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The Talk Show

141: ‘Star Wars: The Force Awakens’ Holiday Spectacular With Special Guests Guy English, Amy Jane Gruber, and More

 

00:00:00   [MUSIC]

00:00:21   Well, just like last year,

00:00:22   we have a cavalcade of special guests for this episode lining up.

00:00:27   they will come on in a series of entrances.

00:00:30   Last year, we end up going overtime

00:00:32   and John Siracusa did not make it onto the show.

00:00:36   So we will, he's lined up, he's ready to go.

00:00:39   We'll try to get him on.

00:00:40   We've also got Ben Thompson and Marco Arment lined up.

00:00:45   Right now though, it's just me and Guy English.

00:00:50   - Yeah, I'm a huge fan of Ben Arment.

00:00:52   He's amazing.

00:00:54   - Am I allowed to talk?

00:00:56   And my wife Amy Gruber is here to talk about Star Wars The Force Awakens.

00:01:03   Now, I don't know what's wrong with people. There are so many people who have already been on like seven podcasts talking about this thing.

00:01:12   Have you, Guy? Have you talked about this on a podcast yet?

00:01:15   I have not, no.

00:01:17   That was my fifth one.

00:01:19   I guess.

00:01:20   No, I haven't actually.

00:01:22   I've wanted to

00:01:24   because

00:01:26   Turns out I like this movie. I'm so excited to talk about it because you know everybody is so anti spoiler

00:01:32   So I've just really been ranting at my family about

00:01:35   So I would it is one thing right like don't spoil it on Twitter, but I mean if you're gonna listen to a podcast

00:01:41   You know, right. So let's just get it out of the way though that this podcast is going to be incredibly

00:01:49   fantastic. So if you haven't seen it yet and you don't want it spoiled, hit pause in your

00:01:55   podcast player, go down to your local multiplex, see the movie, and then when you come out,

00:02:02   hit unpause.

00:02:03   And honestly, get your IQ tested because it's called the Star Wars Christmas Spectacular.

00:02:07   And if you're not expecting spoilers, you might be stupid.

00:02:15   So first things first, here's my question for both of you.

00:02:18   I don't know who wants to answer first, but did you like the movie?

00:02:22   No.

00:02:23   Amy.

00:02:24   No, I did not.

00:02:25   Amy, you didn't like the movie.

00:02:27   No, I had some real problems.

00:02:31   I know.

00:02:32   That's right, I have talked to you about it.

00:02:35   Yeah, I felt bad.

00:02:36   I felt like I made you sad.

00:02:38   Yeah, yeah.

00:02:39   Like, I was loving it.

00:02:42   I was absolutely loving it.

00:02:44   And I was like, wow, I'm actually going to go see this again tomorrow.

00:02:47   Like I was super, super into it, but I had no idea what was going to happen.

00:02:51   And I had given it absolutely no thought what was going to happen.

00:02:55   And then when it happened, I got so sad that I cried in the movie theater.

00:02:59   Yeah.

00:03:01   But how did you like the film?

00:03:04   I thought it was a good film.

00:03:06   I loved it.

00:03:07   Uh, I mean, okay.

00:03:09   There's, you know, there's some flaws as a movie, but, uh, as a modern myth retold,

00:03:18   I love it and I think it's great.

00:03:20   Um, I don't think that that outcome that you're talking about

00:03:23   could have gone any other way.

00:03:24   I think it had to happen.

00:03:25   No, I've been expecting it to happen since 1983, to be honest.

00:03:29   You can get angry.

00:03:36   It's, you're in a safe space.

00:03:37   - So to be clear, let's just get it over with.

00:03:39   What we're talking about is when Han Solo died.

00:03:43   And it was a turning point for Amy in the movie.

00:03:46   (laughing)

00:03:48   - Sure, do you guys have drinks?

00:03:49   - Have my drinks in the movie?

00:03:52   - Maybe don't have a drink, I don't know.

00:03:54   - I don't know.

00:03:56   You know what, I got day drunk the next day

00:03:59   because I woke up and I was like, why am I so sad?

00:04:02   And then I remembered why I was so sad and it was terrible.

00:04:06   - Oh, that's beautiful.

00:04:08   - I was so sad and everybody,

00:04:10   like everybody around me was so excited

00:04:13   and like Jonas was loving the movie

00:04:14   and Jonas is stupid.

00:04:16   He turned to me, he's like, "He's not really dead."

00:04:18   And I was like, "No, he's so dead."

00:04:20   Like he got stabbed and then he fell off a dangerous catwalk

00:04:23   and then he got blown up.

00:04:24   They like itchy and scratchy killed him.

00:04:26   - The planet exploded.

00:04:27   - Right, like Wile E. Coyote.

00:04:29   Like, yeah, like he couldn't have been more dead.

00:04:32   Like they did not leave any avenues open

00:04:35   for him to not be dead.

00:04:37   - Lightsaber through the chest,

00:04:39   fell off a catwalk into what looked like

00:04:42   some kind of fiery pit.

00:04:43   So it was both a fall and some kind of fiery--

00:04:47   - Like a reactor driven by the power of a sun.

00:04:50   - Right.

00:04:50   - Which then explodes.

00:04:51   - Which then exploded.

00:04:52   - I don't know.

00:04:53   - Why don't they stop with these dangerous catwalks?

00:04:55   Why don't they have railings?

00:04:58   So many dangerous catwalks.

00:04:58   - 'Cause he would still be dead, Amy.

00:05:00   He would still be dead.

00:05:01   - I don't know, they could patch him up, maybe.

00:05:04   Like if he hadn't fallen, I don't know.

00:05:09   - I really love your devotion to Han Solo.

00:05:13   I think that's awesome.

00:05:15   I wanted to be Han Solo growing up

00:05:16   and I love the way he went out.

00:05:20   - No, no, no, the way he went out was so stupid.

00:05:24   That stupid wussy kid, that was horrible.

00:05:27   His kid was horrible.

00:05:29   Like it made me so mad that his kid was so horrible

00:05:31   and wussy and such a big baby.

00:05:33   And then he gets to kill Han Solo?

00:05:35   Like, that's- and I wasn't even invested in this kid, I didn't care about him!

00:05:39   He didn't get to kill Han Solo.

00:05:40   He got to- he killed him!

00:05:42   Han Solo elected to be killed.

00:05:45   That was his choice.

00:05:47   Are you kidding me?

00:05:49   Kylo Ren is such a weenie, he didn't move off the bridge.

00:05:52   Like, he mo- he- he stood his ground.

00:05:54   Han walked towards him.

00:05:56   So you think that he chose to-

00:06:01   Like if he loves this kid so much, he just chose to saddle him with having killed his father?

00:06:06   That makes no sense.

00:06:08   No, I think he thought... I think that, uh...

00:06:12   Leia told him, "If you see our son, bring him home."

00:06:16   Uh, so...

00:06:18   So now that he's not home and Han Solo's dead.

00:06:20   So you think she's happy about that?

00:06:22   Well, I think that Han Solo's the kind of guy that he's...

00:06:26   I think he's disappointed later for the last time and he's gonna try to make sure that that kid gets home.

00:06:32   How? He's dead.

00:06:34   I'm so angry. I'm so angry.

00:06:37   Well, he didn't know. He didn't know exactly how the conversation was gonna go.

00:06:40   But at the end, Dave was like, "Well, you can either cut me down in anger, like me, what, I'm gonna pull out my blaster and try to shoot you in the face?

00:06:48   Can't do that.

00:06:49   I can run away? Can't do that.

00:06:52   Or, you know, we can go with this thing where you kill me and I help you.

00:06:57   And then at least there's like a glimmer of light in him still.

00:07:04   Like, "I really hate my dad. He's such a jerk, but he totally helped me turn to the dark side."

00:07:10   I don't understand.

00:07:12   I can't really make a rational argument for it because I've never been there.

00:07:15   But...

00:07:16   Like I said, even if he turns, like even if then he becomes good.

00:07:20   I hope we never see his dumb ass again.

00:07:22   I hate him.

00:07:23   But even if he turns,

00:07:25   he's saddled with having killed his father.

00:07:27   Like, how do you go home to your mother and say like,

00:07:29   "Hey, I'm done with this dark side crap,

00:07:31   "but sorry I killed dad."

00:07:33   Like, that's not helping.

00:07:34   This isn't helping.

00:07:35   Like, it's not helping.

00:07:37   - I don't think it does.

00:07:38   I don't think it does.

00:07:40   - It made no sense.

00:07:41   It made absolutely no sense.

00:07:42   And who, like, I was loving this movie

00:07:44   and I was like, "JJ Abrams, like, you could tell he's a fan

00:07:47   "and he totally got it."

00:07:49   And I felt like there were a whole bunch of like corny,

00:07:51   like Star Wars type jokes where they're corny,

00:07:53   but they're funny.

00:07:54   And then he killed Han Solo and I turned,

00:07:58   I was like, who the fuck does he think he is

00:08:00   killing Han Solo?

00:08:01   Like you don't get to just get this

00:08:03   and then kill my childhood hero.

00:08:05   I was so mad.

00:08:07   Oh, I'm getting mad again.

00:08:10   - It's okay.

00:08:12   You can get mad, but.

00:08:14   - Well, let's back up though.

00:08:15   - I can take it.

00:08:15   I can really take it.

00:08:16   Okay, yeah.

00:08:17   - I'm not mad at you.

00:08:18   - I know, I know, but I don't care if you yell at me.

00:08:21   It's an interesting decision, though, and I feel like...

00:08:28   if there's a spoiler that I knew going into the movie that colored my

00:08:32   viewing of it the first time,

00:08:35   it's an old spoiler.

00:08:37   It's

00:08:37   from knowing from when I was a kid in 1983 that in interviews

00:08:43   about Return of the Jedi that Harrison Ford

00:08:45   publicly said that he had petitioned George Lucas to have Han Solo

00:08:50   killed off

00:08:51   and that he argued that it would give the movie,

00:08:54   I think he called it like gravity or something, weight,

00:08:57   but you know, that it would give like a bittersweet feeling

00:09:01   to the end of the movie instead of everybody, you know,

00:09:04   Kumbaya singing with the Ewoks, that it would be like,

00:09:06   yeah, we beat them and we killed the emperor,

00:09:09   but Han Solo's dead.

00:09:10   And that he, you know, and then it's kind of ugly stuff,

00:09:16   but he publicly said that he thinks George Lucas

00:09:20   didn't want to do that because it would sell fewer toys that you wouldn't sell a

00:09:22   lot of dead Han Solo action figures.

00:09:24   Oh, but that's just like hothead young kid just getting fame talk. You know what I mean?

00:09:30   Like,

00:09:30   no, Harrison Ford is Han Solo. Like there's so much like he, I don't give a

00:09:36   fuck. He's like, he'll just say what I don't think though. But I really do think

00:09:41   though, like if if Harrison Ford had said to, you know, JJ Abrams and the Disney

00:09:45   people than the Lucasfilm people. I'm in it. I, you know, sign me up for three movies. I'll be in all three.

00:09:52   I think that they would have, you know, I think they're not stupid. I think they know everybody loves Han Solo.

00:09:58   I think they would have put him in all three. I think the fact that he got killed is the fact that it's largely colored.

00:10:04   They wrote the story to put that in the story because Harrison Ford said, "All right, I'll do one and you got to give me a lot of money."

00:10:10   And I think it's kind of, it's an interesting thing

00:10:14   that it's like the actor's decision

00:10:15   to color the arc of the whole story.

00:10:18   - Amy?

00:10:23   - I don't really care what Harrison Ford wants.

00:10:25   (laughing)

00:10:27   You've taken on this responsibility.

00:10:29   Like, and apparently everyone knew that he was going to die.

00:10:32   I did not know he was going to die.

00:10:33   I remember that like in the 80s that he, you know,

00:10:36   but he was all swaggery and like,

00:10:38   oh, you know, they should kill me or whatever.

00:10:40   and I don't wanna do it anymore.

00:10:41   But they all said that and they all came back.

00:10:44   I just, I'll never see another J.J. Abrams movie again.

00:10:48   He killed Han Solo and I think during the movie I screamed,

00:10:53   why didn't they kill Chewbacca?

00:10:55   Because I felt like then you could have--

00:10:57   - They shot Chewbacca, you cannot shoot,

00:11:00   you can't shoot Chewbacca.

00:11:01   - So seriously, you're fine with Han Solo,

00:11:04   but Chewbacca crosses your line, oh my God.

00:11:06   - No, no, no, no, what I'm saying is Chewbacca

00:11:09   got shot early.

00:11:11   - Well, I wish he would have done that.

00:11:11   - And I was like, whoa, that,

00:11:14   like the stakes are raised at this point.

00:11:15   Like, anything's on the table.

00:11:18   - If they would have killed Chewbacca,

00:11:20   they could have killed like a character

00:11:23   and then he could have had the,

00:11:24   hey, I killed a major Star Wars character

00:11:26   and gotten that, but not really somebody.

00:11:29   I mean, I'd be like, oh, Chewbacca.

00:11:31   But I wouldn't be heartbroken.

00:11:33   I wouldn't be day drunk the next day.

00:11:35   - But I will also say, so maybe--

00:11:39   Just to be clear and put this on the public record, we went to see the movie on opening night, which was Thursday night.

00:11:46   And we already had tickets for a Saturday matinee. So we didn't go back the next day, but because it was a school day, you know, I thought it was enough that we kept the kid up till 1am watching the movie.

00:11:59   But then Saturday afternoon, we had already bought tickets, three tickets. Amy did not attend. She would not see it again.

00:12:08   I couldn't watch it again.

00:12:09   I couldn't, I really couldn't watch it again.

00:12:11   And John was like, come on.

00:12:12   And I was like, I'm just too sad, I'm not ready.

00:12:15   Like I think maybe in a week or two,

00:12:16   I might be able to go see it again.

00:12:18   I would like to see it again,

00:12:19   but I'm worried that it'll break my heart again.

00:12:21   I mean, I couldn't take it.

00:12:23   I really couldn't take it.

00:12:24   - I love that it affected you that much.

00:12:28   - It really did.

00:12:30   I was surprised. - No, I really do.

00:12:30   I mean, I don't want you to be sad.

00:12:32   Obviously, I don't want you to be unhappy,

00:12:34   But the fact that it hit you is kind of why they did it.

00:12:38   Right?

00:12:39   That's the...

00:12:40   - Yeah, but I felt like, okay,

00:12:42   like this story is kind of a tangent,

00:12:44   but when I was little, you know,

00:12:46   The Wizard of Oz used to come on once a year

00:12:49   and everybody would watch it.

00:12:50   Like it'd be a big event because, you know,

00:12:52   you couldn't watch, when I was little,

00:12:53   you couldn't watch movies over and over again.

00:12:54   So you got to see The Wizard of Oz,

00:12:56   like once a year at Easter, they would show it on TV

00:12:58   and it was a big deal.

00:12:59   And I just remember like 10, 15 members of my family

00:13:02   were watching it and I'm like four years old and I really liked the bad witch.

00:13:07   Oh, there might be a Wizard of Oz spoiler, so if you're sensitive.

00:13:12   Oh yeah, man.

00:13:13   But when she melts, everybody in my family was like, "Yay!

00:13:20   Ding-dong, the witch is dead."

00:13:22   And I really loved her and I started to cry and then they all kind of was, they were laughing

00:13:28   at me for crying and I was like, "I hate you!"

00:13:31   Like my mother still reenacts the scene.

00:13:33   Like I was like, I hate you all, you're all dumb, dumb, dumb.

00:13:36   And I ran away.

00:13:37   Like I was so mad that they were happy that she died.

00:13:39   And that's how I felt when Han Solo died.

00:13:42   Like people were still, and like after the movie,

00:13:44   people were clapping and screaming.

00:13:45   And I was like, you assholes, Han Solo's dead.

00:13:48   Like I couldn't even enjoy it.

00:13:50   And I couldn't believe anyone liked it

00:13:52   and that no one else was as sad as I was.

00:13:54   Like I really had to like hang my head.

00:13:56   I was visibly crying.

00:13:58   - She really was.

00:13:59   She was very upset.

00:14:00   But I would argue what you said, Guy, that it just shows that it was effective as a death that actually meant something.

00:14:12   Yeah, so, I mean, there's two things. The things that I like, and then there's things that I think are good.

00:14:19   Like, you know, well-rendered art.

00:14:26   I can be offended by something that I feel is well-rendered art, or I can be hurt by it emotionally,

00:14:32   and I can be incredibly sad that, you know, Hans and Logan are killed.

00:14:39   That doesn't mean that I don't think it's an effective piece, you know?

00:14:44   No, you're right, but I'm like a Neanderthal, I'm capable of one emotion.

00:14:48   No, I love it though, I love it. No, the viscera--

00:14:50   The visceralness is, like, exactly why they did it.

00:14:53   It's for that reaction.

00:14:55   Like it's everybody had, I had that.

00:14:57   I was like, I saw it coming a mile away and I was like, Oh God, this is not good.

00:15:02   The second time I saw the movie, um, the, uh, the woman sitting next to me

00:15:06   screamed and then it was incredibly destroyed for the rest of the movie.

00:15:12   Like almost distractingly so.

00:15:14   Like,

00:15:14   I wish you'd gotten her number.

00:15:16   I'd like to go see it with her.

00:15:17   I know.

00:15:17   Yeah.

00:15:18   I was like, um, you remind me of a friend of mine.

00:15:22   (laughing)

00:15:25   All right, let's take a break.

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00:17:45   Let's start at the beginning. Here's the thing. I went in and I couldn't shut up about it.

00:17:51   Well, this was the first Star Wars movie that wasn't from 20th Century Fox.

00:17:58   Yeah, let's talk about the actual movie.

00:17:59   Yeah, right. Instead of the one part, let's talk about the parts I actually enjoyed.

00:18:03   Because I did enjoy parts of it.

00:18:04   I, but I think like a lot of people...

00:18:07   I feel like they should have just thrown a bunch of money at them so we can get the fanfare.

00:18:10   Yeah, I feel like...

00:18:12   Just use the fanfare.

00:18:14   I don't know how they could have done it if they could have just had the sound,

00:18:17   but not the, you know, obviously it wouldn't say 20th Century Fox.

00:18:21   But when I hear any other 20th Century Fox movie,

00:18:25   when I hear their fanfare, I immediately think this is going to be

00:18:31   a Star Wars movie. I hear the Star Wars coming in after the 20th Century Fox.

00:18:36   And so my question going into the movie is, what are they going to do?

00:18:40   are they going to put the Disney Magic Kingdom castle thing up?

