Star Wars Episode VII - The Force Awakens (SPOILERS)

Oh, and this thread has inspired me to check the relative heights of the actors involved. Temuera Morrison AKA Jango Fett is 5' 8", Mark Hamill is 5' 9", and John Boyega is also 5' 9". Oops.

But I want everyone to look at John Boyega's face in the trailer.

He's terrified, but the other two actors (whom I don't know, so I can't name) whose faces you can see in the trailer are not terrified. The woman seems anxious, and the white male, seems to have grim determination (sort of like Luke & co. getting ready to make the trench run on the Death Star). That just screams that the black guy is going to get killed. I could be, and hope I am, wrong.

Regardless, this film appears to have the most diverse cast of any in the franchise, with Lupita Nyong'o, Crystal Clarke, and Christina Chong starring in the film. No idea how big their roles are going to be, or how good they are as actors (since I've not seen anything they've been in), but I would have liked to seen Billy Dee Williams in the cast. Lando was a cool character, and if they're going to bring back the other original members of the cast, they ought to have him there as well. He was in the shitty ass freakin' Star Wars: Detours, which got killed when Lucas sold out to Disney, for fuck's sake, so the man's clearly needing a paycheck.

My reaction to the trailer was okay... maybe looks like Tatooine and "Yes! They dropped the Jango Fett clones as storm troopers!" But then at this, I immediate;y thought "Aw, fuck me!! More stupid ass comedy shit!!"




And then thought "Ok, this is sort of cool. Not bad seeing the X-wings not in space."


And then at this I thought "Whoa... that's a funky looking lightsaber blade. The wavering, flame effect is sort of cool looking"



And then nearly shot an oyster into my pants at this!!!















Those eight or so seconds of the Falcon would have on their own, made an awesome fucking trailer!

"Aren't you a little too black to be a Stormtroopers"?

I'd bet money that John Boyega's character (i.e., the black dude in the Stormtrooper uniform) not only does NOT die, but will be one of the leads of the series going forward.

Doesn't bother me in the least, and I don't know why all the interweb geeks seem to be freaking out about this two-second scene. There was tons of "stupid ass comedy shit" in the original Star Wars.

This.

I mean, if it were Jar Jar running around, I could understand the anger That looks like a soccer ball with a Go Pro attached to it. Not getting my panties in a bunch.

We don't even know what it is (aside from a droid). Maybe its based on the stereotypical fat guy in movies who's always sent to run an errand, and thus is perpetually huffing and puffing because he's out of shape. Or maybe its some kind of mobile IED. Either is just as likely, but let's not forget that R2 and 3PO were modeled after the Laurel and Hardy comedy duo, and 3PO spent the better part of the second movie strapped to Chewie's back screaming at Chewie for being an idiot. R2 and Yoda fighting with one another, R2 getting eaten and barfed out, and that's in the movie which is considered by many to be the best in the series.

Even if the droid is part of some comedic bit, that's not necessarily a bad thing. It all depends on the bit itself, and we're unlikely to know that before the film debuts.

Interesting speculation on the new lightsaber that I read - it's almost as if this guy hasn't fully perfected the production of his weapon....

I wish they'd stop building "cooler" lightsabers. A lightsaber is pretty awesome to begin with, without needing to add on extra flair.

Darth Maul, is excepted, of course.

I've had it with these motherfuckin' fanbois, in my motherfuckin' Star Wars!

I did note that neither the sound nor the shimmer looked right. And it's not that JJ couldn't pull it off, because the other light sabers were spot on. So, maybe the guy didn't build it right, though even an incomplete Luke managed to build one. Or maybe the triple split of the beam causes instability?

Or perhaps its a new form of lightsabre technology. According to some speculation on how a lightsabre's constructed, it has a certain gem at its heart (like how red lasers have a ruby rod in them), and this version uses a gem other than the standard one. I hope that they don't go with the whole "a Jedi uses the Force to control the shape of the blade, so no non-Jedi can handle a lightsabre" because not only is that dumb, but its been contradicted multiple times by things seen on screen in the films.

I'm gonna go with the theory that these Sith are from a forgotten ancient order, and that's a "medieval", saber.

That could be, or it could be that its a "sword breaker" sabre, and is more powerful than your standard issue model. Presumably we'll find out when the film hits theaters.

As long as the cross is constructed of something impervious to lightsaber. They don't go completely to the hilt.


Oh, and add me to the meh until the Falcon camp.

The Falcon is definitely the money shot, and I mean that in every way possible. Guaranteed orgasm on each viewing. But the rest of it is really quite full of win. Both my 9 and 11 year old boys think the cross lightsaber looks awesome, so that says to me it's a success.

