Star Wars VII trailer

[Sinornithosaurus]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OMOVFvcNfvE

At least they got old man Lucas off the helm.

[FlowerChild]

Ok, that did look pretty good/cool, but man, having been through all this before, I absolutely refuse to get my hopes up about a new Star Wars film ever again :)

[jorgebonafe]

Ok, that did look pretty good/cool, but man, having been through all this before, I absolutely refuse to get my hopes up about a new Star Wars film ever again :)

I had my doubts before, but after I heard who the director was I got pretty confident this couldn't go wrong... I really loved the last two Star Treks...

[FlowerChild]

I had my doubts before, but after I heard who the director was I got pretty confident this couldn't go wrong... I really loved the last two Star Treks...

See, I really didn't :)

They were ok, but IMO were way overdone, with the fan-service scenes being a tad too obvious (Star Wars Episodes I through III suffered from this too), and didn't really feel like Star Trek to me. I'm already seeing signs of this same thing in this trailer.

Spoilers on details of the trailer in case anyone reading this hasn't watched it yet:

Spoiler

Show

In this case, the Millennium Falcon bit at the end of the trailer gave me chills (seriously), and did an awesome job of conveying "THIS IS THE OLD STAR WARS!!!!", but the droid with the spherical base didn't look like the art-style of the original Star Wars films to me (where the tech tended to look very rough and clunky) and left me wondering why it was one of the things they decided to showcase. The hover bike also looked more akin to episodes I through III to me, than IV-VI, as did the storm trooper helmets.

I'll admit the light saber with the hilt seemed cool to me in a "that makes sense" manner, whereas I thought the double-bladed Darth Maul one looked super cheesy in a "this guy is so bad-ass he has two light sabers combined!" trying-way-too-hard-to-be-cool fashion.

Now, I'm a rather tough customer both when it comes to Star Trek and Star Wars, as these are some of my fondest childhood memories they're fucking with, so others may have an entirely different reaction to such subtleties :)

[Larmantine]

Well, my philosophy here is simple: it's better than nothing. Not saying that I found the trailer bad, mind you.

[EpicAaron]

The light saber with laser guard design makes sense at a glance, but I don't think there is ever a point in the original duals when the sabers would actually slide along each other- they tended to just lock up.

Frankly, I see hilt-guard saber as another gimmick. I'm hoping the new villain has more depth to him beyond a fancy lightsaber.

On the bright side, the CGI in this trailer didn't cause my eyes to bleed. The same can't be said for the Jurassic World Trailer.

EDIT: Sword Terminology

[FlowerChild]

The light saber with laser guard design makes sense at a glance, but I don't think there is ever a point in the original duals when the sabers would actually slide along each other- they tended to just lock up.

Frankly, I see hilt-guard saber as another gimmick. I'm hoping the new villain has more depth to him beyond a fancy lightsaber.

Yeah, agreed. The more I think about it, the more it's feeling like the "trying too hard to be cool" thing that Darth Maul suffered from. It just took a little longer for it to register :)

On the bright side, the CGI in this trailer didn't cause my eyes to bleed.

Yeah, agreed there as well. As critical as I am about this stuff, I absolutely loved the X-Wing, and particularly the Millennium Falcon clips and could find no fault with them. Like I said, that last one with my speakers jacked way up sent a chill down my spine, so they're definitely doing something right :)

So I think they may be doing a very good job of capturing the vibe of the old stuff, where I'm concerned is more the new stuff they're adding to the franchise and whether it really fits in. There was a seamlessness from film to film with episodes IV-VI with the new stuff that was introduced. Like, you took one look at a snow-speeder in Empire, or a hover-bike in Jedi when first seeing those films, and their art-design screamed "Star Wars". I don't get that when I look at that spherical droid or the hover bike in this trailer.

[Larmantine]

I don't get that when I look at that spherical droid or the hover bike in this trailer.

