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A droid carrying important information is jettisoned on a remote desert planet. A mechanically inclined loner with a mysterious past finds it, setting them off on an adventure that will see the destruction of a huge weapon and more. Yes, The Force Awakens mirrors the original Star Wars, and J.J. Abrams thinks it had to.

“It was obviously a wildly intentional thing that we go backwards, in some ways, to go forwards in the important ways,” Abrams said in a podcast with The Hollywood Reporter. “Ultimately the structure of Star Wars itself is as classic and tried and true as you can get. It was itself derivative of all of these things that George loved so much, from the most obvious, Flash Gordon and Joseph Campbell, to the [Akira] Kurosawa references, to Westerns — I mean, all of these elements were part of what made Star Wars.”

Though Abrams admits to hitting all the tried and true beats from the original film, he thinks that pales in significance to everything else.

“I can understand that someone might say, ‘Oh, it’s a complete rip-off!’” he said. “We inherited Star Wars. The story of history repeating itself was, I believe, an obvious and intentional thing, and the structure of meeting a character who comes from a nowhere desert and discovers that she has a power within her, where the bad guys have a weapon that is destructive but that ends up being destroyed — those simple tenets are by far the least important aspects of this movie, and they provide bones that were well-proven long before they were used in Star Wars.”

Those bones, he feels, were necessary to get where this story had to be.

“What was important for me was introducing brand new characters using relationships that were embracing the history that we know to tell a story that is new — to go backwards to go forwards,” Abrams said “So I understand that this movie, I would argue much more than the ones that follow, needed to take a couple of steps backwards into very familiar terrain, and using a structure of nobodies becoming somebodies defeating the baddies — which is, again, I would argue, not a brand new concept, admittedly — but use that to do, I think, a far more important thing, which is introduce this young woman, who’s a character we’ve not seen before and who has a story we have not seen before, meeting the first Storm Trooper we’ve ever seen who we get to know as a human being; to see the two of them have an adventure in a way that no one has had yet, with Han Solo; to see those characters go to find someone who is a brand new character who, yes, may be diminutive, but is as far from Yoda as I think a description of a character can get, who gets to enlighten almost the way a wonderful older teacher or grandparent or great-aunt might, you know, something that is confirming a kind of belief system that is rejected by the main character; and to tell a story of being a parent and being a child and the struggles that that entails — clearly Star Wars has always been a familial story, but never in the way that we’ve told here.”

Abrams continues from there:

“And yes, they destroy a weapon at the end of this movie, but then something else happens which is, I think, far more critical and far more important — and in fact even in that moment, when that is happening, the thing I think the audience is focused on and cares more about is not, ‘Is that big planet gonna blow up?’ — ‘cause we all know it’s gonna blow up. What you really care about is what’s gonna happen in the forest between these two characters who are now alone.”

“Yes, the bones of the thing we always knew would be a genre comfort zone,” Abrams concluded. “But what the thing looks like, we all have a skeleton that looks somewhat similar, but none of us look the same [on the outside]. To me, the important thing was not, ‘What are the bones of this thing?’ To me, it was meeting new characters who discover themselves that they are in a universe that is spiritual, that is optimistic and in a world where you meet people that will become your family.”

It’s a great podcast, that’s well worth a listen. They talk about Abrams’ early career, why he didn’t want to be “The sequel guy,” how Rian Johnson contributed to Episode VII, how Abrams influenced Episode VIII, and more. Here’s the link again.

[The Hollywood Reporter]

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Contact the author at germain@io9.com.

via Gizmodo
J.J. Abrams Explains Why The Force Awakens Isn’t Just a Carbon Copy of A New Hope

We pretty much loved Star Wars: The Force Awakens. The things this movie got right were so much more important than the things it got wrong. That said, it did get some things wrong. Allow us to elaborate.

So now that Episode VII has become the #1 non-inflation-adjusted domestic movie of all time in North America, it’s a good moment to be honest about it. In our movie review, we touched briefly on the fact that there were some flaws in the film that did seem to be a cause for concern, especially in the second half. But we didn’t want to go into detail about those until everybody had had a chance to see the film and chew it over. So here goes.

Warning: Major spoilers ahead…

So first off, just to reiterate—for the most part, we loved this film, and it even improved on subsequent viewings. But yeah, there are some issues.

