Nerd Blasphemy, Redux.

[theweaselking]

Went to see The Force Awakens - non-3D on a Sunday afternoon meant a nice non-crowded theatre.

Executive summary: Easily the best Star Wars movie since 1983. No Ewoks, no Gungans, no 50s diners with muppet cooks, no blatant clumsy racist caricatures. Interesting new characters, fun callbacks to old characters, surprisingly deep writing.

And despite his best efforts JJ Abrams didn't manage to ruin it.

He really, really, really tried, though, and did some serious damage in the process. I'd rank TFA below Return Of The Jedi, even the special edition with extra Ewoks and additional musical numbers, *entirely* because of blatant Abrams-isms that are clearly the exact same mistakes he makes over and over again in everything he does.

Spoilers in the comments.

Comments

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

Abramsisms:
SO. MANY. BASIC. NUMBER. MISTAKES.

Why does the entire "Resistance" only have ~30 ships, all 1-person starfighters? Why does the New Order, with resources to terraform a planet into a living Death Star, only have like two Star Destroyers? What the fuck is the "Resistance" resisting, anyway? Why does the ENTIRETY OF THE REPUBLIC consist of only four planets, on which are docked 100% of all Republic ships, all in the same star system, all within easy viewing from the surface of a *fifth* planet that just happens to have all of our heroes but isn't part of the Republic?

(If all those sound familiar, it's because he made ALL OF THEM, REPEATEDLY, in both Star Trek and ST Into Darkness)

"How big is space?" errors are all over this. Why does the Star Destroyer only have two TIE fighters when it's chasing the Falcon, and why can the Falcon just drive off at sublight speed (no Hyperdrive!), while being CLEARLY easy to trace (Han says so.... and catches up to them in a trash-hauling cargo ship, meaning they're not moving very fast. Three minutes at sublight speed from the planet with the Star Destroyer that's chasing them). Then, two more ships see them, arrive, and dock... and there's still no sign of the Star Destroyer that was, again, *at most* three minutes back from a Falcon that wasn't going very fast to begin with and is now stopped, while radiating signals that a trash hauler could see *and* that are so obvious that Han insists they can't take the Falcon to the Resistance because the New Order would be able to track it.

(One suspects that Abrams remembered the Empire tracing the Falcon back in A New Hope, but didn't rewatch the source material in preparation for the sequel and so forgot there was a tracking device planted aboard.)

And there's all the hyperspace/lightspeed errors. There's a REASON the Lucas-written movies, even the bad ones, refer to it as "the jump to lightspeed" but then "travelling through hyperspace". Because you're not going *at lightspeed*, that's way, way too slow to get you anywhere. Leaving aside the beyond-perfect timing of the defense shields going down *exactly* at the Resistance Starfighters reached the right point to come out of hyperspace. That's not how that works, in Star Wars, dude. They aren't just hanging out, standing still, on the far side of the Alpha Wall[1]

(Also: "We need to leave the system!" "We have to go back for the droid!" okay, yeah, sure, but what about also mentioning "TIE Fighters have no hyperdrive, so we're not leaving the system no matter what. Our only chance is to survive the planet long enough to get a hyper-capable ship" or something like that? Pointing out that gravity is not just a good idea, It's The Law would have been nice. Still, Finn can't fly and is at the mercy of the dude in the pilot seat so that one didn't bug me much.)

And the map.
Ugh, the fucking map.
It's a STARMAP. It clearly covers ABOUT A TENTH OF THE GALAXY. It's got a CRAPTON of reference points - and you can't figure out where it might fit? It should have taken an astromech droid about 15 seconds to figure out where in the galaxy that was, and it's the part of the map with the end. Also, why a trail to follow and not just the end?

This, again, is classic Abrams: he doesn't know anything about distances, times, speeds, numbers, space, light, radio, physics, the source material of the world he's playing in. Rather than learning about it, or leaving it out, he keeps making very specific claims that make no sense whatsoever. At least in The Force Awakens none of the Abrams Errors were plot-critical and none of the plot hung on these clearly-wrong things being true.





[1]: Not a Star Wars reference. A reference to a universe where you very much *can* just hang still in space in hyperspace, and go down (or up!) any time you want.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

Abramsism appendix:

Finally, Starkiller Base: Okay, so they can CLEARLY terraform a planet, and they can CLEARLY aim the damn thing, and the Death Stars were both hyper-capable, so there's no particular reason they can't have put a hyperdrive on it. And the "it eats a star to provide power for the laser" is KIND OF AWESOME, as was the "as long as there's light, there's hope" part and the fact that the star re-ignited once the energy left storage (it should have exploded more but OMG HEY THEY GOT SOMETHING PHYSICS-ISH MOSTLY RIGHT I WILL TAKE IT).

