts with your hands when you're playing with other kids like that's just such a great great thing to do in in the opening scene to establish I guess this guy can do amazing things right away and also very early on we have a bit of a marker for the film as well is when when this this pilot hero guy whose name I've already forgotten is sort of brought before Kylo Ren to get a telling off and and that he's really joky he's funny like in a really modern a modern joky way like who's gonna talk first you can talk first am I gonna talk first like it was very like okay they're gonna they're gonna be sassy they're not like it was a real modern sass wasn't it it wasn't old-fashioned humor it was like very modern speak and it was it was actually quite disorienting for a second that moment right there when the pilot says you're gonna talk first am I gonna talk first and then Kylo Ren says something and then he does another joke which is that he says it's it's very hard to understand you with all the with all the apparatus right it like he's he's making fun of the of the mask with this guy's wearing that was one moment where I was thinking like oh I was a little worried at that point because it because that to me just doesn't feel star wars because it is very modern like I'm not saying it's bad but it was a moment where everything was going great on this train and in my mind anyway like we hit a tiny bump and now I'm suddenly cautious again right it's like sheels up I'm a little bit worried just again just because like once you're watching the movie you just you wanted to go so well and the experiences in the past have been so bad but I feel like you're at least I was anyway like hyper sensitive to everything that felt like slightly slightly off right at the beginning so I was not a fan of that and I wasn't a fan of it on the second viewing again but this is where we'll start to get into some of the things that I think are a little bit off or a little bit weird it did remove a lot of the gravitas of characters that I think are supposed to have some gravitas it did later on I I mean I really liked the humor in the film and I'm sure we'll talk about that but there were a couple of times where the humor felt like it was too much from the streets of New York and not enough from a long time ago in a galaxy far far away there's a few things that felt I feel like I can say this it felt like too American in a way at a few at a few moments in the movie there was this like oh okay that feels very American and it doesn't feel like this this other place but yeah but yeah relatively minor thing relatively minor thing yeah at the moment since I just talked about a moment where I was a little bit worried about stuff I kind of want to talk about the the moment when I felt just sold on this movie and just really stopped thinking about oh I'm watching the Star Wars movie and I started just watching a Star Wars movie yeah and this this was when they have the introduction for the the main character of the movie the girl Ray yeah and so they there's these establishing shots of her and she is a scavenger on New Tatooine and she's pulling apart all of these ships and she has this this like I don't know how long it is maybe five minute introductory scenes seven minutes or so where that is totally free of dialogue all right she's she's not saying anything the movie is just showing her going about her her life is a scavenger and it's great because they're in the background there these scenes of these big ships that have crashed on on Jakku and they don't bother explaining like how the ships got there it's like who cares it just look Star Wars here's this person going through the rubbish and there's just this little moment when she's collected up all of her stuff and she puts it on this little sled she's on the top of a sand dune and she slides down the sand dune and there's this just to my mind this pitch perfect musical cue that is is her theme that they use throughout the movie but it's the first time you hear it I've been thinking about that shot I don't know why but for some reason that was just the moment where I felt like this is really great you haven't just done like the bombastic here's some fight scene oh there's there's spaceships here and there it's like no you're establishing a new character you're also you're also taking your time in doing this you don't feel rushed very much like the earlier Star Wars movies which are kind of surprisingly slow in some scenes when you watch them now this felt like the same thing like you're taking plenty of time to do it and then on top of it you have new music but it still feels like Star Wars and it still feels like this belongs right in in the movie I love the non-spoken establishment of her as a brand new character and that was the point where I really felt like I'm just sitting back and just watching this movie and I'm not really nervous about it anymore or thinking about I'm watching a brand new Star Wars I'm just engaged with a new character who is doing things in this world like that's that's where I really felt sold on this and yeah I'm establishing so much about her you know she's she's technical she's resourceful she's she's like she's like muscular like she's action she's a she's a woman of action you all the time even through that even through that sort of gentle breather after the action you established so much about her in in a short space of time still and watching that silent introduction the second time I was even just more aware of all of the things that are being established about her and also I don't know who that actress is I've never seen her before in anything but man I think she nails that role every line in every scene I just think she just hits it right out of the park there's something about her that she is just so natural like she really feels a part of the Star Wars world unlike some other people I might mention later but I just thought she was she was just amazing she just fits so perfectly and it's it's one of these things that I can never quite put my finger on it but some some actors and actresses are just so natural on screen you just feel like they are what they are and other people you feel like oh you're a good actor but I'm aware of you as being an actor and she was just a total natural so I felt like man whoever found her from the casting department it was just an amazing choice she was so good even just even just little things about in this silent introduction when they show her eating the bread that she's earned from from the items that she has scavenged she's eating that bread convincingly like a person who is really hungry and and not doing it in an overly obvious way it's just so natural like yes this is a person who got less food than they were expecting from their scavenging and she's she's hungry and she's she's eating this and just it sounds dumb to mention that but it's it's just a it's just a pleasure to watch someone on screen who's just so so good at their job it's she was really really just amazing I mean on my light side list here she is absolute top number one I think she's the best thing about the whole film yeah without a doubt without the actress is great but also the characters she does a great performance but the characters so interesting and the costume is great like every single every single thing about that character Ray yeah is brilliant and I think she is absolutely makes the film I always wanted to see what she was up to when she was on screen could you imagine I mean could you just imagine if George Lucas had to write a three minute silent scene for introducing a new character how how unbearably awful would that be would he even try no of course not but it's and that's where like that just felt really great like man I am in the hands of a competent team who is able to show me things without having to explain things like the people who are thinking about this where they show her writing the notches on the wall so you have some sense that oh she's been in this place for a long time you know everything about her life like you said you you learn this from her and she is great and the directing team I mean even things like I just kept thinking wow there are interesting camera angles in this movie like they're choosing to put the camera in in angled locations to show you a bunch of different stuff actually I realized on the second time round her first line of dialogue is in that is in some made up language right she's she's yelling at at the guy who finds the the joy BB8 you know she's she's yelling in a in a different language and it just comes off as convincing right she does she sounds like oh yeah this she just speaks some other language and and even then she makes like a little head gesture and she shushes the droid like she just comes off right away as very very competent character and and a great actress well done yes seriously Daisy Ridley so the actresses name however I feel like this is a moment where maybe I want to take something which is on the dark side as as you have divided your list oh let me get my dark side paper as well and say fuck well as well here we go it's my dark side paper okay because for as much as I love lots of stuff in this movie showing you things without explaining it to you I feel like there was some writer on the team or someone who felt that there had to be lots of exposition that was redundant in the movie there are tons of lines in this movie where people say things twice or three times right in a row and it just really irked the heck out of me and this girl has one of those lines where she she goes into town with BB8 right okay so in your in the silent scene we have established that she's obviously been there for a long time right she's ticking off these little marks on the wall but she says to the to the droid I know all about waiting for my family they'll be back I feel like these these lines like we know you're waiting for someone you don't need to explicitly say this out loud and I don't know I just felt like there were a bunch of lines where someone would just say things several times over and over again and I just I found that kind of irritating like the exposition dial in dialogue was was turned up way too many times like I have a couple notes here for similar similar lines where someone else later in the movie says the droid is in the hands of your father Han Solo it's like yeah no we know we got it right we got it but you don't you have to say it twice so that everybody in the movie knows what you're talking about I don't I mean people don't always pay attention and things are really important you've got to make sure they know them I they're a couple of time they're a couple of times I agree I think I don't think her putting notchers on the wall of her of her home or wherever she was immediately said to me she was waiting for something it could we did need to be told she was waiting for people to come back but they re they we visit that later in the movie like there's a conversation later in the movie where they do it so it's like it's not necessary to do right now you have some sense you have some sense of this already and I think it'd be more powerful later if you don't like hammer it home and you know and then like I have an online like right in the beginning when someone is talking to Kylo Ren you know and and he says oh the first order rose from the dark side you did not right telling us that Kylo Ren didn't start out evil and it says like then his very next line is you can't deny the origin of your family it's like okay but you could have stopped it you did not right like we understand he didn't start out on the dark side you don't have to like super hammer it in I think my favorite my favorite example of this is is right it down oh yeah at the very end they mentioned someone the pilot guy has a line about oh it's it's destroying the sun right and when the sun is when the sun is gone then the you know the weapon is ready yeah it's like okay that's a great line and he says so as long as it's light out we still have a chance it's like okay you you just said that like you just said that line with your previous line that that's probably one of the things it just irritated me the most is feeling like there were lots of these lines for people who were like we're really trying to make sure that you're following along and I understand why movies do that but it just I don't know it feels like you I always want less exposition than there are in movies and this movie felt like there were a few really egregious lines of of exposition I agree with that sun one later in the film I thought that was that was laid on a bit thick but I also think the fact you saw this film twice in three days is contributing to that and I think oh it's definitely not because that was that was I have I'm looking on on my screen I'm looking on my screen the two sets of notes that I have which was the first reaction notes and my first reaction notes has a big thing saying there's 22 much 20% too much exposition and I wrote down that line about the light and made a note from like future me to find some other other lines because the first time I watched it I felt like there's just too much of this there's too much of this I mean I've heard you complain about this with other films too though as well so I think I think you are not everyone pays as close I mean I do pay close attention so I feel a bit the same way but not everyone pays quite such close attention I agree there was a bit too much of it but I don't think like crippled the film and neither do you neither do you neither do you know I don't I don't think so either but it's one of those things we're like I'm when you're really enjoying a movie I just find that stuff like I could stick in that sticks in my side as like this would be a better movie it without this yeah but that's all so do you have something from your dark side list that you want to mention oh okay yeah I will I'll bring up something that's semi related and almost it's funny that this is all this kind of almost goes against what you said um and that is I felt like this film like a big complaint about the terrible terrible prequels is that they completely abandoned sort of characters and interesting characters and they concentrated on this boring politics and this big this big I'll call it like the Mac the the macro story of what's going on in the galaxy I feel like this film went very very far in the other direction to the point where I kind of didn't understand the big picture very much and therefore I didn't really care about some of the things that were going on like who's who's in charge of the galaxy now and that and that planet they blew up because I sort of had the impression that the bad guys the empire had sort of had retained control after return of the Jedi but then these bad guys with their star killer are blowing up is that the planet with the senate on it that they just blew up so are they is this a coup is this the military taking over the government and like and hang on so princess layers like still a rebel so there are still rebels so the bad guys are still in control so why do they why do they blow that up and uh and like so lots of the stuff happening at the higher level like the big the big politics I was completely bamboozled by and therefore I was finding it hard to sort of okay those guys with that star killer are bad so obviously we're going to blow that thing up but who's who's in charge like what's going on there was there was a lot of the macro was lost on me I was very engaged with the micro but the big picture was lost on me and therefore for example at the end of new hope you just want that death star blown up so bad you know you know how bad it is you know who's good you know who's bad this this attack is the culmination but by the end of force awakens it's a bit like I didn't really care about this star killer thing and therefore this big siege at the end where they fly in and blow it up it's a bit like yeah yeah fair enough it's bad I can see why you're blowing that up it's bad but but it wasn't it wasn't this oh thank god thank god it's gone thank god it's gone the death star was going to blow up every planet in the galaxy it was really feared this star killer I'm like yeah yeah good gone we win next okay what what massive spherical planet destroying device are they going to build next for us to blow up I had to say a similar thing in