[psmith2.0]

Seated. t-minus 10 minutes...

#soamped #mightpuke

[Brad]

Just got back.

Verdict: See it. As soon as possible. Do your best to avoid spoilers. There are definitely a number of moments that people are going to be eager to spoil by talking about on social media, news, etc.

My showing was in glorious 2D, as cinema was meant to be experienced.

Midichlorians

...

haha j/k go watch the fucking movie already

[drewprops]

I caught the 7pm show tonight and it was just so much fun.

Arrived just after 6pm, confirmed my purchase and got my tix, went inside and was pointed to the theater. Diverted to pee as much as possible, went inside grabbed a seat and endured the most boring trailer selection (surprisingly, nothing I had not already seen online).

The movie?

Go see it.

ASAP


...

[kscherer]

LOL

Going on the 26th, try to find a matinee. That is all.

[turtle]

Well, now I should be feeling like I need to see it before it hits Netflix or BR/DVD right? I just have such a hard time playing theater prices. Is it really worth it this time?

Paul, where are you?

[psmith2.0]

EDIT: See standalone thread (I still use spoiler tags, but now that the movie is out, I think we should have a new, dedicated thread to discuss the real thing. Kinda like how we go from Speculation and Rumors to Apple Hardware, once something comes out?

[Capella]

Originally Posted by turtle Well, now I should be feeling like I need to see it before it hits Netflix or BR/DVD right? I just have such a hard time playing theater prices. Is it really worth it this time? Paul, where are you?

Do it in theaters. That's my verdict.

Originally Posted by pscates2.0 It gets a hell of a lot more right than not, it's way more enjoyable (on every level that truly counts) than anything in the prequels and depending on what mood you caught me in, I might prefer to watch this than, say, Return of the Jedi (which, apart from the Luke/Vader/Emperor stuff, I'm really not a huge fan of). The Force Awakens is fast-paced and nimble, so there's really no boring, pointless jibber-jabber weighing it down, which was nice. It moves along quite a bit...it feels way shorter than its advertised 2:16 running time.

I agree that it gets the SW movie feel. I wish we'd got a couple slower moments to breathe. Even the not action packed scenes felt tense and crammed with stuff. I agree with you the pacing is fast, but, I don't like being on a constant fast-paced tension spring. I have lots more thoughts but they can wait till I'm not on way to work.

[psmith2.0]

Originally Posted by alcimedes One of you people who watch it first, I'd be interested to hear what you think of the kid friendliness.

Sorry I didn't see this earlier. I think it comes by its PG-13 honestly. While all Star Wars movies have expected, stylized sci-if/fantasy violence or other elements, this pushed it a bit in places.

All kids are different...only thing I know to do is to lay it out, spoiler-free, so you can know. Trying to stay vague, but detailed enough to be helpful:

- Blood appears in two scenes. The blasters in this movie seem to do real damage in a few scenes, vs. just some sparks/smoke

- A massacre of innocent, defenseless villagers via blasters

- Some men are eaten by large, tentacled alien creatures; it isn't gory but you see them going into the mouth, Sarlacc-like, while screaming/squirming

- A certain character has anger control issues and lashes out quite violently/destructively in two different scenes

- Some staff-fighting and fisticuffs, but nothing outrageous or not seen on dozens of TV shows

- A couple of Qui-Gon Jinn-like lightsaber piercing moments, where you see the blade go into someone and briefly protruding from their back.

- A couple of mental/telepathic torture type scenes where the recipient is shown in pain/distress

- The unsettling appearance (and voice) of a certain villain might frighten little ones if they're not used to such things?

- A nightmarish, but fairly brief, vision sequence...nothing really horrific, just some jarring sound/imagery (less than a minute)

- Bodies fly from some blaster hits.

- Two (maybe three?) hells and a damn, all from Finn

- Some lightsaber slashing wounds

All in all, a fine movie for kids!

But seriously, I'd have no problem taking my 10- and 12-year-old nephew and niece. And, frankly, I would've done so years before. But they're both very precocious and mature for their age (always have been) and understand what's what, they watch The Walking Dead, play video games (she's particularly fond of the shooting/fighting stuff...I know she has one with "Black Ops"(?) in the title), I take my nephew to all the Marvel/Avengers movies these past 2-3 years (since he's been 7-8) with no issues, etc.