General Organa

First off, the biggest one is probably Leia. Even in a movie where Luke Skywalker gets a minute of screentime, Leia feels notably underserved, to the point where I wondered if a bunch of her stuff got cut at the last minute. (The thing where she hugs Rey, whom she’s never spoken to, and ignores Chewbacca, kind of supports that idea.)

In The Force Awakens, Leia gets a handful of snarky lines towards her ex, Han Solo, but is mostly just one long stoic reaction shot. Whatever she thinks of her brother running off and leaving the galaxy to die, we never really find out.

But worst of all, she and Han Solo have a couple of scenes that are like the executive summary of a couple talking about their relationship. It’s something I’ve seen a fair bit in movies lately: the scene where two people talk about their feelings, but they’re just summarizing the bullet points. The biggest Han-Leia conversation is half as-you-know-Bob exposition, and half quick-and-dirty, on-the-nose relationship synopsis. At no point do Han and Leia feel like people who once loved each other, had a child together, and have not seen each other in years.

This matters partly because Leia is a kickass character in her own right, and getting to see her as a general was one of the selling points of the film. And it also matters because the Leia-Han relationship was the emotional core of the original trilogy, so it’s weird to see it get such short shrift here.

But Leia getting shortchanged also saps a bit of the oomph out of the film’s climax. Not a lot, but some. Han Solo going to confront his fallen son Kylo Ren works on its own terms, because we’ve seen enough of Han and Kylo in the movie to get that Han has become kind of a sad reflection of who he used to be, and we know that Kylo is struggling with his feelings about his father. But Leia is the one who sends Han to talk to Kylo, and a big part of her scenes is selling us on the idea that Kylo Ren’s father (and not his mother) is the only one who can reach him now. Leia has to know that she’s probably sending Han Solo to his death—or at least, that it’s a likely outcome—and if the scenes where she asks him to do that carried more weight, then it would add more power to the Han-Kylo meeting.

Starkiller Base

And Leia, by dint of her status as leader of the Resistance, also participates in the film’s other biggest shortfall: the whole Starkiller Base storyline. At this point in the film, I’m invested enough in Rey, Finn and Kylo that their arcs paying off feels like enough of a culmination to the film, and it’s okay that Starkiller Base is kind of a forgettable contrivance.

But Starkiller Base absolutely does not carry any weight in the film. When it destroys the New Republic, this is pretty much the first we’ve heard of the New Republic in the movie, and I kept wondering if Jeet Heer had just been atomized or something. General Hux’s speech, coming with no context or setup, is the most unconvincing, random thing in the film, and I look forward to the “remix” videos where he’s shouting about unfair parking tickets and that one Shake Shack where they messed up his onion-ring order because goddamnit, he’s a General and onion rings are a prerogative of his rank.

I don’t care about Starkiller Base. At no point do I believe it’s going to destroy the bunker where Leia and her friends are hunkering down—and apparently neither do they, since they don’t try and evacuate or anything. The mission to destroy Starkiller Base is way too straightforward, and its weakness is glaringly easy. Ken Leung from Lost points out one vulnerable component that the base must have, Finn knows exactly what he means and where it is, and it’s the size of a city to boot.

And the mission goes off more or less without a hitch—both Death Star attacks in the Original Trilogy were disasters, only saved by a last-minute miracle. They even have Admiral Ackbar there in the room, so they oughta remember how it’s supposed to be a trap. [Edited to add: Okay, people in comments are pointing out that the mission does fail at first. But not in a way that feels like “all is lost.” And we cut away from Poe and the X-wings for a long stretch of time, during which we’re apparently not supposed to think they’ve all been destroyed.]

When Starkiller Base gets blown up, I feel basically nothing. (By contrast, Nero’s weapon in J.J. Abrams’ first Star Trek does actually feel menacing, because we actually see it destroy Vulcan, a place we have a connection to, which we’ve spent some time on in this film.)

Maz Kanata

And then there’s Maz Kanata, the pirate/bartender/Force-sensitive ancient alien who’s basically Guinan from Star Trek: The Next Generation. We know that Maz originally had a bigger role in the movie, but they didn’t really know what to do with her after her bar is destroyed. Actually, it sort of feels like they didn’t know what to do with her, in general.

Maz feels like kind of a non-entity. She’s there to help our heroes out, dispense homespun wisdom, and urge Rey to embrace her destiny via Anakin’s old lightsaber. She’s the least memorable character in the film, although I did keep wondering why she has a giant statue of herself outside her bar. She clearly sympathizes with the Resistance—her one memorable speech is about how Han Solo should stop running and join the fight—but she’s not helping them herself, and she probably knows her bar is full of First Order sympathizers, that she caters to.

