One of the first was at the cinemas at West Town Mall in Knoxville, TN.  I even remember the shape of the theater.  That was probably the first because my memory of it was so vivid.  My other “Star Wars in a theater” vivid memory is sneaking out of a Disney double-feature with The Jungle Book and some weird…

That was EXACTLY  my first thought when Han said “can I borrow that?”  NO WAY he had never fired that before...Something that cool looking I’d have been all “where the hell can I get me one of those???”

I LOVED Empire when I was a kid (I was 11ish when it came out), and it had a much bleaker ending than this one. Han captured, Luke missing a hand and finding out his dad’s the worst dude ever, Leia still so upset over the destruction of the planet she grew up on and the death’s of billions of people including everyone…

Exactly--I wish they’d chosen a better way to develop his character than the casino sequence, but I believe all of that, Rose and Del Toro were specifically to be part of Finn’s character’s growth and acceptance of being part of the fight.

OMG I totally said this about the Shatner thing somewhere else in this thread!  It’s the perfect example of just how bad things can be if you let the actor decide what’s best for the character.

I totally get this.  I loved it (except for a couple of bits--mostly Leia Poppins and the casino scenes) but it definitely had pacing issues.  Plot and, frankly, dialogue have never been the strong point of Star Wars movies.

Wait wait wait--someone earlier up there said Rian did this all on his own and obviously neither Disney nor JJ had any idea what was going on?

Jesus—”steal”? “you can fuck off?” “you wanted to be a dick?’ How in the fuck are you so entitled (and, frankly, over-invested to take it this personally)? I’m one of those “olds” and didn’t get that at all, and in all honesty even with your helpful sales analogy I really have no idea what you’re whining about here. …

But, hey, at least it wasn’t podracing, right?

You don’t think the executive producer who wrote and directed the one before was involved at all in this story? That Disney just said “hey, we really liked ‘Brick’ so here’s 300 million bucks, go have fun with what may be our most important and lucrative franchise?” If that’s what you think I some awesome beachfront…

Yeah I remember arguing after the TFA that the only reason she even out-pulled the saber from him is because he was hurt, turned around and had no idea she could do that.  I imagine that really surprised him.  And probably not in a good way.

While it was funny I don’t know why they didn’t just have him pretend he couldn’t hear.  Though it does make you imagine the First Order’s HQ as a giant gleaming office building with secretaries being all “Thank you for calling the First Order how may I direct your call?”

Strangely this phrase does sound sorta star-warsy.

So you don’t think Lucas had a “deep love of the franchise?”  Or are we just ignoring how terrible the prequels were?

I was 8, and I saw it 12 times in the theater (over the years—probably 7 or 8 during the initial run). This is a really great assessment. I tried explaining to my kids (and my staff of 20-somethings) how you could ONLY see movies in a theater back then, and movies like Star Wars played for a year straight. Their minds…

I believe that the intention of the scene was to develop Finn. Just before the mission Rose basically catches someone she idolizes selfishly deserting (and she’s right on the money with that assessment). It’s a mini-parallel to Luke and Rey. Finn’s just looking to get out and save Rey, but agrees to help since it…

I actually read a great article today about how the rebellion’s tactics have always been crap—goes along with a lot of what you say here, but gets into how they’re pretty much crap in all of the TOS as well. Vox had it maybe?

I’ve heard his Joker role mentioned, but really my only thought was “oh cool he’s still getting work.”

The ironic thing is this was by far his best performance as Luke (of course it helped a lot that he was so much more interesting than in any of the other films).

It’s hilarious and so accurate that it surprised me the first time I watched in a”why didn’t this occur to me?” way.