Yeah, I have to agree here. Didn't like them at all. The spherical droid was definitely inspired from some other sci-fi franchise, as I've seen similar concepts elsewhere. And the blocky bike reminded me something from the silly racers from Episode I. However, I did really like the stormptrooper look. Upon seeing them just thought "wow, they might actually kick some ass, not as those blind clowns strapped in worthless excuses for an armor with blasters which accuracy is worse than a 15th century hand cannon's we've seen in episode IV to VI". Same was with clones, and their phase II armor, which looked really cool.

[FlowerChild]

And the blocky bike reminded me something from the silly racers from Episode I.

Yup, see that's the vibe I get from the droid, speeder bike, AND the stormtrooper helmets: like they're trying to reconcile the art-direction from Episodes IV-VI with I-III, and I really wish I-III were just chucked in the bin and forgotten about.

I tell you: at the first mention of Midichlorians as anything other than a bad joke, I'm out :)

[DaveYanakov]

Even if the sabers did slide like a metal blade would, it would slice right through those side emitters and you'd be screwed anyway.

I'm actively trying to avoid even the teasers but that image has been so ubiquitous this weekend that it is unavoidable. The best shop I've seen so far is the one where the tree branches are replaced with lightsaber blades

[logorouge]

Hey, not bad. I didn't get a CGI overdose from the trailer and what I saw gave an enjoyable old-school Star Wars vibe. But those side lasers on the bad guy's lightsaber... What's wrong with using a good old regular lightsaber?

[Sinornithosaurus]

Ok, that did look pretty good/cool, but man, having been through all this before, I absolutely refuse to get my hopes up about a new Star Wars film ever again :)

I don't think this will manage to surpass the prequels' level of shittiness, but I don't have high hopes. It doesn't look bad, but nothing I'd pit against the original.

Either way, it'll be interesting to see how this turns out.

[FlowerChild]

Even if the sabers did slide like a metal blade would, it would slice right through those side emitters and you'd be screwed anyway.

Well, in all fairness, and despite me starting to feel the saber looks cheesy, are those protrusions the emitters, or are they just hollow tubes with the blades continuing beneath them?

I could see the tubes being there just to protect your hands or to stop you grabbing the bit where they come out when the blade activates. Yeah, another saber would slice right through them, but it wouldn't really matter as it would just come into contact with the blade beneath.

No idea how that would work. Maybe diverting those little bits off the main blade with a magnetic field or what have you, not that I have any idea how the sabers are supposed to work in the first place :)

On the bright side, the CGI in this trailer didn't cause my eyes to bleed. The same can't be said for the Jurassic World Trailer.

I hadn't seen the Jurassic park trailer when I originally responded to this one, but man, was that ever bad. So glad I'm not a Jurassic Park fan :)

It wasn't so much the CG that bugged me, as much as I was laughing my ass off at the whole "If dinosaurs are bad ass, what about a genetically engineered super dinosaur???!!!!".

I do believe they managed to one-up Darth Maul on the cheese factor there :)

When I saw the title, I was actually thinking they might have been doing a "Planet Of The Dinosaurs" kinda thing where they had gotten loose and begun to repopulate the earth. I could have seen that being rather cool.

Which reminds me. Did anyone else here happen to see this trailer for Alien 3 in the theaters back in the day?



The first minute of that was the only thing showed initially, and man, I still wish someone would make the movie that promised :)

That one really took the cake for me of biggest trailer-induced disappointment of all time, even if the man-bear-alien from Alien 4 wins for total cheese factor, and Highlander 2 wins the award for most spectacular ruining of a movie through a sequel.

Actually, that makes me realize there's a stunning similarity between what was done with Midichlorians in episodes I-III, and the "Aliens from the Planet Zeist" (I shit you not...it was called Zeist) from Highlander 2. Coincidence? I think not.

[Larmantine]

Ah, Alien. Well I guess the same thing for me goes here as in Star Wars. I'm just too much of a fan for the series to see the bad things in each subsequent film. However, the more i watch them, the more fond I grow towards the first two. The third is the least favorite of mine, but since I'm a huge fan, I love all of them. Alien: Resurrection was great for me as well because it was the first alien film I saw. I was something like 6 years old, I always covered my eyes during the failed clone scene, the aliens looked scary as hell, particularly the newborn (the one you referred to as the bear alien :D) and it's gruesome death scene. Gave me nightmares and excitement for a long time, even got this feeling refreshed now when playing Alien: Isolation.

