Like what is up with that silly bouncy ball droid? Hey, I happen to like him.... I guess that's a "him", since the Star Wars universe has so far only introduced us to droids with male personalities. Anyway, we'll just have to wait and see if BB-8 (as it is called) is a guy or a gal droid. However odd or silly or even technologically impossible (according to our science) BB-8 may be, I like the idea. Cute and agile and quick. This could be the new R2-D2 of the franchise. But do keep R2 around somewhere, sweeping the gangplank of the Falcon or something.
I want to show an image of BB-8, but I will desist just in case the Star Wars overlords of copyright are cracking down on unauthorized use of their stuff. Instead, here's our favourite old droid R2, performing duty as a PEZ dispenser (still in package - take note, collectors):
The Millennium Falcon seems to have been revamped for the new "episode", sleeker overall (or is that my imagination?) and the round radar dish of old replaced by a smaller rectangle-shaped dish. But the Falcon is generally intact and instills the same thrill when you see it roaring by, T.I.E. Fighters in hot pursuit. So I wonder if ol' Han will still be piloting the ship, or if he's handed it off (well, sold it off, since the man is all about cold, hard cash - am I right?) to some younger pilot.
My nifty Millennium Falcon bottle opener, which
opens a Kessel Ale in less than 12 parsecs
The ridiculous reactions to the design of the lightsaber used by the dark-cloaked fellow (a Sith?) Kylo Ren baffle me. Why over-think this? I mean, even the notion of a fixed-length laser is an impossibility by our science (last time I looked), so why quibble over this newly-designed saber. This is fantasy, not hard science. Again, an image would be perfect to illustrate what I'm talking about, but instead, you can legally pop over to starwars.com to see it. The lightsaber in question has two shorter beams popping out from the top of the hilt, near the main "blade", sort of like the guard on the hilt of Earth swords, like this:
I like the look of the scenes that may or may not be set on the desert planet of Tatooine. The "stormtrooper", named Finn, we see in the trailer seems to be in distress. I like to think that he's in disguise - not really a stormtrooper at all - and is in deep trouble. And he must be one of the main characters.
Rey is the young woman who hops on her odd-looking landspeeder "bike" and tears off toward Tatooine style dwellings. I suspect that she, too, is key to this whole story. A daughter of one of the original trilogy's characters wouldn't be a stretch. We shall see.
The slick new stormtrooper armour is pretty cool, too. The helmet is familiar and yet is slightly updated, probably for more aesthetic than functional reasons. But who knows, maybe these things have better cooling and comms systems than the oldies (remember TK-421 in A New Hope?). The glimpse of Finn's trooper armour reveals a sleeker design on the backplate: the clunky box-shaped gizmo of old is gone, replaced simply by a small, single gray disc.... a photo-cell, perhaps? I don't know the technology of this stuff.
All in all, this trailer for The Force Awakens evokes a lot of the feel and look of Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope. Less slick and more gritty, more character and less (obvious) CGI. Let's hope there's a return to form here. Fingers crossed.
That 9th hole is a doozy
No comments:
Post a Comment