I think it worked because throughout the movie Luke seemed to be goading Rey and Kylo. That look on his face drinking the green milk for example, was on par with the shoulder brush, daring his younger students to try him.
Besides he needed Solo to get angry.

Yeah, there’s a weird cognitive dissonance where they think that Star Wars is their special thing, but will also be proud of these movies as literally the most successful films ever.

I have fun imagining Kathleen Kennedy and the Disney executives welcoming JJ Abrams at the first production meeting and wheeling in stacks of Expanded Universe novels and comics, and going ‘well, here you go, make sure that your movie fits into everything in these books. We have to make sure the fans of Zippy Bozzbang…

Or just pause the movie while a link to the relevant reddit-screed or youtube-link flashes across the screen.

Yeah, imagine how awful the next movie would be if Abrams and co decided that the whole story would be based around the First Order’s rise, and Snoke’s origin.
When the real answer for their existence has always been Abrams wanted to make a Star Wars movie that had the same elements as the original movies, so we got a…

Exactly, Snoke and the First Order were just Abrams’ lack of imagination showing. He wanted to make a Star Wars movie, but couldn’t imagine doing it without an empire, creepy old guy in a robe, or Death star.

The problem is that the first film hinted at Snoke’s past and the connection between him, the Force, the emperor, etc. In typical Abrams fashion it was set up to be something to want to know. But ultimately that wasn’t really that important, the only reason Snoke existed was because, just like the First Order, he was…

The success of the next film depends on that connection between Rey and Kylo. That they returned to their opposite corners in light and darkness was not a flaw, but a feature. Both of them struggle with the duality of the force, but fundamentally Rey is a decent person. In TFA she could have sold BB8 for rations, but…

By overwhelmingly voting for her in the general election you mean?
Considering that 25% of Clinton supporters in 2008 voted for McCain I don’t think they should be complaining about the scourge of the Berniebros.

Haha, where have you been? They’ve been blaming her loss on 3rd party voters for months. Hell, if you supported Sanders in the primary you’re probably responsible for Trump winning too.

Because she can always call on someone else who will ask her a different question. Even if the White house press corps would turn into a band of Jeremy Paxmans, they’d give access to some friendly hacks to make it easy to evade questions.

I mean, give these new Klingons some spots and they could pass for Narns anyway.

Nice of Schur to go on the record about it, but I wonder if and how other Parks and Rec people, like Amy Poehler and Aziz Ansari will react, considering those two also have CK’s manager. It’s one thing to say ‘yeah, sorry, I guess’ it’s another to disentangle yourself from the people who helped perpetuate this…

To him America means the US, so he sees it as country built by white people. Also he’s as dumb as a bag of rocks, so he’s never really examined the logic of ‘if you’re not white, ‘x’-country is not your home’. Spencer thinks wearing a three piece suit and walking around with a glass of whisky makes him look…

Yeah, they’re playing this somewhat annoying game with the audience of showing us these scenes of L’Rell bouncing between gigs and motivations. As though just going through plot can make up for characterisation or narrative sense.
I don’t think I’d mind them speaking Klingon if the scenes were more interesting. It’s a…

That’s the beauty of Trump’s dilettante status in the GOP, he can criticise W’s many failures, but have a foreign policy that’s even more simplistic.
The fact that he was able to call out Bush’ catastrophic warmongering was one of the ways he was able to win the primaries and the general election. It made him stand…

There are no ‘good’ presidents, in the case of W, there is little to recommend him, and he should not be let off the hook for wrecking the beginning of this century.
But the elder Bush was a fairly decent Republican. He let his ambition override decency at times (Iran hostage situation, Willie Horton ad), but also…

I could see Data doing it. The problem is that the show hasn’t really developed Saru’s character enough, and didn’t really work the idea out thoroughly.
I’m in favour of the poster idea as well though.

Oh yeah, I wasn’t arguing with you about that general assessment of the galactic timeline.
Speaking of fanwank though, I worry that the show’s commitment to Star Trek history is basically just going to be a lot of namedropping, while doing whatever it wants to do in terms of story, setting and tone.

Yeah, I was going to say that the Maquis-issue on Voyager was very quickly forgotten. Everyone pretty much just immediately settled into routine Rick Berman and 90's-tv demanded. But then Voyager was a show that wasted a lot of opportunities.
On DS9 that level of conflict made sense. Starfleet and the Bajorans had…