Xenon

@ezekiel:

Re: Rogue One

I agree its a story that didn't NEED telling, and it's a little weird Leia's ship is IN the battle given what she says at the beginning of Star Wars. But it's also a story that isn't a problem to be told. The weakness is the big point here. It didn't need to be intentionally designed. But it's not a bad thing that it was. It takes nothing away from the rebel efforts that the flaw was intentional instead of accidental.

Re: Finn and what to do with Rey

Finn I think is a more interesting character because of the choices he made despite his upbrining. He was raised to be a mindless soldier, to kill on command and think nothing of it. But despite that he displays a profound sense of morality and rebels against his upbringing. That strong moral center is the biggest trait a hero must have, and I think seeing him deal with the First Order having grown up IN the first order would have been an interesting tale.

In such case, Rey is Han, kinda. She has her own goals to pursue and is the more competent experienced one of the duo. She isn't some moral crusader but someone trying to find her parents or whoever. She joins the resistence because they convince her its the right thing to do, but ultimately her goal is still to find those people that left her on Jakku. And if she's not the main character, that's enough.

Re: Your Idea

I don't think Luke's introduction is meaningless if she already knows him. The reintroduction of a person into your life that you're fond of or that important to you is a big deal if you've been away from them a while. And in some ways this is even better than the one that we got in Episode VII, since it paralells the audience reaction. This isn't the first time we've met Luke Skywalker, it's a reunion for us. So having her hae a reunion as well, well, that's something worthwhile too.

Re: The Last Jedi

Really hope they don't kill Luke. And yes, the name highlights again highlights the undermining. He's the Last Jedi...just like he was when Yoda died. Because they completely undermined everything he did in the 30 years between Jedi and TFA so Rey could be exalted further.

@lazyimperial:

Your last spoilery point is also a good one that I forgot to mention. I focused on Rey's abilities, but the way the scenes treat her is another important aspect of Mary Suedom.

VII could have done a lot of things and I'd have been happy with it, and it's not as though its a terrible movie, it's just a movie that falls apart when held under any kind of examination. Even with the basic plot they had, there's not a lot you have to change to make it pretty great. Make the First Order an organization that's been working in secret for the last couple decades and TFA was them finally coming to light, a new threat that's been building under the New Republic's noses. Luke has disappeared so Leia sends out Poe to figure out what the First Order is and see if he can Find Luke to help with the First Order. Movie plays out mostly the same, but Finn is the force sensitive one and Rey is along to find out about her past. When the Starkiller base is finally revealed, it's not a dozen ships sent to recreate the Death Star scene from the first movie, but an Armada of ships sent to crush the biggest threat in the Galaxy. In the end, Finn and Rey go off to find Luke and discover that what he's been doing is secretly training a new generation of Jedi so that none could be corrupted by the Dark Side.

You still need to figure out a way to not neuter Kylo Ren completely, and Harrison really wanted to die so you'd have to work that in, but that's easy enough. It's ok if not every single Star Wars movie has a Lightsaber fight too. I love them as much as the next guy, but having Kylo just overpower Finn when he tries to fight and having Rey be the sensible one that pulls some trick that allows them to escape would be enough. Have Han make some big sacrifice to save them because "Kylo is my son and I'm responsible".

But it didn't have to be that either. I just wanted something that didn't undermine the original so thoroughly and I'd have a much more positive outlook to TFA. Part of the reason why I like Rogue One so much more is that while what it does affects what happened in the original trilogy, it doesn't undermine it. It just shows you something you didn't get to see the first time.

As for what the Rebels gained, I have no problem with the fact that war comes back, because it always comes back. But the set up in TFA doesn't give enough impact to what they did. And it isn't even that hard to fix. By making the First Order the underdogs and giving Leia a fleet you would have done a ton. Though the Jedi thing still frustrates me to no end.

The Force Awakens is popular because it's a competently made action flick that has better dialogue than the Prequels. Essentially, the bar was set so low that it couldn't help but clear it. But it's a movie I had issues with upon first seeing it and those issues have only grown more pronounced as time goes on.

1) Certainly, it's not a shot for shot remake of A New Hope. But it is startling how many similarities there are, and, importantly, how little sense those similarities make sense. The Galaxy is in a different place at the end of Return of the Jedi than it is before A New Hope, but instead of Force Awakens adjusting for this, it's still on a desert planet, it's still a tiny resistance against a much larger force, it's still largely the same story.