my first reaction notes that I was I was thinking oh did I did I just miss something here because I had a note about there's first order senate resistance question mark yeah and my feeling was I don't understand the relationship between these three entities yeah and yeah when I'm when I was first watching the movie it was okay I'm just going along with this we have we have obviously the bad guys and obviously the good guys but as soon as the star killer came online it did immediately draw to my attention like wait I don't actually understand what's going on because this resistance seems separate from the senate it doesn't it doesn't seem like they are connected and I when I was watching the movie a second time I was trying to pay attention like did I miss some line like something explaining something here and we really know and there's actually a line that made me even more confused because when the when the evil general is giving his big speech about how we're going to destroy that senate he he makes he makes some remark I wish I caught it the exact mark but he he makes some remark that it's that lead me to believe that there is some formal separation between the senate and the resistance he makes a remark about how like oh that the senate is you know is lying about something about the resistance and then it's like okay now this is really unclear the relationship between these entities like I presume that the senate is running the galaxy now and that the first order is the remnants of the empire with incredible resources yeah yeah yeah yeah it's shocking resources yeah I like oh don't mind us with our terrible things projects but then the like where the rebellion fits into that is very confusing to me then like if you are not the or the where the resistance fits in like if you are not the army of the senate like I'm I am confused now like you're you know you princess layer like how how are you connected to all of this it felt weird the film would have made more sense if the resistance princess layer and the people with the x-wings was the military branch of the senate but then they would no longer be underdogs they would be part of the establishment and you'd lose that whole dynamic so for some reason they've made them some sort of splinter freedom fighters when when it that doesn't really logically make make sense I mean because who they're resisting this first order bunch I like you know are the enemy they're the outsiders or are they or I actually had the impression that the first order was the military branch of the the senate like the government and that gone bad you know because they've got an army they got stormtroopers they're not yeah it was confusing yeah it remains confusing to me yeah it remains confusing I'm sure in a there are answers to all of these in the extended universe like all of this like but I don't really care I'm just watching this movie and I'm curious about the things in the universe of the movie but yeah I did think it was it was weird and a weird dynamic because it's like you want both of these sides to be underdogs like I don't it's it's strange it was it was a bit strange it's a it's a minor complaint but it is definitely like like one of the things I think of as the mark of a good movie is that the more you think about the movie the more the movie rewards you for thinking about it and bad movies are the kind of movies where you have to say like oh it's a great movie just don't think about it because if you think about it all you know it all just falls to pieces right and it doesn't work at all and I definitely have found myself thinking about the Star Wars movie a lot which is great but this is one of those moments where it's like yeah don't don't think about the connection between these three entities too much right don't don't think about it because it's like it's it causes a little bit of a problem and it's not really explained so it's I think it's interesting that you picked up on that as as well hmm I thought the character of Finn this is the this is our stormtrooper turned turned hero was also really good also super strong you know from that moment when we see in the trailer where his head pops up and he looks like he's overacting a little bit and I'm thinking oh no what have they done again I really liked him I really liked him I really cared about him and that's that's the that's the most important thing in any film is that you care about care about the guy I thought he was I thought he put in a good performance there were one or two times I think he pushed the credibility of what that character would do under the circumstances when he got all sassy and funny and he made it there a few times like no you would not be acting that way in these circumstances so that so for that reason you know he wasn't quite as super innovative a character as a the ray character but I thought he was really good he had really good chemistry with the ray character I'm really intrigued as to you know what what happened with their relationship so I thought it was another real asset to the film you know I think that I think they've done really well they're two for two with their two most important characters on the hero side of things yeah see here's where we're going to disagree a little bit because I really like the character as well I think the idea of having the stormtrooper as as a character is is very good I like the role that he plays in the movie but he he was one of the the actors where I feel like you're not there a bunch of lines that he gives in the movie that I felt were clunky and he he was one of the I mentioned before saying some things felt a little bit to American and he was one of these things that there were moments where I feel like you you sound very American in a few of these scenes but a bit off like it it just it's it's so hard like in watching a movie it's it's so hard to pin down why things are different because Harrison Ford shows up in this movie and he talks and he's obviously American right like he actually is American and it doesn't it doesn't feel that way but the guy playing Finn had a few lines it just felt like this is out of place but I didn't think that was his fault I agree I mean that's what I meant when I said you wouldn't act that way like when he when he confronts his old stormtrooper boss towards the end of the film yeah yeah howdy howdy like me now sort of that kind of yeah I'm in charge I'm in charge yeah I mean that was that was that that that missed that missed the beat in a very jarring way that sort of punched you out of the film for a few seconds yeah so there yeah that that's why it wasn't you know that's why I said it wasn't as perfect as sort of the Ray character where I don't remember ever being ever being look no she's she's perfect the whole way through yeah but I think it's not even the lines that he has to deliver which sometimes you know they're hard sometimes but it's the way he delivers them it's it's his accent and his way of speaking feel like clunky lines and I ended up looking him up because I wanted to know like where is this guy from and I think here's my suspicion about this I found out he's actually English right he went to school in London and I got he's another person I have no idea who he is which for a star wars movie by the way is the right way to go you don't want to have very obvious known characters are very obvious known actors in your star wars movie right you want to find a new crop of people who are talented but I think that's a really hard job to do of unknowns or relative unknowns who are also really good but so anyway he he is English maybe it was because he is obviously trying to hide his English accent in the movie because maybe they don't want their two main characters to have the same accent which is quite reasonable but I wonder if that's why some of his his lines of dialogue just feel really really clunky to me when he delivers them it's like oh you're you're not using your natural voice you're trying to put on an accent and your accent sounds very American but maybe because it's not exactly American is why it feels off and weird sometimes so my feeling is is he was fine but I I would not say that he was great like I really like the character but I don't think that the actor did a perfect job with with what he was with what he was given speaking of people sounding American hmm let's come on to Carrie Fisher for a minute because I don't know what's happened with her voice but she has sort of an odd voice now and she sounded her she sounded distractingly American to me like really strong I don't know what her accent is what part of America it's from but her like say Harrison Ford lots of people have American accents and you just used to that in movies you think nothing other yeah sort of invisible Carrie Fisher's I don't know for sure accent her voice has changed in such a way over the years that she her voice really distracted me I had real problems with with how she sounded Carrie Carrie Fisher has been through quite a rough time since the Star Wars movies yeah so it's in this galaxy and that galaxy it's been a bad time for Carrie Fisher so it is not surprising that her her voice sounds shockingly different you know sounds like no sounds like someone who's been through a rough time it's weird because when she did first come on camera I found her distracting as well a bit it's okay you look very different and you sound very different and I find you quite distracting again in a way that I just I was impressed by how not distracting old Harrison Ford was I was expecting it to be a bit oh god like let's can we move Harrison Ford off camera as fast as possible but I think he did a great job with it I think he was really believed except when he except there's all the Harrison Ford I think they gave him too much action work to do I think he I think like when he's running around on that freighter when those monsters are on the loose he's really lumbering like I'm thinking there's no way you're going to get away from those monsters like you are you are first to be much my friend let's come back to those months in a second I thought I thought I mean it's it's it's it's it's low hanging fruit isn't it to pick on these people for being a bit older now but I think he was too old for some of the things he was being asked to do and it was a bit a few times I was thinking of poor fella don't make it don't make him run there someone go and give him a hand aside from that that monster sequence when they're on the spaceship and the monsters get loose which for me might be the low point of the film is that monster sequence totally agree that whole sequence up on that ship was was definitely the the low web it's is the low sequence because okay so what's happened in the movie at this point right is that our main characters have escaped with the Millennium Falcon and Harrison Ford finds them and brings the Millennium Falcon on board his big ship and there is just this convoluted sequence that the end result is like look here's what we want movie we want Harrison Ford back on the Millennium Falcon right everybody wants that Harrison Ford wants to get back on the Millennium Falcon should we want to get back on the Millennium Falcon everybody wants wants to get there and it seems to me like you know what you could do movie you could just just have Han Solo be really happy that he's found the Millennium Falcon again and just fly away on it right just abandon his current ship which he makes reference to is being too big for him to fly anyway because he doesn't have enough of a crew like just have him leave but instead there is this very long sequence where you know whatever it is like these people that Harrison Ford has had passed dealings with they land on the ship and there's like an argument and then there's monsters escaped like all of this is just to get him on the Millennium Falcon and I feel like we could have escaped I don't know how I don't know how to agree with you there were a few things that needed to get achieved at that point in the film I do agree that they did it the wrong way and they could have done it much simpler with you know they could have done it in a lot of different ways they did have to establish that he has spent a long time away as a smuggler he's back on the smuggling track and he'd been and he's been doing it for a while because he's double crossed so many people so he's not just away from layer for 10 minutes he's like he's out on the loose again on his own yeah he's not out getting cigarettes or anything it's been it's been years we also had to find a mechanism for word to get back to the first republic that hand solo has the droid so there has to be someone to to tell on him so someone has to know this so there are a few little things that have to happen but you're right it could have been done a lot quicker and easier than this very non-star wars moment of this of these monsters roaming around the ship trying to gobble everyone up it almost felt like Pac-Man right when it's like there's these these circular monsters are rolling around the hallway eating everybody like they're the pellets and the monsters are exactly the right size of all of the hallways in the spaceship it's like man if you made your hallways two feet shorter this wouldn't be a problem because none of these monsters can go anywhere oh that's going to be lucky for the video game isn't it you know what man you just nailed it on the head that feels like a sequence that's put in there for a video game it really it really does it's also when the kind of thing that happens in movies that just really annoys me happens which is you see these monsters with their tentacles grab and eat all of these peripheral smugglers who are on board but then when one of the monsters grabs Finn our main character like the magic of the script protects him from being eaten immediately and suddenly the monster decides like oh I'm full I'm just gonna run away with this person right instead of just eating him as you would expect as you would expect the monster to do and I just I always feel like that's just cheap like oh you've changed the rules so that your main character is perfectly fine like I have to say I quite I really quite liked again because her character is just perfect in every way I love the fact that Ray doesn't try to fight the monster or find him like she's smart enough to go look at the surveillance cameras and try to time it with closing a door on the tentacles like I love that whole thing and I super love that she doesn't bother to explain that she's saved his ass when they meet up again when when when Finn just goes like oh man the door closed and she goes that was lucky and they keep moving I love that little that little moment because again you know it's sorry so humility as well as humor and yeah yeah it's but it's not even it's a humility it's a kind of pragmatism of like we got to keep moving right there's no time for me to explain this even if I want to take credit like not now right we'll talk about it later over beer or something but we got to go we need to get out of here now that I think about it though and I don't know if I'm reading too much into it but that does then have a nice echo later in the film doesn't it when they come and save her and he doesn't say it was my idea to come and save you it's chewy that toes her so it's almost like like that comes back doesn't that he could have he could have said yeah I really wanted to save you and taking some credit but he didn't and someone else did it for him yeah yeah it is it is it is a little bit of an echo but I don't know if it's intentional but yeah I'm still going to say that that whole sequence is the part where it feels like okay yeah and I agree on my on my second watch through you know as soon as the monsters escape it's like okay great this is the perfect time to go in the bathroom I'll be back when this chase sequences over even the ship didn't feel like a star wars ship it felt like it was like from alien or something and it just it didn't it was it wasn't it wasn't odd it was an odd part of the film yeah it was it was a strange part it's one of those parts where you imagine if people do the the recuts you know they would cut it down to be much shorter I did like the Millennium Falcon going into hyperspace with the monster sucking on the front of it that well I couldn't wait to see what would happen as they fired up the engines I