00:18:44   And I don't know. They did nothing. They did. And what they ended up doing is they put

00:18:48   nothing at the beginning of the movie and it just started. You know that so the fanfare, the 20th

00:18:52   century Fox fanfare came back because Lucas wanted it in 77. They had retired it and he

00:18:59   bought it back because he liked it so much. Right, and that Star Wars was supposed to sort of harken

00:19:05   back to like the golden era of, you know, serial events.

00:19:09   So he resurrected it and it's been more or less stuck ever since.

00:19:13   And it just screamed Star Wars to me.

00:19:16   Like that, like when you hear that, that sound and that fanfare and you hear

00:19:22   that, you see the, the visual, you know, I'm sitting down for a Star Wars movie.

00:19:28   Even the bad ones, even the bad ones had it, you know?

00:19:31   I even... I heard a story once that, and I don't know if it's true, it could be apocryphal,

00:19:38   but I heard that John Williams wrote the opening notes of Star Wars, knowing that they would

00:19:45   come after that fanfare. And in fact, didn't John Williams re-record the fanfare so they'd

00:19:50   have a high fidelity version of it? It was like meant to come after, you know, first

00:19:55   the fanfare, then a pause, then the Star Wars thing kicks in.

00:20:00   I don't know, I would totally believe that.

00:20:02   It's just so perfect.

00:20:03   And I'm like, I'm not sure now if it's...

00:20:07   Like is it perfect because I loved it so much?

00:20:10   Or you know, is it actually arranged in such a way that just makes it perfect?

00:20:16   I don't know.

00:20:17   Either way, silence.

00:20:18   That was a little jarring, I guess.

00:20:23   But you know, whatever.

00:20:25   Something new.

00:20:26   I guess it's better than having the Disney castle.

00:20:28   That would have really broken my heart.

00:20:31   And I like Disney.

00:20:32   I like the Disney Company.

00:20:34   We go to Disney World, I don't know, seven or eight times a year.

00:20:39   But it would have been wrong for Star Wars.

00:20:41   I was really shocked.

00:20:42   I thought there was no way Disney was going to pass up the chance not to throw that castle

00:20:48   up there and start making more associations with Disney and Star Wars.

00:20:52   I was really surprised.

00:20:53   I think Disney is a very, very smart company.

00:20:56   I agree.

00:20:57   I agree.

00:20:58   about their branding and they let him kill Han Solo.

00:21:02   I think, I mean they've let all the Marvel stuff roll with that Marvel, you know like the comic book

00:21:07   like the Marvel logo is like comic book pages flipping right and then it just turns into Marvel.

00:21:14   I don't know, maybe JJ didn't have a great idea but either way I think they were happy to be like

00:21:21   okay like for Marvel we do the Marvel thing and for you guys whatever you want like if you don't

00:21:27   want the castle, fine. Right, and we kind of thought that they might Star Wars theme it, like

00:21:32   the Pirates of the Caribbean movies, they like kind of theme it to the movie and we thought they

00:21:38   might do something corny like that. Yeah, and in Tron they made it sort of Tron, you know, made

00:21:43   like a Tron style castle. But yeah, but this ain't Tron, right? I think what I would have,

00:21:50   What I would have pushed for would be to... I guess you couldn't get Fox to actually use the real Fox

00:21:59   music. I don't think there's any way that... Even like you said, like throwing money at it. I don't

00:22:03   know. There's something. But if they could have just made a new fanfare that was very similar

00:22:07   in some way that strikes the same notes and then play that over the Lucasfilm Limited title card.

00:22:14   Yeah, yeah, I would, yeah. I'd like to think that, I don't know who's in charge of Fox, I'd like to think that every now and then you can be like, look, this is a cultural imperative. Like, it's not about our companies. Can we just use the music?

00:22:30   That's so Canadian of you guys. To think, "Hey, let's all get along and let's just do a nice thing." I don't think it happens that way.

00:22:40   Well, why not?

00:22:41   I know, I agree with you.

00:22:42   I agree with you.

00:22:43   I agree with you.

00:22:44   Yeah, so, yeah.

00:22:45   Anyway, so, a long time ago...

00:22:49   In a galaxy far, far away.

00:22:52   That was so exciting.

00:22:53   It was exciting.

00:22:54   It was just so exciting.

00:22:55   But I remember being excited when I saw it for the prequels, too.

00:22:58   I will say, I've said this many times before, I'm not a prequel hater.

00:23:02   I mean, I don't think they were garbage.

00:23:05   But I do remember very much coming out of the first one and being like, wow, that was...

00:23:11   I feel weird, you know?

00:23:13   I feel like I got molested.

00:23:15   (Bridget laughs)

00:23:17   - Yeah.

00:23:17   I kept going back, there was a movie center

00:23:21   like 100 meters from my place at the time.

00:23:25   And I just kept going back to being molested over and over.

00:23:31   I think I'm gonna, maybe this time I'm gonna like it.

00:23:35   That's not good.

00:23:39   It's like Star Wars.

00:23:41   Yeah, it was so half-assed. It was like, it's the people I like, and I'm excited, but it's so, so bad.

00:23:49   Yeah, there's some design that I like, and there are things that I could actually say nice about the prequels.

00:23:56   See, I've like, kind of wiped them from my memory. And all I remember is it was like watching C-SPAN.

00:24:02   Like, it was just all this political rhetoric. That's all I recall. That and Jar Jar. All I remember.

00:24:09   Alright, so this one starts out and I will say too, but this one, you know what, immediately, immediately bang right off the bat, Luke Skywalker has vanished. Right? What a great line.

00:24:26   They're at the stakes.

00:24:27   Not just trade negotiation bullshit.

00:24:30   It's like Luke Skywalker, the guy that you love, is not here anymore.

00:24:35   Like, so...

00:24:37   Clearly a problem, right? Like our hero is gone.

00:24:42   I was excited because I hate Luke Skywalker.

00:24:46   Well, you know, yeah, yeah.

00:24:49   You know what I mean? He's like the hero of Jedi.

00:24:51   He's the guy that, yeah.

00:24:53   I've got a lot of strongly held, unpopular, uninformed opinions about Star Wars, so I'm like the perfect guest for this show.

00:25:00   No, you're very informed, and strong opinions is the way to go.

00:25:05   And Luke Skywalker is kind of a whiny jerk.

00:25:09   Yeah, I never liked him in the originals, I've just never cared for him.

00:25:15   And ever since I've seen that picture of him, there was a tabloid picture of him,

00:25:19   and he was outside a gas station

00:25:21   and he was digging through the public ashtray

00:25:24   and he picked up a butt and smoked it.

00:25:27   And I just thought, what are you doing, Markel?

00:25:29   - That wasn't Luke Skywalker.

00:25:31   That was-- - Well, in my mind,

00:25:34   Luke Skywalker.

00:25:35   But then he got into like a fancy BMW.

00:25:37   Like, I don't understand.

00:25:40   Like, I just think maybe his wife wanted him

00:25:42   to quit smoking.

00:25:43   I don't know.

00:25:44   You're Luke Skywalker buying a pack of cigarettes.

00:25:46   It's really, really colored my whole view of Skywalker.

00:25:49   - All right, I was confused in the opening scene

00:25:52   where you've got Poe Dameron,

00:25:55   and he very, you know, was easily established

00:25:58   by the opening text that Prince, or General Leia,

00:26:01   I should say, sent her most daring pilot on a mission.

00:26:03   It was pretty clear, okay, this guy's the pilot.

00:26:06   He's, you know, he clearly comes across as a--

00:26:10   - The scroll nailed it.

00:26:10   Like, you knew immediately what was going on.

00:26:12   - But then they said that he went to see, like,

00:26:14   an old ally, and you don't know who it is, and then it's played by Max von Seidel.

00:26:22   I had to look it up, because I don't even know that his name was mentioned in the movie,

00:26:25   but his character's name is Lor San Tekka.

00:26:27   Yeah, they should have just called him Max von Seidel.

00:26:31   Like, forget it.

00:26:32   I was very...

00:26:33   It's a Star Wars enough name.

00:26:35   I'm intimately familiar with all of the actual movies, and I just expected that it was going

00:26:40   be somebody like Lando or somebody who we knew and I'm like all right he's an old guy but I don't

00:26:48   recognize him is and I really wasted a lot of that scene trying to figure out who he was because me

00:26:54   too it seemed like next scene when he meets uh Kylo Ren well yeah but well it would just talk about

00:27:01   that whole opening scene I really felt like we were supposed to know who he was because of they

00:27:07   they kind of set it up like we were supposed to, and we didn't.

00:27:11   And I really did. It was like one of the first things I did when I got home is I looked it up,

00:27:16   and I'm like, "Okay, I wasn't supposed to know who that guy was, but why did they make me feel stupid?"

00:27:19   Right, because I spent a lot of time thinking about it, and I was like, "Oh, wow, I don't have

00:27:23   enough Star Wars knowledge to know who this guy is, and you were two seats away from me,

00:27:27   so I couldn't ask you."

00:27:30   I don't know if they were trying to make you feel stupid so much as they were just trying to roll

00:27:34   into a story and, like, you know, like, so the scroll for episode four just drops you in the deep end, right?

00:27:44   And I think this one does the same thing.

00:27:46   Does the same thing.

00:27:47   And so they say it's an old family friend, but I mean, it's been what, 32 years since the last Star Wars movie.

00:27:54   I did want it to be Land Rover.

00:27:55   Plenty of time to have like an old family friend that we didn't know.

00:27:59   But I did, I expected him to be like an organa or like a Mon Mothma.

00:28:05   I don't know.

00:28:07   Somebody who we were supposed to know.

00:28:10   Somebody, yeah.

00:28:11   You could say, "Oh my god!"

00:28:11   Like Wedge Antilles.

00:28:12   Wedge Antilles is an old man.

00:28:14   Yeah.

00:28:14   Has like the, you know, something.

00:28:17   But we don't, whatever.

00:28:19   Whoever he is.

00:28:20   He's the exorcist is who he is.

00:28:22   Have you heard this story?

00:28:25   That...

00:28:27   I totally expected Wedge to be in the movie, because Wedge is sort of an interesting trivia

00:28:32   question because if you ask, you know, who are the characters who were in all three of

00:28:36   the, you know, the first Star Wars trilogy, it's, you know, there's Han and Luke and Leia

00:28:42   and the droids and Darth Vader, and all these ones that are very, you know, the all these

00:28:47   iconic characters, but the one that's easily overlooked would be Wedge Antilles. And I

00:28:51   thought, well, of course, they're going to bring him back. And somebody told me, I forget

00:28:54   I was talking to but somebody said that they approached the actors still around they approached him and he was like nope can't be bothered

00:28:59   Or like maybe he held out for more money or something but that was

00:29:05   I think that was short-sighted because he probably could have made a pretty penny on that. Hey

00:29:11   it also

00:29:13   so

00:29:14   He's the guy that

00:29:16   Like he made the death star run

00:29:18   I think he actually dropped the... he fired the missiles. It's been a while since I've seen that one.

00:29:24   But he missed. Oh, I think he's the guy that he shot and they impacted on the surface.

00:29:30   No, no. That was a Y-wing pilot, I think. Or no, no, it wasn't X-wing, but it was like the squadron captain.

00:29:38   Oh, Wedge. Oh, here's the thing. Wedge is Luke's wingman going on the trench run.

00:29:42   Right. And then he takes damage and says...

00:29:44   He basically absorbs a bunch of damage and then gets out of there, you know?

00:29:48   In Empire, he is actually the one that topples the AT-AT.

00:29:53   Right. He's the snowspeeder pilot who...

00:29:58   Whose cable works, and he nails it.

00:30:03   And he's the one that, on the third Death Star run in Return of the Jedi,

00:30:08   he blows up the... I don't know how to describe it.

00:30:12   but there's a conduit on the right-hand side that he nukes in order so that the

00:30:17   Falcon can blow up the main bit, you know?

00:30:20   But he's right there, right to the end.

00:30:23   He's been in every major battle that we've seen, and he kicks him a major ass.

00:30:26   Yeah, so I had kind of thought at the bottom of the crawl, where it said that

00:30:31   prince-- or generally, I'm going to keep saying the first half of the word

00:30:34   princess every time I talk about this.

00:30:35   That's okay. You're like C-3PO.

00:30:37   Exactly.

00:30:41   I thought maybe that was who her most daring pilot was.

00:30:44   Or I also was sort of hoping maybe it was Han Solo too.

00:30:47   Until we figured out that it was Poe Dameron.

00:30:51   But I figured, wouldn't it be cool if it was Wedge Antilles?

00:30:54   Ends up Wedge Antilles, not in the movie.

00:30:57   - Holding out for more money.

00:30:59   So we're still at the crawl.

00:31:01   - Well, or crawl.

00:31:02   - This is the show, this show's gonna be full.

00:31:04   - We're half an hour in.

00:31:05   - I mean, I have stuff to do today.

00:31:07   - Crawl and how about the opening,

00:31:09   and the whole opening scene where it's just sort of--

00:31:11   OK, you know what? Let's do this.

00:31:13   Loved it.

00:31:15   We get a shot of, I have to assume it's a moon.

00:31:19   There's two moons orbiting Jakku.

00:31:22   We get a star destroyer coming in in silhouette.

00:31:29   Which is nice, because if they just played out the same episode 4 shot, I think that would have been overdone.

00:31:36   But the notion that you run the scroll and then you pan down onto planets and the Star Destroyer is like that Star Wars lore.

00:31:43   That's how you have to start a movie.

00:31:45   And then we see stormtroopers, like assault ships, kind of drop out of the Star Destroyer.

00:31:55   Which is almost beat for beat identical to what's happening in Star Wars, The New Hope.

00:32:05   I hate calling it a new hope.

00:32:06   Yeah, I don't like calling it a new hope.

00:32:08   On this show, we call it Star Wars.

00:32:10   Yes.

00:32:10   OK, so let's just establish that.

00:32:12   So in Star Wars, that's the same thing, right?

00:32:16   There's a crazy stormtrooper assault, and they look badass.

00:32:20   Some of them get killed, but they just barge in anyway,

00:32:23   and they're unstoppable.

00:32:26   And then after they've kind of cleaned up the scene, in Star Wars,

00:32:32   Vader walks in and in this one we have a shuttle deliver K

00:32:37   yeah I I didn't pick up on it it took me a while watching it the first time

00:32:44   before I picked up on the fact that the whole movie was more or less a remake of

00:32:49   Star Wars and in either very very similar or like similar but like turned

00:32:55   like heads to tails some people have turned that into a negative and I I

00:33:00   I don't like that notion. This is a myth. It's a modern myth.

00:33:04   Stop worrying about reusing plot points.

00:33:08   They set out and they retold the thing.

00:33:12   They retold the story with a few different characters and a few things

00:33:16   mixed up, but they've reset the ground

00:33:20   so that it's fertile for the next few movies. You know what I mean?

00:33:24   Right. I didn't have any problem with that. I thought, because it's kind of, I mean,

00:33:28   Maybe nerds don't want to admit it, but it's kind of like a soap opera.

00:33:31   Like, you know, it has all this and, you know, they recycle plots all the time and somebody's gonna be somebody's daughter or father or and it's just the way it's gonna go.

00:33:40   Yeah, I had more problem with Return of the Jedi when they're like, okay, really like another Death Star?

00:33:46   We kind of did that.

00:33:49   Right, right.

00:33:51   Jedi is weaker.

00:33:52   This one, this one at least is like, okay, now we're gonna do the exact same thing.

00:33:55   like don't and maybe I'm older so well I think the other thing that if we're

00:34:01   being honest with each other and I think I I didn't predict that I and I did go

00:34:05   in blind I did not predict that they would just really remake Star Wars yeah

00:34:09   but I think it's kind of overall I think it's kind of genius because they did it

00:34:14   without actually remaking it now compare and contrast with what they did with

00:34:19   Star Trek where they would and again JJ Abrams they rebooted it but they've

00:34:24   recast all of these iconic characters. You know, there's a new Captain Kirk, there's a new guy playing Spock, and they, you know,

00:34:31   use the time travel trick to get Leonard Nimoy in to sort of tie it together.

00:34:36   But in a way it sort of feels like a cheat because it feels like there's never gonna be a William Shatner Kirk in this universe.

00:34:42   And I'm so glad that they didn't go that way, that they said, you know, we're not remaking episode four, five, six.

00:34:48   Yeah, you know and Han Solo is still Harrison Ford and Luke Skywalker still Mark Hamill and Leia is still Carrie Fisher

00:34:55   But yet we're remaking and I feel like the thing we have to be honest with each other with everybody about is that

00:35:02   Though those movies especially the first one Star Wars

00:35:06   It it's dated in a certain way, you know, and it's you know to tie to get with my other

00:35:13   you know favorite movie series with the James Bond movies as much as I love the Sean Connery Bond movies

00:35:19   There's no way that you could make one of those today

00:35:21   with that pacing and that level of like production quality

00:35:27   like they look old and and the first Star Wars movie looks old and it feels old with the way that it's paced and

00:35:33   So I feel like telling that same story but doing it with up-to-date production values and pacing

00:35:42   is sort of necessary to take the franchise out of cold storage?

00:35:48   I think so. I think there's so much of this movie that is

00:35:52   as much, like, sort of on the meta level as it is actually on the level of telling a story.

00:36:01   Like, certainly all the mirroring of the characters and the plot points.

00:36:09   Yeah, I didn't think it felt like used up. I thought it felt like fresh and like familiar.

00:36:15   Yeah.

00:36:16   I really like, I don't know, I really liked it. I had no issue with that. I was surprised that so

00:36:19   many people did have an issue with that. Yeah, I think they're off-case.

00:36:26   Yeah, exactly. I think people that could complain.

00:36:28   All right. Here's a broad topic here. And from the opening scene, I thought Kylo Ren was an

00:36:35   Excellent villain and I like the way he talked I liked the words that he chose like he was you know very few words

00:36:41   But he chose them very well. I love this new trick that he introduced where he stopped a laser bolt in midair. I

00:36:48   Thought that was I that had never occurred to me. I thought it was an excellent thing

00:36:53   but in the as

00:36:56   The movie goes on so we're introduced to him and he feels like a total legit

00:37:01   Badass exactly like Darth Vader in the first movie when he first enters

00:37:04   but then as the movie goes on to me once he took his helmet off I

00:37:08   One of those guys. I really hate to say it, but I feel like when he took his helmet off

00:37:15   it was it reminds me of vaguely of

00:37:17   What was his name dark helmet in the Spaceballs? Yes, don't kill me

00:37:23   Like yeah

00:37:27   helmet list Kylo Ren is

00:37:30   so whiny and he's ineffective and

00:37:33   It really does correspond to the moment when he takes the helmet off like he that when he started having the tantrums

00:37:41   No, he'd been having tantrums before did he have yeah, that's right

00:37:45   He had his first tantrum and I think his first tantrum was when I was like, this is this is a silly person

00:37:50   I agree. Yeah, I

00:37:52   Think he was I think he was weak and pathetic before he took the helmet off

00:37:56   I think so my read was the

00:38:00   He'd captured Rey. Rey was in restraints.

