 Hello and welcome to a very special Verge roundtable all about Star Wars The Force Awakens. And not just the film itself but literally the culture around it as like the last year has been nothing but Star Wars consuming, all merchandising and culture and pretty much everything there is to have. So just a little bit of context, we saw The Force Awakens last night, everyone here, we are going to talk about spoilers a lot. So if you haven't seen the movie yet, maybe just pause it, come back to us later, it'll still be here. But anyway, let's go ahead and get started. So I'm Ross Miller, I'm going to be moderating, kind of helping everything go along and these are the experts who are actually going to be talking. So I'm Lauren Gresh, I write about space so I know something about stars, I think. I'm Tom Connors, I do videos so I know something about film. I'm Sean O'Kane, I really like Star Wars. And I'm Kwame Opa, I'm a news editor and I occasionally review films. Cool, so you're the one with the job title here. Yeah, it doesn't matter. Let's go ahead and get started. So this is literally less than 12 hours ago, we all just saw the movie for the first time. So what was kind of your immediate reaction and also now that you've had a little bit of sleep, how has that changed? A little bit of sleep is pretty much operative as a fact of it. I got two hours sleep so it was great. This is a new movie to an extent but we are still obsessed and talking about all the old nostalgia stuff. And I think it's like, you were talking about this earlier, it is a new, new hope. Yeah, I think our reviewer Tasha did a really great job of setting up how I feel personally. It was an alternate universe version of a new hope set in the same universe. And I thought that was very on point. And I fully understand, I'm going to be in the minority here and most people will be like, yes, this is what we want, we don't want the prequels that are completely different from the beginning. We want what we know and love. However, I feel like it was so, it mimicked a new hope so precisely. And it just felt like it didn't move anything forward for me. I wanted something new and I didn't really get that. Yeah, I mean, I'm willing to split the difference. I don't disagree with you entirely and I'm going to get to that point, but it really was basically a beat for beat remake in a lot of ways of A New Hope. You have the desert planet which was basically Tatooine. You have the invasion of the Citadel which was basically the Death Star. You have the last strike in the end and the explosion. It's like all these moments, even the most eyes-ly cantina scene, basically the same. But enough was different where they're setting up all these new beats that are going to happen in the next movies with these new characters which are fully fleshed out. And it felt like JJ Abrams does this a lot. He did this really, really purposefully and kind of badly in the Star Trek films, particularly with the Star Trek Into Darkness. But this one he did the same thing. What, I'm talking about that movie? I'm a Star Trek fan. Very up-to-date. But he did effectively the same thing with this movie, but it worked because he very clearly cared and was trying to get fans to not only forgive the past and forget the prequels, but also create this new saga within this saga. I had a weird experience because I am purposefully a spoiler junkie, so I came in knowing pretty much the entire film. So I was like, I'm not going to be disappointed by the fact that it is the same Star Wars storyboard kind of juggled together and shuffled around. And that way I could just focus on the moments. To me Star Wars has always been the moments. I didn't see the original ones in the theaters. I just know these certain key moments. There's a style, there's a performance to it. So yeah, it's a reboot of myth, essentially. It's about the characters, man. This is JJ Abrams we're talking about. It's not about the story, it's about the characters. Oh, but the story is so important to me. So here's the one thing. I think what I wish I would have seen is that he was very clear at one point. You're like, oh, I get the formula. I get it. And I wish there was just that one thing he would do that fucked with the formula just a bit. You know what I mean? Yeah. Like it doesn't like, you know, let's get into the big spoiler that Han dies, right? Sorry, everyone. But so that whole scene is happening, and I feel like they're drawing it out, like making you think, well, maybe it's not because it's so long. But when the same thing you just expect to happen happens. That was not a twist for me at all. It wasn't a twist. That was very clear. It was like somebody's going to die in this movie. And then when it was seen as that happened, I was like, Han's dead. Even Chris, my boyfriend, sitting next to me, he's like, oh, he's about to get dead. Everyone in the theater saw it, regardless of the fact that you could see Obi-Wan like foreshadowing of that. But like an easier thing to do. Like even like he gets so died, but you get so put to a twist. And they're like, what if at the end, because like they made issues with between Leia and Han, right? Like what if Han didn't like be really nice to Kylo in that scene? What if he was like a stern father? And like the scenes where Kylo's like, oh, he'll let you down and stuff like that. Like what if that came to a head and that was the images for him to actually call him and not just, well, I have to do this because I'm evil now. What if Han killed Kylo? Like what if they just kind of went crazy? I mean, that would have been, that would have truly shocked me. It would have shocked me too, because Harrison Ford's not going to sign a three-year contract for anything these days. I mean, anyone going to the film thinking that he was going to be around for all three years. Yeah, yeah. Especially because all the marketing is doing, like, you know he's like, I'm done, guys. Later. This is a movie that injured him. He's not coming back. Like why would he do that? I mean, so I saw that. I mean, I like all of you guys saw that coming. From the moment that he sees him out on that catwalk, we could rename a lot of the Star Wars movies just like the father and son on a catwalk. I mean, this is like of all the tropes they redo, this was like, I was like, really? A catwalk again? Well, it also old sage dies. Right. Also a bottomless pit. Bottomless pit. Lots of bottomless pits. Why are there so many bottomless pits? I mean, where do they all go? But I didn't really mind, I didn't really mind the way that they played it. Like I knew that he was going to die, but that scene was not only incredibly well acted, which I think you can say about almost the entire movie. I think some people probably won't love some of Kylo Ren's stuff, especially with his mask off, but like I thought that scene was so well acted and it could have been screwed up by acting really easily and by bad dialogue and I think they played it really well. And even though you knew he was going to die, that turn, I mean, they give Kylo Ren that beat. He has that moment where some people in the audience probably believed it. Some people probably bought like, oh, he's going to be good. Like maybe he's not going to be the bad guy in the next couple of movies. And then it was one of a number of really subtle touches by JJ Abrams throughout this whole movie that happened here that I really loved, which was just not only does he turn in his emotions a little bit, but it's right when the sun goes out that's powering this weapon. And the blue on his face disappears and it just goes to red. And I thought that was like- It was really impactful. Even though I knew it was coming, I loved the way they played it. And if I was hoping for them to like really change up the formula, I care less about it happening in really the first two thirds of the movie and would rather have had it happen with, to me, the big one was the Death Star, the Starkiller base. The beats through the first two thirds of the movie- It's the Death Star. Yeah. The beats, and they even make that joke. The beats through the first two thirds of the movie, I'm okay with you kind of like rehashing them and messing with them, but knowing that that's what's going to be at the end the entire time, like as soon as you see that thing, knowing they're going to have to do a trench run, knowing they're going to have to find a weakness, like that made that whole part kind of like, you could feel the air kind of get sucked out a little when they showed it, and everybody was like, oh man, this is going to be where it ends, which is why I'm glad that like they really went the extra step and like brought Rey to Luke at the very end of the movie, because at least it gave you one more little bit of scenery that wasn't just like, they're celebrating and it's over. Let's talk about that, because I feel like maybe I'm on the outside of the opinion on this, but I hated that scene. The final scene. Oh, the final scene? Oh no, we also joked, it was like, oh, Luke's just been standing looking at the ocean for years, like waiting for her to come back. It's not just that, it's just like, if you're going to like languish in that moment for so long, just give me something. I can't wait, I can't wait. Give me something. It was drawn out. The meme of like, the shot from like her face to his, her face to his, and it was like, one more shot of his face where he's like, bleh, and then you're just like, oh. I feel like the internet has ruined me, because that was my thought too when I'm watching this scene, like I'm sure it's very beautiful, but my first thought is this is a three panel meme that's going to be on Reddit as soon as there's a home video release. And it's going to end with, I gotta poop. Like, that's how it's going to end. That's happening. What did you think of the helicopter shot there? Because that kind of sucked me out a little bit too. That was like a bizarre directorial choice. And Brian, our reviewer said it was like his favorite shot, ending shot of an action movie. Brian did it, Patton Oswalt did too on Twitter. I really love it. Was it Patton that said that or Brian did? I really love the same difference. I would have been fine with like the last shot being on Rey holding out and then you cut. That would have been fine with me. Well, I mean, I think, I do love what I think they're setting up there, which is, so Luke Skywalker disappeared after he tried to basically start a new Jedi Order, starting with Ben, Kylo Ren. And that went haywire. So he felt like Han did, super responsible for this guy becoming super evil, which like you'd think you'd know that that was like a pretty good possibility by this point with dealing with the force. And also your genetics, the Skywalker family. So he goes into exile and is like, you know, all rot, whatever. But I love what that scene sets up because it's like this idea of like, that's where that little head nod that Luke kind of does and you can kind of see his eyes welling up a little bit too is like, she's handing him that lightsaber and he's like, no, we really can't do this. And she's like, obviously like, no, like I'm like probably going to be the most pure force person ever. So like, listen to me. And I like where that's going to go. That's the tension that's going to start the next movie. And like this movie felt like, I think Ennole Yoshida said this best the other day was like, we could, in fact, Painterbird is another trailer. Like this is just exposition for a new trilogy. I mean, I thought they were going to end with the