couldn't wait to see what they did to the what was going to happen to it that is an example of things are better when they just happen but you don't focus on it so like there's not a dramatic shot of the monster getting just plowed through by the Millennium Falcon you just kind of see it in the background as this mouth that is over the front of their ship and then it separates so you know what's happened you know they've just flown right through it and I just I love that kind of stuff in movies like don't over focus on it it's better if you just have a thing happen but don't give me all of these dramatic shots around the thing happening we're once again super pleased to be sponsored by hover give them a look at hover.com now hovers are domain registrar that just seem to get it right super easy to use and focused on you as customers having the right domain name these days is a really important part of life on the web if you've got a project in mind you should grab the right names while you can you might not be ready to roll just yet but you can still register it now save those best names for a rainy day don't let 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the d are all uppercase I don't enough that matters but I'm just saying jack of diamonds that's 10% off your first purchase when you check out hover dot com seriously check them out I've used a few domain registrars hover are easily the best ones I've got no problems recommending them and we're really thankful for them for sponsoring this episode of hello internet you were worried if we were going to be able to stretch out and talk for an hour about this I think I think we're going to be all right yeah I wasn't sure I wasn't sure if we were going to make it for an hour I will I will pick something from a light side list which I have to mention so if you complain about things go BB eight adorable yeah much better than I expected yeah I was a little worried from the trailer like oh here's a robot that's made for toys but a holy crap is BB eight adorable he's absolutely adorable in every scene and I am totally sold on the decision to have his little head rotate atop the ball body because when you watch it you realize man there's so much animation that is possible compared to something like r2d2 right where you feel a lot of emotion from r2d2 you have a sense of him as a character but BB eight is able to emote through motion in a way that r2d2 or even see 3p real really isn't like they are so much more limited in their movement but his ability to swirl his little head around and and look in different directions it gives him such a character and he is so cute so cute you're such a softy grey that's how you talk when you're playing with Audrey when they're in the millennium falcon just shortly before Han Solo arrives there is a scene that to me it pushes the edge of things but but comes just short of going over my threshold for it but I I think maybe my favorite little sequence in the movie is when Finn confesses to BB eight that he's not really part of the resistance and he's like listen droid like you gotta gotta go with me on this one like and we just can you just tell us where the rebel base is and I just think it's there's something that's really cute about that moment and I absolutely love when Finn gives him the thumbs up and BB eight sticks out his little lighter thing and gives like a little his imitation of a thumbs up that is like right on the edge of something that I would hate if the movie was done less well but it just came in under and I totally love that little sequence I I enjoyed the sequence I think the little cigarette ladder thumbs up it was stretching it and maybe that just just put a toe over the line for half a second yeah I can think that came everything that came before it forgives it because it is a funny it is a funny little exchange between the two yeah that that is definitely a subjective moment like for you it's slightly over the edge and for me it is just just barely under just barely under but it is saved by the fact that again it is so fast right it is just a split second that he does the little lighter thing and pulls it right back in you know if they focused on it too long is now this is no good but I absolutely love that that was that was really great here let's talk about some of the big things what did you think about new Vader Kylo Ren I liked him I thought I liked him when he was menacing with his mask I thought he he was cool looking he not over the top he looked like he looked real like he looked like they weren't trying to make something that looked amazing they were just making a quite cool understated villain when he was out of the mask and being like you know just the dude I thought he was close to being a little bit young Anakin Skywalker wingy but he just he just acted well enough to get away get away with it and so I liked I liked him as a human as well I loved his temper I love that he kept thrashing him kept like getting his lightsaber out and having his temper tantrums I liked that about him and I liked that became his like like that moment where the stormtroopers walk around the corner and they realized he's having another one of his tantrums and they just kind of back away was like one of the really funniest bits of the film wasn't the thing that makes that for me is how the the one stormtrooper puts out his hand to stop the other one in the way that like if a couple's walking along the street like and one notices something that the other one doesn't because they're talking you put out your hand to stop the other person it's such a little humanizing moment because you can imagine they're having some conversation in their head communicators or whatever and it's like well wait a minute buddy I've seen this before we got to patrol somewhere else right now so I did like him I'll say something about the final battle about it at the end though but I liked him did you like him I thought he was really well done and the thing that I kept thinking which I was amazed by and again it's it's just the difference that competence makes is that this new Vader is an angsty Vader which is exactly the thing that everybody complains about in the prequels that the actual Darth Vader is an angsty kind of teenage character and the Kylo Ren character feels like he's he is in that same genre like his temper tantrums later in the movie I think it's interesting that when he is in a battle and he's really upset his I don't know if it's on purpose but his voice is suddenly very different it's like he's lost control over projecting menace right and he's he's much more closer to like a screechy edge of things almost like you would expect a teenager to be and I feel like but it works like it it works and I think the reason it works is because the actor and the costume are still able to project menace and I think the first time he flips out is a really key scene when when there's you know there's always in Star Wars like you don't want to be the officer who has to report to the dark side guy or like that's not the nobody wants that job right that's a terrible job much throat choking in that situation but the first time you go through this very Star Wars scene where the officer has to say oh we've lost the droid and I think it's great because it establishes him as being really menacing that he he trashes the console in front of him and then when the officer gives this additional piece of information it's such a great shot of him using the force to to not just force choke the guy but to pull him across the room to like inches in front of his face and it's that kind of thing that gives it it gives it menace and so it feels like okay he's not just throwing a tantrum because things haven't gone his way it's like he is furious and upset but he is also dangerous and I think the the actor the actor does it really well and I kept looking at the costume which I thought was a really great comparison to Vader because it's so slender in many ways like he he's a slender guy he doesn't have the same kind of huge physical presence that Darth Vader does and I think that's a really good choice for doing something that is similar like you have the same kind of Darth Vader feel but it is it's not the same and I just thought like he looked great in a lot of those scenes as this much more slender character he's even just wearing like this relatively light robe that doesn't even go all the way around him it's just it was just a great visual look and I also thought the voice was done very well it was his his voice over the way he spoke you know reminiscent of Vader but not a mimicry and I think it was it was also done really well that it sounded like oh this is almost like a side effect of the kinds of helmets that all of these people wear because I was aware that when he spoke for the first time very shortly after they have the the female general star stormtrooper talk and her voice is also distorted in kind of a similar way as as his and I feel like it almost establishes like oh he's not doing a Darth Vader impression they're all just talking through helmets that distort their voice and maybe that's just the it's the evident what do I plug in that you yeah that's exactly it like listen all of these people sound like this and I think that's a good choice to very soon here here another character who sounds somewhat similar to him it's like yeah we're not doing a Darth Vader voice this is just with stormtrooper stormtrooper helmets are like and he has a custom one I love that his mask like was a bit dinged up well as well like it was just the mask looked lived in that they did it just right yeah it was perfect I was really aware of that too that there were a few dings on the on the front the front face plates like this is perfect this feels like a real universe like this is a guy who has used this mask over the course of time and yeah it's it's a real thing that has been around for a long time it is not straight from the prop department even though it obviously is say the new the new characters are doing well what about the old characters I I mentioned I thought you know I thought I was a bit embarrassed for hands out at times I'm you know of course I love him you know but aside from the weird action sequence on that that spaceship I thought mostly the script was actually pretty good at having him not do too much like if you put that one action sequence aside he like there's not lots it's not many shots of hand of him running around like he's in there were a few there a few where he's like shooting his blaster and being a hero and I'm thinking yeah but shooting your blaster and being a hero is very different from running right like they don't show an old man running for the most part I think that that's a good decision like he he is there he is doing things the one that to me is over the line is when he doesn't even look and shoots a stormtrooper yeah that to me was like no sorry I'm hitting I'm hitting the no buzzer on that one you know you should cut that half second because because how is that even possible right is he just lucky going back again to think to think about something like the scene earlier in the movie when Ray and Finn are escaping on new Tatooine in the Millennium Falcon which is a great great flight sequence and she's flying you know on the inside of one of the crash star destroyers and the gun gets stuck and she pulls off this amazing maneuver where she you know she flies through and and cuts off the engine at just the right moment and turns the whole ship to line up the gun with the tie fighter so that fin in the back and shoot the gun and hit it it's like that that scene in a Star Wars movie is believable because it's conveying to you immediately that she is force sensitive right that no one could pull off that maneuver like Han Solo couldn't have pulled off that maneuver she's only able to do it because she is special and I feel like okay that that is again like the movie is telling you something about this character and it's done really well whereas Han Solo just shooting a storm trooper without looking behind his back feels like dumb it just feels dumb there's no reason for it to happen it doesn't make any sense in the context of the movie and yeah for me it's it's over the line and I would if I if I was get it or like no JJ Abrams we're just going to cut this it's two seconds it adds nothing it's not actually that funny and it's a bit out of place you bring up the Millennium Falcon I wasn't entirely pleased with the use of the Millennium Falcon in the film why am I not surprised Breedy I thought they got a little bit comic book cartoonish with it at times one of the things I like about Star Wars is it sort of it feels a bit like it obeys the laws of physics and you know if you if you if you're if you're playing crashes into a forest that's like bad right but I feel like I feel like the Millennium Falcon survived scrapes and landings and incidents that that that a that an old banged up old ship shouldn't survive and it was performing maneuvers that it shouldn't be performing I thought the time when Ray Flour on Jakku was such an amazing scene and so much fun that I kind of I kind of forgave the amazing nimbleness it was showing flying inside a star destroyer I forgave that yeah and you point out it showed that she she had something a bit special about how that she could do that very implausible move of turning it off and turning it on again before the impossibility is a plot point as opposed to just something done that is happening whereas seconds earlier when she tries to take off and it it smashes against the ground and then smashes into a building yeah I agree with you it feels like is there physics here because I'm pretty sure that things should have been torn to pieces yeah I mean the landing on the snow planet and coming out of hyperspace so close to a planet and then landing on the planet the way they did like that just that was like okay this is like this is not believable I didn't I didn't like that and it also it didn't feel necessary I've I kind of see why they did it with the snow planet because otherwise if they just went and landed on the snow planet it would be like what is then is there was there no trickiness required to get there but I agree with you that the movie wants some reason why they and only they can land and this maneuver is the reason but yes it doesn't make sense when you think about it too long yeah so I I don't think like there was all this talk about how you know thank goodness Lucas didn't destroy the Millennium Falcon and he's prequels and and JJ Abrams will treat it with care and respect it deserves I don't think it was treated with the care and respect it it deserves and I thought it became a bit of a it was used too much and it was used in in two silly ways and I think it didn't do justice to the to the great lady of the sky I can I can definitely agree with you there like the crash landing in the forest it feels like I remember in a previous movie when ever so slightly bumping against the inside of a death star ripped off a vital component like are we not yeah are we not in that same universe now we can just smash straight through trees and it's fine it does seem it does seem a little bit it does seem a little bit too much yeah but speaking speaking of force sensitivity there is one thing in the movie that that I really feel very strongly about is just a terrible terrible mistake and it is near the end and it is Finn's lightsaber battle with our new Vader character Kylo Ren yeah and when I first watched the movie I really didn't like this scene and I thought okay maybe I'm being too hard on it let me watch it closer in the second rewatching and I hate it even more on the second rewatching I think nothing about that scene makes any sense it shouldn't happen it's bad for both characters I just I loathe that lightsaber scene so much it's just the two of them in the forest before so this is yes this is Finn versus Kylo Ren in the forest it's snowing yeah which by the way all the lightsaber fights in in the snowing forest beautiful scene I just I love that like it just it looks gorgeous let me say that it's it's it's phenomenal but yeah okay why why on earth can Finn use a lightsaber competently I get someone who's already shown us he's pretty handy with the force yeah I mean this I know he I know he's injured by getting shot by Chewy but he was still yeah so here's