00:38:05   And then she sort of questions him by saying, like,

00:38:10   "I forget what it was. You tried to kill me? Well, that's what happens when I'm chased by a monster in a mask."

00:38:16   And he tries to take the mask off. And I think he thinks it's a power move.

00:38:22   And it totally backfires. And the fact that he thinks it's a power move

00:38:27   is where I think it turns awesome.

00:38:32   - Like Darth Vader gets mad and he kills somebody.

00:38:36   You know what I mean?

00:38:37   Like he's frustrated, he's gonna choke somebody

00:38:39   and this guy is just like breaking his lightsaber

00:38:41   over his knee or...

00:38:42   - Darth Vader keeps his shit together.

00:38:44   - Right, right.

00:38:45   - I'm sorry, like he really does.

00:38:46   All of the Sith guys that we've seen,

00:38:48   even in the shitty movies, keep their shit together.

00:38:50   They're like, "If you fuck up, I will kill you.

00:38:54   "Like make no mistake about it."

00:38:56   But if you do what I tell you to do

00:39:01   and things don't go well, I'm fine.

00:39:04   I'm gonna be very, very angry, but it's not your fault,

00:39:08   and I'm gonna move on. (Bridget laughs)

00:39:09   This guy is like, "I'm gonna beat up a computer."

00:39:12   - Yeah, right. (laughs)

00:39:13   - Like, really?

00:39:14   This is your move?

00:39:15   - I was probably right around Jonas's age,

00:39:19   maybe like eight, nine, 10 years old,

00:39:21   and my family had played a game of Monopoly,

00:39:25   which if, you know, I think everybody's familiar with,

00:39:27   takes a long time.

00:39:30   And you know, well over an hour into it,

00:39:32   and I was the first one to go bankrupt.

00:39:37   And I thought for sure that I was gonna win

00:39:39   because I just thought, you know,

00:39:41   my family is full of simpletons.

00:39:44   (laughing)

00:39:45   - It's good that you're sharing with us.

00:39:47   - Well, as a 10 year old, you know,

00:39:49   I really thought that I, you know--

00:39:50   - You were the smartest person in the room.

00:39:52   - Yeah, and I was gonna, you know,

00:39:53   wheel and deal and Donald Trump my way into victory, you know, is a real estate magnet.

00:39:57   And I went bankrupt, magnate. And I lost, I was the first one out and I went into a

00:40:06   fit. And we were playing in the kitchen on the kitchen table and I went into the living

00:40:12   room which is next door, picked a pillow off the sofa and threw it into the kitchen and

00:40:17   it was, it could not have been worse. It just swept the board. It swept everything off the

00:40:23   board, everybody's money. It just slid across the board, like one of the Dukes of Hazzard sliding

00:40:28   across the General Lee. And I instantly knew, wow, that was a horrible mistake. I just ruined the

00:40:36   game for everybody. Like it was completely irrecoverable. And everybody was like, well,

00:40:40   I guess the game's over. Nice job, John. But I was 10 years old, you know what I mean? And I

00:40:44   learned a lesson from it. I was like, wow, you know, you gotta, you know,

00:40:48   You never do stuff like that. I mean that. I know that sounds like because I'm like never serious,

00:40:53   but you don't. You're very even-tempered.

00:40:55   I just feel like it's, I mean, it's obviously a deliberate choice. It's not like they made a

00:41:01   mistake, but it's a curious choice that they've made the main bad guy somebody who has the

00:41:07   emotional temperament of a 10 or 11 year old. Well, I think it needs to in order to

00:41:13   disassociate him with Darth Vader.

00:41:15   But it makes him so unlikable in a way that you have no respect for him.

00:41:21   Like Darth Vader was not likable.

00:41:22   Like he was likable as a badass, but you know, not really likable.

00:41:26   But this guy, that's why it made me so mad when he killed Han Solo.

00:41:30   Like I'm going to stop bringing that up.

00:41:31   But because he was just so unlikable, like he was not worthy of killing Han Solo.

00:41:37   That's what really got to me.

00:41:39   I think that's the point.

00:41:40   I know.

00:41:41   I know that's the point.

00:41:42   But I just-- I'm not going to talk about it anymore.

00:41:45   Well, forget the Han Solo bit.

00:41:48   I think that--

00:41:51   I think that Darth Vader established an archetype

00:41:54   for villains that we've seen played over since its introduction.

00:42:00   And this is like--

00:42:02   they can't do the same thing.

00:42:03   What are you going to do?

00:42:04   Be a better Vader than Vader?

00:42:06   Can't do that.

00:42:07   So they need a petulant child.

00:42:10   I mean, that seems like a pretty...

00:42:12   Like a petulant, overly-entitled, uh...

00:42:16   Vately misogynistic, like, certainly self-entitled...

00:42:21   Well, they nailed it.

00:42:22   Child. Yeah, to be, you know, to be the villain.

00:42:26   'Cause they've already got the cold-calculating guy.

00:42:29   I don't know if Vader's cold and calculating, but he's seething.

00:42:33   They've got the seething thing done.

00:42:37   You can't seethe better than Vader.

00:42:39   Like, his breathing is seething.

00:42:42   You literally can't get more than that, you know?

00:42:45   So they've got this guy who's a whiny wannabe.

00:42:50   And it makes sense in the universe, and it makes sense as a villain, and it's pathetic.

00:42:57   And I like that you don't need to respect--

00:43:04   I like that he doesn't deserve to respect.

00:43:07   respect. And that's his problem is that he feels that he does, but it's immediately

00:43:14   apparent to anybody that watches him that like, no, you don't. You're no Vader kid.

00:43:19   Right. Well, and maybe it's an evolution because I hated Anakin too in the other

00:43:27   ones. So, you know, maybe, I don't know, maybe killing Han Solo gives him the, you

00:43:33   "You know what? I'm a badass. I killed my dad. I killed Han Solo."

00:43:36   So maybe, you know, maybe it's an evolution. I don't know.

00:43:39   I think it-- I think that kind of maybe--

00:43:40   It's gotta be--

00:43:41   I don't know if it backfired in terms of turning him to the light side, but, uh...

00:43:44   He was certainly not thinking with his head when he engaged, uh...

00:43:49   Rey and Finn in that lightsaber battle.

00:43:52   Oh, definitely. Definitely.

00:43:55   Anyway, so we're jumping all over the place.

00:43:57   Yeah, but that-- but I feel like--

00:43:59   It's just a kind of conversa-- I mean--

00:44:00   Yeah.

00:44:01   The other thing they do is in the opening scene we are instantly

00:44:05   and again it parallels the first movie where Princess Leia

00:44:08   you know put the plans in R2D2 and we've got a new R2D2

00:44:13   BB8 and it's you know it could not be more

00:44:17   I almost feel like I should have realized they're remaking the movie I just thought

00:44:20   oh it's just one note

00:44:22   you know similar their secret plans and they're giving them to this astromech

00:44:25   droid

00:44:26   who beeps and emotes instead of talking

00:44:29   like a nod in the beginning like it just felt like a nod to the first movie right then i love bb-8 and

00:44:36   i feel like and i know you know that was a character that they they let out in the trailers

00:44:42   and they started making toys and stuff like that for it so you got the gist of you know like the

00:44:46   way that he sort of built like a snowman um but i really liked him in the movie and i feel like

00:44:52   that one of the things that did to me was at just a home run in the movie is the bb-8 character

00:44:58   What do you guys think?

00:45:02   I don't think he could have done better.

00:45:08   A droid like 3PO would be a failure.

00:45:13   And you can't have another R2 unit.

00:45:16   We've seen that.

00:45:17   We had R4 in the prequels.

00:45:21   Who nobody cared about.

00:45:23   Not even Obi-Wan Kenobi.

00:45:28   Nobody cared about that guy.

00:45:30   So yeah, no, I loved it. I thought that they managed to make a real, genuine new character droid that we actually liked.

00:45:42   And that's no small feat, right?

00:45:45   I think he was such an R2D2. I mean, he's like plucky and cute.

00:45:50   He's cuter and he's more mobile and, you know, like he hides behind people's legs.

00:45:56   R2D2 expresses his personality in terms of beeps and boops.

00:46:00   And BB-8 does it with like...

00:46:04   Yeah, he's kind of like a playful puppy.

00:46:08   You know, he had like you said, like hiding between the legs.

00:46:11   Yeah, he's more like a pet than R2D2.

00:46:15   I had never got the sense that R2D2 was a pet.

00:46:17   I always got the sense that R2, even in the first movie where we see him,

00:46:21   or even if you go back to the prequels,

00:46:23   Even in the prequels, when, you know, chronologically we first see R2, he already feels like he's an old droid.

00:46:31   And he sort of acts like an old droid. Whereas BB-8 is... feels like almost childish.

00:46:37   Yes. He's got like a sense of wonder about him.

00:46:41   One of the biggest laughs in the movie, and I really do love it, I think it's so great, is where...

00:46:49   again we're skipping around, but when they're on the Falcon and Rey is underneath trying

00:46:54   to fix the ship and Finn is explaining that I'm not really part of the Resistance, but

00:47:01   there's no way we're getting out of this unless you tell us where.

00:47:03   He's coming clean to the droid.

00:47:06   Right, and he gives him a thumbs up and BB-8 has like a butane lighter and uses it to give

00:47:14   a thumbs up.

00:47:15   I was ready for it the second time we saw it.

00:47:17   And I really gauged the crowd.

00:47:19   The crowd absolutely lost it at that point.

00:47:22   And I feel like that was really the point where everybody in the theater was like,

00:47:27   "Alright, I am fully on board with this movie."

00:47:29   Yeah. I think so too. That's certainly the biggest laugh.

00:47:33   What about in broad strokes?

00:47:41   I almost feel like, just to jump to a problem with the movie, is that in the first Star Wars,

00:47:49   the famous opening shot where you see the the rebel ship, small rebel ship, going away,

00:47:55   and then the giant, wow, it just keeps going and going and going, giant star destroyer. In addition

00:48:02   to just being a beautiful shot and a tremendously effective special effect, it also instantly

00:48:08   establishes the power dynamics between the rebellion and the empire. That the

00:48:13   rebels are small and really up against it and the Empire is huge and the

00:48:19   overwhelming military strength in the galaxy. The shot establishes that. Whereas

00:48:26   in this movie it's very unclear to me, even after having watched it twice and

00:48:32   you know read the internet and unspoiled myself, it's very unclear to me like how

00:48:37   strong the First Order is, and how strong the New Republic and this Resistance are.

00:48:46   Yeah, I don't think you can tell. They blood out -- so the silhouette of the Star

00:48:57   Store blots out a moon rather than the sun. You'd think that would be more of a -- you

00:49:06   Like if you've got a planet and a sun and a star story just kind of comes in between them.

00:49:11   I don't think... So the opening crawl did not explain the political situation very well,

00:49:22   and none of the expository dialogue really did.

00:49:26   If anything, I think that might have been a reaction to...

00:49:35   you know, the prequels where all we did is spend time talking about, like,

00:49:42   who's voting on what from where and like, oh, wait, that senator needs some farm subsidies

00:49:48   so that we can have these stormtroopers, whatever it was.

00:49:53   I think maybe that it got glossed over a little bit much.

00:49:56   I do know that there have been scenes cut

00:50:01   that deal a little bit more with the political side of things.

00:50:03   Yeah, I've heard that too, including like the characters who got blown up on the balcony.

00:50:09   Yeah, we see a woman, like the close up of the woman's face, she actually apparently gets dispatched by Leia

00:50:17   to go and talk to the Galactic Senate about ginning up more support for the Resistance.

00:50:25   But I think it all got cut, and probably rightfully so. It was a long enough movie with enough going on

00:50:32   that I don't think we needed to know it.

00:50:34   - Right, let's not listen from those prequels.

00:50:36   I mean, if I would have heard the words Galactic Senate,

00:50:39   I would have gotten up and left.

00:50:40   - Yeah, yeah.

00:50:42   Well, you would have missed Han Solo getting killed.

00:50:44   - Yeah, and you know what, then I'd be happy.

00:50:46   (laughing)

00:50:49   - One of the things that I thought was pretty clever

00:50:51   and I liked it is even though it's 30 years later,

00:50:56   and I like the basic idea that what happened

00:51:01   and Return of the Jedi did not completely shut down the Empire instantly.

00:51:05   The Empire truly was an Empire, and losing another Death Star and the Super Star Destroyer

00:51:16   and losing the Emperor and Vader obviously set them back tremendously, but it left them

00:51:21   with something that they could still have.

00:51:23   They still had this massive Starfleet.

00:51:25   I love that basically.

00:51:27   Just makes sense. There's no way you can...

00:51:29   That battle did not...

00:51:31   There's no way that battle could cripple something as large as a galactic empire.

00:51:35   I really like the way that they flipped this, though.

00:51:38   And they made...

00:51:40   It was unclear how old Darth Vader was in the first movies,

00:51:43   but you knew... Obi-Wan said that he was...

00:51:46   He told Luke that he had fought with him and that he was a star pilot.

00:51:51   So you knew he had to be at least like 40 or 50.

00:51:53   And that he was more or less 20 years, maybe, or so younger than Obi-Wan.

00:51:59   But Tarkin was clearly an old guy.

00:52:02   Wait, from those first movies I did not think he was 20 years younger than Obi-Wan.

00:52:07   Oh, you didn't? How old did you think he was? Because he said that he trained him.

00:52:09   I thought he was the same age.

00:52:10   Oh, see, I thought that he was a little younger because he told Luke that it was an apprentice of mine.

00:52:15   Well, okay, so in A New Hope, he says that he fought with him.

00:52:20   Right.

00:52:21   Right. So that established my relationship with the thing.

00:52:24   And then he talks about Darth Vader having trained him.

00:52:28   Yeah, but then he even addresses him as old man.

00:52:30   Your powers are weak, old man.

00:52:31   Yeah, OK.

00:52:35   I still didn't get the 20 years, but OK. Yeah.

00:52:38   Yeah, I just figured... Well, yeah, yeah.

00:52:40   Yeah, I don't think you...

00:52:43   I think you have to have 20 years on somebody to call them an old man.

00:52:46   Right. You can't call somebody who's roughly your age an old man.

00:52:49   Although I'm gonna start.

00:52:50   Old man guy English.

00:52:55   I thought it was a really interesting twist that especially that the

00:53:03   hux character is like, a young boy, I wanted to punch that guy. And I feel

00:53:10   like you wanted to want it. They wanted you to want to punch him. Like when he

00:53:14   He was giving his little Nazi speech to all the troops, and I was just like, "Man, I would

00:53:20   like to see you get punched."

00:53:21   Yeah, you want to grab a Captain America shield and just hit that guy in the face with it.

00:53:26   He's awful.

00:53:27   Is that where you're going with the Tarkin thing?

00:53:29   Well, yeah.

00:53:30   Because he really—

00:53:31   To me, it's one of those aspects of the movie where, yes, the whole thing parallels the

00:53:34   first Star Wars movie.

00:53:36   Hux is clearly the Tarkin stand-in, and I really like the twist that instead of being

00:53:43   an old guy he is young I mean I don't know it looks like to me like he's only

00:53:48   around 30 years old yeah he's young he's full of piss and vinegar and he's he's

00:53:52   on a mission right and it's like inherently like what was the name of the

00:53:57   actor who played Tarkin Peter what who yeah no yeah that's okay somebody will

00:54:07   correct us if we're wrong. That guy just instantly commanded respect, because it's just who he is,

00:54:16   right? You just had to respect him. Whereas Hux is like, because he's like a young punk,

00:54:22   you had to know that. Oh, no, I'm sorry. Peter Cushing was the name.

00:54:25   Peter Cushing. Sorry. Yeah. Peter O'Toole. Yeah. It's funny. I was looking it up on my phone.

00:54:31   But he commanded respect just because he was just this old British actor who you know as

00:54:37   I don't even know what he was in, but you just know you've seen him in things.

00:54:40   His face is like so... it's like Max Fonsetto.

00:54:43   Exactly.

00:54:44   He... it's... yeah.

00:54:46   So I thought that was pretty brilliant. I really liked it.

00:54:48   And I like that the guy is a young punk.

00:54:53   Yeah, definitely.

00:54:55   Well, his arrogance and vigor really got sold because he was a young guy, I think.

00:55:03   It's like he's too young and dumb to have actually thought about what the hell he's saying.

00:55:10   And so he can deliver these kind of speeches with complete conviction, as opposed to having a sense of cynicism.

00:55:23   Like, you know, when you hear the Vader, the Emperor deliver his talks, there's always a cynicism behind it.

00:55:33   I think this guy is just a real believer, you know? He's like a born-again fascist, imperial, lacky leader kind of guy.

00:55:44   Born-again fascist is such a great phrase.

00:55:48   He really is! He's like, he's...

00:55:50   Who does that?

00:55:52   Well, let's not get into politics.

00:55:57   You could just see that he'd be voting for Trump, though.

00:56:00   Yeah, yeah.

00:56:01   All right, let's take another break.

00:56:03   I was trying not to go there.

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00:58:49   Wealthfront. Wealthfront.com/the-talk-show is where you go to sign up. All right, we haven't

00:58:55   really spoken about Rey yet.

00:58:57   Amy?

00:59:01   I love Rey. I mean, I think how could you not like Rey? I loved

00:59:08   her. She was so exciting. And I that was another thing. Well,

00:59:15   what were we gonna say?

00:59:19   I don't remember because you interrupted me.

00:59:21   I was directing you to speak in the microphone.

00:59:24   because your big dumb face is there.

00:59:27   Clearly, I mean this is again this is obvious anybody who's seen the movie knows this.

00:59:30   She is the Luke Skywalker. She's the, you know, the force aware, force capable,

00:59:37   20-ish year old who's living on a desert planet and has, you know, dreams and of bigger adventures.

00:59:48   She's a pilot, you know, she's the new Luke. But whereas Luke was

00:59:54   She's better than Luke. She's definitely way better than Luke.

00:59:58   Luke wants to go to the... whatever. Tamagotchi station. That's not the word. I know.

01:00:04   To get some power converters.

01:00:06   Tashi station.