Falcon going to hyperspace. I thought they were going to cut it there. And then when they actually, and then I was like, wait, no, they got to that island. I was like, oh no, they filmed there. Like they've got one more scene. Well, let's also, okay, I want to talk about the bad guys because they are the ones I had the biggest problem with. They seemed so absurdly evil to the point where I was just like, like, I get it. The dark side is dark, but the empire at least, it seemed more Machiavellian to me. It was like, they wanted to make everyone fear them into submission by showing these big shows of strength by destroying a planet. They didn't kill everyone all the time. They didn't have to though. They were already in charge. They were in charge. They were Nazis. You could believe why people would want it. You could be very clear that they were Nazis. Oh yeah, I'm not sure if that would be fair. As a political entity, they were Nazis. Like there's so much more than politics for the first order. But then here we have, they're the first order and they are from the ashes of a completely decimated empire. Well, they're not completely decimated though. I mean, but they destroyed two death zones. We all just actually view it. I feel so bad. But what's really great is the film doesn't actually have to go into that and like they didn't bother doing that and I think that was a strength of the film actually was like making it more ambiguous. I guess. To me, all it seemed like they did was take the bad guys and make them better. Take the Death Star and make it bigger. There was nothing different. That was one of the jokes that totally didn't land where someone was like, so it's like a Death Star but even bigger. I think Ms. Maaz actually said, I've seen evil so many times. First it was a Sith, then it was the Empire, now it's the First Order. I was like, okay, we're all on the same page. There's a self-awareness. Well, that's the universe that it exists in now is like that's basically how it's set up is like they're... The Return of the Jedi didn't end with the Rebel Alliance defeating the Empire. It ended with them wounding them severely by beating their second version of their greatest weapon but despite all the shots of Ewoks and people on Coruscant dancing around, it's like they had a lot of work to do after that. That's what the original novels really set up was like that are now not part of canon anymore. It's like how do you go apart A, convincing people that yeah, the Empire really was bad. And us, we're the new Republic. We want to set up a whole new Senate which is what corrupted in the first place. That struggle, even though all of those specifics don't exist anymore, they're starting to build those back out in more novels and they're trying to set up that struggle of how do you rebuild a society after it's been affected by this thing. The problem is they totally dodged that in the movie. You can address it a little bit, I think, because here's this giant new weapon. There's this 10 times bigger Death Star. They're going to use it to do horrible, unspeakable things. They aim it at the center of the Republic but they give that scene so little weight. Yeah. If we hadn't talked about it, I wouldn't know who was killed on those planets. Yeah, they show one shot of- Does anyone even know what planet it was? No. It was the Hosnian system but that's all I know. How did we even know that? I mean, originally when they do it with Leia, they blow up her planet. As stakes were her- They give that scene a ton of presence and weight because you see Alderaan through the view screen. You see her come into the shot. You get a lot of play where- I wonder at some point if it's not really worth doing that exact thing again. Maybe the reason that was quick was because if you try to put emotional stakes behind it again, it's just like, oh, that happened. It felt like just a show of force for the sake of it. This is their war machine that they're going to demonstrate their power even though there is this highly fanatical radicalized sect of the old empire. I don't even think the show of force is- The weight is missing. The problem is they just disabled- All right, so here's the resistance which is the fighting arm of the Republic that's trying to bring this galaxy back together. Here's the first order, the guys that can mess it up. They do. They mess it up. They kill the entire fleet basically and they ruin where the new galactic senate is being set up. That doesn't even get more than a line. It's hard to understand. At first, when whatever is happening, the sun power turned into laser beams or whatever, the literal Star Wars as you put it. The Star Wars, yeah. I was saying earlier. They fought with stars. It is a war with stars. That stuff shoots out of the Starkiller base, right? It's a beam, but actually no, it's these little beams. It starts to illuminate these little balls that are out in space which is so far away or something. They did a bad job setting up the place of all these things and then it starts to go towards what look like tiny little things. I was like, oh, it's part of a bigger galaxy spanning weapon. It's going to hit these things and almost like on the Death Star, refocus into one bit. It's like, no, those were just four planets that apparently hang out right next to each other. Yeah, because if I'm rebuilding an entire galaxy, I definitely want to put my entire fleet and the Galactic Senate on four planets that are right next to each other. Everyone knows about it. You just said there's maybe a local government here and there, but that's not like the resistance is probably the new republic thing. Everything's being set up. I want to just say about that, and I don't know if maybe I'm among the minority of us. I feel like that was like the strength of the film was not going into all this. I think so, but I just think that moment needed more weight. I agree it needs more weight, but I feel like in the same way, and there was a couple things I thought they did well, like Captain Phasma, right? She gets one name call near the end of the movie in a very similar way to Boba Fett got called, like one name call in the second movie was in. It feels very much like the original trilogy did where merchandising is going to do a better job of naming and making these characters real things than the actual films themselves. That leads to like, I'm excited for the next generation of kids to nerd out about that because it's not in the film. It's cool to know that those facts that aren't in the film and it feels like there are enough of those little things that like, well, what is these worlds? Why are they important? I feel like that can be filled in with a lot of supplemental material that nerds can just take it. I think that was the beauty of the first Star Wars. It was a simple story with a very complicated universe. That's it. Now it's like, go market it. It's a cynical way to put it, or go build this world around it and create these little pockets if you want to care about you can do it, which is still kind of a cynical way of looking at it. But it's a beautiful way of saying, we're going to just build a world and a playground to explore. This is just one part of it that kind of keeps it on a through line. I feel like that stuff was the worst part of the prequels, like the big galactic stuff. Yeah, I mean that's tipping the boat too far in the other direction. It just went to pure exposition and just wound up being completely real. But at the same time, if we're talking about the political struggle, the power struggle, it wanted a little bit more than just that we're bad guys and we like to kill people. Because that seemed to be the main motivation for me. It didn't seem to be. And I know- That's what I was missing too. The original Star Wars also wasn't that complex either. Yeah, no, that's the thing. And if you go back and given that this is a pretty assiduous remake of that film, then you have to go back and say, well, that was a simple story that didn't really do anything in terms of world building except for what was just said plainly. And you can do what you want in that world and assume things, but there wasn't a whole lot you can only assume so much. They were on a risk too. Emily brought this up really, I think she said it really well in the VirgCast. There are horrible unspeakable things that happen in all the movies and all this stuff, and they're presented in very weird ways. And you can see how the filmmakers behind these movies always have a hard time trying to figure out how to present them. So Anakin Skywalker is going to kill a bunch of kid Jedis. How do you present that without it being... I mean, they probably did a really bad job with that one, but this is the same thing. It's like, okay, how do they cripple the entire Republic? Let's blow up all their planets, kill billions of people, and destroy their fleet. But if you bask in it a little too much, then you're getting maybe... You're showing this atrocity that you need to move your story along a little too... You're laying it a little too bare for what is ostensibly a kids movie. But yeah, this all comes back to your original point, which is the bad guys are probably the weakest part of this movie, next to how much it copies the structure of the movie. I hate to make this comparison, but it felt very Avatar-like in terms of the bad guys were just, we want this one thing and we will do whatever it takes to get it. That comes from the way that they built out those characters. And Kylo Ren's the best of them all, as far as the bad guys that we see. Yeah, because he had at least that internal struggle going on. Yeah, and I'm so excited to see where he goes in the next few movies, especially because not only has he been doing this Gollum-ish light and dark struggle in his own mind and speaking to himself, but he also has... I love... This is another touch that I think J.J. Abrams pulled off really well, which is, here's this fanatical person who's super powerful and super evil and he wears this mask only out of this shameless devotion to this thing that he doesn't even understand. And then to the point that he will willingly take it off and be like, hey, look, I'm just a dude. And then by the end of the movie, he needs the mask because Rey slashes him with the lightsaber, which is so great. That's a great point too, just to go into a different place for a second. Nothing here was... Nothing in this movie was about twists. It was built with the idea of you could get this movie spoiled and it's fine. But early on, by the way, that's her son. That's Han's son. Okay, cool. I don't got to stress about that. Let's take the mask off early on. Let's just play it on performance and execution, less on, oh my god, there's a twist because that only counts once. And this is a movie that's going to be seen multiple times, probably this weekend and probably by everybody here. While still setting up a ton of mystery to go forward, like staying on the bad guy side, Snoke... Can we talk about Snoke for a second? Speaking of Gollum and Andy Serkis. I think all of us probably fell back on our chairs a little bit when he first appears because it's like, other than that cantina scene, up until that point in the movie, the use of CGI was very sparse and very smart. It was what we have heard, this return to practical effects. But we get to that scene and it's like, here's this massive person or whatever he is. And he's the most computer generated person. Oh my god, he did not look scary to me at all. He looked sad, like a dinosaur. But then they pull out