what I think the movie was trying to do because there was one dumb scene which actually made me think of of Indiana Jones which is the first time Finn uses the lightsaber is after they've visited the the Maws character they're on that forest planet and the stormtroopers have landed and he's out there and he's unarmed he has only the lightsaber and I think okay that's reasonable like he's going to have to use a lightsaber in a situation because he doesn't have a gun fair enough yeah so he goes out into the field he kills a stormtrooper but then another stormtrooper in this in this moment which made me laugh a little but it wasn't supposed to this other stormtrooper sees him recognizes him goes traitor and does this weird like throwdown gesture where he just drops whatever the heck it is he's carrying I can't even tell what it's supposed to be on screen that's true and then he pulls out some kind of big electric baton to fight and like wait a minute why isn't this like Indiana Jones why don't you stormtrooper just shoot him you like you have a gun why he's not gonna be he's not gonna be able to deflect boats like Luke Skywalker yeah he's not a he's not a Jedi you know he's not a Jedi he he that fight scene was so dumb it's also really confusing because it was about selling toys man yeah but what is this what is this weapon this stormtrooper has that is a melee weapon that lightsabers can't cut through like you have this weapon that is can go up against a lightsaber okay that's very interesting and quite notable for a thing that you're just going to casually have happened but when I think the movie was trying to establish in the dumbest way possible was that for some bizarre reason stormtroopers have long sword combat training okay that this is a thing that they have I like I think that's what the movie is trying to establish as setting it up for the lightsaber scene at the end well well call me dumb maybe I did need some exposition there where he says boy that sword training I've had always used to hide off because I completely missed that I mean because I don't know if it's intentional but that's that's my guess about what the movie is trying to tell you but it's just implausible like I don't members of the US armed forces I'd love to know like I'm pretty sure that they train you with guns and I'm pretty sure that they would train you in hand-to-hand combat I don't imagine there's a lot of fencing training going on in the US Army and it would make no sense for stormtroopers to have that kind of training but okay even giving this ridiculous premise that they're doing long sword fights at stormtrooper academy why on earth can he hold his own against Kylo Ren in a lightsaber fight for even a fraction of a second well I think Kylo Ren's injured isn't he that's what we're supposed to take from him they keep emphasizing that because he keeps like touching his wounds and things so I think they're trying to somehow justify it by saying this guy's right he's you know he's right down on power mode at the moment I know that that's what they're trying to do and that and they're overly emphasizing that he is injured because Chewie shot him but listen he is still clearly force capable why is this fight even occurring why doesn't he just choke fin to death here's the way this scene in my mind has to go it has to be a bit like the emperor at the end of the original trilogy who is electrocuting Luke and he's electrocuting Luke because they're showing you like the emperor is really cruel and he gets enjoyment out of being cruel like he you know he's not he's not actually trying to kill Luke and it's taking a long time because the emperor is really bad with his lightning hands like he's he's doing it intentionally cruelly and so to me this this scene in the end the only way this this scene can play out is if Kylo Ren is just intentionally being cruel to Finn but they I was watching it really closely like they play it as though it is a real fight like as though Finn has some chance of winning and Finn even lands a blow right he lands a blow on Kylo Ren and I'm and I'm like no this is bull like this this stormtrooper he would just get his ass handed to him no matter how wounded Kylo Ren is like this should not be a fight and it irritates me because I feel like it diminishes other lightsaber fights and it diminishes raise competence at using the lightsaber moments later it's like oh any stormtrooper can just pick up a lightsaber and hold off hold their own for a little while against a very force sensitive individual no no way yeah that you shouldn't even have muggles using lots of this shit you exactly that's that's precisely what is the only person the only person who gets to use a lightsaber is Han Solo when he's trying to save Luke's life right that's not bad on the outside like that was so amazing to see hands are like even turn on a lot of lightsaber like oh he knows where the odd button is yeah exactly exactly so that's if if there's any if there's any genuine real like I have a problem with this movie scene it is it is that lightsaber fight I just it irritates me irritates me a lot again because Ray and the actress and like that scene with the two of them fighting is a great scene and the thing that's extra irritating about it is that when you watch that fight Kylo Ren when he goes up against Ray she is on the defensive for most of that fight right he is really pushing her back she is running and like she is barely holding her own for most of that you see that's not my memory of it my my I mean you've seen it twice so you're right but my memory of of that whole last sequence was actually I was disappointed by how strong she was from the start I actually found that implausible that someone who's only just discovered her force sensitivity and has never even switched on a lightsaber before I know she's got a stick but yeah um it was was so good like I thought like I thought that was implausible the whole thing kind of passed me by I didn't really pay attention like but I thought I thought the spanking she gave Kylo Ren was implausible I thought she should just scrape by in that fight so that I thought she was dominant the way the fight plays out is that for the first half of it he is pushing her back and she is running right she is she is running away from him he corners her and then and he has this little moment where he offers her training right like I can train you that's right I can train him in the force and then pushes the lot cyber up against her right he's pushing the lightsaber up against her and then presumably she does a little like force meditation thing for a moment and gathers up her strength and that's when she then pushes back against him which I agree like it's not my favorite thing in a movie where a character is suddenly much more competent but it's like okay I will let this go but but that's why when she first picks up that lightsaber she's being much more like a normal person who would be using it as a shield to deflect from incoming blows and trying to put distance between themselves and like this force wielding maniac with his lightsaber you know but Finn you know Finn is all he's perfectly capable in a fight so that's why I just didn't I just didn't like that at all I tell you what though I don't I don't mean to get all mushy on you here but that's saying when the lightsaber comes out of the snow towards Kylo Ren then bypasses him and goes into her hand and then the little bit of Star Wars music place that check that tricked me up man that's that got me oh yeah that was great that was absolutely I was like I was like oh you beautiful man you beautiful I was thinking that was like that was like that was the emotional part of the film wasn't I was like oh man I love Star Wars so much yeah it was a very it was a very Star Wars shot you know it very much very much a Star Wars feeling but so what's one of your big bullet points that you want to mention oh I mean we've got to deal with some of the really big things here I met about whether it's okay or not let's deal with one of the biggest things of all and that is the really obvious obvious way in which the Force Awakens mirrors and has incredible coincidences with the first yeah films I mean you've got you've got the desert the desert orphony lonely person finding the droid that has the secret map and plans and then you've got that person meeting up with Handsolo and Chewbacca and having some adventures and then you've got the big siege on the on the big spherical planet destroyer at the end I mean it was the movie should be called Star Wars a new hope too yeah it was well not even two it was almost like a reboot like it in some ways I know there are differences and I know it took some stuff from a turn of the Jedi and you hope and kind of mush them together but it was almost it was it was like and I'm not saying this is a bad thing maybe this is a good thing but it's almost like there's only one story to be told like Robin Hood and it's and it's how many ways can you tell the Robin Hood story is that is that what is that what we liked about it is this is this is this a remake rather than a sequel it's an interesting question because the movie is remarkably close to a reboot or a remake it like almost I was going to say almost embarrassingly so but I don't mean it in a way because you know I really like the film and it's not embarrassing but almost like it's like a big elephant in the room it's like it's like you want to turn to the person next to you and say are you saying this are you noticing this too because this is exactly what happens in the other films and it's just different people acting it yeah it's and it's not always different people like to get either that's true you definitely have some of the same people there like oh hi Admiral Ackbar how are you doing I guess you're a fish species lives a remarkably long time okay yeah there's a there's a bunch of that which is is yeah it's so it's so similar it's it's quite remarkable it's quite remarkable the force moves in mysterious ways maybe so so what do you think do you think that's okay well obviously I do because I liked the film it's kind of unoriginal but maybe I just don't mind that I mean I could watch I could watch 10 different Robin Hood movies you know I like you know old classic tales are old classic tales and and Star Wars you know the original trilogy has become an old classic tale it's become a myth and we love watching our myths get reversion time and time again and maybe that's maybe that's what's happening before our eyes here it's sort of a a re-vergaining of the myth with a few the thing that's weird is it it's so obviously connects with the original as well you know they talk they reference the original films obviously you know this is what happened back in the day so that's that's where that line becomes very blurred but it's kind of like did you not have a new story like did you just could you not think of a new story did you deliberately use the old story are you are you doing it because you think that will tap into our nostalgia are you doing it because you think this is maybe the way the force works and there's this kind of poetry it rhymes sort of thing going on I mean I don't I don't know I don't know yeah so you're your little reference there is precisely what I was thinking through watching the whole movie the first time is in the red letter media reviews of the prequel movies they have a couple of of shots of George Lucas behind the scenes saying this line about how he wants the prequels to be like poetry and to rhyme with the original trilogy that he thinks it's okay for similar things to happen because this is his idea of storytelling and red letter media really just slams him on this just again and again because it's just terrible those movies they're absolutely terrible and so I was watching watching this movie and thinking I got kept hearing Lucas in my head going it's like poetry it rhymes this time I am okay with this it bothered it's interesting it bothered me a little bit on the first watching but today when I watch it a second time which now means I mean how many times have I seen a story where a gigantic planet destroying machine blows up in my life many many times and on the second watch through it it bothered me much much less like I didn't even really think about how this is exactly like a new hope again and it's just I think it again goes to the lesson like competence makes all the difference like it doesn't really matter what the story is like any story can be interesting if competently executed and a great story can be terrible if poorly executed now what I wonder though is I mean I think this has to have been a deliberate decision that they were going to essentially redo a new hope yeah I mean I can't not have noticed I can't not have noticed but what I think is this is probably probably a good decision if you know you have competent people on board because I mean we now have Disney owns the intellectual property to Star Wars and so we know that there will be no shortage of Star Wars films in the future like Disney has made remarks about this that they have plans to do big movies and small movies very much like the way the Marvel universe is unfolding in in movies and TV shows now so there's going to be a lot more Star Wars and I think it's it's fine for this one to be a kind of remake of the older movies establishing that Star Wars feeling like yes people like that are more inclined to like this movie because it's matching up with things that we know you already like it's fine as long as from here on the feel that they can do more different things so if the next movie starts out on an ice planet and someone gets frozen in carbonite halfway through then I'll be concerned right then I'll be feeling like oh okay I see where this is going and I like it a lot less but but my feeling on this is you've established this Star Warsy feeling with a new characters with new characters a new cast a new world and it's going on and we're going to continue from here hello internet today's episode is brought to you by audible.com with over 180,000 audiobooks and spoken audio products you can get a 30 day free trial today at audible.com slash hello internet if you've gotten this far in the podcast you're probably a science fiction fan and so I actually have a science fiction audiobook recommendation today I've mentioned before I don't read a lot of fiction but I recently just finished a series of books called The Virga series by Carl Schroeder the first book is called Sun of Suns it's perhaps one of the most imaginative settings I've come across yet for a science fiction book this is going to sound a bit weird to describe but it totally works the book takes place inside of a closed sphere floating in outer space that is filled with air and there are no planets on the inside so humans in order to live inside this gigantic solar system sized sphere they have to build what they call town wheels basically big cylinders that rotate to give them artificial gravity and for reasons that the book gets into later on it seems like technological progress is limited inside this gigantic sphere it's just such a weird setting and I like it as a science fiction book because it constantly deals with the setting like the very fact that people are living in this big open air solar system has a lot of interesting consequences I don't want to say too much that is a spoiler but so if you want to just quickly jump ahead 10 seconds I will say one thing to try to sell the book which is that it is a very interesting take on post singularity fiction I'm not going to say much more than that the book doesn't really dwell on the singularity but it does sort of incidentally make reference to the fact that this is post singularity fiction and it's a very interesting take on it so again there are five books the first one is called Sun of Suns the series is called Virga and the author is Karl Schroeder and you can give it a free listen with audible's 30 day free trial when you sign up at audible.com slash hello internet if you want to listen to it they have it thanks to audible for supporting the show let me let me put another big picture thing to you here uh-huh uh-huh because you know a lot of people who don't like the prequels myself included always say oh I feel like these have you know robbed me of the glory of these films that I loved when I was a child I