In the prequels they were clones, in the original trilogy they weren’t. I suppose there’s nothing in the original trilogy that says they weren’t taken from birth and raised as soldiers, as far as I recall, but the general understanding seemed to be they were normally recruited army soldiers. You don’t really need to…

Yeah, in the timeline they started as clones and then went to general soldiers.

I think there’s a large difference between being trained and having a few years when you were a kid. I think Rey also saw a lot of his mind - in that scene she clearly fought back against his mind-reading, and I don’t think it’s much of a stretch to go from “so that’s how you fight this” to “so that’s how you do this”…

This sounds pretty cool. And I like the idea of being nostalgic for alternative realities - everyone is nostalgic for hover-boards, for example...

I can imagine JJ Abrams making this movie, thinking about all the flak the prequels got, and wondering how he was going to avoid that. “What do Star Wars fans really like? A New Hope. Let’s just give them that again.”
I don’t blame him, and it was a good movie - I enjoyed the similarities rather than being dismayed by…

I think that’s new. The stormtroopers have been clones and general soldiers. But having them taken as kids and raised is a masterful way to explain the atrocities they commit in this movie.

And it’s obvious why. It’s like wizards on the Discworld...

Before I saw the movie I made the most ridiculous “fake spoiler” I could think of, about Darth Solo. Oops.

How can Rey use the Force if she’s never been trained?

“I’m looking for Obi-Wan Kenobi.”
“Now that’s a name I’ve not heard in a long time...”
“He’s my father.”
“I don’t know where he is. Probably killed by Vader or something. I have to go.”

I have to agree. It’s obvious that the disaster most likely to cause famine is drought.

That only applies to himself. Everyone else he interprets as if they go by “factual”.

My wife just watched A New Hope for the first time, and she quite liked it. Although she thought the colour was off, and some of the creatures looked a bit weird...so it’s not just the nostalgic people who don’t like the new effects.

Can you not have those full-page ads? I don’t mind advertising, but half the time those things break and there’s no way to close them.

It’s a nice point...but it falls through because he conflates “true” with “materially factual”, and they’re not synonyms.

It’s definitely a technology that we need to be socially, politically, economically, and morally ready for before we start. We can get there, we can, especially once the politics of fear works itself out of our system.

“other than Vader”...so, a Skywalker?

Late one night a mouse fell into a bucket in our house, deeper than that one. We didn’t want to deal with it at the time, so we put the lid on and decided to deal with it in the morning. It just kept jumping up and banging its head on the lid.

Smeagol still murdered to get his hands on the ring...

I am supremely unsurprised at the result, and a little impressed at the technical expertise developed to get the result.