[Gears]

Given that my childhood was during the releases of the prequels, I had the backwards thought that the movies were good sheerly because I was young and stupid.

When I went back to re-watch them a year or two ago... Yeah, I basically fell into a deep depression when I realized that my life was a lie.

Looking at this, I'm mildly interested, but I won't get my hopes up for anything.

[FlowerChild]

Ah, Alien. Well I guess the same thing for me goes here as in Star Wars. I'm just too much of a fan for the series to see the bad things in each subsequent film. However, the more i watch them, the more fond I grow towards the first two. The third is the least favorite of mine, but since I'm a huge fan, I love all of them. Alien: Resurrection was great for me as well because it was the first alien film I saw. I was something like 6 years old, I always covered my eyes during the failed clone scene, the aliens looked scary as hell, particularly the newborn (the one you referred to as the bear alien :D) and it's gruesome death scene. Gave me nightmares and excitement for a long time, even got this feeling refreshed now when playing Alien: Isolation.

Man/Bear/Alien.

I'm not certain if South Park's Man/Bear/Pig was a reference to that thing, but I like to think it might have been ;)

See, I actually kinda liked Alien 4, right up until the end. The thing was, when I saw it, I thought it was leading into Ripley being the monster on board the space-ship and it would end with her killing the rest of the people on board. I was thinking to myself "man! That's fucking brilliant! They're going to take the series full circle with Ripley transitioning from the hero to the very villain she was originally fighting!"

Then the Man/Bear/Alien popped out, and I never wanted to see anything to do with the Alien series ever again ;)

It's a very different experience of course if you are first exposed to the movies later in a series than if you have been following it right from the start. Man/Bear/Alien to me was just an extension of the Dog/Alien bullshit in the 3rd one, and neither of those movies could live up to the first two, having loved them from the beginning.

[Larmantine]

Man/Bear/Alien.

I'm not certain if South Park's Man/Bear/Pig was a reference to that thing, but I like to think it might have been ;)

See, I actually kinda liked Alien 4, right up until the end. The thing was, when I saw it, I thought it was leading into Ripley being the monster on board the space-ship and it would end with her killing the rest of the people on board. I was thinking to myself "man! That's fucking brilliant! They're going to take the series full circle with Ripley transitioning from the hero to the very villain she was originally fighting!"

Then the Man/Bear/Alien popped out, and I never wanted to see anything to do with the Alien series ever again ;)

It's a very different experience of course if you are first exposed to the movies later in a series than if you have been following it right from the start. Man/Bear/Alien to me was just an extension of the Dog/Alien bullshit in the 3rd one, and neither of those movies could live up to the first two, having loved them from the beginning.

Damn... you just made me realize how shitty the ending was. Well I kinda hated it already because, they were just sitting on wasted Earth without any hint on their fate, but now that you told me that... Wow, just fucking wow, that would have been really awesome. Well I guess that probably had something to do with each film having a different director.

If you stick to the canon that dog-alien is not bullshit actually, because the Aliens take much from their host. The Alien homeworld doesn't even have the kinds we saw on Alien and Alien 2. Ok I'll stop being a nerd now.

Still don't get it why you see some features of a bear in the Newborn :D

[FlowerChild]

If you stick to the canon that dog-alien is not bullshit actually, because the Aliens take much from their host. The Alien homeworld doesn't even have the kinds we saw on Alien and Alien 2. Ok I'll stop being a nerd now.

Hehe...yeah, I know, as I used to be a big Alien nerd myself. It just looked like ass in practice ;)

[DerAlex]

I'm not and never where a huge Star Wars fan, so the only thing I can contribube to this discussion is this:

Star Wars: Episode VII Trailer - George Lucas' Special Edition

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v93Jh6JNBng

[Larmantine]

I'm not and never where a huge Star Wars fan, so the only thing I can contribube to this discussion is this:

Star Wars: Episode VII Trailer - George Lucas' Special Edition

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v93Jh6JNBng

Dude... thanks for this, that was the funniest thing I've seen in a week.