and I saw the little control panel and I was like, oh good, it's going to be a hologram. And it was a hologram. Why not just make it a blue hologram? Why do that CGI? That just felt so weird. And then so obviously they're trying to set up, you want to know who this guy is, the supreme leader. It was such broad strokes for those guys and this necessary master. That's one thing that Star Wars has always had. There's almost always just two Sith at a time and they're almost always master and underling. So obviously they're setting that back up again. What's going to happen, we were talking about this, it's a giant hologram. He's going to be like, yay big. I hope he's human sized at least. I don't know where they're going to bring that. I'm definitely not interested. I'm curious what his story is and stuff. I didn't leave the theater being like, man, I've got to know what Snoke is all about. It was just too ham-fisted. But we never cared that much where Palpatine came from, he was just an entity. Yeah, and you don't even see him until Jedi. And then you find out in the prequels and you're like, well, you know what, some things are better left unsaid. I think what this film did head and shoulders above the prequels and in some ways above even the original trilogy was just pure dialogue and character work because that did the heavy lifting of the myth building. And JJ Abrams knows how to build characters. Like again, like... Ever seen Lost? Don't talk to me about Lost. Don't talk to me about Lost. But like, seriously, the acting throughout was brilliant. And like, I think the exchanges between like... The droids. The exchanges between... Well, you know what, we didn't have that, we didn't have bad droid humor in this movie. No, they kept it to a minimum. There's the thumbs up lighter moment, which was like, that was the hokey-est part, but I loved it. It was smart. But like, going back to the scene on the gangway plank, whatever, it was just like the subtle choices that the actors made that like build out this entire internal struggle with Kylo Ren, the history that Han had with him, the history that Han had with Leia, what happened with Kylo, what Kyle had with Luke such that he failed and effectively destroyed the entire New Jedi Order. Like, that was packed in that one scene, increased this entire universe around them in that one area. What I'm really excited for with these films is where the prequels had to introduce new characters who had stories ahead of them. They didn't have backstory that influenced what's happening in their lives now. And now we have all these rich characters with like, motivations beyond just, well, I'm a smuggler and I'm trying to be good. Or I'm a princess trying to be a badass. You know? But like, there's so much for the future to go in. Kylo Ren is really interesting because it feels like exactly what you wanted from the prequels in Anakin. This idea of someone who's like right on the edge and having to live those two things. I'm really excited to see how that plays out for three films rather than the last third of episode three, which was... Just like the most forced thing possible. He's like the Anakin Skywalker turning into Darth Vader that we deserved and not the one that we got. Exactly. Because he's gonna... It's gonna get brutal. Yeah. Like he is... They made him incredibly powerful. They also made Rey incredibly powerful. And I know that this is gonna be a point of contention, I think, once people see it a little bit more. And if you're really a fan of the original trilogy, there was some super power stuff going on here. These are like some superheroes. But I don't hate as much how quickly Rey adapted to the Force. Because it set up a really cool... We gotta talk about Rey. Because it's been way too long that we have not talked about probably the best Star Wars character ever. Yes. Honestly. She was by far the best. Anytime she was on screen, I was completely enthralled. And I think that also speaks to the strength of this movie. I know I've been criticizing a lot. But the best part, I think, of Force Awakens were the new people. The new elements I thought were really strong. And it's a lesson learned too. And this is where I'm like, I don't care that it was a reboot of The New Hope, because they did it a better way. But she's the anti-Luke. She's not a whiny little person. I fully believe... She lives on her own. And she lives in an at-at. She lives in a downed at-at, which is like the coolest thing. I want to make camp in an at-at. She actually goes into a Star Destroyer, like, yeah, this is where I go scavenging. It's amazing. They make her a capable human being, where it's like, of course she's going to be a badass, because she already is. We're just giving these to a skill. And I think everyone in some way wasn't a novice. Like, Finn, of course he's a great fighter. He's been dedicated his whole life. Poe, we know he's a great star fighter. It wasn't like these are just chance moments where they lucked out. Everyone was a capable human being that just happened, like, when the moment came, just acted on it. And did very convincing stuff. And also, like you're saying, very nuanced portrayals, very broad stroke characterizations. Capable in a lot of ways, too. Not just because she can jump around a Star Destroyer, or not just because she can climb around Starkiller Base. There are tangible reasons why she is this capable, strong person in a very physical sense. But also, emotionally, where one of the first scenes with her is that whole thing where Finn shows up in her town, and they're on the run now because there's an attack going on. And she's like, why are you holding my hand? Why are you holding it? Stop holding it. I don't need you to hold my hand. I feel like we could talk about this for a while, because I think this is one of my favorite parts of the movie. Because where I was mad that JJ didn't subvert things, he subverted every expectation of what you expect from a female role. Right? Immediately when she got into Falcon, and it wasn't going well, I was like, oh no, don't be woman driver. Don't do it, don't do it. And then she fucking pulls off the bat. That was the finest display of Ariel's effect I've seen in a long time. Yeah, I said it before we started. I loved that this shot, one of the first shots that we saw from this movie a year and a half ago, with the Millennium Falcon doing this loop-de-loop and winding up low on the sand, was not Han Solo. It was her making that maneuver. And that they also gave it weight. There was a reason for her to get low. There was enough little exposition to not just make it a cool thing, but she made it happen. And every moment, the entire time she's in that film, they set up an expectation of, oh, we have to go rescue her. Oh, wait, we get there, and she's fine. She seems well-controlled. She's connecting Han Solo on how to fix his own ship. Or even if he's not even saying it at the same time of her, which plays for humor, she's just doing it. And he's like, oh. And he's still stubborn enough as who Han Solo is to not thank her. There's that one moment where he walks away, and she just almost looks at the camera like, this asshole? Seriously? This is so great. I think my favorite part about her, though, is there's a tendency, at least how I see women in film when they're strong, they have a hard exterior. It's like they can't be emotional, and they can't be goofy. But the best part about her is that she is so charming, and she makes jokes, and she does mess up, too. She's not like Tom Cruise in Mission Impossible, who can't do anything wrong. But at the same time, she still has these really great qualities about her. So it felt really relatable, because it was like, oh, I make jokes, too. I can crack jokes, but I can also kick ass like Ray can. Which left all the room in the world for Finn to do some of that other stuff. Yeah. Finn was like, oh, sorry. He was like the live wire who is also too live wiry for his own good. He was almost too bumbly for my taste, but it played. Because Boyega is just incredible. I had not seen, until very recently, Attack the Block, which is his breakout movie, which wasn't even that big, but is a really incredible movie. I watched that before this movie, because I wanted to get a sense of him. He plays such a different character in that movie. He's like the cool, calm, collected leader. Whereas here, he was, like I said, he's like this bumbling live wire who has really cool motivations and stuff. He played it so well, and it was such a new energy to this kind of cast that we're used to. I think the interesting thing about the new cast is, I think it's very easy to see Ray as new Luke and Finn as new Han and Poe as Han-ish. Ray kind of subsumes all of those three original characters in a way, and is still a new character. The others do that too in their way. Finn is, he wants to be Luke and he's kind of Han, but he can't be that, so he has to be something different. I think the characters are new. I think they're completely new. It's their circumstances that haven't changed. Like you said, she is very different from Luke, but she has a very Luke backstory. Finn and Ray are a little bit deeper, but Poe was probably the same kind of surface level character that we had. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Although he was storming as hell. Yeah. I didn't feel like we got enough time with him. I felt that a lot about some of the characters too. We got a lot of time with Ray and Finn, and I'm very happy about that. And BB-8. And BB-8. I'm surprised we haven't just talked about BB-8 for a while. It was so adorable. It was great. Yeah, he was just perfect. There's nothing else to say. There's nothing else to say. But everybody else, I mean, you were talking about Captain Phasma. I feel like there's so much marketing about her. And we don't even see Brienne of Tarth's face in there. Gwenna and Christine. But honestly- I do like- I was excited by that. I was excited by the idea that she could just keep the mask on the entire time and be that sort of faceless badass without being like, I'm a woman too. You know, I feel like that's like a trope that gets pulled all the time where it's like, you don't need the Metroid trope. Yeah, you don't need to pull the mask. She can just be that faceless badass and live in that world. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But, you know, we've gone through all this stuff and we need to start wrapping up. But what was interesting is we talked about this is a cookie cutter script to an extent, a reboot of Star Wars. I don't see them being able to do the same thing with Empire episode whatever it's going to be now, 8, which is Rian Johnson's next big thing. Where do you see this kind of going forward? Man, if it was in anybody else's hands, I would be wondering how they're going to do this remix formula for Empire. That's where it would feel like it was going. But knowing Rian Johnson, I love his movies just on a surface level, but he is also, I think he is very under, a lot of people don't know who he is. He's director of Brick, director of Looper. He also did Brothers Bloom, which is one of the more, it's Edgar Wright level funny with its visual stylings. I mean, there's stuff that happens in the backgrounds of frames in that movie that made me laugh harder than I've laughed at dialogue in movies. And so he's the perfect person to follow J.J. Abrams and take that kinetic filmmaking style and keep things light and fun, but also develop these characters because he's such a good world builder. The way Looper opens up is this person comes into a scene and tries to steal something from some guy who lives on a bus in this really broken down part of town, and the guy who just comes out of his bus and just shoots the guy dead. That was a scene that I remember being like, wow, you just told me so much about the world that this movie is set in without saying anything, whereas any other director would, like Christopher Nolan would have given you 10 characters telling you about how the world is lawless in time turbulence, and it would have been totally awful. And so seeing how he's gonna take this story, I have faith that he's not just gonna make Empire. He's gonna take it in this weird new direction where there's this really big struggle between Luke and possibly his daughter Rey. We should talk about that. We should talk about that. I don't want Rey to be Luke or Han's daughter. I don't want that either. I think the strength of the Force in the original trilogy is that anyone... She's quite on it. Imagine though. Sleep. But like, the strength of the Force in the original trilogy was that anyone could be a Jedi. You could be a Jedi. And that was undermined in the prequels where it was like this whole notion of lineage, like, oh, the greatest Jedis were obviously Skywalker's, and now that most of the Jedi are gone, then it can only be a Skywalker. And the fear is like, you now have Ben Solo, and then you potentially have Rey Skywalker. And I feel like that just makes the world really small. It would be cool to see another, like, I don't know, maybe I should roll back on that statement, but another like virgin, like midichlorian birth, right? No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Just this idea that like Anakin was like a child born that had like really strong Force powers. Like, that could happen again for another like lineage that's not Skywalker. I like the idea, I like it. Right. Yeah, I like that. Roll back on the midichlorian. If they can flip it, because I think that's what it looks like they're hinting at, right? like you think, oh, she's gonna go to Luke and ask Luke to train her and maybe then they'll set up some new Jedi Order, but I think it's gonna go the other way. It's gonna take Rey showing power that like Luke is like, oh, it's not even gonna be worth it. Like, I'm not gonna be able to train you. And there's gonna be that and then there's gonna be... I do hope we get into some of the deeper stuff that like will still have to stay in the ancillary like novels and everything, but I hope they address in the next one this idea of like everybody else in the galaxy like is kind of not sure what's going on. Like no one really totally knows what happened. I mean, how the Republic died is gonna be a big part of the next movie too, but yeah, I mean, that's where I'm hoping to see it go. I think we're in a place where we should really start wrapping up. So the final thought, question I want from everybody is, what is the one big question you walked away from this film, like wanting to know? Like it could be comic, maybe my found a video game or a comic book or a TV show or maybe the next film. That was it for me. I just like what destroying the entire Republic does to like, cause like this whole effort to like rebuild, even if it wasn't in this movie, like, you know, you come out of Jedi basically kind of winning the battle, but then like you really start the process of like restoring peace to the galaxy and like what they've built up was just swept away like really, really quickly. And so like how that impacts, I mean, now you have this rebel resistance again, essentially, and whoever, like I don't know who they shift the bad guys to. Is it just gonna be Snoke and like Kylo Ren and what's left of the First Order? Like how many of them were there on Starkiller Base? Like I don't know who sets up as like, we know who the good people are and we know that their resources are severely impacted. So who are the bad guys now? Cause I'm not totally sure. I guess for me is, I guess for me is like with the reunion potentially or just the meeting of Rey and Luke, I would love to see an exploration of whether or not the Jedi are really a force for good in the galaxy. Cause you touched on this in the prequels and you know, it was inadequate and it wasn't really effectively done, but the Jedi are kind of useless. Like yes, Luke defeated the Emperor and Darth Vader, technically speaking, but they helped precipitate the Clone Wars. They helped bring about the downfall of the Republic. And Luke just failed in bringing about a new Jedi order because of his nephew. Like can this, you know, this whole notion that, you know, the force is good and evil, black and white, like the world is, the world as a whole is really, really gray and like everything else is very complicated. And the whole notion of just like, we have to hold onto the good is hard to actually do. And I don't think we've actually seen that yet. And that's a really good opportunity to do that in the next movie. I think maybe my biggest questions are just more of the backstories behind Finn and Rey. I mean, you talked about Rey, but I'm really kind of curious about Finn cause I'm not sure if there's more to his defection than just, oh, I saw my friend get killed and I was asked to slaughter a bunch of innocent villagers. Like that sucks. Also I was a janitor. Yeah. But also, and that leads me to my other thing. It's like, I feel like more people would leave then if that's what it took. So then I feel like there must be something deeper into why he of all people left and maybe there's more to his backstory. Who knows? I mean, it could just be that simple or it could not, but I'd like to find out. I think there's a reason that right near the end we hold on him sort of being rehabilitated and I think there's a reason why we hold on him there. And I think that's why they're setting that up. Yeah. I mean, he's definitely coming with us for the next two movies. So I'm sure there's going to be more to his story too. I think the one thing I'm wondering for the future is you make a film with such like exciting gender politics and then you have Colin Trevorrow doing episode nine who did probably the worst job I've ever seen with Jurassic World in terms of that. Like huge offensively. That like I don't equate like this film and how excited I am to see that character evolve and grow and have her journey possibly end with his direction. It scares me terribly. It's funny how much we've talked about trying to get away from like the original. Now that we've sort of we've used a new hope again to like launch this new part of Star Wars and like we want them to get away from some of that original stuff. But like now we're seeing like Rian Johnson really could make like the deep but still action heavy Empire kind of movie and then Carl Trevor could come in and make like the schlocky return of the Jedi and like but then I are. What are Colin Trevorrow's Ewoks? I wonder. I mean the thing that we've all really avoided here we've treated this like it's just another trilogy and it's going to be you know like what is it going to be like when we get to the end of it and Chris Plant brought up when we were talking this morning like a really good point like there's no end to this like a lot of people have written like the really smart line like we won't be alive to see the last Star Wars movie and like the implications of that are really hard. In line I looked at my wife and I was like we're probably going to take our kids to the like 10 years and I will take our kids to like the continuation of the story and like it's just going to always probably live with us because it will probably keep making money no matter what. I mean I hope it ends a trilogy at like episode 9 and like they just take a break for episode 10 do like 16,000 spin-offs. Right. But you're probably right. Yeah. I mean I think that cycles. I mean they're already doing spin-offs like how many times over. I would say though that like this film if this is true and we will have Star Wars for the future it was a really great start. Like at the end of the day I left the movie kind of like back and forth and if I really liked it or if I was like okay with it but like as a like platform to start with and like I think the bridge scene too like it felt like a bridge film into this world that like we are going to live in this world of Star Wars for a while and the world that they built was a great starting point so it's a great TV pilot which is a JJ Abrams. I'm telling you man lost. We're right back to lost. Let's talk about Felicity. I'll be honest I blame Damon Ludenoloff more. And on that note I want to thank everyone for joining me. I want to thank you guys for watching at home. If you want another take a completely different take our three brilliant film critics Emily Yoshida, Brian Bishop and Tasha Robinson have another take on this on the Verge cast. You can check that out now. Of course there's way more stuff at theverge.com I want to thank everyone individually. Tom Connors is Tom W Connors on Twitter. Lauren Grush is Lauren Grush. I'm Onorosco Noe, Call Me Opam and So Cane One. Thanks and again theverge.com way more Star Wars stuff way more non Star Wars stuff. You might want to take a break from that stuff. We'll help you out there too. Thanks for watching.
 Hello and welcome to a very special Verge roundtable all about Star Wars The Force Awakens.
 And not just the film itself but literally the culture around it as like the last year
 has been nothing but Star Wars consuming, all merchandising and culture and pretty much
 everything there is to have.
 So just a little bit of context, we saw The Force Awakens last night, everyone here, we
 are going to talk about spoilers a lot.
 So if you haven't seen the movie yet, maybe just pause it, come back to us later, it'll
 still be here.
 But anyway, let's go ahead and get started.
 So I'm Ross Miller, I'm going to be moderating, kind of helping everything go along and these
 are the experts who are actually going to be talking.
 So I'm Lauren Gresh, I write about space so I know something about stars, I think.
 I'm Tom Connors, I do videos so I know something about film.
 I'm Sean O'Kane, I really like Star Wars.
 And I'm Kwame Opa, I'm a news editor and I occasionally review films.
 Cool, so you're the one with the job title here.
 Yeah, it doesn't matter.
 Let's go ahead and get started.
 So this is literally less than 12 hours ago, we all just saw the movie for the first time.
 So what was kind of your immediate reaction and also now that you've had a little bit
 of sleep, how has that changed?
 A little bit of sleep is pretty much operative as a fact of it.
 I got two hours sleep so it was great.
 This is a new movie to an extent but we are still obsessed and talking about all the old
 nostalgia stuff.
 And I think it's like, you were talking about this earlier, it is a new, new hope.
 Yeah, I think our reviewer Tasha did a really great job of setting up how I feel personally.
 It was an alternate universe version of a new hope set in the same universe.
 And I thought that was very on point.
 And I fully understand, I'm going to be in the minority here and most people will be
 like, yes, this is what we want, we don't want the prequels that are completely different
 from the beginning.
 We want what we know and love.
 However, I feel like it was so, it mimicked a new hope so precisely.
 And it just felt like it didn't move anything forward for me.
 I wanted something new and I didn't really get that.
 Yeah, I mean, I'm willing to split the difference.