01:00:08   Tashi station. She will build you some damn power converters.

01:00:12   She just made me so, so happy.

01:00:17   I mean, she was just this amazing female character.

01:00:21   And I don't know if you remember,

01:00:25   like before the movie came out,

01:00:27   J.J. Abrams was obviously doing a lot of press

01:00:29   and he said something kind of--

01:00:30   - He's good at that.

01:00:31   - He just said something stupid,

01:00:33   but he didn't, but you know, I just felt like,

01:00:36   well, give the guy a chance.

01:00:37   And I just feel like--

01:00:38   - I think he was trying to be coy, right?

01:00:40   - Well, I just think he was,

01:00:41   and let's face it, when we were little,

01:00:44   girls did love Star Wars,

01:00:45   but it was marketed towards boys.

01:00:48   And I think that everyone who criticized him

01:00:52   owes him an apology, because he said maybe one silly

01:00:56   kind of dumb thing, but then in the movie, it was so true.

01:01:00   I mean, she absolutely kicked ass, she was amazing.

01:01:03   - Yeah, I think he said something like,

01:01:05   "Star Wars has always been a boys thing,

01:01:09   "but I hope with this movie,

01:01:11   "mothers will wanna take their daughters

01:01:13   "and it'll be a girl thing."

01:01:14   And then people got bent out of shape,

01:01:16   'cause he was like, well, it wasn't always a boy thing.

01:01:20   I was like, yeah, okay.

01:01:23   - He just misspoke. - True.

01:01:24   - He just wasn't-- - The guy said something stupid.

01:01:26   - But then he made a movie with a kick-ass female character.

01:01:29   - Yeah, he'd already made the movie when he said it,

01:01:32   and he was like trying not to be,

01:01:34   he can't spoil it, and he's trying to be like,

01:01:36   look, this is gonna be more,

01:01:39   this is gonna be more powerful women characters

01:01:41   in this movie than you expect,

01:01:42   is what he's trying to say.

01:01:44   - Right, right.

01:01:45   And it's like just, he screwed up.

01:01:48   - I really loved the introduction to her, cinematically.

01:01:53   - Oh my God.

01:01:54   - And it's when she's exploring the husk

01:01:57   of a destroyed star destroyer on the surface of the planet.

01:02:02   And I thought it the first time I saw it,

01:02:06   and I had this in mind the second time I saw it.

01:02:08   To me, I really do think it's almost an homage to Wally,

01:02:14   that she lives this solitary life

01:02:17   that is to me a lot like Wally,

01:02:19   in the way that Wally was cleaning up garbage

01:02:21   and she was sort of scavenging the garbage for parts.

01:02:25   But the way too that the entire introduction to her,

01:02:28   she's by herself and she never mutters,

01:02:31   there's never anything where she says anything,

01:02:32   she doesn't talk to herself or anything.

01:02:34   It's purely cinematic.

01:02:36   You just see her exploring this thing.

01:02:38   It's beautiful.

01:02:40   It really does look real.

01:02:42   I mean, obviously I guess a lot of that was CGI,

01:02:44   but unlike the prequels, to me,

01:02:46   it really looked like they built

01:02:48   a giant empty Star Destroyer.

01:02:51   And it established her character.

01:02:53   It's like, wow, whoever she is,

01:02:55   she knows the way that she's grappling around

01:02:58   on these hooks and cables and stuff like that.

01:03:01   She knows what she's doing.

01:03:02   And then her excavation ends

01:03:06   with her sliding down the dune like a sled.

01:03:09   And it's just a little bit of whimsy

01:03:11   that to me was like, but she's, you know, she's trying to have fun.

01:03:14   I loved it.

01:03:17   I loved the luxury that Tolkien establishing the way she lived her life.

01:03:22   A lot of movies just have like a faster pace these days.

01:03:27   And maybe they'll drop a couple of lines of exposition like, oh man, I can't

01:03:34   believe I've spent like another day scavenging in the Star Destroyer, you

01:03:37   know, like something like that.

01:03:38   But this is like so much better.

01:03:41   Like, you can-- like, it's nice and slow.

01:03:43   It's, uh, the sled is whimsy, but it also just makes sense.

01:03:50   Why, like, she-- you know that she's been doing this a long time.

01:03:53   She collects a bunch of stuff, she puts on the sled, she slides down the thing,

01:03:57   and she carries it home on her speedometer.

01:03:59   Right.

01:04:00   And it was slow paced, but it was-- it's still enjoyable to watch.

01:04:04   And I felt like it was slow paced, and you got a lot out of it.

01:04:07   Like you really got her isolation.

01:04:10   And I thought that was really,

01:04:13   I thought it was really interesting.

01:04:14   But like you said, it was a slow paced thing,

01:04:16   but it was super enjoyable to watch.

01:04:19   - I loved it.

01:04:19   I loved that she was in line.

01:04:21   She was in line to sell the parts.

01:04:24   Like just the weird, like,

01:04:25   it's just perfect.

01:04:28   Like the monotony of like, okay, I'm gonna do this.

01:04:31   I love the shot of her and the,

01:04:34   she's cleaning off the parts that she's collected.

01:04:37   and she looks up and across the table from her is a weathered old woman.

01:04:43   And not just an old woman, but an old woman who's clearly being

01:04:47   beaten down by the sands and the environment that they're living in.

01:04:53   And it's very brief shot,

01:04:56   but it registers with her and with us that, "Okay, this is it. This is my future."

01:05:03   - This is me if I don't get something going.

01:05:06   - Yeah. - Right.

01:05:07   - The other shot that to me was, it's just cinema.

01:05:11   There's no dialogue, but when she tries on the helmet,

01:05:15   she finds like a rebel-- - So great.

01:05:17   - A rebel X-wing pilot helmet, and she tries it on.

01:05:20   It tells you exactly what you think.

01:05:22   She's dreaming of getting off the planet.

01:05:24   - Right.

01:05:25   - And she's eating her food all happy?

01:05:28   - Yeah.

01:05:29   - Like she's not-- - You know,

01:05:30   they're gonna start selling that food at Disney.

01:05:32   They're gonna sell, I mean, they will sell anything at Disney and the Star Wars stuff is just out of control.

01:05:37   Like they have opened up a new building in one of the parks just to sell Star Wars stuff.

01:05:42   And they're going to sell those little gruel packets. I know it. And kids are gonna go nuts.

01:05:47   One quarter, one quarter portion.

01:05:49   Yeah. But I liked it that she was like, she had a smile on her face. Like, okay, that was a day well done.

01:05:58   I've got something to eat. I'm sitting here eating my thing. I've got my helmet.

01:06:02   Feeling good, you know?

01:06:05   Well, here's one more thing. Because it wasn't like, oh, I'm... it wasn't like a, you know, like an Oliver Twist kind of thing.

01:06:13   Where it's like, oh god, everything is awful, and I'm the worst. It was like, no, make my way.

01:06:18   It's one of the subtle ways that I found her so much more likable than Luke in the first movie, where Luke is so...

01:06:26   So, you know, like, and he's like, "Oh, another season."

01:06:31   - Like, poor me, like, why is this happening to me?

01:06:33   Like, I have these big dreams,

01:06:35   but I'm not really gonna do anything about them.

01:06:36   I'm just gonna whine about my circumstance.

01:06:38   - Yeah.

01:06:39   - And I didn't, you know what,

01:06:40   I didn't get like a contentedness from Ray.

01:06:42   I got a, "Hey, I'm putting up with this,

01:06:45   "but I'm gonna do something."

01:06:46   - Oh yeah, yeah, don't talk to him anymore.

01:06:48   I don't think she's content. - Yeah, I mean,

01:06:49   I don't think she was like smiling.

01:06:49   - I just thought that she took joy in small moments

01:06:52   of like, I'm sitting here enjoying my thing.

01:06:55   At least I'm eating for today,

01:06:56   and this is going to get better.

01:06:58   Like I'm gonna do that. - I've got my happy helmet on.

01:07:00   (both laughing)

01:07:02   Which I love, I just love the idea of like,

01:07:04   and you know what nobody talks about is the,

01:07:06   so she marks off one day at a time on that wall.

01:07:12   - Right. - And there was a lot of marks.

01:07:14   - A lot of marks. (laughs)

01:07:16   - Oh, a lot of marks going on, yeah.

01:07:18   - Yeah, clearly her backstory is,

01:07:22   It's a total JJ Abrams-ism.

01:07:25   Mystery box kind of thing.

01:07:26   Yeah, a mystery box.

01:07:28   And including the fact that we don't hear her last name.

01:07:30   I mean, obviously there's an awful lot of people

01:07:32   who are speculating that maybe she's Luke's daughter,

01:07:35   that she's Rey Skywalker.

01:07:37   Yeah, I don't believe that.

01:07:39   She was left there for whatever mysterious reasons.

01:07:42   I don't know.

01:07:43   There's gotta be some reason we don't know her last name.

01:07:46   Or any other speculation, the other guess,

01:07:49   and going along typical Star Wars.

01:07:51   lines where everybody ends up being somebody's brother or sister

01:07:55   would be that she's Han and Leia's daughter.

01:07:59   But that, that to me doesn't seem plausible just because of the way that

01:08:03   Han's interaction with her, it doesn't even, if there was even a chance of that...

01:08:08   She's Kenobi's granddaughter.

01:08:12   We know that? No, we don't know that.

01:08:15   That's what I choose to assert right now.

01:08:19   A) She's got the accent. B) We hear Kenobi speaking to her in the flashback sequence.

01:08:25   C) Anakin and Kenobi went at it originally, which is kind of what set the whole thing off.

01:08:34   And I don't know what the other one is. I have another reason.

01:08:42   I have heard.

01:08:43   She's just awesome.

01:08:45   I have heard.

01:08:46   So she's got it. I'm a huge Obi-Wan Kenobi fan. Like, he's my guy.

01:08:50   Uh, so I'm going with her being the...

01:08:53   Or maybe she could be like his niece or something, but she, you know, maybe she's named Rey Kenobi.

01:08:58   No, no, so my, I mean, my thing is like, you know what, if you look like Ewan McGregor,

01:09:03   and all of your buddies in the Jedi Order get wiped out,

01:09:06   and you're stuck on Tatooine with nothing to do for 20 years,

01:09:10   I think the cantina may look like a good place to have a little bit of fun if you know that.

01:09:15   Have we thought about the fact that she might be Yoda's?

01:09:19   I haven't thought about that. I had not thought about that.

01:09:26   I don't want to know how that goes on.

01:09:29   Here's a complaint I have with the movie.

01:09:32   One of my complaints is that they don't introduce any memorable vehicles that are new.

01:09:39   It's just they've painted the TIE Fighters black.

01:09:42   They have created a new two-seat TIE Fighter.

01:09:45   What is it? Like the Special Forces TIE Fighter?

01:09:47   Yeah, yeah, that was a plot contrivance, right?

01:09:50   But it's, you know, it's the Millennium Falcon, X-wings, Star Destroyers, all the vehicles.

01:09:55   There's no Y-wings, there's no TIE Interceptors, there's no bombers, there's no A-wings, there's no B-wings, there's nothing.

01:10:01   There's just X-wings and TIE Fighters.

01:10:03   That's exactly where I'm going.

01:10:04   Where the only cool new vehicle at all is Ray's Speeder.

01:10:08   I didn't even like it.

01:10:09   Oh, I kind of liked it. I did. I kind of liked it.

01:10:12   It's like a Lance Beater, but we turned it on its side. I don't know.

01:10:14   No, I kind of liked it. I think if I was a kid, I'd want I would want the Ray's Beater toy.

01:10:19   I liked it. It was kind of shitty. It's just a big box. No, because it makes sense. Right? It's like, what?

01:10:26   She's not gonna be like, going around with it like a dope ride. Whatever. It's like, this thing moves.

01:10:33   And that's like...

01:10:34   It's utilitarian. It's totally utilitarian.

01:10:36   Well, I guess I think it looks cool. My only complaint with it is that given her career, she kind of needs like a pickup truck.

01:10:44   Something to haul things.

01:10:48   Like in theory, she could there could be some some salvageable stuff in that Star Destroyer that or whatever other records, you know, she's she's exploring, that would be too big to take on that thing. She kind of needs a truck.

01:11:02   So my take is that the scavenging has been going on for so long that there's very little left.

01:11:09   Yeah, exactly.

01:11:12   You get like, she's climbing way up to get like a little tiny part that, you know, she takes.

01:11:18   Right.

01:11:19   I don't think, like all of the good stuff was gone like 20 years ago, basically, before she was born.

01:11:24   It's kind of my vague take on it.

01:11:26   Right, it's a rough life.

01:11:27   Yeah.

01:11:29   It's not just scavenging, it's like picking the little scraps of meat off the bones at this point.

01:11:37   Alright, so the other new major character is Finn. What do you guys think about Finn?

01:11:44   I love Finn. I liked him a lot.

01:11:47   Yeah, me too.

01:11:48   He's like a, you know, when it's, he's like a good guy,

01:11:51   and like he's finding himself throughout the movie. Like, I think it's fun.

01:11:57   He's got a good heart and he has bad luck.

01:12:00   And I like that he's kind of the bumbler. You know what I mean?

01:12:03   They may have heard the badass and he's kind of the bumbler. I like that. I like that.

01:12:07   Well, and I think it compares well in the first scene where we really get to see him.

01:12:12   I mean, obviously there's the opening battle where he, for whatever reason,

01:12:16   has broken through the indoctrination of these stormtroopers and has serious moral qualms.

01:12:24   I really hated that though because stormtroopers don't bleed and I realized like the the

01:12:28   The use of that, you know that he it marks him and it shows that he's affected but stormtroopers have never bled. I

01:12:36   Thought it was weird. I

01:12:39   Agree, it was weird. It definitely broke the expectations of the Star Wars movies

01:12:44   But I think the fact that we saw a strong trooper bleeding

01:12:51   humanize them.

01:12:52   Right.

01:12:53   And I think that's what this was.

01:12:53   Which allowed us to then like go ahead and, you know, so.

01:12:56   I vivid-

01:12:57   Right, like he was like, holy crap, we're killing people here for no reason.

01:13:00   We're just mad.

01:13:00   Yeah, but like just the mere fact that a stormtrooper, also, uh, that stormtrooper

01:13:06   didn't have a glove on.

01:13:07   Yeah.

01:13:09   Yeah.

01:13:09   Like, and it doesn't make sense.

01:13:11   Not if it makes sense, just keep rolling.

01:13:13   Stop thinking, keep rolling.

01:13:16   Okay, he's a human and now we're expressing his human and he kind of has a bond with

01:13:21   this guy and that's it. Like just... Cut it short and keep going.

01:13:27   I vividly remember in my childhood, when the movies were new and I was a little kid, that

01:13:32   one of the recurring arguments that me and my friends would have, or a debate I guess,

01:13:36   was exactly what are the stormtroopers? Are they people? Are they clones? Because they

01:13:42   mentioned the Clone Wars, you know, are they clones? And I remember a lot of my friends

01:13:46   thought...

01:13:47   because they switch, you know, they, Han and Luke take their outfits.

01:13:53   Yeah, but there were people who, I remember I had friends who argued that they were droids,

01:13:57   that they must have been like robots, and that even the one-

01:13:59   Because friends are stupid.

01:14:00   And that they, you know, that-

01:14:01   I agree that it was stupid, and it wasn't my argument, but it was enough of a mystery that

01:14:07   at least some kids would argue that they were droids, and that Han and Luke had like,

01:14:12   hollowed out, you know, taken all the robot cuts out.

01:14:15   Well that would have taken a lot of time.

01:14:17   I agree, it's stupid. It wasn't my argument.

01:14:19   No, I'm sorry. Okay, stupid is way harsh for childhood friends.

01:14:23   Uh, no, but I've always seen them as, as, uh...

01:14:27   I don't want to throw them under the bus, but my childhood friend, I'll just name them. David Neumoyer thought that they were droids.

01:14:32   Okay, David, I'm sorry, man. I don't... didn't mean to call you stupid.

01:14:37   He made a good case for it, though.

01:14:39   I bet he did. As a ten-year-old.

01:14:42   - Right, so I love the scene.

01:14:45   I really love the scene where Poe and Finn first meet.

01:14:50   And to me, and it's where J.J. Abrams really just nailed it,

01:14:55   where Poe Dameron is clearly like a,

01:15:00   right out of mythology, he's the hero's hero.

01:15:04   He's brave, he's never afraid.

01:15:07   - He's got a square jaw that could break

01:15:09   like a granite block.

01:15:10   - He felt like Indiana Jones.

01:15:11   Like that's, and even the jacket, I felt like, wow, he's an Indiana Jones.

01:15:14   Yeah.

01:15:15   And like a typical, you know, like when James Bond gets captured, he's never

01:15:18   like worried, you know, that he's not going to, he just figures, ah, something's

01:15:21   going to happen, I'm going to get out of it.

01:15:22   Yeah.

01:15:23   And he's got that.

01:15:24   It's like your thing where he's read the script ahead.

01:15:26   And he's got that confidence.

01:15:28   And Finn is a perfect foil because Finn is like literally in like a flop sweat.

01:15:34   I mean, he is like in like, he's having like the crisis of his life.

01:15:38   He knows that captain Phasma is onto him.

01:15:41   You know, he's supposed to go down to

01:15:43   What does she say? I want your weapon inspected. They're gonna figure out he never he says she says

01:15:48   report to division, I don't even know what that means, but it's like

01:15:51   Kind of doesn't sound good. Yeah, and there's that line where he's like, why are you doing this?

01:15:58   Are you part of the resistance and he and Finn is like it's just the right thing to do and he goes you need a

01:16:03   Pilot and he goes yeah, I need a pilot and it's funny and that really did that moment in the movie watching it

01:16:09   It really struck me that for all of the book length criticism you can have of the prequel

01:16:15   trilogy and what's wrong with it, that the dialogue is stilted and the characters are

01:16:20   lame and the plot is all this political stuff and you don't even know who the bad guys are

01:16:24   because it seems like both sides are really working for the emperor so there's no bad

01:16:27   guys.

01:16:28   And you can go on and on and on and talk about the effects and how everything was green screen.

01:16:32   But it really hit me with that joke of "Yeah, I need a pilot."

01:16:36   But you know what?

01:16:37   One of the huge, huge gaping flaws in the prequel trilogy is there's nothing funny in

01:16:42   them at all.

01:16:43   And a Star Wars movie should be funny.

01:16:45   Yes.

01:16:46   Yeah.

01:16:47   You need to hit the funny action beats, like, in a certain way.

01:16:51   Right.