think in some ways this film has robbed me of even more interesting because the final scene of Return of the Jedi is a very is burned into the memory of any young person isn't it they're they're around the fire they're happy the empire is vanquished you're full of hope and your imagination can run wild of Luke Skywalker becoming this great Jedi and living happily ever after and Hannah Lair are finally together forever like we always wanted them to be and everything everything's going to be good and now we know that that's not what happened Hannah Lair became estranged the Han was due to die this terrible death at some point in the future in these terrible terrible circumstances we know that Luke went off the rails and became this crazy unhappy hermit so it's like all of that niceness I have at the end of the Return of the Jedi where I can just dream of dream about what happened next and come away with a swarm feeling is gone now like now whenever I watched that final scene of Return of the Jedi I would just look at them around the fire and go and I found that you guys knew what's coming next you wouldn't look so happy that is such a Brady way to look at the end of a movie just sitting there and thinking oh everything's going to be great from now on like I what when I watch when I watch the end of Jedi I I feel I can feel happy for them having won this battle but I always had the feeling as a kid of what what happens next and what I don't expect to happen next is just a party on Endor for all of time no but that's not what we have course of course but that's not what return of the Jedi is return of the Jedi isn't supposed to be another yet another battle one it's the end of the war the first two films are a series of battles no they they win a battle they lose a battle they win a battle they lose a battle and then at the very end they win the war and that is what is so beautiful everything everything has you know that's what's so warm about the end of the the end of the series but now we learn no they didn't it was just another battle another bloody star planet blowing up thing gets built yet again they've got to jump in their X-wings and shoot it in its magic belly button where you can blow it up it's like it's like for goodness sake how many is this just going to happen for all of eternity blow up blop a death star we're building another one blow up a death star build another one to borrow from a phrase from another franchise all of this has happened before and all of this will happen again that that is a little bit of the feeling but that that's also why as we mentioned before I actually do find the absence of the macro it's a bit of a problem for this movie because it does feel like what happened after that ending in Jedi and now like what government is going on I really do think that that is a bit of a missing connecting piece and I am I am fine and expect the notion that there is continued adversity in the future but there is there is a disconnect between what happened then and and what happened now like why again why is lay in this resistance as opposed to the other government like that that for me is the problem like I can understand what you're saying that you feel like you have been robbed of the happy ending from the from the end of that movie but I don't I don't necessarily have have that same feeling you know I can live with our don't get me wrong I can live with that and I would rather have the force awakens than nothing because right well you know I don't know this is where are we straying into Godfather 3 territory here do you know I've never seen any of the Godfather movies yeah okay there we go sorry I'm reading let's do that another time because I'd love because I didn't watch the Godfather movies for a very long time and then when I finally did I was like oh my God why didn't I do this years ago so maybe that's maybe that's an assignment for another day but that's a future show we'll do that the night after we do a chick flicks lumber perly yeah maybe anyway so I mean you know the Godfather 3 famously is this third movie that a lot of people wish wasn't made because the first two are so perfect and even not having ever seen the Godfather movies I know that this is the reputation of Godfather 3 but you know I think Godfather 3 is still a really good film and kind of would I rather have a third film just so there's another one I can watch or would I prefer they never touched this sacred cow of the first two films and maybe and that's a bit the case here but I think after the prequels were made the force awakens was almost needed to sort of to save face to cleanse the wound yeah that's what it was but but would it be better would it be better if we could go back in time that we just had those first three star wars films made and nothing else no prequels not even all the other ancillary stuff would it be would it be nice if it was this untouched little nostalgic perfect thing and it's a more interesting question if you ask us would you rather have the original three and nothing else I mean because obviously if you could erase the prequels from existing you would but is are the prequels like paying the price of the prequels is that worth it to get what is coming in the future well that that depends on on what the rest of the movies look like yeah I mean I guess I guess we can only sit and watch those first three films so many times but but many many times over the course of a life though yeah can I say what do you think of the name star killer for that thing is that what they actually called it it's called star killer isn't it yeah it's the star killer they only use it once and I think they deliberately use it once because they really I mean Luke Skywalker was originally going to be called Luke star killer wasn't he in the first script so I think it's also supposed to be a little nod to that maybe but hmm but I think that's a bit of a lame name and I do have problems with that weapon I do have problems with the big bad weapon that name is literally a description of what the weapon does since it sucks up a sun and shoots it out at other planets I know times change and I know this is 30 years later but there have been some incredible advances in the technology that we were made privy to in the original Star Wars films if they can now if they can first convert a planet into a weapon and then a weapon that's capable of sucking up a star and shooting it I mean this is sounding a lot more star trek than Star Wars yeah that's a good that's a good point there's something about that weapon that is very star trek feeling yeah and it it almost when you mention all the resources in the technology it does feel like in the next movie is is this scrappy scrappy first order going to be building Dyson spheres like what are they gonna be up to yeah Kylo Ren or Yusus perpetual motion lightsaber it was just an implausible weapon it's just this upping of the anti and and they do have that that one shot which is the literal the literal upping of the anti when they're doing the debriefing I mean there's this move that movies do which is always remarkably effective but I'm still always aware of when they do it where you have the characters call out something that's happening in a movie to make it less implausible and somehow when the character is acknowledged it you're just much more willing to let it go someone says like oh is it another death star and they go oh no look the death star was this big this thing is really big you have to put this many London double decked buses on top of each other too yeah yeah it's like we're having this little infographic moment there and and the most the most calling out of look at we know exactly what we're doing is when Han Solo has to say is there a way to blow it up there's always a way to blow it up and it does it does like I said it does kind of work in movies when they do that but it is also an acknowledgement of like we know exactly what we're doing like we have to tell you that it's not a death star it's it's a bazillion times bigger and like I wonder if there's a way to blow it up there always is the other the other mode the other great line that Han Solo has that kind of steps out of the movie for a second and winks at the movie but was so good was when Finn says he was gonna do something and he he used the force and head Solo just says that's not how the force works yeah I do like that yeah I do really like that that was a good line yeah yeah that worked that worked really well it worked really well I think I'm just gonna use the force to rescue her he's like I don't know what no one knows what the force is but it definitely doesn't work like that yeah so you didn't know Han Solo was gonna die I did not at what point did you realize it was about to happen and how did you feel when I happened because I missed out on this gasp moment you know okay well here's the problem even though I wasn't spoiled there are things that happen in movies that telegraph so clearly what is going to happen yeah I mean that clearly had that and when they're there this is again is one of these cases of exposition irritating the crap out of me and exposition kind of ruining something that's coming up which is when chewy and Han are talking about planting all the detonators in you know the place they have to blow up so the whole thing blows up the place of no god riles yeah yeah yeah we're gonna plant these detonators and there's two things that immediately happens which is one Han suggests a plan chewy makes a sound and Han says oh that's much better I'll go down there you go up there it's like that that's little warning sign number one in your brain that that like they're drawing attention to things might have gone a different way but they're not going to but there's no reason for that to happen in the scripts yeah but the real thing which is just oh okay is then Han then has to say to Chewy here you take the detonator and it just bothers me because we've already established earlier in the movie Han Solo literally says my friend has a bag full of explosives why don't we use that it's like I would presume the Chewy has the detonator but as soon as you're drawing attention to someone having the detonator yeah at that moment I was like oh okay Han Solo was going to die within the next three minutes like you just you just know what's going to happen you just know what's going to happen and then when Finn and Ray just arrive at the convenient point at the viewing window to watch everything unfold and we have that new hope mirror you know where everyone arrives at the one place just in time to watch Ara here I get let's say but exactly so I don't I don't mind Finn and Ray arriving at the balcony for good viewing and I don't mind the dramatic no guard rails ladder across the gigantic empty space it's like man they have the worst health and safety standards at all these empire bases I don't mind that because it's it's setting things up it's fine but the little line about the detonator just irritates me more because yeah is there anybody in the world who would have been super confused when Chewy ran out and took out a little thing and pressed a button and it exploded is there anybody who would have gone how did he make that explode where did the detonator come from like he has the bags full of explosives I presume the detonator is in there why movie do you have to draw attention to this in such a way that's so clearly telegraphs what's coming up other things could have been on a timer as well for goodness sake no in case as long as the thing blows up yeah yeah it doesn't matter yeah that that's another way to do it yeah just have it be on a timer just yeah a side note here I absolutely love that they use the same little sound effect for the bombs that was in the the original movies like there was a lot of little details with the sound work on this movie that I just loved and there were some bombs in the original trilogies and they clearly went back and got like the exact same sound effect to use for these bombs of the little charging up or you know when they press the button to get it ready so I just you know someone cared making this movie I like that then for goodness sake Gray can I just take issue with one word you keep using then what and I know you're using it correctly and I'm probably not you keep talking about competent and competence I think if you say someone did a competent job you're saying they did enough I think the people that made this film were beyond competent I think they were very good at making films yeah yeah the reason I keep using competence is because I'm really comparing it with someone who was quite incompetent to do that right that's that's why I'm phrasing I'm not saying that they hit only competence I'm you know that they they were like competence is if you're you have to fill up a glass to get to excellent right and like they did a great job and then by definition the glass has to be filled up to at least competence where somebody else didn't didn't hit that mark you mean the guy that invented a little might be possible basically yeah exactly so even knowing it's clearly telegraphs Han Solo is going to die and also I mean you kind of if you know anything about the background of Star Wars you know that Harrison Ford is kind of a grumpy guy who's kind of weirdly accidentally a famous actor and seems really grumpy about the whole thing and who also had some arguments with George Lucas about whether or not Han Solo should die in return of the Jedi that that he was very strong on the opinion that Han Solo should die at the end of that movie so it it feels like Harrison Ford definitely wants to step out in a dramatic way if he possibly can like this was his previous goal so it's not surprising that he dies in this movie I thought that scene was really well done and another emotional point I thought there was a real little real little gut punch is when he calls out Ben to get his sons attention that is exactly the kind of thing that might seem like an inconsequential spoiler if you knew it ahead of time but in the context of that scene to me that is actually the important reveal of this it's like okay I know Han Solo is going to die here but that that extra kick in the gut of they name their son Ben that that adds like this emotional emotional piece to to that scene so I thought that was that was a really nice way of adding something to that that scene that you know is going to play out in a certain way I mean how did you how did you feel about that scene yeah Han Solo had a much bigger part in the film that I ever expected yeah me too I was very surprised at that yeah they they certainly got their their pound of flesh out of him before they before they did away with him you know obviously the opposite of Luke who hasn't hasn't earned his wages yet I don't think I was actually wondering because in the unions in Hollywood unions they cheat you very differently if you're someone who has a spoken line of dialogue if you're not or if you're not I was kind of wondering about that about Mark Hamill I was like oh he doesn't say a single word I wonder if he got paid less because of it I'm hoping he left something to do in the next film but but yeah I was I was all right with him dying I kind of I'm not I see why we've got the old actors back and I hope they do something awesome with Luke Skywalker but I have to say the return of all these old characters has left me a bit colder than I thought it would and you know see three PO I think they could have done without him all he did was annoy me and get him out of there like you know and I they've got this red arm now is that to sell more toys I can only assume that's to sell new toys but but it's it's funny you mentioned that because the C three PO appearance with when Han and Leia meet again for the first time presumably after years of a strangement and then C three PO pops into camera I have to admit that got a hell of a laugh out of me because it was so unexpected and I did not know that C three PO was in the movie like I had no idea yeah which is as a slight note here I went into the theater without ever having even seen the poster for the movie which I was really glad because the poster actually gives away huge amount of stuff and so for me watching it knowing nothing like C three PO showing up was quite a surprise and could not have been done in a better way like it just I thought it fit just perfectly