 I don't disagree with you entirely and I'm going to get to that point, but it really
 was basically a beat for beat remake in a lot of ways of A New Hope.
 You have the desert planet which was basically Tatooine.
 You have the invasion of the Citadel which was basically the Death Star.
 You have the last strike in the end and the explosion.
 It's like all these moments, even the most eyes-ly cantina scene, basically the same.
 But enough was different where they're setting up all these new beats that are going to happen
 in the next movies with these new characters which are fully fleshed out.
 And it felt like JJ Abrams does this a lot.
 He did this really, really purposefully and kind of badly in the Star Trek films, particularly
 with the Star Trek Into Darkness.
 But this one he did the same thing.
 What, I'm talking about that movie?
 I'm a Star Trek fan.
 Very up-to-date.
 But he did effectively the same thing with this movie, but it worked because he very
 clearly cared and was trying to get fans to not only forgive the past and forget the prequels,
 but also create this new saga within this saga.
 I had a weird experience because I am purposefully a spoiler junkie, so I came in knowing pretty
 much the entire film.
 So I was like, I'm not going to be disappointed by the fact that it is the same Star Wars
 storyboard kind of juggled together and shuffled around.
 And that way I could just focus on the moments.
 To me Star Wars has always been the moments.
 I didn't see the original ones in the theaters.
 I just know these certain key moments.
 There's a style, there's a performance to it.
 So yeah, it's a reboot of myth, essentially.
 It's about the characters, man.
 This is JJ Abrams we're talking about.
 It's not about the story, it's about the characters.
 Oh, but the story is so important to me.
 So here's the one thing.
 I think what I wish I would have seen is that he was very clear at one point.
 You're like, oh, I get the formula.
 I get it.
 And I wish there was just that one thing he would do that fucked with the formula just
 a bit.
 You know what I mean?
 Yeah.
 Like it doesn't like, you know, let's get into the big spoiler that Han dies, right?
 Sorry, everyone.
 But so that whole scene is happening, and I feel like they're drawing it out, like making
 you think, well, maybe it's not because it's so long.
 But when the same thing you just expect to happen happens.
 That was not a twist for me at all.
 It wasn't a twist.
 That was very clear.
 It was like somebody's going to die in this movie.
 And then when it was seen as that happened, I was like, Han's dead.
 Even Chris, my boyfriend, sitting next to me, he's like, oh, he's about to get dead.
 Everyone in the theater saw it, regardless of the fact that you could see Obi-Wan like
 foreshadowing of that.
 But like an easier thing to do.
 Like even like he gets so died, but you get so put to a twist.
 And they're like, what if at the end, because like they made issues with between Leia and
 Han, right?
 Like what if Han didn't like be really nice to Kylo in that scene?
 What if he was like a stern father?
 And like the scenes where Kylo's like, oh, he'll let you down and stuff like that.
 Like what if that came to a head and that was the images for him to actually call him
 and not just, well, I have to do this because I'm evil now.
 What if Han killed Kylo?
 Like what if they just kind of went crazy?
 I mean, that would have been, that would have truly shocked me.
 It would have shocked me too, because Harrison Ford's not going to sign a three-year contract
 for anything these days.
 I mean, anyone going to the film thinking that he was going to be around for all three
 years.
 Yeah, yeah.
 Especially because all the marketing is doing, like, you know he's like, I'm done, guys.
 Later.
 This is a movie that injured him.
 He's not coming back.
 Like why would he do that?
 I mean, so I saw that.
 I mean, I like all of you guys saw that coming.
 From the moment that he sees him out on that catwalk, we could rename a lot of the Star
 Wars movies just like the father and son on a catwalk.
 I mean, this is like of all the tropes they redo, this was like, I was like, really?
 A catwalk again?
 Well, it also old sage dies.
 Right.
 Also a bottomless pit.
 Bottomless pit.
 Lots of bottomless pits.
 Why are there so many bottomless pits?
 I mean, where do they all go?
 But I didn't really mind, I didn't really mind the way that they played it.
 Like I knew that he was going to die, but that scene was not only incredibly well acted,
 which I think you can say about almost the entire movie.
 I think some people probably won't love some of Kylo Ren's stuff, especially with his mask
 off, but like I thought that scene was so well acted and it could have been screwed
 up by acting really easily and by bad dialogue and I think they played it really well.
 And even though you knew he was going to die, that turn, I mean, they give Kylo Ren that
 beat.
 He has that moment where some people in the audience probably believed it.
 Some people probably bought like, oh, he's going to be good.
 Like maybe he's not going to be the bad guy in the next couple of movies.
 And then it was one of a number of really subtle touches by JJ Abrams throughout this
 whole movie that happened here that I really loved, which was just not only does he turn
 in his emotions a little bit, but it's right when the sun goes out that's powering this
 weapon.
 And the blue on his face disappears and it just goes to red.
 And I thought that was like-
 It was really impactful.
 Even though I knew it was coming, I loved the way they played it.
 And if I was hoping for them to like really change up the formula, I care less about it
 happening in really the first two thirds of the movie and would rather have had it happen
 with, to me, the big one was the Death Star, the Starkiller base.
 The beats through the first two thirds of the movie-
 It's the Death Star.
 Yeah.
 The beats, and they even make that joke.
 The beats through the first two thirds of the movie, I'm okay with you kind of like
 rehashing them and messing with them, but knowing that that's what's going to be at
 the end the entire time, like as soon as you see that thing, knowing they're going to have
 to do a trench run, knowing they're going to have to find a weakness, like that made
 that whole part kind of like, you could feel the air kind of get sucked out a little when
 they showed it, and everybody was like, oh man, this is going to be where it ends, which
 is why I'm glad that like they really went the extra step and like brought Rey to Luke
 at the very end of the movie, because at least it gave you one more little bit of scenery
 that wasn't just like, they're celebrating and it's over.
 Let's talk about that, because I feel like maybe I'm on the outside of the opinion on
 this, but I hated that scene.
 The final scene.
 Oh, the final scene?
 Oh no, we also joked, it was like, oh, Luke's just been standing looking at the ocean for
 years, like waiting for her to come back.
 It's not just that, it's just like, if you're going to like languish in that moment for
 so long, just give me something.
 I can't wait, I can't wait.
 Give me something.
 It was drawn out.
 The meme of like, the shot from like her face to his, her face to his, and it was like,
 one more shot of his face where he's like, bleh, and then you're just like, oh.
 I feel like the internet has ruined me, because that was my thought too when I'm watching
 this scene, like I'm sure it's very beautiful, but my first thought is this is a three panel
 meme that's going to be on Reddit as soon as there's a home video release.
 And it's going to end with, I gotta poop.
 Like, that's how it's going to end.
 That's happening.
 What did you think of the helicopter shot there?
 Because that kind of sucked me out a little bit too.
 That was like a bizarre directorial choice.
 And Brian, our reviewer said it was like his favorite shot, ending shot of an action movie.
 Brian did it, Patton Oswalt did too on Twitter.
 I really love it.
 Was it Patton that said that or Brian did?
 I really love the same difference.
 I would have been fine with like the last shot being on Rey holding out and then you
 cut.
 That would have been fine with me.
 Well, I mean, I think, I do love what I think they're setting up there, which is, so Luke
 Skywalker disappeared after he tried to basically start a new Jedi Order, starting with Ben,
 Kylo Ren.
 And that went haywire.
 So he felt like Han did, super responsible for this guy becoming super evil, which like
 you'd think you'd know that that was like a pretty good possibility by this point with
 dealing with the force.
 And also your genetics, the Skywalker family.
 So he goes into exile and is like, you know, all rot, whatever.
 But I love what that scene sets up because it's like this idea of like, that's where
 that little head nod that Luke kind of does and you can kind of see his eyes welling up
 a little bit too is like, she's handing him that lightsaber and he's like, no, we really
 can't do this.
 And she's like, obviously like, no, like I'm like probably going to be the most pure force
 person ever.
 So like, listen to me.
 And I like where that's going to go.
 That's the tension that's going to start the next movie.
 And like this movie felt like, I think Ennole Yoshida said this best the other day was like,
 we could, in fact, Painterbird is another trailer.
 Like this is just exposition for a new trilogy.
 I mean, I thought they were going to end with the Falcon going to hyperspace.
 I thought they were going to cut it there.
 And then when they actually, and then I was like, wait, no, they got to that island.
 I was like, oh no, they filmed there.
 Like they've got one more scene.
 Well, let's also, okay, I want to talk about the bad guys because they are the ones I had
 the biggest problem with.
 They seemed so absurdly evil to the point where I was just like, like, I get it.
 The dark side is dark, but the empire at least, it seemed more Machiavellian to me.
 It was like, they wanted to make everyone fear them into submission by showing these
 big shows of strength by destroying a planet.
 They didn't kill everyone all the time.
 They didn't have to though.
 They were already in charge.
 They were in charge.
 They were Nazis.
 You could believe why people would want it.
 You could be very clear that they were Nazis.
 Oh yeah, I'm not sure if that would be fair.
 As a political entity, they were Nazis.
 Like there's so much more than politics for the first order.