Strangely enough, the idea that the quillons or cross on a normal sword served as a form of hand protection or guard is probably rather recent and not really supported by the old manuals. They were occasionally used in some types of bind, just because they're there, but you really don't need anything larger than a katana's tsuba to keep the opponent's blade from sliding into your hand. In the vast majority of cases you defend with the flat of the blade instead of the edge, so the cross isn't even in the right plane to be any kind of hand protection.

From my experiments, the reason they are on the sword is that without them, a long straight blade can't be used in combat because it spins around in your hand by 30 or 40 degrees the instant two cutting blades make hard oblique contact. It's got a wide blade, and an impact to the side of the edge applies a large torque, yet the bare blade has only a very tiny rotational inertia (it wants to spin like a drill bit). A huge applied force (sharp impact) and low mass produces an extremely high rotational acceleration. To stop the millisecond of uncontrolled spin, before natural damping occurs when the blade flexes from the impact (which acts like a figure skater throwing her arms out), you have to throw some mass off-line, such as attaching some little barbels to the hilt. Often the cross was made exactly like little barbels.

A few central Asian swords put the cross down where the pommel is, getting double-duty out of the mass, but that can interfere with your wrists. Other swords with no cross went with a very flat, paddle like handle that can't really spin in your hand. Some time after basket hilts became fashionable, the cross entirely disappeared. It had became redundant because the basket hilt itself has plenty of rotational inertia, but for a while swords had both a basket hilt and quillons. Earlier sword techniques precluded a basket hilt because they required moving your hands all over the place on the hilt in combat, spinning the blade 90 degrees in your hand and back, grabbing the pommel, shifting a hand out onto the blade, and such. The solution to hand protection was to wear armored gloves. But who has time to put those on in a street fight?

And that's your sword lesson for the day.

What bothers me about the cross lightsaber is that the crosshilt is lightsabery too--which means I might hit myself with it accidentally. With a traditional sword you might bruise yourself, but with this thing it seems like you could lose a finger.

Of course, Obi-Wan gave Luke a lightsaber without even a warning or detailed instruction, so maybe everyone is just more safety-conscious in a galaxy far, far away.

For me it built up slowly, don't know the stormtrooper, don't care, hey cool droid!, nice little speeder thingy...., how does that lightsaber work?, ooohhh X wings on the water, that's pretty.....BBBWWWWWWWHHHHHHHAAAAAAAMMMMMMMMMM!!!!!!!!!!!!! Oh God! Uh... uh... yeahhhhhhhhbhh......

Then ten minutes later I was ready for another round.

Topic for debate:

Resolved, it is the Millennium Falcon that makes it a real Star Wars movie.

Who wants to argue con?

Only fantasy swords feature sharp and pointy crosses. Heck, sometimes they dig into your arms in a guard position.

A buddy of mine was just saying how stupid he thought the new lightsabre looked. Now I see there may be some logic to it.

That was what I was trying to say--and that the cross lightsaber counts as "pointy" to me.

William Shatner has weighed in.

As I recall, more exagerated crossguards were sometimes used as hooks to dismount a mounted opponent - you reverse your grip on the sword (grabbing the blade) and use the extended crossguard to yank a guy out of his saddle. They must have worn very good gloves . . .

Also, in the christian kingdoms they wanted the sword to look like a cross when the point was down. So while cross guards have practical functions, they are also decorative elements and not always entirely practical. Of the three real swords I own, one is a katana with only a tsuba, one is a sort of "stealth" design with no crossguard at all and one is a short sword with a minimal guard.

I do that a lot, both pushing and pulling, especially hooking the neck to go with a leg sweep. There's also a blow called the mordenschlag (murder stroke) where you swing the sword by the blade and strike with the pommel, which is especially useful against helmets. Strangely enough, you don't need gloves because medieval and Renaissance swords were generally only sharpened within a hand-span of the tip. The rest of the blade has a pretty dull edge that has to be going pretty fast to make a cut. That was done intentionally because most techniques inside (close combat) were done with the half-sword or shortened-sword, where you put one hand mid-blade and use it like a musket with a bayonet, using both the point and the pommel (like hitting them with a rifle butt).



Another very common technique was "commanding the blade", where you get one hand on your opponents blade and squeeze the sides. Generally you can rip the sword right out of their hands, and aside from that they can't then poke at you because they can't apply enough torque to move the point around. All they can effectively do is push or pull, and all they get is a tug of war. So the general response to having someone grab your blade is to grab their blade, which often results in swapping swords, or just grabbing them by the arms or head and going to wrestling moves.

There's lots of discussions and links at the HEMA alliance forums. It's a fascinating and fresh subject, since most of what we thought we knew up through the 1990's turned out to be wrong. For example, in Meyer's works from the 1500's, most of the killing blows are actually delivered with the back edge of the blade in some biomechanically ingenious ways. When I first got into swords everybody thought the back edge was just a spare.