Part of the problem with Maz is that she’s the film’s Yoda, but she’s also the film’s Lando Calrissian. She’s both the wise teacher who is on the side of good and the morally gray, neutral rogue who doesn’t want to pick a side. I guess. She’s a few archetypes cobbled together, but none of them actually sticks.

The Force

And that brings me to another problem with The Force Awakens—even though the Force is right there in the title, and we’re told a few times that the Force is coming back after a period of quiescence, I don’t really feel the Force very much in this movie.

That is, I don’t really get a ton of the feeling of mysticism and awe that I associate with the Force in this film, as compared to Empire Strikes Back or A New Hope. The weird poetry of it. And some of that is down to the fact that Maz Kanata is this movie’s Yoda or Obi-Wan, and she’s kind of an empty vessel.

I absolutely buy Rey becoming strong with the Force, because she’s clearly got an innate ability and every time she encounters Kylo Ren he shows her more stuff. My problems with the Force in this movie are not suspension-of-disbelief issues, or logistical ones, at all. But I didn’t have any “holy cow” spiritual moments involving that mysterious energy field that binds all living things together. There’s no “that is why you fail” moment in this movie.

Some of the lack of awe towards the Force in the movie could be down to John Williams’ music, which is great but never has any of the “wonder” moments that he layers into a lot of the first two moments.

In fact, after I saw Episode VII for the first time, I had a moment of wondering if the Force was just such a Baby Boomer zen-and-the-art-of-motorcycle-maintenance hippie concept that no film-maker born since 1965 could really encapsulate it. But I also hope that Rian Johnson finds a way to bring more of that awe and strangeness into Episode VIII, once Luke Skywalker actually opens his mouth. If Johnson talks to his friend Shane Carruth, who nailed some of the feeling of unspeakable connectedness in Upstream Color, we might be getting somewhere.

Captain Phasma

There’s a third female character who sort of lacks oomph in this film. But I don’t hold that against The Force Awakens. Captain Phasma, Finn’s commanding officer, was clearly meant to be a minor character who shows up in a couple of scenes and then Finn turns the tables on her in a funny moment before tossing her into a garbage compactor. And then they cast Gwendoline Christie in the role, and decided to upgrade her to major supporting character after all—Christie did a lot of press for this movie, remember.

So if you just think of Phasma as a slightly upgraded version of “hapless stormtrooper who gets bullied into turning off the force field,” it’s not a big deal. The fact that she turns off the force field for them is just part of the larger problem of Starkiller Base being kind of a pushover. On the other hand, if Episode VIII sees the return of Phasma—as it apparently will—she’ll have a bit of an uphill climb to regain her credibility.

Other stuff

There are a few other issues. Supreme Leader Snoke is another character who feels more or less forgettable—another CG mo-cap baddie with a generic “villain” look—and even the Vatican felt like Snoke could have been a more compelling villain. But he’s clearly meant to be in the background in this film, much as the Emperor was in A New Hope, and he’s got lots of chances to shine in the next two films.

There’s some choppy editing in the movie, which seems to be the result of last-minute cuts—Rey and Finn swapping Poe’s jacket back and forth in the final act being one of the clues.

It’s weird that the guys from The Raid are in this movie and get basically nothing to do.

And as usual with a J.J. Abrams film, some crucial stuff isn’t explained in the film, that probably should be. We had questions after we saw the film, and in some cases the answers are easy to find online. But R2D2 suddenly powering on at the end, and why Luke doesn’t want to be found but left a map to find him, are pieces of information that should be dropped into the film somehow. Poe randomly deciding not to look for BB-8 on Jakku, but instead just bugging out, is also kind of random.

And finally, there’s the fact that The Force Awakens so closely mirrors the structure and storyline of A New Hope, down to all the main beats. (Secret document hidden in a droid on a desert planet, escape in the Millennium Falcon, meeting a mentor figure who later dies, giant super-weapon blows up, etc.) That didn’t really bother me, because it was always in the cards that this film would be sort of a “greatest hits” of Star Wars, and these beats were remixed enough that I was into it.

Bottom line: As I said in the beginning, the things The Force Awakens does right are much more important than the things it does wrong. In particular, it makes you care about its brand new characters, as much as you ever cared about Han Solo or Luke Skywalker.