 But then here we have, they're the first order and they are from the ashes of a completely
 decimated empire.
 Well, they're not completely decimated though.
 I mean, but they destroyed two death zones.
 We all just actually view it.
 I feel so bad.
 But what's really great is the film doesn't actually have to go into that and like they
 didn't bother doing that and I think that was a strength of the film actually was like
 making it more ambiguous.
 I guess.
 To me, all it seemed like they did was take the bad guys and make them better.
 Take the Death Star and make it bigger.
 There was nothing different.
 That was one of the jokes that totally didn't land where someone was like, so it's like
 a Death Star but even bigger.
 I think Ms. Maaz actually said, I've seen evil so many times.
 First it was a Sith, then it was the Empire, now it's the First Order.
 I was like, okay, we're all on the same page.
 There's a self-awareness.
 Well, that's the universe that it exists in now is like that's basically how it's set
 up is like they're...
 The Return of the Jedi didn't end with the Rebel Alliance defeating the Empire.
 It ended with them wounding them severely by beating their second version of their greatest
 weapon but despite all the shots of Ewoks and people on Coruscant dancing around, it's
 like they had a lot of work to do after that.
 That's what the original novels really set up was like that are now not part of canon
 anymore.
 It's like how do you go apart A, convincing people that yeah, the Empire really was bad.
 And us, we're the new Republic.
 We want to set up a whole new Senate which is what corrupted in the first place.
 That struggle, even though all of those specifics don't exist anymore, they're starting to build
 those back out in more novels and they're trying to set up that struggle of how do you
 rebuild a society after it's been affected by this thing.
 The problem is they totally dodged that in the movie.
 You can address it a little bit, I think, because here's this giant new weapon.
 There's this 10 times bigger Death Star.
 They're going to use it to do horrible, unspeakable things.
 They aim it at the center of the Republic but they give that scene so little weight.
 Yeah.
 If we hadn't talked about it, I wouldn't know who was killed on those planets.
 Yeah, they show one shot of-
 Does anyone even know what planet it was?
 No.
 It was the Hosnian system but that's all I know.
 How did we even know that?
 I mean, originally when they do it with Leia, they blow up her planet.
 As stakes were her- They give that scene a ton of presence and
 weight because you see Alderaan through the view screen.
 You see her come into the shot.
 You get a lot of play where- I wonder at some point if it's not really
 worth doing that exact thing again.
 Maybe the reason that was quick was because if you try to put emotional stakes behind
 it again, it's just like, oh, that happened.
 It felt like just a show of force for the sake of it.
 This is their war machine that they're going to demonstrate their power even though there
 is this highly fanatical radicalized sect of the old empire.
 I don't even think the show of force is- The weight is missing.
 The problem is they just disabled- All right, so here's the resistance which is the fighting
 arm of the Republic that's trying to bring this galaxy back together.
 Here's the first order, the guys that can mess it up.
 They do.
 They mess it up.
 They kill the entire fleet basically and they ruin where the new galactic senate is being
 set up.
 That doesn't even get more than a line.
 It's hard to understand.
 At first, when whatever is happening, the sun power turned into laser beams or whatever,
 the literal Star Wars as you put it.
 The Star Wars, yeah.
 I was saying earlier.
 They fought with stars.
 It is a war with stars.
 That stuff shoots out of the Starkiller base, right?
 It's a beam, but actually no, it's these little beams.
 It starts to illuminate these little balls that are out in space which is so far away
 or something.
 They did a bad job setting up the place of all these things and then it starts to go
 towards what look like tiny little things.
 I was like, oh, it's part of a bigger galaxy spanning weapon.
 It's going to hit these things and almost like on the Death Star, refocus into one bit.
 It's like, no, those were just four planets that apparently hang out right next to each
 other.
 Yeah, because if I'm rebuilding an entire galaxy, I definitely want to put my entire
 fleet and the Galactic Senate on four planets that are right next to each other.
 Everyone knows about it.
 You just said there's maybe a local government here and there, but that's not like the resistance
 is probably the new republic thing.
 Everything's being set up.
 I want to just say about that, and I don't know if maybe I'm among the minority of us.
 I feel like that was like the strength of the film was not going into all this.
 I think so, but I just think that moment needed more weight.
 I agree it needs more weight, but I feel like in the same way, and there was a couple things
 I thought they did well, like Captain Phasma, right?
 She gets one name call near the end of the movie in a very similar way to Boba Fett got
 called, like one name call in the second movie was in.
 It feels very much like the original trilogy did where merchandising is going to do a better
 job of naming and making these characters real things than the actual films themselves.
 That leads to like, I'm excited for the next generation of kids to nerd out about that
 because it's not in the film.
 It's cool to know that those facts that aren't in the film and it feels like there are enough
 of those little things that like, well, what is these worlds?
 Why are they important?
 I feel like that can be filled in with a lot of supplemental material that nerds can just
 take it.
 I think that was the beauty of the first Star Wars.
 It was a simple story with a very complicated universe.
 That's it.
 Now it's like, go market it.
 It's a cynical way to put it, or go build this world around it and create these little
 pockets if you want to care about you can do it, which is still kind of a cynical way
 of looking at it.
 But it's a beautiful way of saying, we're going to just build a world and a playground
 to explore.
 This is just one part of it that kind of keeps it on a through line.
 I feel like that stuff was the worst part of the prequels, like the big galactic stuff.
 Yeah, I mean that's tipping the boat too far in the other direction.
 It just went to pure exposition and just wound up being completely real.
 But at the same time, if we're talking about the political struggle, the power struggle,
 it wanted a little bit more than just that we're bad guys and we like to kill people.
 Because that seemed to be the main motivation for me.
 It didn't seem to be.
 And I know-
 That's what I was missing too.
 The original Star Wars also wasn't that complex either.
 Yeah, no, that's the thing.
 And if you go back and given that this is a pretty assiduous remake of that film, then
 you have to go back and say, well, that was a simple story that didn't really do anything
 in terms of world building except for what was just said plainly.
 And you can do what you want in that world and assume things, but there wasn't a whole
 lot you can only assume so much.
 They were on a risk too.
 Emily brought this up really, I think she said it really well in the VirgCast.
 There are horrible unspeakable things that happen in all the movies and all this stuff,
 and they're presented in very weird ways.
 And you can see how the filmmakers behind these movies always have a hard time trying
 to figure out how to present them.
 So Anakin Skywalker is going to kill a bunch of kid Jedis.
 How do you present that without it being...
 I mean, they probably did a really bad job with that one, but this is the same thing.
 It's like, okay, how do they cripple the entire Republic?
 Let's blow up all their planets, kill billions of people, and destroy their fleet.
 But if you bask in it a little too much, then you're getting maybe...
 You're showing this atrocity that you need to move your story along a little too...
 You're laying it a little too bare for what is ostensibly a kids movie.
 But yeah, this all comes back to your original point, which is the bad guys are probably
 the weakest part of this movie, next to how much it copies the structure of the movie.
 I hate to make this comparison, but it felt very Avatar-like in terms of the bad guys
 were just, we want this one thing and we will do whatever it takes to get it.
 That comes from the way that they built out those characters.
 And Kylo Ren's the best of them all, as far as the bad guys that we see.
 Yeah, because he had at least that internal struggle going on.
 Yeah, and I'm so excited to see where he goes in the next few movies, especially because
 not only has he been doing this Gollum-ish light and dark struggle in his own mind and
 speaking to himself, but he also has...
 I love...
 This is another touch that I think J.J. Abrams pulled off really well, which is, here's this
 fanatical person who's super powerful and super evil and he wears this mask only out
 of this shameless devotion to this thing that he doesn't even understand.
 And then to the point that he will willingly take it off and be like, hey, look, I'm just
 a dude.
 And then by the end of the movie, he needs the mask because Rey slashes him with the
 lightsaber, which is so great.
 That's a great point too, just to go into a different place for a second.
 Nothing here was...
 Nothing in this movie was about twists.
 It was built with the idea of you could get this movie spoiled and it's fine.
 But early on, by the way, that's her son.
 That's Han's son.
 Okay, cool.
 I don't got to stress about that.
 Let's take the mask off early on.
 Let's just play it on performance and execution, less on, oh my god, there's a twist because
 that only counts once.
 And this is a movie that's going to be seen multiple times, probably this weekend and
 probably by everybody here.
 While still setting up a ton of mystery to go forward, like staying on the bad guy side,
 Snoke...
 Can we talk about Snoke for a second?
 Speaking of Gollum and Andy Serkis.
 I think all of us probably fell back on our chairs a little bit when he first appears
 because it's like, other than that cantina scene, up until that point in the movie, the
 use of CGI was very sparse and very smart.
 It was what we have heard, this return to practical effects.
 But we get to that scene and it's like, here's this massive person or whatever he is.
 And he's the most computer generated person.
 Oh my god, he did not look scary to me at all.
 He looked sad, like a dinosaur.
 But then they pull out and I saw the little control panel and I was like, oh good, it's
 going to be a hologram.
 And it was a hologram.
 Why not just make it a blue hologram?
 Why do that CGI?
 That just felt so weird.
