Making Star Wars Full Synopsis

it wont happen. Jason Ward is in love with attention.

--- Double Post Merged, Nov 22, 2015, Original Post Date: Nov 22, 2015 ---

agreed. been saying this for months now.

 

Look, the perfect way to take the MSW synopsis into account in spoiler discussions is to

1. Don't assume its gospel - Interpretations of things usually have some flaws
2. Don't treat it as a static document. If you're interested in MSW info, you have to read their articles and listen to their podcasts. Only two weeks ago we finally found out via the podcast that the "thing" inside BB-8 was called "The candy", then before that they discussed the Clan and the lightsabre stuff in more detail.
3. Don't dismiss it because you don't like one section.

Take MSW/SWNN/SWU info as a "guide".

 

Is BB-8 the new R2 unit then? Attached to multiple X-wings.

 

Yeah, that pretty much sums it up. The new shiny droid, dont forget everything old is new again?

 

1) Actually, I think this is one where the book is wrong. In the trailer, BB-8 is clearly seen in an X-Wing droid slot (probably in Poe's, since he/she is Poe's droid?) in the battle over the ice planet. (Which we should presume to be Starkiller base.) How can BB-8 be co-piloting an X-Wing with Poe if he/she is in the custody of the First Order?

2) I think MSW has speculated that it is Yavin IV. Looks like their speculation is wrong. They have speculated a lot.

 

Yes... people need to remember, that most of the names MSW had access to, were production code names. They were bound to get things wrong when they started trying to flesh it all out.

 

To much stock being put into some of these rumors. Personally, I think fans here have done a heck of a job on this message board putting things together our our own.

 

Yes. The Clan is the one that really has people's interest piqued. I'm thinking that's definitely a code name for some other type of group.

 

There's rumours, and then there's leaks.

After months of official confirmation, a lot of the MSW plot synopsis now falls into the realm of "leak." You still have to sift through all of their own speculation, but a lot of it is undeniable. I don't think people are putting too much stock into it at all. I think most of us are smart enough to realise it's not perfect.

 

To add to that, we've also seen BB-8 at the Resistance base on D'Qar, which (you would presume) couldn't happen if the droid is captured on Takodana with Rey.



The way I see it, there is obviously a lot we don't know yet - that doesn't necessary make what we do know "wrong", it just means we don't quite understand what is actually being presented.
As an example, if you had a vague outline of the final act of TESB, you might wonder how Artoo can be with Leia, Han and co - who have been captured by the Empire - when he is with Luke on Dagobah before he arrives on Bespin.
The fact that he just ends up being separated from Luke and bumping into them after they escape is so simple, it probably might not occur to you if you didn't know the precise chain of events.

Something that occurs to me is that there seem to be two phases to the battle over Starkiller - before the Sledgehammer/Array stuff and then afterwards, with Poe's group surviving to lauch a final assault while Finn and co enter the base on foot.
From the story outline: "Moments later, Poe from the sky discovers Han Solo and the gang on the planet’s surface. They’re alive!"
That doesn't necessarily rule out him picking up BB-8 along the way somehow prior to the final assault. There may be a simple explanation.
However, were that the case, this doesn't explain the EW behind the scenes photo of Poe, Finn and BB-8 on D'Qar (you could argue this situation may occur after the battle, when the heroes have returned home - although I doubt this is the case) or the image of Threepio, Artoo and BB-8 together (you could argue this is just an illustration, and therefore incorporates a bit of artistic licence, or maybe even that this isn't in the Resistance base but is somewhere else at some other point in the movie that we just don't know about - but I doubt this is the case!).

Personally, I think there is a clear divide between the MSW posts where they were presenting their own interpretation of the leaked shooting schedule directly, and the posts where they were speculating over third-party rumours or merely making assumptions and putting stuff out there.
IMHO, you can certainly say that some of the stuff MSW has posted on its feed is flat out wrong. The problem is, they have posted a lot of rumour and speculation, alongside the reports based on leaked materials. But the stuff which is directly related to the shooting schedule has pretty much all stacked up so far.
The way I see it - the "Yavin" thing seems to be speculation that stuck in lieu of anything else to refer to the planet as. Heck, six months or so ago, it wasn't even clear that Maz's castle and the Resistance base were even on different planets at all.
There are certainly some flaws in the synopsis, which, don't forget, was not actually compiled by Jason Ward himself, but the sheer volume of stuff that came from the leaked shooting schedule which has turned out to be right on the money cannot be ignored, IMHO.

 

It's not even their own interpretation that is necessarily the issue...

The bigger problem is that their information comes from multiple, and sometimes contradictory sources.

