Star Wars: The Force Awakens Spoiler Thread

Luke, however, didn't know him during the prequels. His biggest problem was his senility. He used to be a cunning and brilliant manipulator, and now he's doing shit like leaking the location of the shield generator to the Rebels and then actually putting the shield generator there or slowly torturing Luke right in front of a father who - on Palpy's own urgings, mind you'' - once abandoned everything he believed in for the sake of protecting his family.

The Emperor did not age gracefully.

edited 5th Feb '16 7:59:56 AM by TobiasDrake

This strip springs to mind.

The main time I remember us seeing a truly surprised and unprepared Palpatine is the Zillo Beast arc in Clone Wars, where he comes across a powerful being the likes he'd never seen before.

He has this sense of wonder that on him looks very creepy.

Prequel trilogy over-inflated Palpatine same way they over inflated lightsaber fighting with buncha flip kicks and rad ollies on a half grind.

I mean its fine but it makes the stuff that comes chronologically later look torpid.

Palpatine's plan in ROTJ had gaping logical flaws but it would have worked if it hadn't been for those meddling main characters with their plot armor + Vader not wanting to watch his son be slowly electrocuted to death for some reason??

Not gonna lie, being a relatively young person and having watched the prequels before the originals, I far preferred the flippy spinny flashy bullshit lightsaber fighting of the prequels.

Get off my lawn and stop grinding mad rails yo on a halfpipe 360 degree corkscrew unicorn

The reason Palpatine lost was because the rebel strike team brought a gold-plated diplomatic droid to a covert op, and inexplicably said droid turned out to be a dead ringer for a primitive tribe's god. Basically, Lucas blatantly and literally used a Deus ex Machina to resolve the story. There's a reason nobody likes the noble savage fuzzballs - a stellar stroke of storytelling, they weren't.

You mean like the time Jawas took two droids that once belonged to Anakin and sold them to the household where Anakin's secret son lived?

Star Wars is built on contrivance.

so do it, I feel people defending the lightsaber fight of the original as pure nostalgia and sense of childhood over anything else, which is why I annoy me TFA being so close to it.

edited 5th Feb '16 10:29:20 AM by unknowing

In Star Wars contrivance = the Force.

Xehanort did it.

Curse you Xehanort!!

@Ninety: The lightsaber fight in TFA is exactly like the lightsaber fights in Empire and Jedi, intense and fast-paced, but not as slow as in ANH.

Besides, the lightsaber duels in Empire and Jedi were a precursor to the prequel lightsaber battles in terms of fastness and intensity.

edited 5th Feb '16 10:39:46 AM by higherbrainpattern

I have a hard time watching the 2 fights in ESB and ROTJ because the film critic and fighter in me keeps screaming "Stop aiming a meter above his head! Vader didn't even need to dodge that strike but he still did! Why are you hitting the railing instead of his hand right next to it!". Thank god for Nick Gillard and the ones who follow.

In my opinion I'd say the fights go ROTS>TPM>TFA>END>AOTC>ROTJ>ANH. The fights in Darth Vader are pretty great thus far and CW had some good ones from what I recall.

edited 5th Feb '16 10:58:18 AM by LordofLore

Kylo Ren did his share of prequel-esque twirly bits too.

Yeah, I think that when lightsabers are twirled it's to build up power for a swing (or a flourish to intimidate) but I have no problem with them.

I actually find Sheev's plan in the PT to be, not nearly as brilliant as some people make it out to be. In fact, it's really rather overly convoluted, requires pretty much EVERYTHING to go his way for the better part of two decades (including stuff that he couldn't possibly have known about), and relies on most of the main cast being clueless fools, in order to make it work.

edited 5th Feb '16 11:25:00 AM by Punisher286

As for the lightsaber duels, I didn't care because I cared about who was fighting (unlike in the PT), there's in-built reasons for why they're somewhat awkward sloppy (same with TFA for that matter), and they still feel like actual fights to me.

He probably adjusted that plan somewhat according to the circumstances. His initial plan seems to just have been to let the Trade Federation invade Naboo, bog Valorum down in bureucracy before he can act, have the queen legalise the invasion by signing the treaty, then use Valorum's failure as pretext to call for a vote of no confidance.

Yeah, in Darth Plagueis he and Plagueis both freak out when Anakin enters the picture and immediately put every effort towards killing Qui-Gon to stop Anakin from being an easily manipulatable Jedi.

"I actually find Sheev's plan in the PT to be, not nearly as brilliant as some people make it out to be. In fact, it's really rather overly convoluted, requires pretty much EVERYTHING to go his way for the better part of two decades (including stuff that he couldn't possibly have known about), and relies on most of the main cast being clueless fools, in order to make it work."

This is the inherent flaw of prequel works: because you know how you're going to end up, you write the story backwards. Lucas took a process that took decades and rammed it into six hours. No one can be very competent because Palpatine needs to win. It's a brute force way of writing, but that's the price you pay for telling a story that doesn't necessarily need to be told.

I just imagined Palpatine bringing the pace of the movie to a screeching halt to pull a death note or metal gear monologue explaining his plan in excruciating detail and every way he adapted due to unforeseen nonsense

"Of course, my plan only accounted for a mustachioed Master Windu. When he shaved it off, I had to revise thirty years of work in five minutes."

edited 5th Feb '16 11:54:10 AM by Bocaj

Or just give him a more logical plan to start with. Or make it more clear that he's adapting to changing circumstances. Or not make your heroes so clueless, etc.

It's not a zero-sum game.

What, specifically, do you think came off as contrived? It's pretty obvious from Sidious's dialogue that Amidala escaping from Naboo and getting to Coruscant was not part of his plan, or else he would never have sent Darth Maul to retrieve her.

So I just saw this last night and I have to say goddamn it was awesome. It had the overall feel and setup of the original movies, without feeling like a rehash with different characters.

Of course, I didn't like what happened to Han. If I was him I'd have taken Kylo's backstabbing ass with we as I fell, lol.

Also, why do the good guys have to wear the lamest outfits? The First Order looked sharp as fuck. The Resistance? Diarrhea-brown sweaters.