Star Wars Episode VII - Wretched Hive of Rumor and Spoilers Thread

There were some misguided predictions during the first week of TFA’s release, but even those analysts backed off quickly. TFA is having an amazing run, but unless something completely crazy happens, there’s no way it will beat Avatar’s WW revenue.

Avatar was a juggernaut that defied expectations.

Yeah, the main reason is that Star Wars isn’t performing as well in China.

It beat every record of every other movie domestically, but it looks like the weak response in China (especially compared to Avatar) put a damper on the worldwide totals. Still, it’s pretty amazing how close it’s gotten in only five weeks.

Right but it was well known way in advance that it wasn’t going to light China on fire. I remember several articles in December saying that exactly this would happen. Nobody was disputing it.

Any reasons why China isn’t particularly Force sensitive? I would have thought the opposite.

Star Wars IV, V, and VI were never shown in wide-release in Chinese theaters. Even the prequels were low-key showings. Most of the Chinese national exposure to Star Wars has been through pirated VHS tapes and more recently through the internet. Basically, the saga just wasn’t marketed in China as hardcore as it was in the West and Japan. They have no nostalgia for it.

Disney definitely spent a bunch of money on marketing The Force Awakens in China, and it did do really well, just not as well as other movies. They have to build an audience for it over there.

Which sort of makes sense but it’s not like they had ever heard of Avatar before, either.

Should be interesting, since the sequels for both movies are currently scheduled for Christmas 2017. Avatar 2 has been delayed a few times, though.

Nope. Avatar 2 has been delayed past 2017. http://www.thewrap.com/james-camerons-avatar-2-wont-be-ready-for-christmas-2017-exclusive/

Yeah I’m not really surprised by that news. Would have been fun to watch but I’m sure the studios wouldn’t let it happen regardless.

According to the A.V. Club, they were mostly watching another movie called Monster Hunt instead of Star Wars.

Hey, I just saw this last night at the Cinerama, pretty much sold out again! And apparently at some point since I last saw a movie there (Zombieland, so it’s been a little while) they went assigned seating. Which was weird. But good. Mostly weird.

Anyway, I liked the movie. I don’t think I loved it though, overall. I was really into about the first half, when I had no idea where things were going. But somewhere around I guess the midpoint, probably when Han Solo and Chewie showed up, it started to fall into that fairly predictable Star Wars routine. And oh boy, another Death Star. Wonder what’s going to happen? But the action was cool, it kept a good pace, and always had interesting things to show me. Good enough at this point.

And just to contribute my geeky nitpick to the thread: I never got the impression from the other movies that the noises from the droids that didn’t actually talk were understandable by humans. Previously there was always C3P0 to translate, and! and! when Luke was flying to Dagobah with R2, he was reading from a screen when R2 would beep at him. But in this one, pretty much everyone speaks beepboopboop. Now what you’re going to say is, well if people can understand Chewbacca why are droids such a stretch, and ok I guess you got me there. Also it’s just a movie, I should really just relax and all that. Hey man, I can’t help how my brain works.

I’m pretty sure at least Annakin speaks directly to R2 regularly in the prequels. I think (though not as sure) Obi-Wan does as well (e.g., in the space battle at the beginning of RotS).

They were closed for a few months a year or two ago for a revamp. New seats (actually about 200 less then before because they added legroom), new projector and sound, yadda-yada. The reserved seating was part of that. I mostly like it (and it’s a trend everywhere it seems), but it does take away the chance to be spontaneous about seeing a movie without ending up in a crappy seat.

I live in Puyallup but see a few movies at the Cinerama each year. Such a great theater (and chocolate popcorn! Yumm!).

Speaking of C3PO’s red arm, one of the aliens in the background yelled “Kojima” in the movie.

Red Eyed Sand Alien (watching BB-8 roll away): “Kojima.” — Robert Stambler

So I finally saw this last night. Paid $5 and sat in a mostly empty theater, and left at the end having enjoyed almost every minute of it. Sure it was full of material “borrowed” from the originals, it was what I wanted. It was a perfect stepping stone to the next level, whatever that may be. And that will be the important movie in the series, as they cannot 'get away" with continually using the same material.

One improvement in this movie was the quality of the acting. Another was it didn’t resemble the prequels. This is a movie, like the originals, that I will see over and over again.

Hear, hear!

I’d see a lot more movies if I could see them for $5.

One of the local theater chains does a $5 Tuesday promotion. Everything they show is $5 all day every Tuesday.

So I finally saw this, and I haven’t read any of the previous posts, but I wanted to jump in and say, WTF?

I’m sitting in the theater and the predominant thought going through my head was that they recycled the entire original Star Wars for this movie. I mean, seriously, pretty much every scene I’ve seen done before in Star Wars, but only better because A. It was new and fresh and exciting back then and B. somehow Lucas + Editor/Ex-Wife are much more talented than Abrams as a storyteller.

I can’t decide whether this is the equivalent of fan fiction, because I feel that most fan fic writers would at least try to inject some new ideas. This movie was about 80% recycled material and 20% fan service.

You know how people love to rip the first Shannara book because it was a blatant Tolkien clone? Force Awakens is a blatant Episode IV clone through and through.

Fine.

But do you think Ren is a Mary Sue?