YMMV. Hope the above can help. I think it's a bit grim and violent in a few places. It's more like TESB than ROTJ in places, in the adult themes (and lack of teddy bear-like cuteness) department.

The sole, consistently "kid-friendly" character - cute, non-threatening, etc. - is BB-8.

[kscherer]

Good review, Paul, and thanks. I'm feeling much better, now. Unfortunately, I simply can't get to it for at least a week. I will not go without my girl, and she is laying on a surgery table as we speak, having her tonsils out. I'm told she will be quite uncomfortable for at least a week, and maybe two, so there will be no SW for this guy for a few days.

Like I said, I had no plans to see this in the $$$$ Theater, and was planning to wait for the $ Theater. Reviews are positive, however, and that gives me hope—and excitement. Can't wait. I'll hit the $ theater for the second/third screening.

And no one needs to worry about spoilers for this guy. I could care less.

[psmith2.0]

Yeah, but I do it for all the others. Feel free to click on my tagged stuff and be spoiled away. I've actually added to it all a good bit since last night.

I think most Star Wars fans will really enjoy it. I plan to see it again...probably 1-2 more times in the theater. I certainly wouldn't do that if I wasn't pleased with it (and I don't do it for any of that Marvel stuff), and wanted to experience it again (now that I kinda got that initial "rush" out of me, and I can watch for other things, or listen harder at certain things.

My second viewing last night is when I caught some of the neat audio that appeared during that vision/flashback-y scene.

During my first 10:45pm showing (which was completely sold out...not a single empty seat anywhere) I sat beside a bit of a geek girl who squealed, gasped and clapped a bit more than I would've preferred, so I definitely missed a few quieter things during my first viewing. But she was having a good time, she wasn't talking/commenting - and was a bit of a costumed Sith vixen/cutie-pie (black vinyl dress, black thigh boots, a red saber, white makeup, amazing bod) - so I didn't want to be a jerk about it if it wasn't truly necessary. Had it been some obnoxious neckbeard dude who wouldn't STFU at all (and talked to the screen in complete sentences from the opening crawl onward), it would've certainly gone another way.

That was a big part of the reason I decided to stay out an extra 90 or so minutes and catch the remainder of the 12:15am showing...that theater wasn't sold out like my 10:45 one, and I got a seat to myself, with nobody around me, over on the side. I heard much more, as it was a smaller (and quieter) audience.

I may be going with my niece and nephew Monday.

[kscherer]

Originally Posted by pscates2.0 During my first 10:45pm showing (which was completely sold out...not a single empty seat anywhere) I sat beside a bit of a geek girl who squealed, gasped and clapped a bit more than I would've preferred, so I definitely missed a few quieter things during my first viewing. But she was having a good time, she wasn't talking/commenting - and was a bit of a costumed Sith vixen/cutie-pie (black vinyl dress, black thigh boots, a red saber, white makeup, amazing bod) - so I didn't want to be a jerk about it if it wasn't truly necessary.

Well I hope you got her number, or at least her screen name! Hell, she might dress up like Princess Leia on Saturday nights!

[psmith2.0]

Nah, I'm out of that racket at this point.

She was with her hubby or boyfriend anyway (although he was dressed normally and didn't seem particularly thrilled to be there).

He kinda had this vibe of "so I'm dating one of those chicks, huh?"

He stood up immediately after the final scene irised out and the credits began, and she was like "wait...I wanna watch the credits!"

His eye-roll went super-sonic.

She'll probably have to watch some football game this weekend, and be equally miserable.

It's all about balance, you see..."if I'm gonna be miserable for 2-3 hours, then you owe me the same, honey...".

(see my first sentence above, and it'll all make more sense).

[kscherer]

I hear ya!

[turtle]

Thanks for the input. I did skip the spoilers so I hope to see it with "fresh" eyes and not knowing completely what to expect.

[psmith2.0]

You're welcome.

Yeah, I'd never purposely write/blab a bunch of stuff without spoiler tags. Especially this early on. That's what the idiots over at IMDb do (I just visited there for the first time since Monday...what a den of inconsiderate jackassery).

[kscherer]

Speaking of which, how does one make the "spoiler" tag?