with his character no I mean he's famous for stopping them kissing isn't he and things like that so yeah like it I like that it just worked I kind of like the red arm with this this notion that he is both really vain and also doesn't understand the way humans perceive him like he thinks he looks completely different with this with this red arm but I also agree that there there was a little bit of a feeling for me with C three PO and R2D2 of do we need them like do we do we need these characters back I'm not I'm not 100% sure that we really that we really do I'm sort of thinking on the fly here but it I might be way off the mark I might be right maybe the problem I had with C three PO being in this film is he is now tired by the prequels so he's part he's part of those so bringing him into this is a bit like and like he does so many stupid things in those prequels like so many scenes that we won't even talk about that it's a bit like jar jar binks appearing it's a bit like oh no no and you know and I'm and I'm bringing I'm having memories of you know wrong heads on robots and bad puns and I'm thinking no no go away you're bringing but you know you're giving me flashbacks and not to the good films you're giving me flashbacks to the bad films so maybe it's that but I feel like I feel like it added it added little and you know and he's not like important he's not important like oh I'm so low and Luke Skywalker you're your mythical legends is Luke Skywalker real it's not like it's not like people 30 years later are going oh my goodness it's the amazing C three PO you know who helped with some translation so yeah yeah I see what you mean I do so I get wise I get wise there and you know it's all right it's not a big deal but it's not a big deal because he's he's not a big character but I have I did have this little bit of a feeling when I don't know I can say in some ways I actually find like R2D2 is a weirdly problematic character in this movie but I did feel when R2D2 wakes up and he has the rest of the map for some reason it's it's a bit weird the dialogue that happens there it's like okay R2D2 has the rest of the map okay we're just going to go along with this but it is there is this feeling of like okay we have three drawings now like do we need all these drawings I'm not 100 percent sure and and this feeling of I like you was surprised how much of a role Han and Leia had in this movie because my presumption was they were going to have a relatively minimal role and be handing over Star Wars to this next generation of characters and I never really thought about C3PO and R2D2 as being in the in the subsequent movies and it looks like Leia is going to play some role in the future movie and obviously Luke is going to play some role in the future movie and it begins to feel a bit like an ensemble cast of okay if we have Leia and we have Luke and we have R2D2 and we have C3PO it feels a little bit crowded like this I want more space for new characters like let's let's do new things and I understand like BB8 is very much an R2D2 new generation thing but it's maybe that's why there's this feeling of like do we need R2D2 and BB8 I don't know yeah I'm not too worried about the I mean obviously Luke is going to be this sage Ben Kenobi so I'm happy with him continuing through the ages and Han Solo basically does his hand over in this film doesn't he and I can imagine Leia is going to probably be maybe just be some non-action bureaucratic you know mon motha type character who's just you know sits a basin gives lectures so I don't I don't think she's going to be out blowing stuff up and things like that so I'm not too worried with the integration of the humans but I just feel like say 3p I just get some my nerves now I've had enough of it the thing is though Brady it's it's totally okay because perhaps my favorite line of the movie not because of not because of its delivery not because of how entertaining it is not because of anything that the line actually conveys except what it the director is explicitly telling you is when the new general and Kyleren are having this little argument over the stormtroopers and and Ren says maybe we should be using clone troopers instead of these these regular army guys and the general is irritated and he says oh no my my soldiers are supremely well trained and we don't need a clone army to me that line is like JJ Abrams looking directly at the audience and saying you know all that stuff with the prequels forget it like this doesn't exist in this universe we don't have clone troopers like none of that really really connects and so I would just be shocked if anything that JJ Abrams does has a real connection to anything that happens in the prequels so I feel like like that line really just closes the door and on one side of of that door there's the original trilogies and there's JJ Abrams movie and on the other side of the door out in the cold are the prequels and like this movie is making that really official so I just I just love that they took their time to add in this line which makes no sense to almost anybody who isn't a pretty big star wars fan but they they took the time to have this little disagreement be like yeah there's no clone troopers you know the whole thing that the the prequels were about that they focused around yeah we're just undoing all of that I mean I read that line differently in a few different ways but now put a lot that I say that meaning as well but how did you read it originally though well I obviously thought it was being used to show it there's an antagonism between the two characters because it's one of the first times we see that they aren't on the same page you know Kylo read in this general is it general hugs I think his name is I they're not on the same page I can also see it serving the purpose because obviously those prequels created so much confusion as to the status of storm troopers are they clones are are they humans so I think the point was to say whatever you thought about the the middle trilogy about the status of storm troopers are they still clones who have they've been humanized whatever you thought this is what they are now they're humans so don't be confused about why Finn is a stormtrooper and doesn't look just like the Bob of Fett you know this is everything's all right relax yeah he doesn't have a New Zealand accent you know he's fine it's fine I thought it was more kind just dealing with a few possible points of confusion and also I thought are they setting up something for the future are they setting up something about clones coming later but in hindsight I don't think they are I would be shocked if they ever bring the clones back like that's that's what I think that line is delivering yeah like we're just doing anyway but I also agree that as again as a minor point I think it's really well done to show that the general and Kylo Ren are they're on the same sort of level again it's it's it's very new hopey in that Darth Darth Vader in that is part of this whole establishment but he's not like in charge of it he's just another guy who is working with the emperor and I like that this this movie does the same kind of thing where it's like Kylo Ren you get this feeling that he is working alongside the military but is partially outside of it but neither of the two of them have direct command over the other it's like they are each in charge of a different thing each working for oh I forgot his name with the the new major sit lord the wizard of us yeah the wizard of us yeah snooks something like that I forget I'll tell you what speaking of this general Hux mm-hmm I thought that was unless something's gonna change which it probably will I thought that was a bad piece of casting I like that actor I like him I've I've liked him and other stuff I thought he was the wrong man for the role and maybe the role is gonna change and he'll become he's gonna grow into it and he'll be suited to it later but at the moment I felt like he looks more like the work experience kid than the person who would be in charge of all that so you think he looks too young I think he looks too young and he just doesn't have an authority about him that like you know grandma of Tarquin people like that had he has he has nothing of Tarquin like that's hard to beat that guy was awesome yeah yeah pay us pay the cushing but I think this guy doesn't doesn't have a I thought and I think Dom Domnehole Gleason I think it might be I'm not sure is the actor and I think I didn't get it like I like him as an actor when I heard he was in the film I thought oh great he's a cool actor I'm sure he'll be really good but the role just seemed incongruous to me that that he had that and I thought that was I thought that was a miss but maybe he's gonna something's gonna happen to him later and his character will go on a different journey that will be more suited to the actor's skill set but at the moment I think they should have had someone with a bit more authority and experience about them yeah see for me I I think he worked I was worried when he showed up because I have I have seen him mostly in he's in an episode of black mirror of course and I have seen him as the male lead in a couple of chick flicks and he's a striking looking person you know it's him right away and but in all of his roles I have found him to be a very good actor but when he did show up in this movie my feeling was oh it's him like I I was eventually sold on him in this role as this character and the feeling that I have is like okay yes he is a little young but maybe he is just extremely competent at at what he is doing I was never sold by him and like when he does his big you know hit Lanasi speech to the to the soldiers which was a bit of a weird scene if you ask me but when he does that and he's a bit intense yeah and he's supposed to be giving that stirring stirring speech that's this sort of big moment to kick off this finale just didn't do anything for me I'm like I'm not I'm not feeling that you don't have you wouldn't you wouldn't you wouldn't command me you don't have the charisma for that you know didn't didn't work but maybe I maybe I was having a sip of my coke at the time and not paying enough attention this is the thing with acting right everybody reacts differently to different characters I think I think he was fine in the role I was worried when he showed up but I think he did okay uh where is again like it as we said many times in the beginning girl who plays Ray phenomenal job and I and I don't think Finn was the you know he had some clunky lines and the other character who like the pilot guy wasn't super sold on him and this is I gotta do a bit of an argument with someone about this but I was disappointed when the pilot showed back up later in the movie I think that he should have died in the tie fighter crash at the beginning I think that is a much stronger start to the movie that you have this character they've built him up to be a kind of smart-ass kind of guy they've given him a little bit of characterization and then he dies passing on this mission to Finn and to bring him back later it just feels it just feels cheap like and I don't think he was he didn't strike me as some amazing actor I wasn't oh great this guy is is back I wasn't really in love with his character and so I was I was disappointed at the scene where you're supposed to feel like oh boy that amazing pilot is back and he's like oh okay I'm not entirely convinced that his parentage won't be of some interest in the subsequent films the pilot's parentage well everybody's parentage is in question in the Star Wars movie yeah that's why I think I think him you know because he says ab they keep emphasizing that he's this abnormally good pilot and there are only two people I know who are really good pilots in the Star Wars universe yeah and they're and they're both pretty important characters so I don't know I think I think you know you're right it would have been it would have been cool if you know a cool character dies really quickly but I don't know I think I think maybe Vader might have had a little little action on the side there is that what you think well I don't know it could be there's a few things that could be and so yeah I'm not sure I'm not sure where he's going because he's like he seems to be a marquee actor for the film and yet he didn't really do much in this film yeah but he's obviously one of the three right they they have three characters that are going to be going on through the rest of the movies and he is one of those three and my feeling was uh and he hasn't he hasn't earned his place in that three yet so that makes me think there's something more to him yeah he hasn't earned his place and and also just like the guy who plays fan I felt a few of his his line deliveries were just not not super great he doesn't this sounds really stupid but is he quite a short guy doesn't seem to have much he doesn't seem to have much in a presence like when he first appeared and came walking down the ramp like when you got out of his ship and he appeared and like when he can I was a bit like oh you're a bit you're a bit I don't know he sort of lacks lacks he lacks the physical presence of his kind of cockshornous yeah the thing the thing that this kind of reminded me of is in Star Trek Voyager in the first couple of episodes they try very hard to establish that their pilot it's a similar kind of thing that their pilot is an amazing pilot and he's this rebel guy and they pulled him out of a prison to to have him do this special mission for Star Trek Voyager and all of the characters are constantly talking about how he is just like this badass pilot and the actor it just does not have that characteristic right he just he looks like he should be wearing a white sweater tied around his neck and a pink colored shirt right he just he just looks like a really preppy upper middle class kind of guy yeah and and it's like no matter how much you have characters trying to tell me the Tom Parris is like some badass in prison who's an amazing pilot like he just isn't and I totally agree with you that this this pilot character whose name I don't even know he just this is kind of why I wanted him to die in the beginning is if like he does not he doesn't have that kind of on-screen presence I talk to the talk and I think he's I like his face in his hair and I like his swagger but he just seems like a he just seems like there's not much of him he seemed like a short eye I could I could be wrong I mean I agree about Tom Parris he's just you know always supposed to be this action hero and he always looked like a he looked a bit ponsy didn't he but yeah exactly but I don't think I don't think this new character whoever is called I forget it suffers from that kind of Paris ponsiness it's more a kind of I'm not saying it's Paris ponsiness which is great I like that phrase but but it's it's a similar kind of just a lack of this feeling of I like oh yeah you feel like a guy who could be an amazing pilot and but you're right I mean they do keep emphasizing it and and another one of these these lines of dialogue that I didn't like is when Kyler and is is torturing him he says I had no idea we had the best pilot in the resistance on board it's like why do you have to say that would anybody in real life say that I don't think yeah and it was written in text for us which is which is which is also but the fact they emphasized so much is what also made me think like I was straight away thinking I was he like the son of Han Solo or is he the son of Luke Skywalker or but he knows yeah so I'm sure we'll be seeing much more of him but I always I always wish I always wish that movies would either like make a decision either you kill characters or you don't but the thing that I hate the most is the death fake out of characters and yeah that you know because it just it always feels to me like you just rob your earlier scenes of of any importance and it's become such a trope now too that I mean did anyone actually think he was dead surely not like it was a bit silly like it would have been a it would have been a bigger twist if he was dead because it was JJ Abrams and JJ Abrams does some interesting things in movies sometimes I was actually running under the assumption that he was dead and I thought oh what a relief but it might have also just been some wishful thinking on my part you got you got double fact like oh boy that guy's gone like