Take the opening scene for instance.
MSW was told by some sources that the movie opened with a lightsaber in space, and crashing on a planet. Another source however, which has since been confirmed via official sources (the Behind the scenes video from SDCC), provided numbered scene descriptions which directly contradict it.
Where MSW made a mistake, is that they still want to believe both pieces of information are correct.

 

Oh, you caught me...

But seriously folks, with the name iluvkoalas???? It's pretty obvious that I can't grow a beard.

And that all I pretty much talk about on this board is Han and Leia and their relationship...

 

It's not that obvious...

You could be a guy who really loves koalas...

 

Except that I'm not.

 

My take on that is this:

The lightsaber in space thing originally came from Devin Faraci at Badassdigest, quickly followed by another site (which escapes me for the moment) giving a slightly different account of the same concept, before MSW jumped on the bandwagon.
Reading between the lines, MSW has pretty much implied the shooting schedule they have omits any CGI-only scenes.
So I think MSW know there is *something* at the start of the movie before any of the shots they have info on.
MSW did actually originally have the shot of First Order troops lined up in the transporter (revealed to be from scene three from the Comic Con reel) right at the start of the movie as of last December.
Why MSW then chose to move that scene to after all the stuff on Jakku with Poe and Lor San Tekka at some point prior to the "synopsis" being compiled, I am not sure. But you are right, it doesn't quite stack up now, when it could have been made to work. I suppose it just makes more sense on paper that we don't see the troops at all until they are arriving on Jakku.

Let's presume for a moment the opening shot of the movie is a lightsaber in space (I'm not sure we'll ever find out why someone thought this would be the opening shot with such certainty, even if they simply knew such a shot exists at all) - MSW's problem is, they have no info of their own about that opening shot (on the basis it would have required no footage being shot, and therefore was not on the shot list).
There is no reason we could not go from lightsaber tumbling, to troops preparing for mission, to Poe arriving on Jakku - that could still conceivably fit in with scene three being Finn and his comrades onboard the troop carrier.

The thing is, once the lightsaber rumour was out there, MSW haven't been able to look beyond that idea - probably because it matches up with other things they know were filmed (a lightsaber landing and being retrieved). So (I'm guessing) they just stuck all that stuff at the start of the movie because that was where it seemed to fit best.

My personal opinion now is, there is going to be a flashback/vision - call it what you will - and it is going to be "self-contained"... not "teased" at the start of the movie as MSW suggests. Our heroes are going to get a history lesson on the saber, its famous owner and the exploits of the Knights of Ren from Maz - from Luke's duel on Bespin, to the saber being recovered and changing hands over the past 30 years, through to Kylo Ren's obsession with finding Skywalker and ending the Jedi line.
And if that's the case then it makes a whole lot more sense to me that the film can open with: First Order Star Destroyer (in true Star Wars style), troops preparing for mission, troop carrier approaching Jakku, before we cut to what is going on on the planet's surface.

It depends on your point of view I guess, I don't look at that and think "pah, MSW are totally unreliable", I just look at it and think "well, MSW has the shot list, but they may have mixed a couple of things up there - all the info is correct, they just may have put some things in the wrong order based on trying to accommodate someone else's rumour simply because it adds something they are missing and, by that token, makes their synopsis more complete."

The fact is, we didn't know about a lot of that stuff without MSW revealing it in the first place.
It's kind of like someone giving you a load of lego bricks they made into a car or something, then you refining the car to be more accurate by moving a few bricks around because you have found a reference photo - then kind of denying they even gave you the bricks in the first place, simply because they had a wheel in the wrong place or something.

I suppose part of MSW's problem is the ego involved.

 

Exactly.

Just because MSW have reported a few things which don't really make sense, it doesn't discredit everything else they have been right about (and they've been right about a lot of stuff).

 

I once held one in Brazil. Did you know that Koalas have Chlamydia? ...not that I have it.

 

I have been wanting to know this too! Are there different colors with different threads?

 

Add another flub to the list.

Apparently, the last thing filmed was the KOR "unleashing a 'force back'.

In MSW's synopsis the "force back" is performed by Maz, in which the KOR are seen attacking Luke's jedi temple.

Is this a misinterpretation of a discussion, or are the KOR still active during TFA? We're led to believe Kylo is the last of them, but maybe not. It's not a direct quote from KK, but I doubt she'd purposely mislead the interviewer. She'd rather just not say anything.

If the KOR do perform a "force back" when do they do it, and what are their capabilities during the act? Is it like remote viewing? Or can they physically interact with their environment? Either way, it looks like MSW is wrong again about something that happens later in the film.

 

I get the feeling lots of people trying to discredit MSW cos they don't want the end scene to be true...what MSW predicts!