But, uh, how did they charge up the first shot? And why not recharge (then move to a new star so the biosphere stays inhabitable) immediately after firing the first shot? Speaking of which, something with an atmosphere going into hyperspace makes me wonder how much of the air and trees and shit would be left, cf Falcon vs Tentacle Monster, but that's a smaller issue.

[lurkerwithout.livejournal.com]

No Ewoks

Thats it, I'm out!

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

Awesome bits:

Kylo Ren is a low-rent Darth Vader: YES EXACTLY AND THIS WAS AWESOME. You can't match Darth Vader, because you can't *be* the original Spaceman In Black and you can't measure up to three and a half decades of classic. So it's a great decision that they didn't even try. Ren isn't wearing an environment suit to survive, he's wearing a spooky mask because he thinks it makes him spookier. Ren isn't a ruthless killer, he's hesitant and worried and when he loses his temper he takes out *things*, not people. Ren does PROPERTY DAMAGE where Vader chokes the shit out of people. Ren is a cheap copy of Darth Vader who doesn't measure up *by design*.

Rei and Finn: Rei is just great in every scene. Finn is excellent and gets most of the good jokes. They work well together.

Rei: She's a self-rescuing princess and she gets to win the big fight without a man saving her. Always nice. The, uh, "secret" of her identity isn't exactly a deep secret, though. 2 minutes after we first see her she's sitting holding a helmet that clearly has personal meaning to her. It's an X-Wing pilot's helmet, circa Battle Of Yavin, of pilot Red Five. Which is to say, Luke Skywalker.

Finn: torrain thought his characterisation seemed a little rushed, but I disagree, because he STARTED as the Little Stormtrooper Who Couldn't, the guy with qualms, who realised that his bridge was burning and jumped as far as he could, as fast as he could. Wacky Theory: the bar owner mentions recognising eyes she's seen before, and clearly he wants to run. She's got a double meaning: She can clearly see he wants to run away, and she also recognises him. Finn was taken from his family very young and has no idea who his parents are, but he's clearly force-sensitive, and pretty strong even if he's not in the same class as the Skywalkers. My theory: I don't know who his parents or grandparents are, but his great-grandfather is one Master Mace Windu, Samuel L Jackson's character from the bad movies.

Leia and Han: Carrie Fisher and Harrison Ford were clearly enjoying themselves and brought a great deal of awesome to their roles. Also, Leia still being Skywalker-style "definitely Force-sensitive although not a Jedi" always makes me happy.

Starkiller Base: all it needed was a prerecorded Peter Cushing "You may fire when ready". Yes, yes, interstellar FTL lasergun SHUT UP, the dude from Stargate Universe explained it: "Somehow, they've made a Hyperspace laser gun!"

Starkiller Base's name: In the original script of the first Star Wars, a certain whiny farmboy was named "Luke Starkiller".

Definitely some more things, those are just all what immediately jump out at me.

[torrain.livejournal.com]

Re Finn: is it possible his Force-sensitivity is part of why he quit? I get the impression that the First Order troopers were indoctrinated fairly heavily, and yet the first time he sees people getting killed he bails with admirable conviction.(1) I'm guessing the murder of a village might not produce a truly large-scale disturbance in the Force, but I'm wondering if it was enough to help him go.

(I still grin a little over "No-one looked at mgs the way you did." She looked at you like she was gonna beat your ass with a stick, and she did.)

Love the two sides, light/dark, shooter/protector division, mind.
===
(1)"Alright, then, I'll GO to Hell!"

[malovich.livejournal.com]

I'm assuming charging, storage, and discharging don't necessarily take up an entire sun's worth of energy.

I can see failsafes keeping the energy of the sun from exploding right up until it's stable enough then finally giving out as it vapourizes.

What I *can't* get out of my mind are those bolts of energy coming out of the Starkiller... visibly... then splitting... then being watched as they crawled across the sky... so visible on a human-eye scale... hitting several targets in close proximity...

Were they all in the same system? No, because they'd see their own star get sucked up... I... I can't even... faster-than-light emissions visible... AIEEEE

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that's a classic Abrams-ism: ABSOLUTELY no sense of time, distance, velocity, scale, population, the laws of physics, the tendency of light to go in a straight line whenever it can.... Basically, if it's possible for something to have a number, JJ Abrams will always both specify that number and have that number be the *dumbest possible number* that contradicts *as many things as possible* for that value.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

Oh, and:
I'm assuming charging, storage, and discharging don't necessarily take up an entire sun's worth of energy.