when he appeared back on screen gray was the edifice in the cinema who went oh yeah I mean the thing is there is something really unremarkable about him because even when they showed him in the in the X-wing when he flies back on I didn't twig that it was him until Finn delivers again that line I was like boy that guy sure is an amazing pilot it's like I can see it I can see it on the screen you don't need to tell me this I'm speaking of breaking the laws of physics by the way when they show human beings doing like maneuvers that would require reflexes and things beyond what a human can do like some of those little barrel rolls and turns I do have problems with that too like that seems like no human like that would tear a human's body to pieces some of those turns and maneuvers that were being done yet alone whether they have the actual cognitive ability to be thinking that fast yeah but anyway yeah this is always the thing it's it's how far can they push things before you feel like it's too far yeah with I don't know with some of the some of the X-wing stuff I didn't really think about that too much you know that just there is something great about X-wing tie fighter fights it's just you know it's it's a it's a pleasure to watch again I love all the sound work on the tie fighters like they just have such a particular sound that I love man they're great yeah so one other thing that I wanted to mention was just thinking about this movie versus thinking about the dreaded prequels mm-hmm one of the things I was I was really aware of watching this is in some of the the opening establishing sequence of this movie with Ray and her life and Finn on the desert planet there were CGI animals in the background that I couldn't help but notice because that of course is one of the great sins of the remade versions and of the prequels of just like crap in the background just everywhere mm-hmm and I'm looking at the CGI animals in the background of this movie and again just appreciating what a well done movie can do because I was looking at them and thinking oh why don't these animals bother me and the answer is they're all there for a reason and so the very first background animal that we see is in that silent establishing sequence for Ray when she gets she's done with her scavenging she gets back to town and she's pulling behind her on this sled there's there's a load of stuff that she has scavenged and coming in the opposite direction is a CGI animal pulling a way bigger load of scavenged stuff and this to me is just a great example of that animal adds to this scene because it's like a comment on her life that she is there as a kind of beast of burden doing this very manual labor and this animal that is going in the opposite direction is at that moment doing her job better than her because she's she's only able to carry so much and it is carrying this enormous amount of stuff and it's like that that just that one little shot is just the perfect example of how to add stuff that is atmospheric without being distracting that animal has a reason to be in that scene it's not just oh I want to make this this place look really busy an alien and I'm just going to throw aliens everywhere it's going to be animals everywhere adding nothing doing distracting stuff sneezing when main characters are walking into buildings it was it was just great and then the other the other big CGI animal which is like very close to being George Lucas but not quite was the gigantic elephant thing that's drinking from the water but but even that animal it's it's okay you can argue that it doesn't need to be there but it's still it adds something to the scene because it provides a good reason why Finn is so desperately thirsty that he's drinking the water and it's obviously disgusting because this big giant disgusting creature is also drinking from it and then it's the motion of that creature that distracts him for a moment and so he sees this this fight taking place between Ray and some other scavengers and so like that's amazing just a great example of you want to have stuff in your movie to show that it's an alien place that's great but it works when they are doing things when they have a reason to be in the scenes and it's just to me draw as a tremendous example of the difference between like what George Lucas does and what a competent film would do it was competence at its very best yes it was it really was and even just I mean just other other very minor thing but just I love that in in those desert scenes the actor playing Finn is sweaty you want to know why because they're really in a desert like he's really hot they are actually somewhere you know they're not on a on a green screen they are filming out in the deserts in Abu Dhabi or someplace right just it's a little thing like that that just makes it so real to see like this guy actually has sweat on his face because he is really hot wherever he is standing like thank you JJ Abrams for building sets and taking people places and and making it feel very real I mean the desert scenes are by far and away the highlight of the film for me or the start of the film along with the lightsaber and the snow in terms of visuals but the desert not only is visually the most appealing part but it's also just the most engaging part of the film like it was it was it's the highlight of the film I film that I like all the bits of but that was the that was by far and away the best part of the film for me let me ask you about the end of the film so first of all there's a question would they just send Ray to go and meet Luke Skywalker the person they've been that everyone has been looking for for the last 30 years and they finally find out where he is and they send this girl they've just met well you know two he's worth it I mean I understand maybe they want to keep at low profile but would you not send like your best pilot or I don't know it doesn't seem it doesn't seem low profile when you have everybody in the base cheering her on as she leaves I mean presumably they're all cheering her on because they know where she's going yeah should that so that but let's leave that to one side I mean I'm glad they sent her but but it saves an odd decision what do you think of the end the final scene you know she we finally see Luke Skywalker and she holds out the lightsaber I think the movie should have ended three minutes earlier with her taking off and flying into space to go find Luke like the end of well at the end of empire yeah the pacing of the movie aside from the monster scene it never really felt slow to me it never felt like okay oh the we've slowed down for a moment even when the scenes themselves were slow the movie the pace always felt appropriate but that was the only time where I felt a little antsy all of a sudden in my seat is this like isn't this movie over we're done right she's gonna go off and find yeah Luke Skywalker right okay that's great it felt like such a natural end to me that I was thinking oh like I was thinking oh we're not gonna say Luke Skywalker because it's such a good time to end and we haven't saved him so obviously we're not gonna see him at all and then they like tagged on like okay yeah we've got to show you yeah and this is this is another example of where knowing anything is a bit of a spoiler because even having watched the first trailer my brain is always doing the thing that I do in the watch these movies where it's just ticking off all of the scenes like we haven't seen X-wings flying across the water yet oh they're standing at a place where there's a big lake I guess this is where the X-wings are coming in like just tick tick tick tick tick tick and simply knowing that Mark Hamill was in this movie is a bit of okay the movie should obviously end here but I know that it isn't going to and it didn't really feel to me like why do they have this scene I think they have this scene so that Mark Hamill is involved in this movie I think this this scene is here for reasons other than the pure movie making of it it would have been a great bite and switch and I could have argued he was in it because of his arm in the flashback scene or something exactly exactly I think they they easily they easily could have done that I just I don't know I really feel like that scene was there because they wanted to have Mark Hamill involved in this production and it was not there because it was the best way to end this movie yeah I think you're probably right that aside like once we accept okay they're gonna do it I have to say I was not a big fan of the final shot this sort of big area shot of the helicopter going around the pinnacle showing the two of them it was the perhaps the one camera shot in the whole film that didn't feel like a Star Wars movie yeah I agree I agree it felt like it felt like a BBC TV documentary where someone's doing a documentary about you know Ireland and and they should and they have this big shot where the presenter goes and here you can see all the coast that has been here for five thousand years and like it felt and and it was obviously in a helicopter and it just it didn't it didn't belong and I think the one of the reasons this film feels so much like a Star Wars film is that JJ Abrams restrained himself and like although though he's so much more creative with the cameras then Lucas was he didn't go overboard like it's not quite as frantic as even the new Star Trek movies and other things it like it it did retain an old-fashioned feel and even the camera moved a lot more than it like in you know old films there was kind of a deliberate sort of space opera decision to say let's be a little bit old school in traditionally exactly exactly there was no shot that was the equivalent in Star Trek of where Kirk realizes they are warping into a trap and he runs through an enormous set doing a whole bunch of stuff and the cameraman is running behind him yeah like that that that is a very JJ Abrams feeling shot and is a like an iconic moment from that movie and they don't do that kind of camera motion anywhere in this and you might be right that might be one of the reasons why it does feel more Star Warsy but yes that that swirling camera shot at the end it did seem a little bit out of place and I'll tell you having watched it twice the first time I saw that scene it did feel a little bit like I mean that that whole scene where she she's climbing up the stairs in Ireland and going to find Mark Hamill the first time I'm watching it it felt a little long as like obviously you should have ended the movie two minutes ago buddy but I'll tell you on the second watch through that is going to be the part of the movie that just ages the worst because it feels forever on a second watch through and they do more cuts back and forth between Mark Hamill and her looking at each other silently as she holds out that lightsaber then you realize the first time you watch that movie it is way too long like if you're going to do that scene it even has to be half as long as it already is it also felt a bit shape which is amazing because I'm sure it cost a bomb to make but it felt like it felt like it was shot on a video camera after they'd finished making the main film and they sent they sent some guy with a video camera and a helicopter and they didn't fork out for the steady cam and yeah it's in Congress and it leaves it's a bit weird at the end it leaves a weird taste in your mouth it's still a great film and everything but we still definitely enjoyed it but it that feels totally like the kind of thing that the next movie could take care of imagine they cut it when she flies off into outer space the next movie it picks up it does a scene an opening shot kind of a planet and a spaceship and they and they kick off with some exciting thing if after that point they cut to Ray being trained by Luke Skywalker somewhere in beautiful Ireland is there anyone who's going to be confused is there anyone who's going to think how did that happen it's obvious she found him and she's being trained now and who the hell cares about the exact moment they met like you could cut that whole thing you don't even need to do it in the second movie or what a dramatic start to the next film that the camera pans down to to Luke planet and the first ship we say is a Millennium Falcon arriving at the planet yeah there are many ways that you could do it and I just I don't think you even need to show this meeting happening so explicitly and that's why it just it really feels like there's some kind of Hollywood political reason that this scene is there like I can't imagine anybody actually thinks that's the best way to to end the movie it's like like you said because it's so obvious that it should end with her going off into space it's such a natural ending the other thing I wanted to talk about I don't know if you would care to do this I don't think it counts as spoilers do you have any kind of what will happen next thoughts now like what's gonna happen like I mean it's impossible to know maybe they don't even know for sure but what you think will happen next what you'd like to see happen next is Ray gonna be Luke's daughter is she Han and Layers daughter and the brother of the sister of Carlo Ren do you know do you care do I will be avoiding spoilers for the next movie obviously but I'm also totally happy to speculate I think this is speculating without knowledge is perfectly fine and so I am vaguely op are eating under the assumption that the most likely thing is that yes she she is the daughter of of Han and Layer like that seems she's somebody's daughter right of importance there's there's not a reason that they wouldn't mention it yeah and it just that just seems like the likely case you know she's for sensitive so it's again it's like either you know Luke Luke had a bit of an adventure or she is this other daughter and I believe in the extended universe it's that it is that that Luke and Layer have a set of twins don't think yeah yeah Han and Layer yes Han and Layer yes sorry Han and Layer that extended universe got a bit freaky for a while they're flukin layer had twins yeah no Han and Layer had twins in the extended universe didn't they they did they did yes and I'm pretty sure that the the nights of Ren that little reference they make in the movie is from the extended universe but okay the movie seems to lean in that way to make you think this that probably the better decision is to make her Luke's child in I think I think I think that's what the movie's leaning towards I think if you're a dumber you'd be thinking that she's Luke's daughter and it's been waiting for Luke to come back I think the Han and Layer is the less obvious option which ironically then makes it the more obvious option but well depends on what you think is the more obvious the less one yeah but but Kyla Ren has that line where he explicitly says to her oh you feel that Han Solo is the father that you've never had yeah true okay maybe that's the reason why he gives that line is because it's actually that she's loose the thing is like she's somebody's daughter right it's it's Star Wars the people are gonna be related this is a family everybody everybody's got everybody's somebody's daughter or son I have a minor guess which I'll just put on the record now yeah the what's his name again the the boss of Kyla Ren Seth something oh the Wizard of Oz yeah the Wizard of Oz snow snow I really I really liked in his first appearance the holograph fake out thing where they're talking to him and he's huge and then you realize oh it's a hologram yeah my prediction here is that in person he's actually quite small right that he's basically an evil Yoda that's almost a certainty isn't that's almost too obvious like it has to be it has to be he's not going to be a normal size dude he's going to have to be a teeny tiny dude that's not the boldest prediction great that's let me say I predict there's going to be lightsabers in the next film I'm not saying it's a bold prediction I'm just saying I'm getting it on record here is this is my speculation is Kyla Ren going to go through the obvious redemption like is it going to be Darth Vader all over again where he like comes to the good ride at the end seems like could they would they have the audacity to do that to be so obvious and I hope not I think that the story indicates that he won't because I think having him kill his father is quite a thing to do on camera yeah the flip side of this