Additional reporting by Germain Lussier

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Charlie Jane Anders is the author of All The Birds in the Sky, coming Jan 26 from Tor Books. Follow her on Twitter, and email her.

via Gizmodo
Everything That’s Wrong With Star Wars: The Force Awakens

Apple at last decided to give its TV box an upgrade worthy of the name last year, and if you’ve bought yourself one of the new devices (or got one as a gift from Santa) then there’s lots to explore—the Apple TV has a simple, straightforward interface but there are still a number of hidden features and tools available to take advantage of.

1. Have an iPhone or iPad nearby

Setting up passwords and networks on a device without a keyboard is never a pleasurable process, but if you’ve got a device running iOS 9.1 or above to hand then you can use it to beam important configuration information to your Apple TV, including your Apple ID and home wifi password.

All you need to do is unlock the device, switch on Bluetooth and keep it near the Apple TV while you’re configuring your new bit of kit—the TV box will do the rest. Watch for the prompt during the initial setup process and you can save yourself some time when getting your new box up and running.

2. Access in-play options

A swipe down from the top of the remote trackpad while you’re watching something reveals details about the current movie or show as well as giving you access to some additional settings. Switch to the Audio section and it’s possible to change the current language or switch to a different set of AirPlay speakers.

On supported iTunes content you can use the same drop-down panel to skip between chapters (tap the Menu button to hide it again). Meanwhile, tapping and holding the left or right side of the top Touch pad on the remote will rewind or fast forward through whatever you’re watching or listening to.

3. Customize the home screen

You don’t have to settle for the layout of icons and apps presented to you by Apple on its TV device. A long press of the touch-sensitive trackpad button at the top of the remote and the current app icon starts to shake: swipe to move it to a new location on the grid of apps or press Play/Pause to remove it.

That means you can get the apps you use most often up at the top of the screen and banish the least helpful ones to the bottom of the list. This only works on the main home screen and only with the Apple TV apps—you can’t use it to rearrange the ‘featured’ carousel at the top of the interface.

4. Check how much space apps are using

Whether you’ve gone for the 32GB or 64GB version of the fourth-generation Apple TV, you probably want to keep a close eye on how much room you’ve got left. Go to the Settings app, then select General and Manage Storage to see how much room each of your installed apps are currently using.

We’ve already mentioned how you can delete apps from the Apple TV home screen, but you can do it here too via the trash can icons that appear on the right. The only apps listed here are the non-native ones that don’t come with the Apple TV—you can’t see details of cached movies and television shows.

5. Look out for your favorite games

The selection of games available on the Apple TV when it first launched was fairly limited, but the situation is slowly getting better. If you can find your favorite games on the new device’s App Store then you won’t have to pay again for them (or at least that’s the case with the ones we tested).

To quickly check if any of your previously purchased games (or indeed apps) have versions specific to the Apple TV, scroll up from the front page of the App Store interface and then go across to Purchased—you can then drill down into the available selection based on your previous iOS installs.

6. Re-pair your remote

The Siri remote is a big part of the new Apple TV experience and if it becomes unpaired with your device somehow, press and hold the Menu and Plus buttons to connect it again. You can only have one remote paired with your Apple TV at any one time, but that’s unlikely to be much of a problem.

Here’s another shortcut trick you can do with the Siri remote: hold down the Menu and Home buttons together and wait until the white LED on the front of the Apple TV starts to flash. This forces a reset of your device, which is handy if an app or the entire Apple TV becomes unresponsive for whatever reason.

7. Use Siri for search

The Siri searching capabilities are of course one of the major selling points of the fourth-generation Apple TV, so make sure you’re fully aware of all the different voice commands that are available: “show that Modern Family episode with Edward Norton” was an example used in the September demo.

Try “show me good movies from the 80s” or “show me TV comedies”. You can also ask Siri questions such as “will I need an umbrella tomorrow?” and “what was the Lakers score?” (as on iOS). Press and hold the Siri button (the microphone) to run a command, then talk into the top of the remote.

8. Use Siri for navigation

You can make use of the Siri button while enjoying your Apple TV content as well. Use “what did he/she say?” to skip back 15 seconds in a movie or television show and temporarily turn on the subtitles; or try commands like “skip” and “previous track” while you’re inside the Apple Music app.

Commands such as “go back 30 seconds” or “go forward seven minutes” work, as do setting commands like “reduce loud sounds”. If you ask “who stars in this?”, meanwhile, you get a roster of the talent in the film or show along the bottom of the screen (press the Menu button) to hide it again.

