Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015) (2 Viewers)

[TravisR]

I think the standard Blu-ray cover (with just the logo and the starfield) looks the best by far. The Target cover is my second favorite and due to the bonus disc, I'll be at Target at 8 AM on April 5.

 

[Kevin Lamb]

I'm ordering mine from disneystore.com. You get the "Logo on Starfield" art (which I agree is the best) PLUS some really cool 14x10 lithos (including "Chewie...we're home.")

http://www.disneystore.com/entertai...-ray-combo-pack-pre-order/mp/1397199/1000205/

 

[Sam Favate]

I'm ordering mine from disneystore.com. You get the "Logo on Starfield" art (which I agree is the best) PLUS some really cool 14x10 lithos (including "Chewie...we're home.")
]

Funny, I'm in Hollywood Studios now, and they're selling a Han and Chewie shirt that says "Chewie, we're home," except for some strange reason the picture, which is them entering the Falcon from the trailer, has Han's hair colored brown.

I must have seen 200 different Star Wars shirts on people here; more unique designs than I could have imagined, because when I was a kid in 1977, there were about 10 unique t-shirts. You could have had them all if you wanted. And now.... #wheresrey

 

[Wayne_j]

I caught it for the 6th time today, this time in 2D at the local 2nd run theater. I still love it! Picture was great, sound was good but could have been 10 dB higher.

 

[Citizen87645]

With four weeks until the BD release, I figured it was high time I saw it in the theaters for the FIRST time.

Overall, I quite enjoyed it. Some parts I found clunky, like the scenes between Han and Leia, but I have zero complaints with Boyega, Ridley, and Isaac as the new generation of Star Wars heroes. I especially like the idea of my daughter of having a more complete female Star Wars hero to idolize (no offense to Princess Leia and assuming my kid is into Star Wars, which she doesn't have to be if she doesn't want to). If I were to nitpick, I guess I have unanswered questions about how Finn developed the personality he has if he was raised to be a stormtrooper. I would expect someone assigned with a serial number to be much more of an automaton, so I would have liked more development there.

My main hang up probably is with Adam Driver. I feel like he was physically miscast for the part. He has such a distinctive facial structure, I just couldn't buy him as the son of Han and Leia. But that may be a moot point now that he is facially scarred and likely to be keeping his helmet on more often.

 

[TravisR]

There's two things that I haven't seen mentioned. Near the beginning of the movie when BB-8 sees the explosion of Poe's X-Wing and rolls off, some droid is looking at him, what the hell is it? It's not a First Order probe and it seems too far away from the village to be something of theirs.

And when Kylo Ren first takes off his mask when he's interrogating Rey, he slams his helmet down onto some kind of box with a bunch of small gravel or sand on the top of it. Is it a zen sand garden thing? An intergalactic ashtray?

 

[Tino]

I think the thing popping it's head out is an alien not a probe. I think it may be a nod to a cantina character from the first film.

The box I believe contains the ashes from the Darth Vader funeral pyre where the helmet was retrieved.

I certainly can be wrong on both accounts of course. [emoji13]

 

[TravisR]

I think the thing popping it's head out is an alien not a probe. I think it may be a nod to a cantina character from the first film.

Funny you say that because I thought it looked like the first alien you see in the cantina too. http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Hem_Dazon

 

[Citizen87645]

Yes, I thought it was that alien also, but that would be kind of random. Based on a wiki about that race, they aren't native to Jakku, but Kashykk.

 

[TravisR]

Mystery solved! It was ID'ed in TFA Visual Dictionary as a 'nightwatcher worm'. From Wookieepedia,

Nightwatcher worms were a little-documented species of nocturnal sandborers native to the planetJakku.[1] Following the Attack on Tuanul, the astromech droidBB-8 was spied upon by one such worm. The worm rose from its burrow and squinted its red eyes. It made a curious sound as the BB unit rolled by.

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Nightwatcher_worm

The red eyes made me think it was mechanical rather than an alien.

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

Funny you say that because I thought it looked like the first alien you see in the cantina too. http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Hem_Dazon

I thought the same thing.

J.J. Abrams: Leia and Rey’s Hug in ‘The Force Awakens’ "was probably one of the mistakes I made":

That was probably one of the mistakes I made in that. My thinking at the time was that Chewbacca, despite the pain he was feeling, was focused on trying to save Finn and getting him taken care of. So I tried to have Chewbacca go off with him and focus on Rey, and then have Rey find Leia and Leia find Rey. The idea being that both of them being strong with the Force and never having met, would know about each other — that Leia would have been told about her beyond what we saw onscreen and Rey of course would have learned about Leia. And that reunion would be a meeting and a reunion all in one, and a sort of commiseration of their mutual loss.

...

Had Chewbacca not been where he was, you probably wouldn’t have thought of it. But because he was right there, passed by Leia, it felt almost like a slight, which was definitely not the intention.

 

[Simon Massey]

I knew it !!!

"There was [some] consideration that we'd open with Luke's lightsaber flying through space," remembers editor Mary Jo Markey, "landing on Jakku and Maz's hand pulling it out of the ground". Another option was a fake-out that disguised a stormtrooper's helmet as a planet. "We didn't get very far with that," adds Markey.

 

[Tino]

I knew it !!!

Thank god that ridiculous idea was abandoned!

 

[Josh Steinberg]

I knew it !!!

Where's that interview from? Would love to check out the rest of it.

 

[Simon Massey]

http://www.empireonline.com/movies/features/star-wars-force-awakens-dvd-10-things-learned/

 

[Citizen87645]

And when Kylo Ren first takes off his mask when he's interrogating Rey, he slams his helmet down onto some kind of box with a bunch of small gravel or sand on the top of it. Is it a zen sand garden thing? An intergalactic ashtray?

It's worse: http://io9.gizmodo.com/turns-out-kylo-ren-was-way-more-evil-than-we-thought-1769123827

 

[TravisR]

^ Damn, that's pretty evil.

 

[Mike Frezon]

^ Damn, that's pretty evil.

Meh. I've seen worse at the Mall of the Americas.

[It's just been a long time since I've heard anyone say that here at the forum...]

 

[TravisR]

Sadly, The Force Awakens is leaving my local theater today so I went to see the final showing. Even at 3 PM, there was 10 people there.

 

[Josh Steinberg]

Sadly, The Force Awakens is leaving my local theater today so I went to see the final showing. Even at 3 PM, there was 10 people there.

This movie had legs like nothing I've seen in probably five years or more. The huge opening was completely expected, but that it did as much repeat and long-term business as it did was a surprise in today's day and age. It probably helped that Disney was able to get such favorable terms for exhibition, specifically that theaters agreeing to show the movie had to agree to keep it playing on the largest auditorium in the house for four weeks. It stayed in IMAX 3D theaters for almost two months straight, which doesn't really happen anymore.

I saw it the last week that it was playing in IMAX near me, and a Monday or Tuesday night showing was almost sold out - that IMAX has a seating capacity of about 650 per show. Compare that to Batman v Superman at that same IMAX theater, which I saw for a second time on a Friday night at the beginning of the movie's third weekend, and there were less than 50 people there. At no point during TFA's IMAX run at the theater here could you just waltz up to the box office and get good seats - all of the best reserved seats sold in advance for the entire run. For BvS, I had purchased in advance, but I could have walked up the box office at showtime and still gotten the most desirable seating locations.

Even the next SW movie will have a tough time exactly duplicating this success. It was a fun phenomenon to be a part of.