the thing that slightly annoys me is the whole thin leaves the battle and it's his first battle ever and he's never killed anybody it makes him it makes him too much like this shiny new minted penny that landed on the battlefield and decided oh I want out of this later on in the movie he's all like oh I know I hate what I was it's like but what what were you do like a parent as far as I can tell you were a guy who went through training and then bugged out on the first opportunity like you didn't you didn't actually do anything might deserve to have a yeah yeah but deserve it from the evil empire right this is a little different but I think it makes his character a little bit too squeaky clean but then this makes him like oh he is a good guy in this universe because he's never killed anybody whereas I think a much more interesting character would be someone who has woken up from his programming over time and and left and like genuinely did bad things so I give if if that is the backstory that they've established for a good guy like we want him to be universally good and to be entirely unblemished my feeling is that the reverse of that that having Kyla ran actually kill his father it makes him unredeemable I think it's unlikely that they're going to do the redemption I'll be I mean we'll see in a couple of years but I'd be pretty shocked if they if they have a moment where a Kyla ran turns around I think they're going to keep with him as an actual villain I don't know I just don't know I think I think he will be turned around I don't think he'll be bad forever I do like I do like the little twist to the force thing where he's like trying to push the light out like I know that's kind of what happened to Darth Vader but it wasn't quite it wasn't quite framed in that way it's a bit like I want it's like he's like I want to be dark like normally the dark just takes over you and you like give up and say oh I just gave up that's like that was Darth Vader you know it's too late for me son you know I'd be kind of dark I'm stained I've got ink on my shirt that's it you can't clean whereas he's like the opposite he's like he wants to be dark and like he keeps having these light impulses that he's like oh I've got to stop these light impulses you know I want to be a bad guy I've got to I've got to stop this hankering to be good I find that I find that a real interesting twist on the force yeah I like that as well I thought that was really nice this idea that there is late temptation yeah I want to help that I'll granny cross the street but I mustn't I mustn't do it I like that and I also I just think it provides a tiny bit of either there was there was a couple lines I don't quite like in the movie but one of which is when when Han Solo explicitly says that the forces is tying together good and evil like the light and the dark I think you need to at least have a little bit of an excuse for dark side characters to imagine that they are performing the correct actions and if you're just explicitly saying like oh it's evil I think it is better when villains are somewhat sympathetic and I try to imagine the dark side as like the this is much easier to get started down path though in the long run is less powerful but you can get like very you can go from zero to 90 very fast and so I imagine that like dark side characters are ambitious and attracted to immediate power and then that's why he finds himself like rejecting the light side is because he's he's trying to grow immediate power and so I do like this temptation like oh no if I'm going to level in my light side points it's going to take forever to get really powerful it like he's on a crash star anyway but the thing that's always been a slight problem for me with the force and star wars is that the dark side know that they're the bad guys like it's like they know they know they're bad but yeah it's always been a bit weird to me you know come come to the they call themselves the dark side that may as well be calling themselves the bad guys like and like we put skulls on our caps right yeah yeah like come come on come and be a bad guy because it's yeah because it gives you power and it's fun like like you say like bad surely bad guys are supposed to think they're good guys but in the Star Wars universe the bad guys have always kind of known their bad guys yeah like like the emperor in the original trilogy it seems it seems like he really likes being the villain that seems to be his main characteristic yeah it's like it's like a fat person saying come on be really really fat because you get to eat lots of yummy donuts you have to be really fat and disgusting but at least you get to eat donuts like surely the ideal person is someone who wants to be thin and eat donuts but like the but the dark side are like a willing to be fat because they want to eat lots of donuts say whereas a person real life a person who eats lots of donuts somehow convinces themselves they can still be thin eventually whereas the dark side don't do that yeah I don't know what I'm doing here with this force and donuts but no works breaks just roll with it you wouldn't think we liked the film so much the way we were talking about it but well it's not you know it's always easy it's always easy to complain about and I have many more things that we will we will come up against at some point I was I was complaining to my wife for probably a good 30 minutes and testing her patience about how much I dislike the line where Ray references the Millennium Falcon having completed the Kessel run in 14 parsecs yeah everything that was like there are many many more very nerdy very specific things to pick apart and I have a long list of reasons why I don't like that line but I'm sure these things will come up again that was doubling down on a mistake wasn't it wouldn't they probably shouldn't have it wow okay listen now I have to do this I have to do this now right okay I'll give you I'll give you the like the short version of this okay the reason I hated that line is because it does okay so for the I'm sure anyone who's listening now already knows right but in the in the first movie when Han Solo says to Luke and Ben that they made that he made the Kessel run in 12 parsecs nerds kind of freak out because a parsec is a unit of distance it's not a measurement of time and so it seems like it's the wrong thing for the race and yes super nerds don't send me the links about how the parts about how the Kessel run is measured I know all of this yeah you can't to step yeah you can't twist it my interpretation of that scene which I'm convinced every time I watch it is intentional is that Han Solo is bullshitting Ben and Luke on purpose he is saying something intentionally wrong to see if they pick up on it like how much do these guys know about space travel how much do they know about ships and their speeds what you mean he got the the the the S he used a wrong SI unit to test them or he's just breaking about something he didn't really accomplish is he is he testing their scientific knowledge or testing their knowledge of his fame and ability what he is testing is their knowledge of fast ships and the reason he's doing that is because he's trying to sense how much of a sucker they are yeah how much he can rip them off exactly right how much how much do they know about what's going on how much can he rip them off and like if you watch that scene really closely he gives that line and then they flash to Ben Kenobi and Luke and Ben Kenobi gives this weird little smile almost like he knows what what Han is doing like I don't think I'm reading too much into this scene but I just very very shortly after that Ben and Luke get up and leave and that is like such a great little moment in in Star Wars when Han then turns to chewy like boy these guys are really desperate and there's like can't wait to extract all the money from from these desperate suckers who have come along can I say I don't read it that way can I tell you how I read that saying how do you read it well first of all let me acknowledge from the start that quite often when you talk about films you watched as a child you are blinded to some of the adult nuance and even when you grow up you somehow don't have the ability to see that nuance and you might be the same exactly but that's that that said as my little butt cover the way I read that scene is Han Sarl is a bit of a legend in his own lunchtime and he thinks he's he thinks he's the great I am and it's kind of like his one claim to fame his one thing that he thinks he's famous for is this Kessel run and like and these guys haven't heard of it and it's a bit like it's like me walking into a room and going oh hi I'm Brady Herron I make number five videos and no one there's heard of number five and it's like so the one the one the one the one thing like you know my claim to fame and like no one no one's ever heard of number five because it's some little YouTube channel and I think that's what's happening to him it's like he's he's there you know hey I've got the Millennium Falcon and they're like what's that and he's going oh well I've made the Kessel you haven't heard of the Muff Ship it made the Kessel run at this time it's like famous man and they're like no and it's kind of like so he's kind of this like legend in his own mind and and he's like being brought down to earth and realized and it's like okay I don't think he's testing them I think he's bragging to them and then his brag falls flat because these guys are kind of just newbie so at least he thinks they are obviously been Kenobi's not but that's a perfectly legitimate interpretation of the scene I think I wouldn't argue against that I think you know because there's there's only subtext in that scene so you can interpret it either way and so I just have my own pet interpretation of that but it is just destroyed when Ray says out loud oh it made the Kessel run at 14 parsecs and he gets irritated and he says 12 because then it legitimizes like oh this was a thing this is a race like yes the dumb extended universe backwards compatibility reason for why it's measured in parsecs is now canon like I just I really hate that line it completely vindicates my interpretation because what's happening now is he finally meets someone who has heard of his great claim to fame and even they get it wrong because they use the wrong number this does go exactly into making your interpretation the canon interpretation at this moment okay but I also I also don't like that line because I just why does she know this like that that seems a bizarrely specific thing for this character to know I think there's a purpose to I don't like that line either by the way that's saying I it greats with me as well just because it feels it just jars but I think it's a little too fan service as well yeah but what I think what I think it was trying to do in service of the plot is to show that she's a complete spaceship geek like she's into it she knows everything she knows the Millennium Falcon she knows like she's a real she's a real spaceship engineering a mechanical nerd and like because only a mechanical engineering spaceship nerd would have heard of the Millennium Falcon and know about the Kessel run so I think they're trying to further establish her credentials credentials as someone who really knows spaceships and then we see that later on you know she fixes the Millennium Falcon on the Huff and so I think they're trying to just establish her as a real geek in the area she's the one who has heard of the Kessel run in the Millennium Falcon unlike Luke and Ben yeah I understand the mechanics of what is doing in the movie and I totally agree and it also acts as a as a first little bonding moment between her and Han Solo like even though it's antagonistic it's a bit of oh okay well at least you know about this thing but it's just it's just great I mean and it just feels like a weird thing for her to know because what like what's the timeline when did the when did this Kessel run occur how how many years ago was this how many years was this before she was born I don't know I mean maybe this is because I'm not a not a sports nerd but it seems it seems like the equivalent of someone knowing obscure baseball statistics that happened 20 years before they were born when they're 19 it seems like I get no I get that and I like that I think the problem the reason it jars with me is the timing of it like she's like on a broken down ship hovering in space it's a it seems to be her first time in space perhaps like a second ago she was figuring out how she's gonna how she's gonna live there's a lot of stuff going on it seems like that she's just met someone who like I don't know it just doesn't seem like a conversation she'd be having at that time it seems like something you discuss maybe later over a cup of coffee right yeah it's it's it's a line that yeah it just it just bothers me it feels like a bit of fan service I understand the mechanics that it's that it's doing in the plot but I think they're better ways to do that where she she could recognize something about you know whatever they say something later on like the cargo class kind of thing that this ship is like you can have her recognize things about the ship yeah that that then Han Solo talks to her about you don't have to have this particular line especially when it's such an infamous line in in the Star Wars universe it's poking the bear isn't that yeah it's it's a bit too much it's a bit too much I'm like this is for you Star Wars fans but it's like yeah but I know I don't I don't need you to remind me just like I don't need the chess table to turn on when Finn sits at it it's like I recognize that chess table immediately there's nobody who sees the chess pieces come on who then puts the puts it together in their head everybody who's going to recognize those chess pieces recognizes the table that that that would have been classier if it didn't switch on yeah it would be a thousand times classier if it didn't switch on that I think those those two things right in a row were a bit like yeah you don't need to you don't need to do this I recognize the table it's better if the table doesn't turn on that just goes further to that little part of the film where they get off the desert planet but before they leave being the worst part of the film from the basically the moment that ship breaks down in orbit of Jekyll until they finally blast out of there fix something if I can blast out of there that whole sequence is the part of the film where I'm like yeah that is that is the low part of the film I will agree with that also I mean even at least a tiny bit of of classy fan service but it's still like this scene is unnecessary is when Finn is looking for the bandages for chewy in that scene he pulls out the training ball that Luke uses yeah and he like holds it right in front of the camera looks at it and throws it to the side I was like I don't need to do that like you can just you can have it on set in the background and trust me I will notice or have him throw it away but don't linger don't have him look at it just have him throw it away and then the people who go through it find by frame go you're awesome I love you but don't yeah don't hold it up in front of my face yeah it's it's a bit like I notice every single one of the droids on those first-order ships that were the droids from the original movies like I recognize that little floor droid I know him right away I see the trash can guy with the two feet in the background like I recognize all of them you don't need to linger on them and this is the kind of thing which is nice for super fans but yeah holding the thing up in front of the camera is a bit too much switching on the chest set is a bit too much that's probably the last of the last of our our pickiness about the movie for today anyway today just consider this sort of bit of an introductory taster and we'll really get into some fine detail at a limited date yeah this is just this was our first impressions podcast we're gonna go back and watch a few more times now to pick up some of the minutia yeah yeah well really we'll really get into it then almost certainly I'm going to see it again with my wife relatively soon so I like it for all the complaining if there's anybody who's on the edge like spoilers and listen to the end I I recommend the new star wars movie
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