01:16:52   But like I said earlier, it's all corny funny, but it's like, you know...

01:16:55   That's okay, though.

01:16:56   Right.

01:16:57   Right.

01:16:58   No, it's in a good way.

01:16:59   And that's why, like I said earlier, like, you got the feeling that the people who made

01:17:01   this movie really loved Star Wars.

01:17:04   And I feel like they hit so many of the jokes in the right way.

01:17:08   Like the joke about, you know, when they're running toward the ship and he's like, "What

01:17:13   about that one?"

01:17:14   And she's like, "No, that one's garbage."

01:17:15   And then, you know, then they have to go to that one.

01:17:18   And it's the Millennium Falcon.

01:17:19   It's such a great joke.

01:17:20   Like, it's such a Star Wars, like it just hits the perfect tone of Star Wars.

01:17:24   And the main theme kicks in.

01:17:27   Like the camera turns to show the Millennium Falcon and it does like, "Duh, duh, duh, duh,

01:17:32   duh."

01:17:33   - It's so exciting.

01:17:34   - Yeah. - I don't know.

01:17:35   I thought that's so exciting.

01:17:36   - Now we're playing for real, you know?

01:17:38   - It's such a perfect Star Wars joke.

01:17:41   Totally corny, but yet you laugh anyway.

01:17:45   - But that's, so that scene with Poe and Finn is amazing,

01:17:50   because it immediately establishes Finn's character,

01:17:54   who actually doesn't even have a name yet,

01:17:56   but it establishes him as like a guy

01:18:01   that knows what the good thing to say is.

01:18:05   Like he knows what the right thing to do and say is, but he's actually

01:18:09   just really out for himself.

01:18:11   Like I'm letting you go because it's the right thing to do.

01:18:14   Oh, you need a pilot?

01:18:15   Yeah, I need a pilot.

01:18:17   Like he knows what the thing to say is and then he's just, he can't hold it together.

01:18:25   Like he can't lie very well, you know?

01:18:28   So, and that comes up again and again in the movie.

01:18:31   Yeah, and so one of the parallels, I think, and it's not an exact parallel,

01:18:36   but clearly Finn is in a certain way, he is the Han Solo of this movie,

01:18:42   where he's the character who's really just looking out for his own interests.

01:18:46   Yeah.

01:18:47   Lying and bluffing his way through everything.

01:18:50   Yeah. Where Han was sort of, as soon as you met him, he was grizzled and competent.

01:18:56   Finn is competent in some ways, but definitely not world-wise, like Han was, right?

01:19:06   Right, because he's been a programmed stormtrooper this whole time, so I think it's amazing that he has as much thought as he does have.

01:19:15   Yeah, exactly. If anything, it's kind of impressive that he's not more of an asshole.

01:19:21   - Not to take out of the moment,

01:19:24   but did we tell our son that we're doing this?

01:19:27   And is it weird that he hasn't wondered where we are?

01:19:29   (both laughing)

01:19:32   I just thought of that.

01:19:35   And he doesn't know where we are and he's not concerned.

01:19:38   - He'll figure it out.

01:19:40   (both laughing)

01:19:42   - He's just got new video games for Christmas

01:19:48   and I haven't seen him upright.

01:19:50   In days.

01:19:55   One of the things that in the first Star Wars movie is Han and Luke, you really don't see

01:20:03   them together much.

01:20:05   They're on the Millennium Falcon and Obi Wan is telling them about the force and Han

01:20:10   I always assumed it's because Han can't really stand him.

01:20:13   And I've been all around the galaxy.

01:20:16   I've never seen anything that makes me believe in an all-powerful force controls my destiny and then they're on the Death Star and it's really

01:20:23   Really, you know

01:20:25   The only real scene they have together is that scene where they decide to go rescue Princess Leia and Luke is like, you know

01:20:30   She's rich, you know

01:20:32   You know, there'll be a big reward more than you can imagine. I don't know I can imagine quite a bit

01:20:37   Well, they shoot the way out. They end up in a garbage compactor

01:20:42   Yeah, but it's mostly action, but somehow they're not together for that much.

01:20:45   I mean, it's obviously more than Poe and Finn are together, but it's not that much.

01:20:49   But then somehow, but the way that it works though, is that when Empire Strikes Back starts and

01:20:54   Luke says, you know, on his communicator, "Han, old buddy." And when, you know, Luke doesn't come back and Han is like,

01:21:01   "That's my friend out there, you know, I'm gonna, you know..."

01:21:03   Yeah, you know what it is? It's when Kenobi gets cut down.

01:21:07   Yeah.

01:21:07   And it's standing right there and they see it happen and I think that's the moment where it's like

01:21:12   There's something about the interaction between Finn and Poe that to me even though it's really minimal in this movie

01:21:19   That's just that one scene where they escaped together and then when they reunited and he's like, hey, that's my jacket

01:21:24   Yeah, but somehow like if the next movie starts and it's it acted

01:21:30   It'll just feel like Poe and Finn are like best buddies and comrades with oh, yeah with the deep camaraderie

01:21:36   Like that's one of those things that that JJ Abrams really nailed. Yeah

01:21:41   Well that I I mean, I don't know but I would bet a huge amount of money that the next movie is not gonna start

01:21:47   Back on that planet with

01:21:51   me and Luke

01:21:53   Staring at each other. No. No, definitely. I think it's sort of like it's like a

01:21:58   Tradition in Star Wars movies that something happens in between the movies. You have to what's the scroll gonna be?

01:22:06   scroll is going to be like episode eight. Did you see the last one?

01:22:10   Like, what do you think? No, you need to pause it. We'll wait.

01:22:17   All right. Let me take another break here and thank, uh, our next sponsors,

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01:24:02   Do you like that?

01:24:06   - You're getting better at those.

01:24:07   You're really good at those.

01:24:08   I don't listen to your show.

01:24:10   But this is really good.

01:24:12   You're getting better.

01:24:14   I can't wait to hear you pronounce the next one, though.

01:24:16   - Wait, what is the next one?

01:24:17   (Bridget laughs)

01:24:20   It got swapped out.

01:24:22   - This might be a Pixelmature type situation.

01:24:26   - All right, so we've talked about Ray,

01:24:32   we've talked about Finn. - John has some grits.

01:24:34   - He really does, doesn't he?

01:24:35   - So yeah, so we talked about Ray, we talked about Finn.

01:24:40   Poe is, man candy, he can fly an X-ray and pretty great.

01:24:45   - He's gotta have a bigger role in the next movie, right?

01:24:49   - Yeah, I think so.

01:24:50   He's sort of like gonna take the place of Han Solo, I think, in terms of his big...

01:24:54   I really liked him, just because...

01:24:56   Like the cool guy, handsome, like a guy said, square jaw. Like he's gotta be...

01:25:01   Yeah, he was awesome. He's like almost too awesome. It's just ridiculous, yeah.

01:25:05   So who are you left with? Kylo Ren. You wanna talk about Kylo?

01:25:11   Well, I was gonna go to... where Amy had said, you know, "No, not that one. That one's garbage."

01:25:18   and they take off in the Millennium Falcon.

01:25:20   And then...

01:25:21   That was so exciting.

01:25:22   But then, here come Han and Chewie.

01:25:25   And it's...

01:25:27   The thing I want to talk about is this.

01:25:29   That we find out.

01:25:31   And when they...

01:25:32   I don't know what other people knew.

01:25:34   Spoilers. I came in.

01:25:35   I did know Han and Chewie were in the movie.

01:25:37   Because I did watch the first trailer where there's...

01:25:40   Chewie were home.

01:25:41   When they...

01:25:43   And you knew they were going to come through that door, right?

01:25:45   Yeah, I kind of did.

01:25:47   You can see the framing and you, yeah.

01:25:49   And I thought it was pretty, I thought it was telling that when they thought maybe it was the first order that had boarded them,

01:25:57   but it, they didn't clearly show the ship that had taken the Millennium Falcon in.

01:26:01   So since they didn't show it, I thought, you know, this must be it.

01:26:04   Well, it was getting sucked in through the front rather than through the belly of a Star Destroyer.

01:26:08   So I was like, yeah, this is weird.

01:26:10   Yeah, it clearly wasn't a Star Destroyer.

01:26:12   So when it was Han and Chewie, I wasn't surprised and it felt like the movie had gone on long enough without him

01:26:17   but what about I have to say I really

01:26:21   It but more than the Han Solo getting killed in the movie

01:26:26   What bothered me more the first time I saw it was the idea that?

01:26:30   That Hans backstory for this movie was that he was

01:26:35   Separated from Leia obviously for some some significant amount of time

01:26:41   maybe most of the 30 years, or at least a lot of it.

01:26:45   - I think they fixed it about 20 years.

01:26:49   - Really?

01:26:50   I thought it was always obvious

01:26:51   that they could never be together.

01:26:53   - Well, they can't.

01:26:54   - That they can't stand each other.

01:26:55   I mean, they obviously love each other,

01:26:57   but I just think that one of those not meant to be,

01:26:59   like, they're not going to like--

01:27:01   - Hand screwed something up.

01:27:03   - Yeah, exactly.

01:27:04   - Even if their son hadn't gone bad, hand screwed up.

01:27:10   All right, but even more than being separated from Leia, even

01:27:13   way more, actually, I was bothered by the idea that he and

01:27:16   Chewie had lost the Millennium Falcon.

01:27:18   I just feel like all right, maybe he loses his family. You

01:27:24   know, all right, that happens. I mean, that can happen to a guy.

01:27:27   But there's no way there's no way that Han Solo is gonna lose

01:27:30   the Millennium Falcon.

01:27:31   So we're gonna get divorced, but you're gonna hold on to that

01:27:33   accurate.

01:27:34   And you'll be perfectly fine.

01:27:37   (laughing)

01:27:39   - You're kind of a bad person.

01:27:44   - I don't know why I agreed to this.

01:27:49   - I like our car, but it's not the Millennium Falcon.

01:27:51   If our car was as cool as the Millennium Falcon,

01:27:53   I would say, yeah.

01:27:54   Like I kind of thought when they boarded

01:27:58   that maybe like the idea was gonna be

01:28:00   that they had planted the Millennium Falcon there

01:28:03   and that maybe they'd explain it, maybe they wouldn't,

01:28:05   but that it was part of the plan

01:28:06   and that's why they picked it up,

01:28:07   because they left behind.

01:28:09   The idea that they, Han and Chewie,

01:28:11   haven't had the Falcon for some number of years

01:28:13   really bothered me.

01:28:14   - He can't hold onto anything.

01:28:16   He's not a good person.

01:28:18   I mean, he's a good person,

01:28:20   but he's not really good at life.

01:28:23   Like, he's always fly by the seat of his pants, right?

01:28:26   - Yeah, that's true.

01:28:28   - I'm surprised.

01:28:29   - Look, like so much of this movie,

01:28:34   It is a meta movie in so many ways.

01:28:37   On a truly not having been on the Falcon in 30 years is because we haven't been on the Falcon in 30 years.

01:28:44   That's it. The reason R2D2 is asleep the entire time until after we blow up the Death Star

01:28:49   is because R2D2 is the heart and soul of the movies.

01:28:54   And after we've done the entire first movie again by blowing up the Death Star,

01:28:59   rather than like a medal ceremony,

01:29:01   we get to see R2-D2 reboot magically

01:29:04   out of the ether for no good reason.

01:29:08   - Oh yeah, that's something that John and I

01:29:10   spent a lot of time talking about,

01:29:11   like what makes him wake up.

01:29:13   - It's a narrative, well, who cares?

01:29:15   It's a narrative construct.

01:29:16   It's like R2-D2 is the heart of Star Wars

01:29:19   and he wakes up after we've seen a Star Wars--

01:29:21   - I like that we spent two hours talking about it

01:29:23   and you're like, who cares?

01:29:24   (laughing)

01:29:25   - Well--

01:29:27   - I think he's right though, I think that--

01:29:28   I think you're absolutely right too.

01:29:30   Like I'm not, it's like a briefcase.

01:29:31   Do you want to find like an in-universe excuse?

01:29:33   I'm sure we can.

01:29:33   I'm sure we can.

01:29:34   It's like the briefcase in Pulp Fiction.

01:29:35   You know what I mean?

01:29:36   Like you're not supposed to spend time dwelling on it.

01:29:38   Don't, doesn't matter.

01:29:40   Right.

01:29:40   But we've seen, we've seen a Star Wars movie concluding with the

01:29:44   destruction of a Death Star.

01:29:46   Do you feel rekindled?

01:29:49   Here's the movie title, The Force Awakens.

01:29:52   What happens?

01:29:53   Force Awakens.

01:29:54   R2-D2 awakens and literally tells you.

01:29:57   See, I think it's like his mental connection with Luke.

01:30:00   And Luke was like, you know.

01:30:01   I actually think that Luke forced diddled him.

01:30:06   Or like turned him on in some way.

01:30:10   I think Luke was like, "Hey, you chill out till I send you a signal, and then I'll send

01:30:15   you a signal and you come to life."

01:30:17   Yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:30:19   I use the word diddle for that.

01:30:20   But yeah, so I think he, in the universe, I think, in terms of writing the script,

01:30:26   It's like, who cares?

01:30:28   It's like, O2D2 represents something to us.

01:30:32   And the fact that we have the new droid BB-8 bump him and like, want to resurrect

01:30:39   him is, again, meta commentary on like, we have to, you know, we're trying to reboot

01:30:46   these old movies, we're trying to get them back.

01:30:48   The whole thing about inheritance and how even just the scavenger stuff, like that

01:30:56   the new people are scavenging parts from the old,

01:31:00   you know, from the old Empire or from the old series

01:31:05   and they're reusing them, like all of this is just, it's--

01:31:09   - Right, that's for us to say, oh my gosh, look at that,

01:31:12   you know, look at the old ship or, now I agree with you,

01:31:14   I think that the whole thing--

01:31:15   - Well, just as a meta commentary, like the--

01:31:18   - That the movie is scavenging the old movies.

01:31:20   - Exactly. - Oh, that's interesting.

01:31:22   - Exactly, like the whole thing,

01:31:24   Like it works on a lot of different levels.

01:31:26   Not that I'm saying this movie is high art or anything, but...

01:31:29   Yeah, don't get crazy, but...

01:31:31   But I think it's silly to think of it in terms of like,

01:31:36   "Well, man, they already made this movie."

01:31:38   Yes. Okay. Thank you.

01:31:41   Now, can we think about why maybe they made these choices?

01:31:44   And I think that the reason they made these choices is,

01:31:49   you know, it's a modern myth,

01:31:51   telling a myth is part of being a myth and it's certainly you know in terms of

01:32:00   scavenging or the R2-D2 thing like the acknowledging what has come before is is

01:32:05   a large part of what this movie is about and I think it's like an intentional

01:32:11   choice. Here's what I've upon thinking about it after like Mike said my initial

01:32:16   reaction was that it really bothered me that they decided that Han had lost the

01:32:19   Falcon at some point.

01:32:20   We lost the Falcon. That's the thing we right.

01:32:24   I agree. I and that works for me. But the other thing too is I also

01:32:29   really like the idea once it settled in that rock bottom for

01:32:34   Han Solo. He still had Chewbacca like like so like the fact that

01:32:39   he'd lost the Falcon just showed just how far he's fallen and it

01:32:43   lends some weight to like your general that Han Solo general

01:32:46   Solo and he says, "I used to be." I like it. It bothered me at first, but I actually...

01:32:54   I love that line because it works for Han Solo and it works for Harrison Ford, too.

01:32:59   And the other thing, too, that really struck me about this movie is it's by far, and I've always

01:33:05   been a fan of Chewbacca, and I've always thought that Chewbacca is an underrated special effect

01:33:13   because to me he's he is the most credible and believable alien creature in any movie ever made

01:33:19   yeah like you just never doubt and and and so many of the effects in the original star wars

01:33:25   they're good but they're they kind of hold up only with nostalgia whereas Chewbacca he really he does

01:33:32   not look like a man in a suit he looks like a wookie yeah and i don't know what they did you

01:33:38   You know, like the... what was that magazine when we were kids that would have all the...

01:33:42   Fangoria?

01:33:43   Fangoria.

01:33:44   Yeah.

01:33:44   Uh...

01:33:45   Phantasm?

01:33:46   Fan...

01:33:46   Well, there were...

01:33:47   I remember Fangoria.

01:33:48   Yeah.

01:33:48   But like, just the effects that they did to make his mouth not look like a human mouth and everything.

01:33:54   He's always been a super credible alien.

01:33:57   I loved it.

01:33:57   But this movie, to me, was by far and away the best Chewbacca movie ever.

01:34:01   It's...

01:34:02   He... on his own...

01:34:03   He... kind of steals the show.

01:34:05   and in terms of just emphasizing

01:34:09   what an incredible friendship he and Han Solo have.

01:34:12   - Really, because I think, okay, I'm not dwelling on it,

01:34:16   but I think he got over it pretty quickly.

01:34:19   I mean, Han Solo died,

01:34:20   and I think one of the second things I turned to you

01:34:23   and said after Han Solo died was, "Oh my God, poor Chewie."

01:34:26   After I said, "Why couldn't it have been Chewie?"

01:34:30   - They did a disservice to that.

01:34:33   - Yeah, I felt like he just wasn't,

01:34:34   - 'Cause then after what he's flirting with that nurse,

01:34:36   come on, Han Solo died.

01:34:38   - No, wait, no, no, that was before.

01:34:42   - I've only seen the movie once.

01:34:43   - Yeah, no, that's cool.

01:34:45   That was before.

01:34:46   - Okay.

01:34:47   - Yeah, and that was kind of adorable.

01:34:50   - That was adorable, that really was adorable.

01:34:52   But I didn't know he was broken up enough.

01:34:54   I feel like, well, who knows?

01:34:56   I feel like shooting's not the reason why.

01:34:58   - Well, he shoots a family member.

01:34:59   - Right, right.

01:35:02   Which is very not like the Chewbacca we've ever seen.

01:35:05   Like, he may strangle Lando.

01:35:09   Lando got Han Solo frozen in carbonate and sold to the Empire and then back to Jabba

01:35:15   Hutt.

01:35:16   And he didn't kill him on sight, you know?

01:35:17   He shot Han's son, who Han was willing to die to dry rescue, and Chewie was like, "Screw

01:35:22   you, you kill Han Solo, I'm shooting you."

01:35:25   Yeah.

01:35:26   He's a friend.

01:35:27   And he got him pretty good, too.

01:35:28   And they spent a lot of time in that movie establishing that, like, that thing hurts.

01:35:32   Right.

01:35:33   No, they did!

01:35:34   They were like, "Hey, can I try that?"