Well, sure, so they only used part of the sun for the first shot, which might also be why their world is so cold and snowy at the moment.

But then they're going to use the ENTIRE star for the second shot? Which will be their last shot, rendering their planet a lifeless frozen husk and making their superweapon useless, in an entire galaxy of people who just say them nuke 5-8 planets and who know that they have from now until the next Starkiller is built (so, a few decades then) to destroy the New Order?

Nah, in order for the Starkiller to not be the most counterproductive superweapon of all time, in a universe that's already had *two* Death Stars and a droid army? The entire planet has to be mobile.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

The, uh, "secret" of her identity isn't exactly a deep secret, though.

At least Luke specifically ISN'T looking for her - they're not hiding Darth Vader's son from Darth Vader by putting him on Darth Vader's home planet, with Darth Vader's only surviving relatives, this time.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

Also awesome: Han Solo shoots many people in this movie. As far as I can tell, *not one of them* has shot at him first when he fires. When there's a firefight, Han starts it. But at no time does the fight start with Han *returning* fire.

Put another way: Han Shoots First.

(At least, as far as I remember. I wasn't watching specifically for that until partway through.)

[affreca.livejournal.com]

Thanks for helping me identify what was bothering me about TFA - sense of the scale. It's what killed the Star Trek reboot for me (actually, I was out after the giant canyon in Iowa).

[jayblanc.livejournal.com]

Good News. Abrams is not the creative lead for the franchise, and will have no further role in production of sequels and spin-offs.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

I know, and I'm very happy about it. And he's pointedly *not* writing or directing the third Star Trek movie, although he's still "producing".

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

The worst parts about the Star Trek reboot, for me, were 1) when Abrams clearly and beyond any shadow of doubt established that the Klingon homeworld is somewhere farther than Mars' orbit, but inside Jupiter's - and 2) that humans on Earth can't see the moon.

Basic. Math. Errors.

[kierthos.livejournal.com]

Have they come out and said he is Force sensitive? I mean, you don't have to be one to use a lightsaber. You're just almost certainly going to suck at using it.

[malovich.livejournal.com]

'Nah, in order for the Starkiller to not be the most counterproductive superweapon of all time, in a universe that's already had *two* Death Stars and a droid army? The entire planet has to be mobile.'

Yeah, if they can deplete a star... fuck, nevermind that, what about the amount of time it would have taken those shots to have hit their targets if they aren't in the system, assuming lightspeed? What, years? Decades? Far better to arrive in-system, and blow your targets away.

[malovich.livejournal.com]

'My theory: I don't know who his parents or grandparents are, but his great-grandfather is one Master Mace Windu, Samuel L Jackson's character from the bad movies.'

FUCK YES I dear so hope for this.

[torrain.livejournal.com]

Nope, but they have come out and said that he went from heavily trained stormtrooper with no prior indications of questionable behaviour to bravely breaking out an enemy prisoner the first time he was in combat and saw the Empire killing people. That seemed kind of unusual to me. :)

[torrain.livejournal.com]

Why does the ENTIRETY OF THE REPUBLIC consist of only four planets, on which are docked 100% of all Republic ships, all in the same star system, all within easy viewing from the surface of a *fifth* planet that just happens to have all of our heroes but isn't part of the Republic?

Huh, I could have sworn their were five. Now I want to rewatch.

WRT to the map, and a trail to follow: the Empire has a history of deleting all records of information--I do remember that from movies that predate the current in-universe events by maybe sixty-eighty years, even if the only other things I really remember are an anti-smoking ad and General Grevious's style--space is really really big, and even if there isn't something special about coming in exactly that way--

Star Wars is about the journey. Star Wars has always been about the journey.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

, I could have sworn their were five

Four, five, doesn't matter. There are *tens of thousands* of Republic Senate seats, each representing either a planet or a group of planets. And the entire Republic navy does not land on a planet while in port and does not all sit in port simultaneously.

So, let's assume they took out Coruscant (the seat of government for both the Empire *and* the Republic) and four other heavily populated important worlds - Corellia (Han Solo's home planet!), Mon Calamari (Admiral Ackbar's!), wherever the fuck the Alderaanian expats settled, and another - because somehow all of those are in the same fucking star system within easy bare-eye viewing of each other and of a sixth planet (meaning, they're ALL FIVE way closer to where Finn was standing than any other planet is to Earth).