9. Switching between apps

The Menu button takes you back one level through apps and menus, with a double-tap taking you back to the home screen. Tap again from the front page to activate those gorgeous Apple TV screensavers (if you haven’t already installed them, go to General then Screensaver in the Settings app).

Then there’s the Home button (with a picture of a television set on it)—this primarily serves as a way of getting quickly back to the Apple TV home screen, but if you double-tap it you get the device’s multitasking page, enabling you to quickly switch between all of your recently used apps.

10. Take Apple TV screenshots

Should you be writing up a guide to the Apple TV or wanting to show off your Crossy Road achievements, it’s not particular difficult to take an Apple TV screenshot (or video) if you have a Mac computer and a USB Type-C cable to hand—although it doesn’t work with DRM-protected content on screen.

Hook up your computer to the Apple TV via its USB Type-C port, launch the latest version of QuickTime on OS X and you should be able to see the Apple TV as an input option when you choose New Movie Recording from the File menu. To capture a still, press Cmd+Shift+4 and then hit Space.

via Gizmodo
10 Tricks to Make Yourself an Apple TV Master

via Dilbert
Dilbert 2016-01-06

One of the new features in El Capitan and iOS 9 is “Proactive,” which supposedly helps you find email addresses and other info automatically. It doesn’t always work great though. Thankfully, Macworld points to where you can turn it off.

Proactive is supposed to automatically skim emails to pull contact info to make it easier to get in touch with people. This is useful sometimes, but other times it just sits there suggesting email addresses from some random person you don’t care about or worse, pulls up old emails for people for no apparent reason. For example, when I type in my own name, Mail suggests eight different email addresses, including some I haven’t used since college. To clean this up and only allow Mail to suggest emails from your actual Contacts, you just need to toggle a couple settings.

On Mac

Launch Contacts, then head to Contacts > Preferences > General. Uncheck the “Show Contacts Found in Mail” option.

On iOS

Head to Settings > Mail, Contacts, Calendars, and uncheck the box marked “Contacts Found in Mail.”

With those settings disabled, the only autosuggested recipients will be the email addresses you actually have in your address book.

How to disable unconfirmed email suggestions | Macworld

via Lifehacker
Disable OS X and iOS Contact Email Suggestions to Clean Up the Recipient Field

If there’s one thing that rankles about The Force Awakens, it’s that a lot of its world-building is left to the array of tie-in media that launched with the movie on December 18th. It’s a bummer that there are so many questions left unanswered, but we’ve combed through all these books for all the most important details about this new look at the Star Wars galaxy.

Naturally, there are going to be major spoilers for the entirety of Star Wars: The Force Awakens below.

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Much of the information sourced for this article comes from the Star Wars: The Force Awakens Visual Dictionary, a guidebook released by DK to coincide with the film’s release. Like several other tie-ins such as Alan Dean Foster’s novelization or The Art of Star Wars: The Force Awakens, it gives some fascinating insight into the world behind the movie, and it’s all straight from Lucasfilm’s story group, ensuring that everything sits right in Disney’s still fledgling reboot of the Star Wars canon.

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Who the Hell Is Lor San Tekka?

Max Von Sydow’s mysterious character Lor San Tekka is barely in the film; he’s the old man who gives Poe Dameron the missing piece of the map to Luke Skywalker at the beginning of the film, and shortly thereafter he gets cut down by Kylo Ren in a fit of rage. Some of his dialogue (including some pointed remarks about Ren’s heritage that act as teasers for the eventual reveal of his real name) hints that Tekka was meant to be a big mystery, perhaps a connection to Star Wars’ past—many rumors pegged him as an elderly Boba Fett, or even a character from the prequels!—but the real answer is rather simple.

Since the fall of the Empire, Lor San Tekka has been a galactic traveler who eventually worked with the New Republic (and later the Resistance) mapping the remote fringe of the galaxy, before retiring to Jakku. Additionally, Tekka is also a religious man. He and most of the villagers he lives with are followers of the “Church of the Force,” a faith that gathered people who were not sensitive to the Force, but worshippers of Jedi codes and practices. The church operated in secret during the time of the Empire, but apparently flourished after Palpatine’s death.

Throughout his mapping expeditions, Tekka became intimate with the history of the Jedi and Sith orders, making him a prominent figure in the Church and giving him a reputation as a source for galactic secrets the Empire had clamped down on for decades.