And while your at it, the "strikethrough" tag as well?

[psmith2.0]

I'm honestly not sure on the strikethrough one.

The spoiler one is:

[ spoiler ]...[ /spoiler ]

...but without the spaces between the left and right brackets and the word "spoiler"

Testing...

this is a test

EDIT: Ah, okay...strikethroughs are same as spoiler tags above...simply replace the word "spoiler" with "strike"

[kscherer]

Oh, good I've been wanting to do this for ages.

Thanks!

[turtle]

Don't forget the fun "offtopic" tag too.

[alcimedes]

Huh. So my short but sweet review.

I thought the movie was good. It was entertaining, nothing made me cringe, the special effects were good but not over the top. The story was easy enough to follow, and the characters weren't flat.

That being said? I couldn't help but feel like I was just watching an Ep. 4 reboot, like the Star Trek reboot.

I felt like 90% of SWFA was just a rehash of the original Star Wars.

Cantina scene? Check Dusty world where our character's small life suddenly looms large after a random droid enters their life? Check Imperial troopers chasing them out of the cantina into their space adventure? Check Death start? Check Destroy the shield generator then take out the big bad ship? Check Revamped Darth Vader? Check Scene where the confrontation between father/teacher and student results in the tragic death of the father/teacher? Check

All in all, I liked the movie but felt like I'd seen it before.

[psmith2.0]

It's like poetry, it rhymes.

Yeah, some of that had to be intentional. It's a sequel/continuation, but mixed with a bit of a soft reboot/reframing (for the new generation, etc.). Too many parallels and similarities to be accidental/random.

They've already gotten all the three planet types (desert, forest, snow) out of the way in this one, but it does leave room for a floating city in the clouds and/or swamp planet to show up in episode 8!

[alcimedes]

The weird thing is, I didn't mind at all, and I'll probably watch this again in the theaters, but I had a vague feeling like I'd see it all before.

[Dr. Bobsky]

You have: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/seth-a...b_8850324.html

I mean all of it is a rehash...

[Robo]

Originally Posted by Dr. Bobsky You have: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/seth-a...b_8850324.html I mean all of it is a rehash...

shock of all shocks, billybobsky doesn't like something <3 <3

with all those unforgivable mistakes i don't know how lawrence and jj tricked critics and audiences into loving the film! good thing we have the exposé of a huffpo listicle to draw attention to this, because nobody ever scrutinizes star wars films. the fans are famous for just blindly accept all of them.

i'm not like a writer or anything but it's usually customary to wait until a story is, you know, done before complaining about plot holes. not to mention this is a series where literally any coincidence or plot contrivance could be legitimately explained by the force. but i'm just a crazy star wars fanboy i guess, like when i said disney should make a star wars land and that was so totally ridiculous they've accelerated their schedule and start construction in january

[Dr. Bobsky]

Jack... I couldn't care less about the plot holes. I also didn't say I didn't like the movie. Both of those are your erroneous leaps, and I will not further address them nor will I confront you for making them. If you do follow the line of discussion, I was responding to Alci's observation that he felt like he had seen it all before.

The movie itself is a decent effort to update the original series of movies to modern sensibilities. It (singular) isn't something new. Almost every single commenter here (including yourself) thinks the next one will be much more interesting/better/exciting because there was business to take care of in this film. I am somewhat disappointed it did not distinguish itself enough from previous films in the series. I mean: holy fuck, a plot revolving around a third death star with a nearly identical single point weakness. My actual thoughts: the movie was funny, BB8 was adorable, three droids is a droid too many, the actors put in good turns, I am not sure I cared about the republic being destroyed -- no i definitely didn't, whinging skywalkers does not a good villain make, the 3D wasn't obtrusive etc. None of which are: I wasn't entertained, or thought the movie was boring. I might have had as decent an experience watching it on a small screen at less cost (which included train tickets to get to an English language showing), but I don't regret it.

[Kickaha]

OMG, that HuffPo fluff piece is just ridiculous.

Item #34 was *explicitly shown in the movie* for fuck's sake. Christ, what a lazy article. I want my click back.

I mean really now, plenty of plot holes that I found questionable, and yeah, the fan service and retread was a bit too on the nose, but for god's sake, at least watch the movie before writing such a lousy article.