[logorouge]

Oh boy, that Special Edition of the trailer was pretty funny. I liked the Millennium Falcon bit in particular. :)

[Gilberreke]

[FlowerChild]

Ok guys...props: It's exceedingly difficult to get me to laugh (or do anything other than respond in grunts) before my first coffee and cigarette, yet you had me rolling with laughter with the above .gif and "special edition" version of the trailer first thing this morning :)

[MoRmEnGiL]

Once again I find myself the heretic :P

I liked the prequel trilogy more than the original, loved alien 3 much more than aliens, and found the crosshilt lightsaber scene so incredibly stupid I could not believe I wasn't watching a parody :P

Yes, disney, marketing etc, they have invested tons of money and need the wow factor to build hype. But that was simply bad taste if you ask me. See, Darth Mauls dual saber is actually a very different weapon with a very different fighting style attached to it, think sword vs staff. And this is evident in Qui-Gon Jinn's extreme difficulty in defeating this style.

(lore nerdism ahead, warning)

Qui-Gon was a master of Form IV: Ataru, one of the main forms of lightsaber fighting. A highly acrobatic and flashy style, with mutliple unpredictable angles of attack, but requiring ample space and not very defensive in nature. Also the combat style Maul used with his dual saber was something no Jedi had experience fighting. His defeat at the hands of Maul prompted a relative young Obi Wan to reexamine fighting styles and defensive fighting, and study and excel at Form III: Soresu, a form initially developed to fight blaster wielding opponents, which puts an emphasis on defence and economy of movement. It was a bit of a paradigm shift for the jedi council, who were quite surprised by the defeat of a master as capable in combat as Qui-Gon. This form proved quite formidable in Obi Wan's hands right until his very end.

So the dual bladed saber had a relatively big impact on the SW universe.

As for the cross hilted saber, only time will tell if there is a convincing lore behind it :P

Other than that the trailer was exactly what it needed to be and I'm quite hyped to be honest. 1 year is 12 months too long.

[DerAlex]

I tell you: at the first mention of Midichlorians as anything other than a bad joke, I'm out :)

Funnily enough, I read something about the I-III trilogy on reddit today, which somehow makes a lot of sense, and also propably gives Lucas way too much credit:

[quote=""bon_bon" on reddit.com"]
George Lucas is a terrible filmmaker--the best cinematic elements of the original trilogy were the result of others' involvement. Lucas, however, was responsible for the integration of Campell's "hero's journey," and his mastery of theme is also present in episodes I-III.

The Jedi order that existed at the Republic's fall practices the Force in a manner at odds with how we understand the force in the original trilogy. The standard view is that Lucas' love of merchandising and special effects brought this about, but it actually makes sense as an arc. Relying on midichlorian counts to determine one's strength in the force feels wrong to us as an audience because it is wrong, a sign that the Jedi have abandoned the spiritual roots of the Force. We see further evidence of this: Obi Wan's austere monk's robes have been transformed into some weird uniform that all Jedi wear; there's a child soldier bootcamp where children are trained, machinelike, to become Jedi in direct contradiction with how we see Luke learn in ESB. Basically, the Jedi have become decadent and out of touch, just like the Republic they protect. A Republic, I should mention, that both abides aristocracy and willingly gives way to fascists. Shit, both Obi Wan and Qui-Gon Jin think that it's more important to solve some trade dispute than to free child slaves. Palpatine doesn't take over a just society through trickery, he just exploits the rot at the center of the system for his own benefit.

This works with the original trilogy to an extent. In those, both Obi Wan and Yoda, though wiser from their failure, are still supposed to be wrong. They want Luke to kill Darth Vader, and they hide the fact that he's Luke's father in order to accomplish this. But Luke does the true Jedi thing and redeems his father - even at the risk of death.

Lucas, though he's a pretty bad director in a lot of ways, is pretty good at mashing up a lot of different influences into a coherent story idea. One important influence is Kurosawa, who often portrayed the samurai in his films as dogmatic and inflexible, just like the Jedi.

Star Wars goes deep. I wish George had enough energy to get off his chair and direct on a set.[/quote]

A fun theory, even if nothing more