The Resistance Is Much Smaller Than You Think It Is…

The Rebel Alliance was always meant to be seen as a plucky upstart group striking out at the big evil force, but by the time of Return of the Jedi, they’re massive: they’ve got capital ships, wings of fighter squadrons, the whole shebang. On the other hand, the Resistance is tiny.

Although the novelization emphasized Leia’s distaste for the New Republic, in The Visual Dictionary it’s pretty much acknowledged that the Resistance is an independent, private force “tolerated” by the New Republic, but not officially condoned or supported, due to a fear of conflict with the First Order.

This makes the Resistance’s actual military might incredibly small. In terms of ships, the organization has no capital vessels to call on, and its Starfighter corps is woefully light—two squadrons, Blue and Red, and Poe in the lead with his Black X-Wing. That’s it. On the ground, it fares slightly better, but there is apparently an emphasis on droid support, charged and used constantly to support what little the Resistance has in terms of ground crew, while the biological members often pull double duty as support and frontline staff.

…And the First Order Is Much Bigger

The First Order, on the other hand, is far bigger than the New Republic hopes it is. Hiding in a section of space called the Unknown Regions, the First Order has been building itself out of a group of dissident Imperial Admirals and Moffs who openly defied the signing of a peace treaty (dubbed “the Galactic Concordance”) after the Battle of Jakku 30 years ago, taking what soldiers and ships they could to the fringe of the galaxy to rebuild the Empire.

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And rebuild they did. Despite officially being defanged militarily and forced to pay huge reparations to the Republic, the Empire secretly pumped what money it could into building new fleets of ships, and invaded fringe worlds to establish itself as a dominant power again. The Finalizer, Kylo Ren’s Star Destroyer seen in The Force Awakens, is massive—twice the size of the Empire’s old Destroyers—and this isn’t a solitary vessel, but the flagship of a massive fleet of similar capital ships.

With the New Republic fleet largely wiped out during Starkiller Base’s attack in The Force Awakens, it seems like there’s a really grim fight ahead for the Resistance.

The Mystical Secrets of Maz Kanata

Maz Kanata is one of The Force Awakens’ biggest mysteries. We know some of her scenes were cut from the film too, leaving her even more mysterious.

While the film does heavily hint that Maz can use the Force, the Visual Dictionary confirms that she is indeed Force Sensitive—Maz is familiar with the Jedi and had many Jedi acquaintances before the Empire, but “never went down that path,” according to the book. Instead, she quietly used her Force abilities to keep her alive during her hundreds of years of adventures as a pirate.

When Maz retired to Takodana in the wake of Palpatine’s death, she began using her abilities openly—tracking force-strong relics and collecting them as a safeguard… which led to her sensing Luke Skywalker’s lightsaber, lost in the bowels of Bespin after the end of The Empire Strikes Back, and eventually retrieving it for her collection.

The Force Really Did Awaken

A minor thing, but the book also does briefly mention why Force-strong people like Rey and Kylo Ren have started emerging again around the time the movie begins—apparently the Force went dormant after Ben Solo and the Knights of Ren slaughtered Luke’s fledgling Jedi order:

Since the disappearance of Luke Skywalker and the shattering of his fledgling Jedi following, the cosmic Force has lain dormant, seemingly quieted to those able to sense its presence. The adventures of Rey and Finn on Jakku coincide with a turbulence in the cosmic Force, a sudden ripple indicating the awakening of newfound ability. With the Jedi and their records vanished, few—other than Kylo Ren and his mysterious master—are able to appreciate the occurrence.

The Force Experiences Turbulence was probably seen as being nowhere near as catchy as The Force Awakens.

Why the Starkiller Base Didn’t Blow Up Coruscant

When The Force Awakens first came out, there was a lot of incorrect information that the planet destroyed by Starkiller Base as the seat of the Republic Senate was Coruscant, the capital world of the Republic shown in the prequels. Later it was confirmed to be Hosnian Prime, a previously unheard of planet.

So why didn’t the Republic use the former Capital after it signed its treaty with the Empire? Apparently, to convince New Republic worlds that this government was different. Just as Chancellors served terms, the Senate also regularly voted to move itself to a different member world, to reflect that all worlds in the Republic had an equal say in the shaping of Galactic politics. Hosnian Prime was just the unfortunate current host.