 And then so obviously they're trying to set up, you want to know who this guy is, the
 supreme leader.
 It was such broad strokes for those guys and this necessary master.
 That's one thing that Star Wars has always had.
 There's almost always just two Sith at a time and they're almost always master and underling.
 So obviously they're setting that back up again.
 What's going to happen, we were talking about this, it's a giant hologram.
 He's going to be like, yay big.
 I hope he's human sized at least.
 I don't know where they're going to bring that.
 I'm definitely not interested.
 I'm curious what his story is and stuff.
 I didn't leave the theater being like, man, I've got to know what Snoke is all about.
 It was just too ham-fisted.
 But we never cared that much where Palpatine came from, he was just an entity.
 Yeah, and you don't even see him until Jedi.
 And then you find out in the prequels and you're like, well, you know what, some things
 are better left unsaid.
 I think what this film did head and shoulders above the prequels and in some ways above
 even the original trilogy was just pure dialogue and character work because that did the heavy
 lifting of the myth building.
 And JJ Abrams knows how to build characters.
 Like again, like...
 Ever seen Lost?
 Don't talk to me about Lost.
 Don't talk to me about Lost.
 But like, seriously, the acting throughout was brilliant.
 And like, I think the exchanges between like...
 The droids.
 The exchanges between...
 Well, you know what, we didn't have that, we didn't have bad droid humor in this movie.
 No, they kept it to a minimum.
 There's the thumbs up lighter moment, which was like, that was the hokey-est part, but
 I loved it.
 It was smart.
 But like, going back to the scene on the gangway plank, whatever, it was just like the subtle
 choices that the actors made that like build out this entire internal struggle with Kylo
 Ren, the history that Han had with him, the history that Han had with Leia, what happened
 with Kylo, what Kyle had with Luke such that he failed and effectively destroyed the entire
 New Jedi Order.
 Like, that was packed in that one scene, increased this entire universe around them in that one
 area.
 What I'm really excited for with these films is where the prequels had to introduce new
 characters who had stories ahead of them.
 They didn't have backstory that influenced what's happening in their lives now.
 And now we have all these rich characters with like, motivations beyond just, well,
 I'm a smuggler and I'm trying to be good.
 Or I'm a princess trying to be a badass.
 You know?
 But like, there's so much for the future to go in.
 Kylo Ren is really interesting because it feels like exactly what you wanted from the
 prequels in Anakin.
 This idea of someone who's like right on the edge and having to live those two things.
 I'm really excited to see how that plays out for three films rather than the last third
 of episode three, which was...
 Just like the most forced thing possible.
 He's like the Anakin Skywalker turning into Darth Vader that we deserved and not the one
 that we got.
 Exactly.
 Because he's gonna...
 It's gonna get brutal.
 Yeah.
 Like he is...
 They made him incredibly powerful.
 They also made Rey incredibly powerful.
 And I know that this is gonna be a point of contention, I think, once people see it a
 little bit more.
 And if you're really a fan of the original trilogy, there was some super power stuff
 going on here.
 These are like some superheroes.
 But I don't hate as much how quickly Rey adapted to the Force.
 Because it set up a really cool...
 We gotta talk about Rey.
 Because it's been way too long that we have not talked about probably the best Star Wars
 character ever.
 Yes.
 Honestly.
 She was by far the best.
 Anytime she was on screen, I was completely enthralled.
 And I think that also speaks to the strength of this movie.
 I know I've been criticizing a lot.
 But the best part, I think, of Force Awakens were the new people.
 The new elements I thought were really strong.
 And it's a lesson learned too.
 And this is where I'm like, I don't care that it was a reboot of The New Hope, because they
 did it a better way.
 But she's the anti-Luke.
 She's not a whiny little person.
 I fully believe...
 She lives on her own.
 And she lives in an at-at.
 She lives in a downed at-at, which is like the coolest thing.
 I want to make camp in an at-at.
 She actually goes into a Star Destroyer, like, yeah, this is where I go scavenging.
 It's amazing.
 They make her a capable human being, where it's like, of course she's going to be a badass,
 because she already is.
 We're just giving these to a skill.
 And I think everyone in some way wasn't a novice.
 Like, Finn, of course he's a great fighter.
 He's been dedicated his whole life.
 Poe, we know he's a great star fighter.
 It wasn't like these are just chance moments where they lucked out.
 Everyone was a capable human being that just happened, like, when the moment came, just
 acted on it.
 And did very convincing stuff.
 And also, like you're saying, very nuanced portrayals, very broad stroke characterizations.
 Capable in a lot of ways, too.
 Not just because she can jump around a Star Destroyer, or not just because she can climb
 around Starkiller Base.
 There are tangible reasons why she is this capable, strong person in a very physical
 sense.
 But also, emotionally, where one of the first scenes with her is that whole thing where
 Finn shows up in her town, and they're on the run now because there's an attack going
 on.
 And she's like, why are you holding my hand?
 Why are you holding it?
 Stop holding it.
 I don't need you to hold my hand.
 I feel like we could talk about this for a while, because I think this is one of my
 favorite parts of the movie.
 Because where I was mad that JJ didn't subvert things, he subverted every expectation of
 what you expect from a female role.
 Right?
 Immediately when she got into Falcon, and it wasn't going well, I was like, oh no, don't
 be woman driver.
 Don't do it, don't do it.
 And then she fucking pulls off the bat.
 That was the finest display of Ariel's effect I've seen in a long time.
 Yeah, I said it before we started.
 I loved that this shot, one of the first shots that we saw from this movie a year and a half
 ago, with the Millennium Falcon doing this loop-de-loop and winding up low on the sand,
 was not Han Solo.
 It was her making that maneuver.
 And that they also gave it weight.
 There was a reason for her to get low.
 There was enough little exposition to not just make it a cool thing, but she made it
 happen.
 And every moment, the entire time she's in that film, they set up an expectation of,
 oh, we have to go rescue her.
 Oh, wait, we get there, and she's fine.
 She seems well-controlled.
 She's connecting Han Solo on how to fix his own ship.
 Or even if he's not even saying it at the same time of her, which plays for humor, she's
 just doing it.
 And he's like, oh.
 And he's still stubborn enough as who Han Solo is to not thank her.
 There's that one moment where he walks away, and she just almost looks at the camera like,
 this asshole?
 Seriously?
 This is so great.
 I think my favorite part about her, though, is there's a tendency, at least how I see
 women in film when they're strong, they have a hard exterior.
 It's like they can't be emotional, and they can't be goofy.
 But the best part about her is that she is so charming, and she makes jokes, and she
 does mess up, too.
 She's not like Tom Cruise in Mission Impossible, who can't do anything wrong.
 But at the same time, she still has these really great qualities about her.
 So it felt really relatable, because it was like, oh, I make jokes, too.
 I can crack jokes, but I can also kick ass like Ray can.
 Which left all the room in the world for Finn to do some of that other stuff.
 Yeah.
 Finn was like, oh, sorry.
 He was like the live wire who is also too live wiry for his own good.
 He was almost too bumbly for my taste, but it played.
 Because Boyega is just incredible.
 I had not seen, until very recently, Attack the Block, which is his breakout movie, which
 wasn't even that big, but is a really incredible movie.
 I watched that before this movie, because I wanted to get a sense of him.
 He plays such a different character in that movie.
 He's like the cool, calm, collected leader.
 Whereas here, he was, like I said, he's like this bumbling live wire who has really cool
 motivations and stuff.
 He played it so well, and it was such a new energy to this kind of cast that we're used
 to.
 I think the interesting thing about the new cast is, I think it's very easy to see Ray
 as new Luke and Finn as new Han and Poe as Han-ish.
 Ray kind of subsumes all of those three original characters in a way, and is still a new character.
 The others do that too in their way.
 Finn is, he wants to be Luke and he's kind of Han, but he can't be that, so he has to
 be something different.
 I think the characters are new.
 I think they're completely new.
 It's their circumstances that haven't changed.
 Like you said, she is very different from Luke, but she has a very Luke backstory.
 Finn and Ray are a little bit deeper, but Poe was probably the same kind of surface
 level character that we had.
 Yeah, yeah, yeah.
 Although he was storming as hell.
 Yeah.
 I didn't feel like we got enough time with him.
 I felt that a lot about some of the characters too.
 We got a lot of time with Ray and Finn, and I'm very happy about that.
 And BB-8.
 And BB-8.
 I'm surprised we haven't just talked about BB-8 for a while.
 It was so adorable.
 It was great.
 Yeah, he was just perfect.
 There's nothing else to say.
 There's nothing else to say.
 But everybody else, I mean, you were talking about Captain Phasma.
 I feel like there's so much marketing about her.
 And we don't even see Brienne of Tarth's face in there.
 Gwenna and Christine.
 But honestly-
 I do like-
 I was excited by that.
 I was excited by the idea that she could just keep the mask on the entire time and be that
 sort of faceless badass without being like, I'm a woman too.
 You know, I feel like that's like a trope that gets pulled all the time where it's like,
 you don't need the Metroid trope.
 Yeah, you don't need to pull the mask.