01:35:36   And he shot it and two stormtroopers just blow up.

01:35:39   He doesn't even hit them, and they just blow up.

01:35:41   They spent a lot of time establishing that that thing is, uh, that's gonna sting.

01:35:46   I feel like you guys take this, like, a lot more seriously than I do, and you have, like,

01:35:51   some super-

01:35:52   You think?

01:35:53   I don't know!

01:35:54   But you guys have some super insights.

01:35:55   I would have guessed so, but I mean you're actually heartbroken like you know I was texting you and I just was like oh man

01:36:02   I

01:36:04   Texted John right after Mike. I'm sorry. I think it made me sad

01:36:08   I talked about I know like it really got to me, but let's talk about like cuz Jonas got one for Christmas

01:36:14   Let's talk about Kylo Ren's lightsaber

01:36:16   Like why does it have like a stick at the bottom that you can cut yourself open with?

01:36:21   Like it's got the crossy thing and Jonas still insists that Han Solo died with the crossy thing

01:36:27   Like Han Solo's not going out with the crossy thing like he got the big end

01:36:30   Oh, oh, oh

01:36:32   [laughter]

01:36:34   You can't take out Han Solo with the crossy end

01:36:36   'Cause you know it's like a cross

01:36:37   No, no that was pointed right at his chest

01:36:39   Right, right, it's so obvious

01:36:41   It's going right through him

01:36:43   He's a stupid kid

01:36:45   He's not a stupid kid, he's a hopeful, lovely kid

01:36:47   I'm his mother, I think Colin's stupid

01:36:49   I wish I was that

01:36:51   hopeful that Han Solo would come back, but he's dead.

01:36:55   - He was so sure, and I was just like, no, and stop,

01:36:58   and then him saying it was getting me more upset.

01:37:00   - I love that, I love that you're like,

01:37:03   I'm more emotionally affected by this than you, so don't.

01:37:06   - And Jonas was just like, it's fine, mama, it's fine.

01:37:09   I was like, you don't understand,

01:37:10   I have loved Han Solo my whole life.

01:37:12   (laughing)

01:37:13   - I cannot be your mother right now.

01:37:16   I need to deal with this loss of Han Solo.

01:37:18   - And seriously, on the way home, he was like, he's fine.

01:37:20   And I was like, just get out of my face.

01:37:22   Get out of my face.

01:37:23   Like, I can't take it.

01:37:25   - It was a real ugly scene.

01:37:26   - Yeah, like this breaks families apart.

01:37:29   But why does his thing have that,

01:37:31   like it's like a half a Darth Maul,

01:37:33   like at the bottom.

01:37:34   And it's like John and I were saying,

01:37:36   it just seems like you're gonna stab yourself.

01:37:39   His lightsaber makes no sense.

01:37:41   - My take on it is that the production designers

01:37:43   wanted to make an original lightsaber.

01:37:45   - So they could sell more like the Darth Mauls

01:37:48   where they had the double side of,

01:37:50   This is better than Darth Maul.

01:37:52   This is way better than Darth Maul.

01:37:53   Yeah, but he had, he wielded his like, like Rey's stick, like in the middle

01:37:58   and twirled and stuff like this.

01:38:00   But this one just has one, like I imagine Kylo Ren has a whole bunch of

01:38:03   robes that have like cuts in them because, oh shoot, I cut myself with my

01:38:08   lightsaber, because he's not that good at it.

01:38:09   Well, he does use one of the edges to hurt Finn, right?

01:38:15   It just doesn't seem like a practical design though.

01:38:18   It's exactly-

01:38:19   It's an impractical design.

01:38:20   - But we bought one.

01:38:21   So, I mean, something's working.

01:38:24   - So it worked out.

01:38:25   (laughing)

01:38:28   - These are the kinds of things

01:38:34   that kept me up about this movie.

01:38:36   - There's so much about this movie

01:38:41   that we haven't even addressed.

01:38:43   - We didn't talk about Princess Leia at all.

01:38:45   - All right, well let's talk about Leia.

01:38:47   - I cried a little when I saw her too.

01:38:49   I was so excited.

01:38:51   - Well, how great that scene where Han and Leia are reunited.

01:38:55   - It's my favorite scene in the whole thing

01:38:58   where Han and Leia are reunited

01:39:00   and it's such a good Star Wars joke

01:39:03   and then C-3P pops up and he's like,

01:39:07   what does he call him?

01:39:08   Does he call him Captain Solo?

01:39:10   And then he says, perhaps you did not recognize me

01:39:13   because of my red arm.

01:39:14   (laughs)

01:39:16   And it's so funny.

01:39:18   - It's so perfect.

01:39:19   It is I, C-3PO.

01:39:21   (laughing)

01:39:21   Perhaps he did not recognize me because of my red arm.

01:39:25   And Han Solo, of course, recognizes him

01:39:28   'cause he hates him.

01:39:29   (laughing)

01:39:31   And he looks totally the same.

01:39:32   One of the best things about Han Solo

01:39:34   is that he hasn't just murdered C-3PO at this point.

01:39:37   (laughing)

01:39:39   Like that is the defining characteristic of him.

01:39:42   Between Chewbacca and Han Solo,

01:39:44   I can't believe he's allowed to live.

01:39:46   (laughing)

01:39:48   I love C-3PO. I do, I love him. He's such a fussy little annoying.

01:39:52   There's a bunch of weird stuff happening about the droids.

01:39:56   BB-8, it appears, knows 3PO.

01:40:01   And certainly why wouldn't he?

01:40:03   Because they all hang out at the Resistance base when they're out and out on missions.

01:40:07   And yet he uncovers O2D2 and 3PO has to explain to BB-8 that O2D2 is asleep.

01:40:17   He's like, "Yeah, BB-8 would have known that, because you guys have been hanging out for like 20 years now, so..."

01:40:25   And every time he pokes him, nothing happens.

01:40:27   Well, you know what? I do... I kind of like that...

01:40:33   Droids giving other droids exposition doesn't count as like...

01:40:42   Clunky dialogue, I guess? I don't... like...

01:40:45   Why is he telling him this? Like, this little droid should have known that, like, for a long time.

01:40:50   But, because we don't know it, and we don't have any words coming out of BB-8's mouth, we can...

01:40:56   We're fine. You know what I mean? Like, we can just accept that.

01:41:00   Here's a scene I did not... I really didn't care for. I did not care for the scene on Han and Chewie's

01:41:08   new freighter where they have these three captured animals and two different pirate crews somehow

01:41:15   easily breaking the ship. Oh, I liked it. I thought it was exactly like what he said,

01:41:20   like I'm going to talk my way out of this just like I do everything. I thought it was a fun

01:41:24   little like... it may be a little sad, but go ahead. Well, I didn't dislike it. It's not like

01:41:31   I thought that they should take it out, but... They could cut that and nothing would change.

01:41:36   Yeah, it doesn't really do much.

01:41:37   Yeah, it doesn't really do anything.

01:41:38   But I just liked seeing Han Solo, like being Han Solo.

01:41:42   Here's my take on it, is that this movie is beat for beat,

01:41:49   along with Star Wars.

01:41:52   And in Star Wars, about mid-script, they--

01:41:57   so they get on a ship that is called Garbage,

01:42:02   and they get picked up by basically like a garbage scow.

01:42:07   And then they end up fighting a tentacle monster.

01:42:10   All of which is akin to falling down the garbage chute,

01:42:14   getting into the trash compactor

01:42:15   and then fighting the tentacle monster in Star Wars.

01:42:18   And so I think, beat for beat,

01:42:20   they wanted some kind of tentacle monster

01:42:25   at this point in the script.

01:42:26   - Right, but it also established like a trust for Rey.

01:42:31   And it gave Ray a chance to be a badass.

01:42:33   And I love the relationship between Han Solo and Ray.

01:42:36   I love the way he so obviously respects her, but he's not the kind of person to just say,

01:42:43   like, "Wow, I think you're great."

01:42:44   I don't know.

01:42:45   I thought it--

01:42:46   I think it had some purpose, but I don't think that giant CGI tentacle balls was

01:42:56   necessarily the best way to establish that.

01:42:59   You know, like to me it was a bit much.

01:43:01   It was a very J.J. Abrams scene to me.

01:43:03   And it also felt a lot more like his Star Trek stuff.

01:43:07   You know, like in the one Star Trek movie where there was the monster chasing Kirk on the ice planet.

01:43:12   It just felt like that. Rather than feeling like Star Wars.

01:43:17   Because to me, what makes Star Wars, Star Wars a lot of the time is that the action scenes are sort of allowed to breathe.

01:43:25   like diced up in the editing room as quick quick quick quick quick shots it's

01:43:30   more like the action plays out in the frame and that that scene was to me more

01:43:36   like a like any current decade science fiction alien movie yeah it felt a bit

01:43:44   more modern than I maybe then I wanted it to and Finn getting dragged away and

01:43:50   Yeah, that was weird.

01:43:53   Like, why? I don't understand the motivation of the creatures.

01:43:57   Not that I need to necessarily understand them, but how come they're eating some guys and not them?

01:44:05   They're going to drag him around for ten minutes. And you knew he wasn't in danger.

01:44:08   I knew he wasn't going to die.

01:44:10   Yeah, of course.

01:44:11   Now, there was one moment, I think Guy, maybe you even said this to me, Guy, when we were chatting about the movie,

01:44:16   but that there is a...

01:44:18   When Han shoved the one bad guy into the alien's mouth,

01:44:24   it was sort of a, to me, the...

01:44:27   the...

01:44:30   the nod was to the "Han shot first" argument.

01:44:34   It was sort of, and to me, maybe...

01:44:36   I'm not sure if that was me, but yeah.

01:44:38   It was sort of the only "F you" they gave to George Lucas.

01:44:41   You know, the whole thing to me was pretty respectful of Lucas and the prequels.

01:44:46   And I think Amy had hinted at this earlier, but to me, it was actually to me a very kindness

01:44:54   that they did to George Lucas that they made Kylo Ren so clearly like Anakin.

01:45:01   Not the Anakin that I wanted Anakin to be, but the Anakin that George Lucas wrote in

01:45:06   the prequels.

01:45:10   And then it works in terms of...

01:45:11   Yeah, they did a better Anakin.

01:45:13   Right.

01:45:14   shoving the guy into the alien's mouth, just killing the guy.

01:45:17   To me, it was like, hey, Han Solo is the guy who shoves guys into aliens and doesn't

01:45:21   doesn't worry about it, he doesn't wait for them to shoot first.

01:45:24   Yeah, that guy's just standing there.

01:45:26   He punches him in the face and then and then

01:45:30   he takes a step back.

01:45:31   He's like, oh, wait, I can use this guy for something more.

01:45:34   And grabs him and throws him into the mouth of the alien.

01:45:39   Totally needlessly.

01:45:42   But I do think that it kind of establishes this character a bit again.

01:45:49   So next up, though, is where...

01:45:51   I think it's next, right? It's after they escape, where they...

01:45:59   After they get off that freighter, where...

01:46:02   Yeah, they blast out into light speed and then meet Max Kanata.

01:46:07   Well, no, but first he says to BB-8, "Let's see what you've got."

01:46:12   and he projects the map and gives the speech. This to me is the point where it really, really

01:46:23   hit home to me that, "Oh, I see what they're doing. They're remaking the first film, but different

01:46:27   characters are in different roles." It really hit me that Han is the new Obi-Wan.

01:46:33   He's standing in the same spot.

01:46:35   He's literally the same room in the living Falcon where Obi-Wan gave,

01:46:41   as I call it, "the speech" where he explains what the Force is,

01:46:45   to the heroes who are going to fill out the rest of the trilogy.

01:46:48   And Han is giving the speech and he does a better job of it.

01:46:52   I mean, Alec Guinness was great, but it's like when Han says,

01:46:55   you know, "It's all real." It's like, you know, "I'm fighting back tears."

01:46:59   It's like, "I'm choked up."

01:47:01   Yeah. Well, Harrison Ford has the benefit of knowing the cultural weight

01:47:08   of what he's saying. Whereas Alec Guinness is like, "Can I do another movie about the

01:47:14   bridge over the river Kwai? Because that was pretty great."

01:47:17   So there's the speech on the Falcon, and I love it. I think it really works. And it adds gravity.

01:47:23   And then just jump back ahead to where he dies at the end. And he dies at the hand of the Darth

01:47:28   Vader character. And it's witnessed by the new heroes who are younger and-

01:47:36   It's not just witness, they are incapable of interfering.

01:47:39   Right.

01:47:39   Or intervening, I should say.

01:47:40   They're helpless, right. They're helpless, all they can do is watch.

01:47:42   And, you know, it hits home for the audience this time in a way that when Obi-Wan got killed,

01:47:52   I will admit when I was a kid, I remember being surprised, and I also remember being confused

01:47:57   about the fact that he disappeared, and I thought, well maybe, because that's the only guy who gets

01:48:00   killed by a lightsaber in that movie. And this is another one of those things where I very

01:48:04   distinctly remember, you know, first, second grade arguing like whenever anybody gets hit

01:48:10   with a lightsaber, do they just disappear? And it wasn't until Empire Strikes Back and you got to

01:48:16   see Vader cut Luke's hand off that, you know, the no, it's just a thing that I just thought

01:48:21   that was a Jedi thing because we see it even in A New Hope. The jerk at the bar gets his arm chopped

01:48:28   up. Yeah, the only other guy who gets killed by a lightsaber is the guy at the cantina. And he

01:48:32   Well, he doesn't die, but he gets, you know...

01:48:34   Well, I think he died.

01:48:36   [laughs]

01:48:38   He definitely lost a lot of blood.

01:48:40   [laughs]

01:48:42   There should be more spurting.

01:48:44   He had a very bad day.

01:48:46   This is a thing, though, that I remember thinking,

01:48:48   and I've always thought it, but even as a little kid,

01:48:51   I really wasn't that happy with the way that Obi-Wan went down.

01:48:55   And I realized what Lucas was going for,

01:48:57   that he was sacrificing himself knowing that by doing this,

01:49:00   this, that Luke and the others could escape on the Falcon, and that it was supposed to

01:49:06   be some kind of symbolic, zen-like state that he had reached, that he was going to reach

01:49:13   some kind of higher plane of existence.

01:49:14   I've always loved the zen-like smile on his face.

01:49:17   It bothered me, though. I was like, "Why not fight? Maybe you could beat this Darth Vader."

01:49:21   He did! That's the thing. He won.

01:49:24   It bothered me that he...

01:49:26   But, at the end of Jedi, that's exactly how Luke wins.

01:49:31   Well, I agree, but it bothered me...

01:49:34   He defeats Vader and then it's just like, "Okay, look, I'm done. You have to kill me, you're gonna kill me."

01:49:41   Whereas Han's sacrifice here, and letting this guy, letting Kylo Ren kill him...

01:49:47   To me, it was way more believable than Obi-Wan.

01:49:51   than Obi-Wan. Or not believable, but to me it was more satisfying than Obi-Wan's.

01:49:55   And I know Amy disagrees. [laughter]

01:49:59   But I really do think-- I can't believe you found it satisfying. I just-- I found nothing

01:50:03   satisfying about it. Well, okay.

01:50:07   We're not gonna-- let's not. So, Obi-Wan...

01:50:11   I was surprised, too. It didn't make a lot of sense. It didn't register

01:50:15   to me. Over the years I've come to kind of maybe even rationalize

01:50:19   Maybe I'm like, maybe Star Wars has warped my brain enough that I'm like,

01:50:25   "Now that's the framework that I see things in and I think that that kind of makes sense."

01:50:30   The way Han Solo died, I think, he's got to die, right? At some point.

01:50:42   Right, right. But it was just, to me it was like this whole culmination of,

01:50:46   of "Oh my gosh, Star Wars is back, and oh my god, this movie is fantastic."

01:50:50   And then, "Oh my god, they just killed a childhood hero."

01:50:53   Like, with Obi-Wan, I was not as invested.

01:50:55   - They didn't-- - I was a young kid, and I just--

01:50:57   I wasn't as invested in him.

01:50:59   And I just-- And, as a young kid, I was like,

01:51:01   "Well, he's old, he's gonna die anyway."

01:51:03   Han...

01:51:05   They didn't kill Han.

01:51:08   Han died...

01:51:10   making a choice.

01:51:13   Right? Like, he knew.

01:51:15   Yeah, but I think he's helping.

01:51:16   You can see the look on his face before he,

01:51:18   like he's hiding behind that column.

01:51:20   Also, by the way, Calaren, not very good at using the force

01:51:26   because what the hell?

01:51:28   He really sucks at the force.

01:51:30   Like, you're letting this guy sneak up behind you?

01:51:33   Like, come on, like you're an idiot.

01:51:35   Anyway, that aside.

01:51:36   The girl who's never heard of the force beats him.

01:51:41   All right, hold on, hold that thought.

01:51:42   Let's come back to that.

01:51:43   Let me just finish up here.

01:51:44   And we gotta get some of these other guests on the show.

01:51:46   I see 'em sitting there in the Skype.

01:51:47   We'll get 'em on soon.

01:51:48   But I have one more sponsor to thank,

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01:54:10   Great service.

01:54:11   You did that without any notes.

01:54:13   That was really impressive.

01:54:14   I am going to be nice to you because it's the last day of the year.

01:54:19   The one day of the year.

01:54:22   It's his day.

01:54:23   What about the fact that Han and Leia...

01:54:26   Well, we're going to talk about the lightsaber fight, but here's a question.

01:54:29   What about the fact that Han and Leia don't kiss?

01:54:31   Is that like...

01:54:32   That's like a realistic portrayal of...

01:54:34   They don't, you know what, they don't say, "I love you."

01:54:38   - Yeah.

01:54:39   - Because you don't want--

01:54:40   - There's obviously a deep affection, but they're not--

01:54:42   - No, they love each other, it's fine.

01:54:45   They don't, it's, you know,

01:54:50   you don't need to say it at that point.

01:54:51   Like, it's not a, they haven't seen each other

01:54:54   for a long time.

01:54:55   Their son is their primary concern, and so--

01:55:01   - He's an a-hole.

01:55:02   It's like I didn't want them to be apart,

01:55:04   I didn't want them to have broken up,

01:55:06   but I believed it, like Amy said.

01:55:09   I do kind of believe that--

01:55:10   - I just knew it, it just couldn't work.

01:55:12   They're just both too-- - Too volatile.

01:55:14   - They're both too used to being in charge.

01:55:16   - Yeah. - It couldn't work.

01:55:18   - Who doesn't wanna be Han Solo?

01:55:19   - Who doesn't wanna be Princess Leia?