2) This has the added effect of completely undermining the original trilogy in the process. Hey you know how you guys were the heroes of the galaxy that destroyed the Emperor, his right hand man, and their greatest weapon? Eh, didn't mean anything. Jedi order gets killed again. Empire is still huge and building super weapons. Rebels Resistance are still some barely held together force. Nothing they did mattered. They didn't save the Galaxy, the just shot some people.

3) The movie wastes Finn as a decoy. Finn was in all the marketing materials and magazine covers before the movie came out. He was the one they show with the lightsaber in the trailers, the one in the toys and merchandise. I was in some Nerd Store recently and was confused for a second when I saw a Millenium Falcon Toy that came with Finn and Chewbacca. Finn....didn't belong. It took me a second to remember that he was there because they had to pretend that Finn was the main character.

The movie follows suit. Finn is the first character we see and the driving part of the story for the first half. He's my favorite character in the movie through this. He's not the best at what he does but he's driven by a strong sense of moral purpose that drives him to abandon the only life he's ever known because he knows its wrong. He tries to save the girl but lol she doesn't need saving. He starts to run away but turns back at the last moment because people need him. He's got an interesting backstory, a connection to the enemy faction, and a powerful moral compass. He's a strong main character that has a good foundation and yet can still grow into something great.

But screw all that. He's just there to be a red herring. Rey is the main character. Rey is the gifted one we follow and who is going to be the next Jedi. Rey will defeat the villain and save the day. He doesn't even really get to save her using his knowledge of enemy facilities, because she already freed herself before he got there. He is, IMO, the best of the characters in that movie, and he seeems to only be there so they could distract us from Rey. Which brings me too...

4) Rey is absolutely a Mary Sue and no, it's not the same as Luke. Luke is gifted in the force, but he's raw, untrained, and shows he needs a lot of work in the first movie. He's a great pilot, but that's his only real skill. He's can't defend himself from aggressors in a bar, has poor judgment, and while he means well when he tries to rescue Leia, his rescue plan is faulty at best and requires both Leia and R2 to save them from certain doom. And his piloting skill is referenced throughout the movie before the climatic scene. Way back on Tatooine, when Han mocks the idea of Luke flying them out there, he tries to defend that idea and says he's not such a bad pilot himself. We dismiss that line at the time as youthful brashness, but given his later comments about bullseying womp rats and shown abilities, its revealed for what it really is, an establishing line.

But he still needs help. He doesn't fight Vader in the first movie at all, instead leaving that to Obi-Wan, who is able to defend himself fairly well, but in the end lets himself lose so they can escape. During the assault on the Death Star, Biggs has to save him one time from TIE fighters, and Han has to save him from Vader right before the end. He's only able to destroy the Death Star because of his strength in the Force, but even that isn't all natural talent, as they spent the trip to Alderaan training with Obi-Wan to learn the basics of the Force.

This is how you establish a hero who is special but not OP. He has accomplishments throughout the movie, he's an important driving force throughout, but he can't do it on his own and he has shortcomings. The main villain of that movie is never overcome by Luke (which helps establish that villain as a genuine threat), he has to be saved more than once, and he can't do everything himself, but he's still a major part of the solution.

Rey is not that. Rey is a master fighter, mechanic, and pilot when the movie starts. By the end she's a more powerful Jedi than Kylo Ren to boot, able to overcome his mind probes and flip them back on him and just beat him in a duel (though to be fair, because he's incompetent he was injured before that fight). Made even more ridiculous by the fact that during the movie she seems shocked to find out the Jedi and Force were real. She goes from believing the Force was a fairy tale to a master user in less time than it took Luke to get to Alderaan. And yes, she's a master user. Don't forget, Kylo Ren killed all the other trainees years ago. That means years ago, before being trained by Snoke, he was already the strongest kid in class. And had been trained by Luke Skywalker himself for a period of time. Then he spent time training under Snoke as well. Kylo has been training for years.....and girl who thought the Force was a fairy tale yesterday overpowers him both mentally and physically. Remember when Kylo Ren displayed Force powers never before seen in Star Wars when he stopped a Blaster Bolt in midair? Yeah.