Congratulations, you now have a few tens of thousands of regional autonomous governments, now operating without oversight, all of whom have seen that you may be a genocidal lunatic who is a direct and immediate threat to them personally but you have at most one more shot of your big gun. And you have only, like, one ship apart from it.

the Empire has a history of deleting all records of information

It's *a starmap* of *a tenth of the galaxy*. A middle chunk, even, not even a bunch of Rim systems. People have been travelling through there constently for thousands of years, they'd *notice* if in that whole chunk of the galaxy all the maps were like "uh, no stars here", especially when they can see those stars and need to route around them. And if there WAS a giant blank spot on every starmap and nobody had bothered to ask why in 20 years, it would still be pretty easy to figure out where the map chunk that matches the blank spot in size and shape goes.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

They actually do bother to cover that one - it fires the blast through Hyperspace, meaning it's going FTL in exactly the same way as all the ships go FTL. The Dude From Stargate Universe says so during the briefing.

This is handwavy Star Wars Physics, but at least they handwaved it.

(This also kind of explains why people can see it in real-time as it moves: The light coming off the blast in all directions is ALSO moving FTL and leaking out of hyperspace into realspace)

[torrain.livejournal.com]

There are *tens of thousands* of Republic Senate seats, each representing either a planet or a group of planets.

I thought the Senate was disbanded in A New Hope?

I don't remember the details of the context, but I went looking and I found the quote "The Imperial Senate will no longer be of any concern to us. I've just received word that the Emperor has dissolved the council permanently. The last remnants of the Old Republic have been swept away." I remember that, and it left me thinking:

What's currently the Republic isn't the Old Republic, the great arena full of people that cheered Jar-Jar on, thousands and thousands of planets strong. It's whatever the New Republic turned into over the last ?thirty? years as the whole Republic-ing thing apparently didn't seem very important, and I am honestly not surprised if a bunch of members (and I don't know how many there are!) are stepping back saying "well, we didn't expect that. Fire from the sky and planets ignited, my word. Reconsidering options now."

(Poking at the Star Wars wikia says something about the New Republic being in the hundreds, not thousands. It also said something about the Republic disarming itself and Leia creating the Resistance because the Republic didn't recognize the First Order as a threat, but I confess I have limited time to go down that rabbit hole and anyway it wasn't in the movie.)

WRT the starmap: I'm not saying no-one knows where it is, and I'm sure the local people have maps, but that doesn't mean that the First Order knows where there is. They needed the bit of the map that showed where Luke was. I believe they didn't even know where to start, because they lose things, but even so it's not like they can grab directions from anywhere else, they need that map because it has the X that marks the Jedi spot.

Same with the Resistance. Leia knows where to start! She has a starmap of a tenth of the galaxy. There's a missing spot. That means that without the starmap, all she needs to do is search... assuming the missing spot was 1/20th the size of the map... half a percent of the volume of the galaxy for a Jedi who's decided he doesn't want to be found.

The starmap seems like it would make this much easier.

[xengar.livejournal.com]

Speaking of which, something with an atmosphere going into hyperspace makes me wonder how much of the air and trees and shit would be left, cf Falcon vs Tentacle Monster, but that's a smaller issue.

I've always (well, always since I was old enough to question such things) assumed that in the Star Wars universe space is full of non-breathable air. This is why ships handle exactly this same close to planets and far away. This is why pilots wear acceleration suits and breathmasks, but not pressure suits. This is why there is sound in space...

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

She has a starmap of a tenth of the galaxy. There's a missing spot.

No. The missing spot *is* a tenth of the galaxy.

The map that leads to Luke, the super-important piece that they fight over for the whole movie, covers a tenth of the galaxy. The bit that R2 produces at the end of the movie is the other 90% of *the whole freaking galaxy*.

On that map, covering 10% of the Galaxy, is the "X Marks The Jedi" spot. And also a whole freaking lot of reference stars.

Finding those reference stars, and thus which 10% of the galaxy that is, and thus where Luke was, should have been trivial. Maybe they have to put it on hold because, hey, Starkiller - but 3POs line about "we don't have enough information" is stupid and wrong. It's yet another clear example of JJ Abrams doesn't understand numbers, distances, times, navigation, maps, or anything about the universe, and R2's emergence with the rest of the map was pointless.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

Poking at the Star Wars wikia says something about the New Republic being in the hundreds [...] I confess I have limited time to go down that rabbit hole and anyway it wasn't in the movie.

Even if it's "hundreds", it's still much more than FIVE. But yes.