Kylo Ren’s Lightsaber Has Important Links to the Old Expanded Universe

There are still many fans left sore at the ejection of the old Star Wars expanded universe in favor of Disney’s own canon material, and some of the sorest are fans of the “Old Republic” era, a setting thousands of years before the events of the films popularized by the hit Knights of the Old Republic video games. Although Disney have remained quiet about whether that era still remains part of the new canon, The Visual Dictionary does throw KotoR fans a bone in a description of Kylo Ren’s unorthodox lightsaber design.

As well as revealing that the saber housed a cracked crystal (hence its volatile beam and the need for crossguards to vent the energy), the description describes Kylo’s saber hilt as “an ancient design, dating back thousands of years to the Great Scourge of Malachor.” Malachor, or more specifically, Malachor V, played a huge role in Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords, and was a major planet in the Sith Empire and had powerful links to the Dark Side of the Force. Not exactly confirmation that Knights of the Old Republic is canon, but interesting insight into how deep Kylo Ren and Supreme Leader Snoke are plunging into Sith history.

Insight Into Deleted Scenes

First Order snowtroopers board the crashed Millennium Falcon on Starkiller Base. Source: Visual Dictionary, via /Film.

Perhaps one of the most interesting things about The Visual Dictionary is that it’s packed with pictures of scenes that didn’t make it into the film’s final cut. Snowtroopers actually make up most of the new images, from a shot of them inspecting the downed Millennium Falcon after Han crashes it on Starkiller Base, to scenes of a snowspeeder chase featuring Finn and Rey.

Also included are several shots of Maisie Richardson-Sellers’ cut character, Korr Sella. Sella, a diplomatic aide to Leia, would have been sent to Hosnian Prime to petition the New Republic for the Resistance, with Starkiller Base as proof that the First Order broke the peace treaty—only to die when the planet was destroyed. J.J. Abrams has stated that there’s probably only around 20 minutes of cut scenes from the film, but so far this is our only official look at some of the filmed moments that didn’t make it into the movie.

via Gizmodo
All the Backstory You Desperately Want to Know About The Force Awakens

Last night, electric car startup Faraday Future served up the wild FFZERO1 concept as “the most extreme iteration of what it can build” with a barrage of buzzwords that left most people wondering what the hell was actually going on. But according to two company officials who spoke to Jalopnik, there is a real car out there testing on actual roads. We just haven’t seen it yet.

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Those seeking real answers about Faraday Future after last night’s sometimes bizarre obfuscation-fest will be unsatisfied, however. At least for now.

For those who didn’t watch Faraday Future’s Las Vegas unveiling live, let’s recap. The startup, flush with cash from the billionaire behind China’s version of Netflix, would like you to know that they have an Amazing Team, a Transformative Vision, Incredible Alliances, and They Are Very Fast.

Also, they said, here is an amazing electric race car that we won’t build.

Journalists and casual observers alike found this frustrating. I was one of them. Faraday Future’s marketing message of being “a new kind of car company” that would “disrupt the industry” and “change everything we know about cars” rang more than a little hollow with little else to go on besides the undeniably radical looking concept before us.

Still, I was willing to reserve judgement until I got to sit down with Faraday Future’s chief designer Richard Kim and a communications representative this morning.

Kim’s not some geek off the streets when it comes to designing cars. He’s the man behind the BMW i3 and i8, two of the most fascinating and progressive approaches to new car building and green performance we’ve seen in years. His sidekick was a comms veteran of Jaguar Land Rover.

Here’s what I was able to glean from them about the company’s inner-workings, feasability, and (no pun intended) future.

Do you guys have a real car or what?

“It’s already through the feasibility shakedowns and test-driving out on roads,” Kim said. But it doesn’t look anything like the spaceworthy Batmobile we saw last night.

So why show us a ridiculous, unbuildable car?

Both balked at the word “unbuildable.”

“All the dimensions, suspension geometry, it’s all real,” Kim said. Apparently the FFZERO1, as insane as it looks, would actually be drivable if only it was connected to a powered platform.

But the answer to the question was simple: they wanted wow-factor.

The car was a passion project, something Kim and his design team were working on nights and weekends. It had them fired up. From a business perspective, Faraday Future figured it’d get the public fired up too. “Whet our appetite” for excitement to increase hype for the real deal, they said.

Will we see elements of this concept in your production car?

“Almost everything on the FFZERO1 has a connection to the production car,” Kim said, adding that the concept was “a distant cousin.”