01:55:22   I spent my whole life like--

01:55:24   - Sure.

01:55:25   - Yeah, I mean, I wanted to be Princess Leia.

01:55:26   I wanted to be a combination of Princess Leia,

01:55:29   Rizzo from "Grease," and Pinky Tuscadero

01:55:31   from Happy Days, this is so dating me.

01:55:33   - Yeah, you know what, you're not far off.

01:55:36   (Stevie laughs)

01:55:38   You're doing pretty good.

01:55:40   - Like I really, really wanted to be her.

01:55:43   - All right, so here is--

01:55:44   - But I mean, you know, come on, Han's gonna screw it up.

01:55:47   Han's gonna do something.

01:55:48   - I believe it.

01:55:49   And I thought that the--

01:55:51   - But Han's gonna screw it up, and you know what?

01:55:52   She's not gonna take it.

01:55:53   Like that's the other thing. - Exactly.

01:55:54   - She's not gonna be like, well, let Han be Han.

01:55:56   She's gonna say, screw you, that's what I love about her.

01:55:59   Right. I feel like if they would have like, you know, like...

01:56:02   And I feel like he missed her way more than she missed him.

01:56:05   I agree with that.

01:56:07   Definitely. He needs her more than she needs him.

01:56:10   Well, that's why he keeps running.

01:56:12   Right. Right.

01:56:13   She's not scared to get off that troop transport and say hi to him.

01:56:16   And he's like, "Oh, God. Okay. I gotta talk to Leia."

01:56:19   She doesn't want to see. Leia doesn't want to see me.

01:56:21   Yeah. He's like...

01:56:23   Yeah, he goes to see Maz Kanata

01:56:26   to get the droid back to the Resistance

01:56:28   because he's scared of facing Leia.

01:56:32   Here's the last two things I want to talk about. I want to talk about

01:56:36   Maz Kanata. What's her name? Tanaka? Maz? I'll just call her Maz.

01:56:40   I want to talk about that scene. And then I want to talk about the lightsaber

01:56:44   fight at the end. I don't care which order.

01:56:48   I guess we'll go in chronological order. So we'll talk about Maz first. I felt

01:56:52   like that was probably the worst scene of the movie. That it just

01:56:56   felt I the potential was there and I like the whole idea of it but it just

01:57:02   didn't it just didn't seem right I'm not sure why she's a CGI character well yeah

01:57:09   I found her very distracting I found that character distracting because she

01:57:12   just looked out of place she looked like one of the characters from the prequels

01:57:16   like yeah right right and she's an amazing actress I think maybe they were

01:57:20   trying to go for the Yoda thing but it was like yeah yeah she was trying to

01:57:23   give like a Yoda vibe. And that actress is like tall and slender.

01:57:28   Like it's a very different Yoda. I have since heard, you know, like it in the the now that I'm not afraid of

01:57:34   spoilers looking into it, that that whole scene was rewritten and that the the actress who played her

01:57:40   had to come in and re-record all of her lines that like the way it was originally written was different.

01:57:45   um

01:57:49   like to the point where at one point she says um

01:57:54   you know i'm no jedi but i know i know the force

01:57:57   and that apparently in earlier drafts it was more clear that she

01:58:01   had the force and that um i actually just ordered the book renee i was on the

01:58:07   show the previous episode of this and renee told me about this book the

01:58:11   the making of star wars the force awakened so i ordered the book

01:58:14   But one of the things in the book, it has all these effects shots and stuff like that, including

01:58:19   some that aren't cut from the movie. But apparently one of the scenes that was cut was

01:58:23   in the battle that breaks out after the... On her planet, when the TIE fighters are busting up her

01:58:31   bar and everything, there's a part of the building is gonna topple and might hit Finn or something

01:58:38   like that and she uses the force to like keep the blocks from hitting him.

01:58:43   That would have made more sense because what is she just like a Jedi groupie?

01:58:47   Like why does she know so much about it?

01:58:51   Well I'm okay with her just being sensitive I guess like having all the weird force dreams

01:59:03   and like being in tune with that kind of stuff.

01:59:05   Well, that's part of it. The other thing I've read when I looked up who Max von Sydow's character is, this Lor San Tekka.

01:59:13   I mean, who knows, because...

01:59:15   It's Max von Sydow. Like, they should just rename that character.

01:59:19   Well, his character is apparently, according to the Wookiepedia, is a...

01:59:24   He's like a priest in the Church of the Force or something like that.

01:59:30   They're not Jedi, but they're like,

01:59:32   it's like another sect of good guys who use the Force.

01:59:36   And I think it's similar to the way

01:59:37   that these Knights of Ren aren't Sith,

01:59:40   but they are bad guys who use the dark side of the Force.

01:59:44   And the gist I've gotten from this is that in this,

01:59:48   you know, they're broadening the view of the galaxy

01:59:51   and the Force to the point where it's, you know,

01:59:53   yes, there are Jedi and there are Sith,

01:59:55   or there were at least, maybe the Sith are dead,

01:59:57   but that they're not the only two groups

01:59:59   that use the Force. I don't know. But it seemed to me like this

02:00:03   Maz was clearly supposed to be somehow, and that's

02:00:07   how she got the lightsaber. She's got the Force

02:00:11   in some way, but

02:00:15   just the way that it came out on screen just felt like, blah.

02:00:19   Right, there was no explanation of it.

02:00:23   Didn't really run. I did love that

02:00:27   flashback scene though, flash back forward sideways,

02:00:32   whatever the hell that was, like the forced dream that--

02:00:35   - Right. - When she first--

02:00:37   - When she first touches it, right?

02:00:39   Yeah, I feel like there's a lot of secrets in there,

02:00:42   like there's a lot. - Yeah.

02:00:43   - There's somebody, I guess I'll put a link to it

02:00:45   in the show notes, but there's probably even more,

02:00:48   but somebody, God bless them, but somebody obviously

02:00:53   was videotaping the whole thing on their iPhone

02:00:57   and posted a whole bunch of pictures to Reddit or somewhere,

02:01:00   but there's a whole bunch of stuff in there,

02:01:02   including the fact that it's, you know,

02:01:05   at one point when you hear her name called out,

02:01:08   it's Obi-Wan Kenobi calling her name.

02:01:10   - Yeah. - Yeah.

02:01:11   - Yeah, that's...

02:01:13   I thought that'd been said somewhere.

02:01:17   So Obi-Wan Kenobi calls out "Ray,"

02:01:20   and it's actually Alec Guinness's voice.

02:01:22   - Right, did you, John told me this story,

02:01:24   but if you, it's a great story.

02:01:25   Yeah, I'm trying to remember where I heard the--

02:01:28   So J.J. Abrams was at some kind of--

02:01:31   Oh yeah, it was J.J. Yeah, okay.

02:01:33   So it was public, so it's not like him.

02:01:35   It was on stage at a Screenwriter Guild event

02:01:39   for the Force Awakens, and J.J. said that they brought in--

02:01:44   Who's the young Obi-Wan?

02:01:47   What's his name?

02:01:48   Well, the most recent one is the guy

02:01:49   that did for the Clone Wars.

02:01:52   Ewan McGregor.

02:01:53   Ewan McGregor.

02:01:54   Well, no. So the guy that did it for the Clone Wars recorded it all first.

02:01:58   Yeah, so the guy who did the Clone Wars cartoon came in.

02:02:02   And then he gradually got replaced and he's like, "Okay, well."

02:02:04   They got Ewan McGregor and so they were going to throw out the Clone Wars guy's thing and use Ewan McGregor's.

02:02:09   And then some of the sound guys found an old clip of Alec Guinness where he said, I forget what the word was.

02:02:19   Afraid.

02:02:20   Afraid, right. He was saying the word afraid.

02:02:22   I don't even think that's from Star Wars. God knows where it's from.

02:02:27   Yeah, who knows? But they found Alec Guinness saying the word "afraid" and clipped it, and that just the "ray" part of the word "afraid"

02:02:35   not only was Alec Guinness' voice, like JJ said, it was exactly the way I would have...

02:02:40   If I could direct him to say it, it was exactly the way I would tell him to say "ray."

02:02:44   Didn't they mix it with...

02:02:46   Yeah, so they mixed it with you and the filmmakers.

02:02:48   Which isn't right.

02:02:50   Well, it could get even a little bit. They had Frank Ellis come in to do the Yoda bit at the beginning.

02:02:56   What was the Yoda bit?

02:02:59   The, like, right when she starts tripping balls, she says something about, she hears Yoda say something about like, "Oh, it binds us, it surrounds us."

02:03:11   Oh, right, right.

02:03:12   Like that kind of like forced, like the beginning of the forced speech that she, that Yoda gives.

02:03:19   So here's a question. Do you think that the like in the next movie now that Luke is back

02:03:25   Do you think Luke can still communicate with obi-wan and Yoda or is there like a like a time limit?

02:03:33   You know like like after you're a J

02:03:35   Even if you know the trick that that those guys know where you can still communicate with other Jedi after you died

02:03:40   Is there like?

02:03:42   You know as the years go on it gets weaker and weaker, you know

02:03:45   like a battery running out or something.

02:03:47   I think we're most likely to find Luke broken.

02:03:51   I think he's a terrible alcoholic.

02:03:53   Yeah.

02:03:54   I do. I think he's not that amount of...

02:03:56   And it's not alcoholic, it's like just a meditation holic.

02:04:00   There's like a lot of Jedi yoga, whatever he does.

02:04:03   Jedi yoga.

02:04:04   No, yeah.

02:04:06   No, I think he's broken.

02:04:10   I mean, you can tell by that last scene where he's like...

02:04:13   Well, first of all, he just runs away and is disengaged.

02:04:16   Yeah, and it seemed like they could really use his help.

02:04:21   Yeah, you think? A little bit. And he's just not involved.

02:04:24   And I think Ray and him are going to rehabilitate each other in some kind of way.

02:04:35   He's going to be the Yoda.

02:04:37   Yeah, he's going to be the Yoda, and that's going to give him...

02:04:40   I don't know. I kind of think that each one of these movies is going to kill off one of the old people.

02:04:49   We've had Han go. Leia or Luke is going to be next.

02:04:54   And then whoever's left will be in the last one.

02:04:57   You can't kill Leia.

02:04:58   You can't kill... I don't think you can kill Luke.

02:05:01   Oh, you gotta kill Luke.

02:05:02   Well, you can't kill him in the next movie.

02:05:04   I'll kill Luke right now.

02:05:05   What about... All right.

02:05:08   You know who you can't kill?

02:05:09   Han Solo is who you can't kill.

02:05:11   Yeah, exactly.

02:05:13   And it already happened.

02:05:14   What about the fact that they're only

02:05:17   going to make three of these?

02:05:18   I know there's these offshoot movies,

02:05:21   there's going to be a Boba Fett movie.

02:05:23   Yeah, yeah, yeah.

02:05:23   There's going to be a Boba Fett movie?

02:05:25   There's also supposed to be a young Han Solo movie, which

02:05:28   I think sounds like a disaster.

02:05:29   I think--

02:05:30   Just don't do it.

02:05:31   No, because there's going to be--

02:05:33   Yeah, I know.

02:05:33   You can't even get River Phoenix to play him.

02:05:35   [LAUGHTER]

02:05:38   Tasteless.

02:05:39   Well, I'm just saying, you can't get him.

02:05:41   He's not available.

02:05:44   He's like Wes Dantilly.

02:05:47   His agent ain't picking up the phone.

02:05:49   He's a weird brother.

02:05:49   But what about the fact that they're only

02:05:52   going to make three?

02:05:53   There's episodes seven, eight, and nine.

02:05:55   They're only going to make three.

02:05:56   He was available, but they decided

02:05:59   for the interest of drama and secrecy

02:06:03   that Luke literally only appears in like 30 sec the last 30 seconds of the film and doesn't have a line

02:06:09   was it a wasted opportunity no no no they they used him exactly how they wanted to use him

02:06:14   i i think and they i think they used him well he is the

02:06:19   again getting back to the meta thing uh luke skywalker has been our hero in the

02:06:26   I mean, effectively, in the three movies that mattered, like the original trilogy.

02:06:31   And this movie is about resetting everything and getting us back to, you know, to where we were,

02:06:43   to re-finding what it is to be Star Wars fans. That's why R2 wakes up.

02:06:48   And then we have like a five-minute denouement.

02:06:53   And then we have Ray, our new hero, handing the baton.

02:06:58   I know I've said this before to you, John, but literally it's a baton.

02:07:03   It's like you can't make it more obvious, trying to hand the baton back to Luke.

02:07:08   And I think that that's just a visual

02:07:14   storytelling, very metaphorical,

02:07:19   you know, trying to bring back, like, it's a passing of the baton from the old guard to the new guard, but it's flipped on its head kind of idea.

02:07:27   You guys are so optimistic. I think Mark Hamill just needs more acting lessons. They were like, "Just turn around at the end and that's good."

02:07:35   He actually works a lot. He's just like a lot of voice work. He's on TV and stuff.

02:07:40   He's the Joker in the Batman animated series. And the video games.

02:07:47   And he does a lot of voice work.

02:07:49   I think he looks good.

02:07:50   Sure, sure.

02:07:51   Oh, he looks amazing!

02:07:52   I'm not saying he's ugly, I'm saying he's a bad actor.

02:07:55   He's always been a bad actor.

02:07:57   Right!

02:07:58   Right.

02:07:59   And now Santa's a liar.

02:08:00   You know what?

02:08:01   A bad actor is...

02:08:03   He's been...

02:08:07   I don't know, a gross actor.

02:08:09   And I mean gross, not in like disgusting, but in like a...

02:08:11   Cigarette butts.

02:08:13   He likes...

02:08:16   He over-emphasizes. It's a very stage-act-y kind of thing that he does.

02:08:22   Like the Joker. Like the Joker in the Batman the Animated Series.

02:08:26   Anyway, I don't think he needed the line. I think they used him exactly the way they wanted him to be used.

02:08:34   But using him this way means we'll never get to see Han and Luke together again.

02:08:38   Oh my god.

02:08:39   That's okay.

02:08:40   Why would you say this to me?

02:08:42   You know what? I didn't like them together anyway.

02:08:45   I'm not gonna get upset. I'm not wasting my time.

02:08:48   Wait. So let's go back and try to figure out when was the last time we saw the theater? On Endor, right?

02:08:55   Yeah, Endor. They definitely-

02:08:56   In the Ewok village.

02:08:57   Right, in the Ewok village.

02:08:59   How do you guys remember, like, all the planets? Like, I confuse the Wookie Planet with that one Led Zeppelin album.

02:09:07   Like, I'm not-

02:09:08   Kashyyyk and-

02:09:09   I get them confused all the time. I'm like, what's your favorite? Let's have an album

02:09:14   Cassique and he's like, that's the Wookie planet. I really love the movies. And but

02:09:24   I don't have like an encyclopedia like Jonas has encyclopedias of this stuff.

02:09:28   That was actually another one of my complaints though about Maz's the whole thing on Maz's

02:09:32   planet was that her planet. That's what I don't remember.

02:09:36   I don't even--uh, think it starts with an "I"?

02:09:39   Yeah, and it looked too much--

02:09:40   No, maybe not.

02:09:41   It looked too much like the planet where the Resistance was headquartered.

02:09:45   You know, it's just sort of like a Yavin 4-looking forest and rivers and stuff like that.

02:09:52   Well, I've always kind of made fun of Star Wars for having, like, uh...

02:09:58   One planet is all ice, one planet is all desert, and like, one planet is all--

02:10:02   and it's like, you gotta run out of those pretty quick.

02:10:06   Even Jonas is like, "Why don't all these desert people move?"

02:10:09   That is a smart kid.

02:10:13   Yeah.

02:10:13   There are lush planets.

02:10:14   Like the Wookie planet is lush.

02:10:16   Yeah.

02:10:18   Kashmir.

02:10:19   Don't know.

02:10:19   Kashmir?

02:10:20   It's my favorite.

02:10:22   All right.

02:10:22   Indian prophets.

02:10:23   I do want to, you, we touched on it before.

02:10:25   I want to talk about the lightsaber fight at the end of the movie.

02:10:28   Yeah.

02:10:28   We got to talk about the bad guys at some point too.

02:10:30   Well, yeah.

02:10:31   Yeah.

02:10:31   Or...

02:10:32   I thought the lightsaber fight was incredibly well done.

02:10:34   And you can quibble about the fact that, you know, well, how would Ray hold her own without any training?

02:10:41   You know, but you know, to me, it's just she's super strong in the force.

02:10:44   And that Kylo Ren is not really that good.

02:10:48   So Kylo Ren sucks at pretty much everything, which, Annie, I feel your pain. I really do.

02:10:56   He sucks at life. He's bad. And you know what, like, okay, you know, bad thing aside, I hate the way,

02:11:04   Like, he's not good enough to be Han and Leia's son.

02:11:07   Like, he's just not good enough.

02:11:09   Like, how could they ever...

02:11:10   But it's like, I guess it's like Han says, you know, there's too much Vader in him.

02:11:14   Yeah.

02:11:15   You know, or too much Anakin, really.

02:11:17   Yeah, well, probably Han didn't help either.

02:11:20   But there's too much Anakin in him.

02:11:22   So...

02:11:23   A, he got shot by Chewbacca.

02:11:27   Uncle Chewie shot him, but good.

02:11:30   Uncle Chewie.

02:11:33   Yeah, because if you think about it though, you have to think that when he was a kid, you know, until he went bad...

02:11:39   There's no way Chewie was... Chewbacca didn't change his diapers, right?

02:11:42   And then he straight out called out, "Choose the guy."

02:11:46   Oh, what a moral dilemma for Chewie.

02:11:52   Not really, Chewbacca, he's like, "Screw you." I'm putting up t-shirts.

02:11:56   "I'm taking you down, I'm taking you down, you whiny bastard." Oh, now that hand's out of the picture?

02:12:02   Boom! Finally get to kill you.

02:12:04   I really liked the lightsaber fight. I thought that it was what the lightsaber fights were

02:12:10   supposed to be like, which is like a good sword fight in a kung fu movie.

02:12:14   I love both of them.

02:12:15   And not force-powered people doing 40-foot triple Lindsey jumps in the air,

02:12:23   and doing all this fantastic stuff. It's just a couple of people chasing in tight quarters,

02:12:30   swinging lightsabers at each other.

02:12:32   Yeah, I like the idea that you can be trained and be competent with a lightsaber.

02:12:37   But if some random dude, like Finn, picks up a lightsaber, and he's, you know, he's got some kind of...

02:12:46   He's a soldier, and we've seen the soldiers use that crazy baton thing earlier in the movie.