And I was kind of fine with her being "The Ace" when I thought the story was about Finn. She's a fighter, pilot, mechanic, but he's the Jedi and the moral compass for the new movies. There's a balance there and it makes sense from a storytelling perspective as well. If you're not going to focus on her, the fact that she's really good at things matters less, because that's not who the story is about. But with her pushing Finn out of the way, all of a sudden you have to wonder where does she go from here? Kylo Ren has been completely neutered by his defeat in the first movie (Darth Vader wasn't defeated until the THIRD movie, and even in the prequels, Sith that lost were killed, not treated as continued threats). She's good at everything so....what, she's going to train under Luke? Who cares? They undermined him by making her more powerful than he is, despite longstanding lore and tradition establishing him as the strongest Jedi....ever.

They don't try to mitigate this at all. Finn's two attempts at rescue are both completely destroyed by her overcompetence. She's the best at everything.

5) I mentioned this before in passing, but you completely screwed up Kylo Ren, too. Injured though he may have been, he was fighting someone who had never used a lightsaber before and had been aware of the Force itself for a Day. He's a joke. A whiny, incompetent loser. He's a scary threatening dude until the moment he walks into the interrogation chamber with Rey, at which point he turns into a saturday morning cartoon villain, completely incapable of doing anything right. He got shot by a screaming Wookie! It wasn't a sneak attack! There wasn't some chaotic battle going on that Kylo was focused on. He killed his dad, got screamed at by a wookie, and then managed to get shot instead of blocking the shot with his lightsaber (the one already in his hand) or using his fancy bolt stopping power from earlier in the movie. It's why I don't give him a pass for losing his fight to Rey. Not only has he already lost to her Force power when completely unwounded, but its his own failing that caused him to be wounded in the first place.

XIII-2 was all kinds of superior to its predecessor, basically fixing 2/3rds of what was wrong with that game.

But you're ruining the surprise. There's something special about the first time you jump on that multicolored Chocobo and all of a sudden you realize you don't have enough Greens to stay on forever to keep listening to it.

This is one of my pet peeves, but saying it was originally called "Gojira" is a bit misleading in that it seems to imply there was a mistake made in the romanization that's not really there.

I'll spare the essay, but the short version is that in Japanese the character that normally means "Ji" also means "Zi" (and in fact is part of the same character family as "Za", "Zu", "Ze" and "Zo"). The original title was written in Katakana to be "Go" "Ji" "Ra", which can be romanized one of several ways. Gojira is one. But Gozira, Gojila, Gozila are all exactly as accurate in a context free world (because, again l/r are the same thing in Japanese). However, because of the hard way the "Ji" is pronounced pronounced, adding the "D" isn't necessarily wrong, either.

It's not REALLY important, it's just one of those things that irk me as someone who has a passing familiarity with the language.

I guess somebody at Zenimax wasn't too thrilled about Facebook buying Oculus either. Given that Carmack's participation has been known for a long time and just now they're suing about it. =p

But this is nothing new. When Wozniack (spelling) made the first Apple computer, he first had to show it to Hewlett-Packard (his employer) and they had to pass on it before he could sell it as his own invention. It's the nature of the business and it's not nearly as nefarious as you guys would like to think in general.

Companies like Zenimax are in the business of creative ideas. They hire people expressly for the purpose of thinking up new ideas and give them resources to create those ideas so that the company can profit off of them. Unlike labor, "think time" is basically unmeasurable or at least unprovable. Without such clauses, employees who think of the best ideas would simply claim it's personal think time and therefore they have all ownership rights and therefore all the profit. It can ruffle some feathers, but it's really just a simple risk-reward proposition. The company is taking the risk of paying you for duds or nothing. Sure, eventually they'll fire you if you give them nothing, but all that time you produce nothing or even things that are non-profitable is risk taken by them. As a result, they get the reward when you think of the next big thing. If, on the other hand, you take the risk, then you get all the reward...assuming you don't starve first.

Now, with all that said, I do think it's crappy when companies don't reward the employee appropriately for that big idea. And I think that in a situation like this, Zenimax is overstepping their bounds. They simply were not going to pursue VR tech on their own, and as long as Mr. Carmack gave them all they asked for, I don't think they have any claim morally to what he did. But since it's facebook, meh, they'll just pay them millions and move along. It's lame, but shouldn't be harmful.