Kim’s communications guy brought up the (very literal, in this case) smartphone integration in the steering wheel. “You get in a $100,000 Range Rover with your phone in your hand, then use the phone for navigation, and fumble for a place to put it,” he said. The company sees the FFZERO1’s steering wheel cellphone mount as a seamless solution to that problem, and it was hinted that such a feature might be in the road car.

But neither would get specific about the “realistic” feasibility of light strings, air tunnels, yoke-style steering thing or jet-fighter cockpit: any of the other outlandish things we saw on the prototype last night.

When will we be able to drive, or ride in, one of your vehicles?

Faraday Future’s chief engineer has been as specific as “a couple years” on this one. Kim basically told me it’ll happen when the car is good and ready.

In stark contrast to Faraday Future’s party line of “We Are Very Fast,” company officials seemed wary of going to market too soon. “The consumer wants quality, performance, price, it take time to satisfy all these demands,” Kim said.

What price range are you shooting for?

No comment whatsoever on this one.

The FFZERO1 looks like a million dollar hypercar, but if Faraday Future wants to “remix the auto industry,” it’s going to have to build something people can actually afford to use.

Who are your competitors?

The answer here from Kim was a nebulous (and very Silicon Valley) “we don’t see ourselves as a car company.” So no automakers, but also all of them, would be competitors for the consumer’s dollar. As for a price or performance segment in which to benchmark it, we’re just going to have to wait.

What are the biggest challenges you’re still working through?

“Everything,” they said. Not surprising when you’re a startup.

The gentlemen from Faraday Future were not interested in discussing specifics on how they’re planning on selling or servicing their cars, let alone getting them road legal for consumer purchase. But that didn’t stop me from pressing.

How are you planning on selling, servicing, maintaining your products? Getting them government-certified?

The answer sounded like an honest “we don’t know” from Kim and has communications guy.

That’s the scary part. Designing an extreme, aesthetically challenging concept is one thing; making it functional is another, getting it to pass federal and state safety and environmental standards is yet another.

The idea of a dealer network was obviously unformed as well. Whether Faraday Future is even planning on selling cars in some semblance of a “traditional” model or wants to go a completely different route is also yet to be determined. We know they’re big on autonomy, so that will have a big impact on the idea of ownership and mobility.

But the Nevada factory’s going up in a couple weeks.

In case you didn’t know, Faraday Future in December secured $335 million in state incentives from Nevada to build what it says will be a $1 billion manufacturing plant. And the company says groundbreaking is set to begin this month. Is this for real, I asked?

There was no doubt on the face of either Kim or his accomplice about the company’s commitment to building their megalithic assembly facility in North Las Vegas. By the end of January, Faraday Future will be building their plant, they insisted.

Both Kim and his fellow representative have worked at large traditional automakers, so I asked: Why don’t shops like BMW and Jaguar Land Rover pull stunts like Faraday?

“I can’t speak to their business plans,” Kim said, “but companies like that are big machines, and things move slowly.” Remember how this one is supposed to be faster?

Faraday Future says they’re building cars without clay models, going straight from digital rendering to tangible parts. This speeds along the production process.

Does that mean it allows for more mistakes? I guess we’ll see how the first batch of Faraday Futuremobiles come out. Or we won’t.

Does Faraday Future still have something interesting up its sleeve, or will it just go up in a smoldering pile of defaced dollar bills?

This, of course, is the only question you’ve got and probably the reason you’re reading this. The answer is still disappointingly insipid because it’s the only thing Faraday Future is really willing to support their claims with: “Trust us.”

We were told Faraday Future will disrupt, then we sat though a presentation I would have expected from any high-end automaker down to the well-dressed woman posing with the product. We were told that crazy concept would work if made real; “Just look at the suspension and frame!”, they said, but who can tell a properly-positioned shock absorber from a prop?

Finally, I felt myself holding back a chuckle when I heard that Faraday Future will “Think Different.” Both Kim and his assistant seem like intelligent people with earnest confidence in their product, not to mention good resumes; the rest of the company’s personnel lineup seems much the same.

But with so many significant questions still unanswered about this Great Disruptor, it was hard for me not to feel like I was less in a presentation by a major automotive force to be reckoned with and more in an episode of Silicon Valley.

I’m looking forward to seeing what Faraday Future has in store, but I’m still deeply skeptical. And I know I’m not the only one.

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Contact the author at andrew@jalopnik.com.

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