 She can just be that faceless badass and live in that world.
 Yeah, yeah, yeah.
 But, you know, we've gone through all this stuff and we need to start wrapping up.
 But what was interesting is we talked about this is a cookie cutter script to an extent,
 a reboot of Star Wars.
 I don't see them being able to do the same thing with Empire episode whatever it's going
 to be now, 8, which is Rian Johnson's next big thing.
 Where do you see this kind of going forward?
 Man, if it was in anybody else's hands, I would be wondering how they're going to do
 this remix formula for Empire.
 That's where it would feel like it was going.
 But knowing Rian Johnson, I love his movies just on a surface level, but he is also, I
 think he is very under, a lot of people don't know who he is.
 He's director of Brick, director of Looper.
 He also did Brothers Bloom, which is one of the more, it's Edgar Wright level funny with
 its visual stylings.
 I mean, there's stuff that happens in the backgrounds of frames in that movie that made
 me laugh harder than I've laughed at dialogue in movies.
 And so he's the perfect person to follow J.J. Abrams and take that kinetic filmmaking style
 and keep things light and fun, but also develop these characters because he's such a good
 world builder.
 The way Looper opens up is this person comes into a scene and tries to steal something
 from some guy who lives on a bus in this really broken down part of town, and the guy who
 just comes out of his bus and just shoots the guy dead.
 That was a scene that I remember being like, wow, you just told me so much about the world
 that this movie is set in without saying anything, whereas any other director would, like Christopher
 Nolan would have given you 10 characters telling you about how the world is lawless in time
 turbulence, and it would have been totally awful.
 And so seeing how he's gonna take this story, I have faith that he's not just gonna make
 Empire.
 He's gonna take it in this weird new direction where there's this really big struggle between
 Luke and possibly his daughter Rey.
 We should talk about that.
 We should talk about that.
 I don't want Rey to be Luke or Han's daughter.
 I don't want that either.
 I think the strength of the Force in the original trilogy is that anyone...
 She's quite on it.
 Imagine though.
 Sleep.
 But like, the strength of the Force in the original trilogy was that anyone could be
 a Jedi.
 You could be a Jedi.
 And that was undermined in the prequels where it was like this whole notion of lineage,
 like, oh, the greatest Jedis were obviously Skywalker's, and now that most of the Jedi
 are gone, then it can only be a Skywalker.
 And the fear is like, you now have Ben Solo, and then you potentially have Rey Skywalker.
 And I feel like that just makes the world really small.
 It would be cool to see another, like, I don't know, maybe I should roll back on that statement,
 but another like virgin, like midichlorian birth, right?
 No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,
 no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
 Just this idea that like Anakin was like a child born that had like really strong Force
 powers.
 Like, that could happen again for another like lineage that's not Skywalker.
 I like the idea, I like it.
 Right.
 Yeah, I like that.
 Roll back on the midichlorian.
 If they can flip it, because I think that's what it looks like they're hinting at, right?
 like you think, oh, she's gonna go to Luke and ask Luke to train her and maybe then they'll
 set up some new Jedi Order, but I think it's gonna go the other way. It's gonna take Rey
 showing power that like Luke is like, oh, it's not even gonna be worth it. Like, I'm
 not gonna be able to train you. And there's gonna be that and then there's gonna be...
 I do hope we get into some of the deeper stuff that like will still have to stay in the ancillary
 like novels and everything, but I hope they address in the next one this idea of like
 everybody else in the galaxy like is kind of not sure what's going on. Like no one really
 totally knows what happened. I mean, how the Republic died is gonna be a big part of the
 next movie too, but yeah, I mean, that's where I'm hoping to see it go.
 I think we're in a place where we should really start wrapping up. So the final thought, question
 I want from everybody is, what is the one big question you walked away from this film,
 like wanting to know? Like it could be comic, maybe my found a video game or a comic book
 or a TV show or maybe the next film.
 That was it for me. I just like what destroying the entire Republic does to like, cause like
 this whole effort to like rebuild, even if it wasn't in this movie, like, you know, you
 come out of Jedi basically kind of winning the battle, but then like you really start
 the process of like restoring peace to the galaxy and like what they've built up was
 just swept away like really, really quickly. And so like how that impacts, I mean, now
 you have this rebel resistance again, essentially, and whoever, like I don't know who they shift
 the bad guys to. Is it just gonna be Snoke and like Kylo Ren and what's left of the First
 Order? Like how many of them were there on Starkiller Base? Like I don't know who sets
 up as like, we know who the good people are and we know that their resources are severely
 impacted. So who are the bad guys now? Cause I'm not totally sure.
 I guess for me is, I guess for me is like with the reunion potentially or just the meeting
 of Rey and Luke, I would love to see an exploration of whether or not the Jedi are really a force
 for good in the galaxy. Cause you touched on this in the prequels and you know, it was
 inadequate and it wasn't really effectively done, but the Jedi are kind of useless. Like
 yes, Luke defeated the Emperor and Darth Vader, technically speaking, but they helped precipitate
 the Clone Wars. They helped bring about the downfall of the Republic. And Luke just failed
 in bringing about a new Jedi order because of his nephew. Like can this, you know, this
 whole notion that, you know, the force is good and evil, black and white, like the world
 is, the world as a whole is really, really gray and like everything else is very complicated.
 And the whole notion of just like, we have to hold onto the good is hard to actually
 do. And I don't think we've actually seen that yet. And that's a really good opportunity
 to do that in the next movie.
 I think maybe my biggest questions are just more of the backstories behind Finn and Rey.
 I mean, you talked about Rey, but I'm really kind of curious about Finn cause I'm not sure
 if there's more to his defection than just, oh, I saw my friend get killed and I was asked
 to slaughter a bunch of innocent villagers. Like that sucks.
 Also I was a janitor.
 Yeah. But also, and that leads me to my other thing. It's like, I feel like more people
 would leave then if that's what it took. So then I feel like there must be something deeper
 into why he of all people left and maybe there's more to his backstory. Who knows? I mean, it
 could just be that simple or it could not, but I'd like to find out.
 I think there's a reason that right near the end we hold on him sort of being rehabilitated
 and I think there's a reason why we hold on him there. And I think that's why they're
 setting that up.
 Yeah. I mean, he's definitely coming with us for the next two movies. So I'm sure there's
 going to be more to his story too.
 I think the one thing I'm wondering for the future is you make a film with such like exciting
 gender politics and then you have Colin Trevorrow doing episode nine who did probably the worst
 job I've ever seen with Jurassic World in terms of that. Like huge offensively. That
 like I don't equate like this film and how excited I am to see that character evolve
 and grow and have her journey possibly end with his direction. It scares me terribly.
 It's funny how much we've talked about trying to get away from like the original. Now that
 we've sort of we've used a new hope again to like launch this new part of Star Wars
 and like we want them to get away from some of that original stuff. But like now we're
 seeing like Rian Johnson really could make like the deep but still action heavy Empire
 kind of movie and then Carl Trevor could come in and make like the schlocky return of the
 Jedi and like but then I are.
 What are Colin Trevorrow's Ewoks? I wonder.
 I mean the thing that we've all really avoided here we've treated this like it's just another
 trilogy and it's going to be you know like what is it going to be like when we get to
 the end of it and Chris Plant brought up when we were talking this morning like a really
 good point like there's no end to this like a lot of people have written like the really
 smart line like we won't be alive to see the last Star Wars movie and like the implications
 of that are really hard.
 In line I looked at my wife and I was like we're probably going to take our kids to the
 like 10 years and I will take our kids to like the continuation of the story and like
 it's just going to always probably live with us because it will probably keep making money
 no matter what.
 I mean I hope it ends a trilogy at like episode 9 and like they just take a break for episode
 10 do like 16,000 spin-offs.
 Right.
 But you're probably right.
 Yeah.
 I mean I think that cycles.
 I mean they're already doing spin-offs like how many times over.
 I would say though that like this film if this is true and we will have Star Wars for
 the future it was a really great start.
 Like at the end of the day I left the movie kind of like back and forth and if I really
 liked it or if I was like okay with it but like as a like platform to start with and
 like I think the bridge scene too like it felt like a bridge film into this world that
 like we are going to live in this world of Star Wars for a while and the world that they
 built was a great starting point so it's a great TV pilot which is a JJ Abrams.
 I'm telling you man lost.
 We're right back to lost.
 Let's talk about Felicity.
 I'll be honest I blame Damon Ludenoloff more.
 And on that note I want to thank everyone for joining me.
 I want to thank you guys for watching at home.
 If you want another take a completely different take our three brilliant film critics Emily
 Yoshida, Brian Bishop and Tasha Robinson have another take on this on the Verge cast.
 You can check that out now.
 Of course there's way more stuff at theverge.com I want to thank everyone individually.
 Tom Connors is Tom W Connors on Twitter.
 Lauren Grush is Lauren Grush.
 I'm Onorosco Noe, Call Me Opam and So Cane One.
 Thanks and again theverge.com way more Star Wars stuff way more non Star Wars stuff.
 You might want to take a break from that stuff.
 We'll help you out there too.
 Thanks for watching.