02:12:53   He's, you know, he's not incompetent.

02:12:56   I like that he can hold his own for a few minutes.

02:13:00   I like the idea that maybe the stormtroopers, as part of their standard training,

02:13:04   are trained specifically just like anti-Luke Skywalker.

02:13:08   We don't even know where this Luke Skywalker is, but if he comes back, we want you to have some training

02:13:12   against a guy using a lightsaber.

02:13:16   So I've got the Force Awakens visual dictionary

02:13:20   thing here. Did you notice that the guy

02:13:24   the baton, like he drops his gun but he's holding a shield at the same time. It's

02:13:29   like basically riot gear and he starts beating on him with his riot gear baton

02:13:36   kind of thing. So yeah, like I'm totally cool with the idea that like a storm

02:13:41   trooper can have some kind of basic training and he's not, he's actually not

02:13:46   good. He gets kind of destroyed and like Halloween is definitely playing with it.

02:13:50   But that's what makes it amazing because you're like, let her have it. Let her have it.

02:13:53   Exactly.

02:13:53   Because you know that she's gonna kick ass with that.

02:13:55   And he manages to...

02:13:56   So here's the thing, he hits Kaluen in the shoulder and then that's it.

02:14:00   Like, the lightsaber goes flying after that, like Kalu is...

02:14:04   What kind of piece of shit dude with the Force gets hit by an old stormtrooper with a lightsaber?

02:14:09   Well, he had been hit by Uncle Chewie, had taken a chunk out of him.

02:14:13   Yeah, he was bleeding.

02:14:16   But he's also an arrogant, angry...

02:14:18   He's not good. He's not... he's just not... he's...

02:14:22   He's not competent. He's not competent. And he knows he's not competent, which is, I think, driving character. It's bad.

02:14:34   Alright, we gotta wrap it up soon.

02:14:39   What are you talking about? It's only two hours.

02:14:41   Well, I don't know. We might have to cut some of this special guest. But we gotta talk about this supreme leader Snoke.

02:14:46   Oh, the Snoke. It didn't make any sense. Why did it look like Gollum?

02:14:50   And that was another like CGI distracting thing that I thought didn't fit in with the whole movie.

02:14:56   That was, that is my least favorite thing.

02:14:59   And is he like the Wizard of Oz? Like, is he a projection? Like, is that what it is?

02:15:04   Like, I have no idea.

02:15:05   Yeah, he's a hologram and he's bigger than he is actually.

02:15:07   And really he's like a little worm.

02:15:08   Well, we don't know how big he is. Is he human size? Is he like Yoda size? Or is he actually like nine feet tall or something?

02:15:15   or something.

02:15:16   I think I've heard somebody say that he's normal size.

02:15:21   But he's obviously –

02:15:22   That could have been like an ILM girl.

02:15:23   That could have been like, no.

02:15:25   What you're supposed to get out of it though is that like hologram technology has improved

02:15:29   in the last 30 years such that he looks like he's actually in the room 40 feet tall in

02:15:35   the first time we see him where he's talking to Kylo Ren and General Hux or Admiral Hux,

02:15:41   whatever his title is.

02:15:43   General Hux.

02:15:45   And the way that it looks like he's there,

02:15:48   and I had a bad, I thought, oh my God,

02:15:50   are they trying to tell me that this guy is 40 feet tall?

02:15:52   'Cause that's ridiculous.

02:15:54   And then when he disappeared, it was like, oh, I get it.

02:15:56   It's just that hologram technology has gotten high def.

02:15:59   - He's just on a big screen.

02:16:02   I don't like that guy, I don't like the way he looks.

02:16:05   I don't know why you would make him CG.

02:16:07   - He doesn't even look Star Wars-y to me.

02:16:09   Like he didn't look right.

02:16:11   I guess maybe I am influenced by the fact

02:16:14   that he does look like Gollum, but like, it just, it totally didn't fit.

02:16:18   It just, again, it's distracting.

02:16:20   I don't understand him at all.

02:16:22   They keep going back to him.

02:16:24   Right.

02:16:24   It's not like they had like one scene and it's like, okay, I can

02:16:27   forget that and keep moving.

02:16:28   They just, they just keep showing him over and over.

02:16:32   I don't even like his face.

02:16:32   And it's always, it's always like a meeting, like, uh, we screwed everything

02:16:36   up, what do you think we should do?

02:16:38   Right, I can't think of everything.

02:16:40   I don't know, you're incompetent boobs.

02:16:42   - It's like blow up on the planet.

02:16:44   Like forget it, I'll find somebody better.

02:16:45   Like, yeah.

02:16:47   - Even as like John said, his name isn't good.

02:16:49   It's like, that's like your kids, like Teddy bear Snoke.

02:16:52   You know, like it's not. - The worst.

02:16:54   - And he's the Snoke?

02:16:55   - Supreme leader Snoke.

02:16:57   - Supreme leader Snoke.

02:16:59   - Stupid, I really,

02:17:01   and it left me thinking, you know, 'cause I'm a moron.

02:17:05   So it left me thinking about

02:17:07   a totally inconsequential plot point.

02:17:09   Like I'm missing the movie 'cause I'm like,

02:17:11   what's going on here?

02:17:12   But most of the other new names are good. Like, "Ray" is a good name. "Fin" is a great name.

02:17:16   "Kylo Ren" is a good name.

02:17:17   "Kylo Ren" is a good name.

02:17:18   "In the Knights of Ren."

02:17:19   Well, so first of all, "Kylo Ren," his actual first name before he went bad is "Ben."

02:17:29   Oh, right.

02:17:30   So "Ben," "Ren," "Ray," things get way too...

02:17:36   I forgot that he was...

02:17:37   It's like everything's a little bit too close for...

02:17:40   That's a good moment though, when Han Solo calls out, "Ben, man, that's..."

02:17:44   Yeah, but you can hear it.

02:17:46   I rolled my eyes.

02:17:47   It's because it's the beginning of the end, as far as you're concerned.

02:17:53   You're like, "Screw this movie."

02:17:55   You rolled your eyes because you were busy pouring petrol into your Coke bottle

02:18:01   and trying to light the fuse.

02:18:03   I know.

02:18:03   I should have brought a cyanide pill to this movie.

02:18:06   I was not.

02:18:06   No.

02:18:07   I didn't know.

02:18:08   Firebomb, let's just stick with a firebomb.

02:18:10   It's okay.

02:18:11   All right, what else do we want to talk about

02:18:13   before we wrap up?

02:18:14   So the actual lightsaber battle between Rey and--

02:18:17   It's very important to me.

02:18:19   All right, here's a question.

02:18:22   So Rey--

02:18:23   In the next movies, does Rey build her own lightsaber,

02:18:26   'cause that's what Jedis do, or does she continue

02:18:28   to use Anakins? No, she gets the blue one.

02:18:29   She just uses Anakins. Yeah.

02:18:31   She loses it at the end of the second movie.

02:18:34   I think that, I think she uses that one.

02:18:38   I think it's obviously spoke to her, you know?

02:18:41   - Yeah, I think so, but I think she's gonna lose it

02:18:44   at the end of the second movie. - Maybe she gets her hand

02:18:45   cut off in the next movie and loses a lightsaber.

02:18:47   - I think she will-- - Too much.

02:18:49   - I am kind of surprised that she didn't cut--

02:18:52   - Too much, I'll have to build one.

02:18:53   - I thought she might have cut Kylo Ren's hand off.

02:18:56   - I don't know, so what else do we wanna talk about?

02:19:00   Do you think Rey is gonna have her own lightsaber

02:19:02   or do you think she's gonna continue to use Luke?

02:19:03   - I think she's gonna lose it at the midpoint.

02:19:07   She's going to lose it next episode.

02:19:09   Because they've got to sell more lightsabers.

02:19:11   Well, okay, there's that.

02:19:14   Yeah, sure, why not?

02:19:16   That's the cynical way of looking at it.

02:19:18   That's fine, maybe.

02:19:20   Just in terms of if we continue with kind of the mirroring aspect of what we've seen,

02:19:26   she's going to have to lose it, right?

02:19:28   Let's talk about Carrie Fisher.

02:19:30   How many fucks does she not give?

02:19:32   I love her press tours for this.

02:19:34   - I...

02:19:35   - She gives zero fucks about anything.

02:19:39   She brings her janky little dog.

02:19:42   - I have never wanted to have sex with Carrie Fisher

02:19:44   more than right now.

02:19:46   - More than like slave Leia.

02:19:47   - No, no, no, yeah, exactly.

02:19:49   Like kid, you know, young boy kind of thing.

02:19:52   Like, holy shit, look at that.

02:19:53   That's like a woman.

02:19:54   Carrie Fisher is just the best.

02:19:58   She's amazing.

02:19:59   - She's really, really good.

02:20:01   - She seems to be having fun.

02:20:03   Yeah, like she's having fun and she's just saying all the shit she's wanted to say.

02:20:07   She's kicking so much ass, it's hilarious.

02:20:10   Right, and then she had those tweets about, because it is true, like she got judged on her looks.

02:20:15   And I think, I thought she looked amazing.

02:20:18   If anything, a little too like Botoxed, which only to me I noticed because they let Han Solo be all like grizzled and he's way older, right?

02:20:27   He's older than you.

02:20:28   Yeah, he's cool.

02:20:28   Yeah, yeah.

02:20:29   - Yeah, she was 19 and 77. - They let him be grizzled,

02:20:31   and yet, she's got a lot of Botox.

02:20:35   And I just don't think that's fair.

02:20:36   And I think that if it would've been up to Carrie Fisher,

02:20:38   she would've been like, "Fuck you, I'm not losing weight.

02:20:40   "Fuck you, I'm not doing any Botox."

02:20:42   - I don't, I just like it.

02:20:44   - But she looks amazing!

02:20:45   - Yeah, I have a lot of admiration for her.

02:20:46   - Oh, guess what?

02:20:47   She doesn't look 24 anymore.

02:20:49   I get surprised. - Yeah, it's like,

02:20:50   what do you expect?

02:20:52   - You know what, I feel like she feels and sounds

02:20:57   and looks like old Princess Leia in a way that has in for doesn't inhabit.

02:21:06   What about in the in the goofy kingdom of the Crystal Skull?

02:21:11   Exactly.

02:21:12   In the Jones movie, the actress who plays Marion to me is like unrecognizable.

02:21:16   Yeah.

02:21:16   It's like and it doesn't feel like Marion at all. It doesn't feel like like somehow

02:21:23   there it just every everything from just the way she looks to the interaction that the two characters have does not feel like

02:21:29   Indy and Marion back together again, it just feels hollow and

02:21:34   Pantomime'd in a way that Leia feels like wow, that's that's 30 years older Princess Leia. Yeah, and she's in charge

02:21:43   right right kicking some ass and

02:21:48   Han Solo is still way over stretching himself.

02:21:51   Right, he's still a little bit of a fuck up, you know what I mean?

02:21:54   He's always a fuck up.

02:21:55   But yeah, at this point, he's beat.

02:21:58   Yeah, but it's like, sadder.

02:21:59   It's sadder because he's old.

02:22:01   Well yeah, I mean, the gang's the truth.

02:22:03   Tell them, kids, it's nobody else to screw over in the galaxy.

02:22:07   Like, you're done.

02:22:09   There's nowhere to hide.

02:22:11   Leia, on the other hand, is kind of on the top of the game.

02:22:17   top of the game. She's like, "No, look, I'm cool, come, I got my shit together. I'm

02:22:20   like taking care of business. I'm landing on the battleship or the transport right

02:22:27   after battle." Like, yeah, she's badass. She makes a bit more sense to me than

02:22:33   Han does. Although I can see Han being the kind of stubborn idiot that would still

02:22:38   be getting himself into those kind of situations in his 70s.

02:22:41   Right. So he's got like a self-destructive streak.

02:22:45   Yeah, well, how'd that work out, Amy?

02:22:48   Shut up. We're not going to talk about it. You know what, though? This felt so cathartic to get it out.

02:22:57   Oh, that's good.

02:22:58   Okay.

02:22:59   Because I can't talk about it on Twitter. And like everybody is like, Star Wars is so amazing. And I just want to scream, screw you, Han Solo stuff.

02:23:07   Yeah, give it a week or something.

02:23:08   So will you will you go see the movie again now?

02:23:12   I feel like maybe I need another week, but it's it's mellowing

02:23:16   I texted my best friend like when it happened and I was like, did you see it? And thank God she said yes

02:23:22   And I was like, oh my god, I'm inconsolable

02:23:24   And she was like, you know what you should do. You should watch Empire

02:23:28   That'll make you feel better

02:23:29   If you watch Empire Strikes Back and she's like and just know that he really wanted out like he he's he's always wanted out

02:23:36   and so like he's happy now and

02:23:39   That helped. It helped a little.

02:23:41   Guy, did you see it in 3D?

02:23:43   Or did you see it in 2D?

02:23:45   I did. All three times.

02:23:47   Really? I see. I don't like 3D, so I haven't seen it in 2D yet.

02:23:50   But I heard that 3D for this was pretty good.

02:23:52   It wasn't like typical dark.

02:23:54   Now that I've seen it twice, I'm thinking maybe I will see it if I go see it a third time.

02:23:58   Well, I will. But I think maybe I should go see it in 3D while it's in theaters.

02:24:03   Oh, definitely.

02:24:05   Do not do 3D like at home.

02:24:07   I'm gonna go try to see it in 2D.

02:24:09   Yeah, you should see it. You know what? I'd be interested to hear if you saw it in 2D.

02:24:13   Because then I read that 3D is not bad.

02:24:15   Like we have seen so many bad movies in 3D.

02:24:17   Oh no, this is a good one. They do.

02:24:19   But then I've heard too that in 3D wasn't that different.

02:24:23   That it wasn't like...

02:24:25   I believe that because it's not over the top.

02:24:27   In your face, literally.

02:24:29   There's maybe one shot that I think is a bit extreme.

02:24:33   And there's like a starter-- so this is a shot of a starter store on the screen, like an establishing shot, and in 3D it's like in your face, right up there.

02:24:48   I don't know what it looks like in 2D.

02:24:50   Well, maybe I'll try it. We'll let the healing begin. Maybe I'm ready.

02:24:54   Yeah, so yeah, I do plan to see it in 2D.

02:24:57   But, you know, you can't, I mean, you gotta go see it in 3D when it's in the cinema.

02:25:02   Because they did not phone this in, I think it's a, you know, they did a good job.

02:25:07   And like you, I am not a 3D guy.

02:25:11   Any final thoughts that you want to say before we wrap things up, Dan?

02:25:14   I'm sorry, Amy, that Han Solo had to die.

02:25:18   I appreciate your sympathy.

02:25:21   Alright, here's a question. Do you think Chewbacca is going to remain a major character?

02:25:25   character or does he drop down to be like a peripheral character?

02:25:28   No, Chewbacca is gonna be the... he's attached to Rey now.

02:25:33   Right.

02:25:34   Oh yeah, yeah.

02:25:36   Rey and Chewie.

02:25:37   Even if she trains, I think Rey and Chewie keep the Millennium Falcon.

02:25:41   And I think he's gonna have a special affinity for her because he knew that Han had an affinity for her.

02:25:46   Yeah.

02:25:46   Oh, it's gonna be nice. Oh, see, don't...

02:25:49   That's too bad. Chewie kind of likes you.

02:25:51   In a sense, the thing that occurred to me is that the job offer that Han offered her to come on, you know,

02:25:58   come on board the Millennium Falcon with Chewie, she ended up taking it, you know, Han's just not there to...

02:26:04   How great is it though that she like turned it down at first? I love her.

02:26:08   Yeah, she's awesome. Well, she's got to get back to Jakku. And I love that Finn's like, "Why? Why do people want to go back to that planet?

02:26:20   What is going on with you?

02:26:21   Do you know what? We didn't even talk about like my one of my

02:26:26   favorite parts where she's like, stop grabbing my hand. Yeah, I

02:26:30   love it. I loved that part. I thought that was so great. Yeah.

02:26:34   Stop. Why are you grabbing my hand? I loved her like

02:26:37   independent streak of Princess Leia, but yet she's got like,

02:26:42   the mechanical skills that are usually reserved for men in

02:26:45   these movies. Like, so fantastic.

02:26:48   I have to admit, JJ Abrams totally suckered me in with the first scene where her and Finn meet in the market.

02:26:55   And the guys who were told, "Hey, steal that droid from her," are attacking her.

02:27:01   And you cut to Finn, and you see, it's like, this is where, like, in the moment, Finn, you can say he's out for himself, but he's gonna help her.

02:27:08   Right.

02:27:09   And then, I was totally like, "Oh, I get it."

02:27:11   And he doesn't know it from Abram. It's just like, "Okay, this girl's in trouble. I'm gonna..."

02:27:15   And instead, I was totally suckered in, as J.J. Abrams intended me to be,

02:27:21   that thinking he's going to rescue her, and the next thing you know, he's like,

02:27:24   "Oh." And she's kicked all three guys' asses.

02:27:28   And she's unscathed, and it's like, "Oh, this is a different type of movie."

02:27:33   And then BB-8's like, "Hey, that guy's got the jacket."

02:27:40   Yeah.

02:27:40   Yeah, he's like, "Oh, wait, what?"

02:27:43   You're right. You're right. Because then immediately, not only are you surprised that she didn't need to be rescued, but immediately she's like, got him on his ass and is like, give us back the jacket.

02:27:53   The next target. Yeah. And BB-8 keeps electrocuting him.

02:28:03   I don't know. So great. Such a great female character. And it never felt gratuitous. Like it never felt like, okay, now we're doing something, you know, so the girls won't complain. Like, truly a great character.

02:28:14   No, no, none of that at all. Yeah. Not even like, there's not sexualized. There's not even-

02:28:21   No, no.

02:28:21   There's like, like, mild romance, but not even like-

02:28:25   Right, right.

02:28:26   Yeah. Star Wars-y.

02:28:27   Star Wars-y. Very Star Wars-y.

02:28:29   Yeah, but Star Wars he had I mean they kept it to a kiss but

02:28:33   Yeah, even less than the original show was I'd say yeah. Yeah

02:28:37   It makes me wanna we should have more children and like have a girl because I just want her to see this movie

02:28:43   Okay. Oh wait. Sorry, not me

02:28:46   All right guy

02:28:50   Thank you for doing this my apologies to the kick especially guess who did not we're gonna have to cut it short

02:28:56   So my apologies to everybody waiting in the green room. Yeah. Peace Ben Thompson. I hope they're watching our child

02:29:03   child.

02:29:03   (laughing)