Star Wars : Rogue One

Twilight Sparkle said:

Prequels suffer from a lessened feeling of suspense because you already have a general idea of how things are going to turn out. That problem is far worse when you try to shoehorn something between two movies. The general irrelevance of Rebels to the overall Star Wars stories is how it actually remains interesting. The show is basically just a collection of cameos and references to the movies woven together into an engaging story.

Rogue One would have been better as a 15 minute short in the vein of Final Flight of the Osiris. Turning this tiny bit of Star Wars story into a standalone movie is like stretching the Hobbit into three separate movies.

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The Animatrix had some good short films, one or two bad ones. Flight of Osiris was good.

Am I crazy, or did I see a Clone Trooper helmet during the fight at Jedha City?

Lightning Lord Rule said:

--The characters are mostly great. Jyn, Cassian, Donnie Yen, Old Hawaiian Gunner, Forest Whitaker, even Director Krennic I thought were all good as far as characterization, motivations, and actions. I never had a problem with Krennic as the villain, he works in the context of this story, and I found him to be reasonably threatening to our heroes.

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The character development was the film's crippling weakness. Didn't give a fuck about Jyn or her relationship with her father, especially given the fact that Felicity Jones had the range of a muskrat. Saw Guerrera was totally inconsequential as a mentor and as a martyr to the cause. He rescues her and is later revealed to be an eccentric, tortured soul (his performance was ridiculous by the way) before just giving up and dying as the laser obliterates the city. Then they tease a burgeoning romance between Jyn and the Mexican guy when it was never earned. And the sheer number of characters introduced magnifies this flaw considerably.

sneakyflute said:

The character development was the film's crippling weakness. Didn't give a fuck about Jyn or her relationship with her father, especially given the fact that Felicity Jones had the range of a muskrat. Saw Guerrera was totally inconsequential as a mentor and as a martyr to the cause. He rescues her and is later revealed to be an eccentric, tortured soul (his performance was ridiculous by the way) before just giving up and dying as the laser obliterates the city. Then they tease a burgeoning romance between Jyn and the Mexican guy when it was never earned. And the sheer number of characters introduced magnifies this flaw considerably.

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right or wrong, it just sounds like you're regurgitating that Red Media review

Mist said:

So where's the disconnect between these guys and the people in this thread that liked the movie?

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Some of us just weigh the strengths as being greater than the flaws. I'd agree that the character development could've been better, but there was also next to no character development in Fury Road and most people fucking loved it. Rogue One delivered on most of what I was hoping for

Mist said:

So where's the disconnect between these guys and the people in this thread that liked the movie?

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That assessment is pretty much right on for me.

I thought TFA really hit the nail on the head as far as Star Wars theme and feel. Sure, maybe that's partly due to the rehashing of the plot of ANH. This movie just didn't feel like a Star Wars movie at all to me... until the last 10-20 minutes with the direct ANH references.

Saw it tonight... Don't think anything below merits spoilers but i'm going to give it 6.5 or 7 primarily due to the beginning.

Overall, I liked the movie so most of this is probably being picky.

• The beginning and overall soundtrack felt like they couldn't secure rights to anything that looked or sounded like Star Wars so they did the best they could. I don't mind the fact the wanted to do something different but it was too distant and awkward for me. That immediately started the movie on the wrong foot for me personally.
• The first 45 min - 1 hour was very choppy. However, maybe this was a result of the Rebellion not really being as formal and organized as it we think it should be. You have to remember it was pretty disjointed and the committee was at the brink of folding until Rogue One took matters into their own hands. It was them that truly brought their efforts together and rallied their forces. So, afterwards I was a bit forgiving as the rebels really needed all these pieces to fall into place to bring the movies ending together. I still think it could have been done better.
• CGI Tarkin didn't bother me but I thought he was a bit over used. I liked the comment made earlier that they could have given him a little more mystery and left him to a reflection in the window and maybe gave him a short reveal at some point. Leia though was very well done and I think because her moment was short on the screen.
• My biggest issue was Vader's suit and primarily his neck. They just got the helmet, primarily the neck portion just horribly wrong. It was as if his helmet wasn't on properly. His pants seemed off too. You just can't miss with Vader's appearance and it was obvious it was off a bit.
• I really enjoyed the characters, all well done, and set up ANH quite well.
• I think Vader needed one more scene or two. Maybe less Tarkin and more Vader would have balanced the movie out a bit.

You fix the pacing and transitions in the beginning and Vader's suit, you take the movie from 6+ to 8+ out of 10. I recommend that any and all SW fan goes and watch, it's a solid movie but it certainly has it's flaws but I will say what others have already mentioned, the last 45 minutes or so of this movie are simply outstanding.

"The strongest stars have hearts of kyber."

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This would imply that kyber crystals are not a true crystal in the usual sense, but rather a form of stable crystalline element that is either so high on the periodic table or such an incredibly rare stable isotope that it can only be made in a supernova explosion of a very high mass star.

Probably only achievable by nucleosynthesis at the end of a chain of very unstable reactions whose half lives are miniscule.

kegkilla said:

the people in here praising it have an unhealthy emotional attachment to anything "Star Wars" that prevents them from objectively looking at the movie.

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This is completely and absolutely true.

also what is the date that you kill yourself?

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How about 'never'

Lanx said:

nah that's just china man acting all china man, kyber crystals are rare crystals growing in scary ass caves.

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Or Yoda can conjure one out of midair and slowly levitate it to you despite being in another solar system god knows how many light years away.

Guys getting so upset over a movie that they write multi paragraph posts about what bothered them, but the people who enjoyed the movie have an unhealthy emotional attachment?

It's great that people can write what they like and dislike. That makes perfect sense to me.

Jive Turkey I have an emotional attachment. I totally do! I watched 4-6 at least once a year when I was a kid. I must have seen those movies so many times. Don't get so hung up on the unhealthy bit. Be proud to be a Star Wars nerd, bro!

Return of the Jedi was one of the first movies I saw in a movie theater. I was three years old. I 'member this

and this

so am I emotionally attached? You bet your sweet ass I am.

it'll be interesting to watch R1 and ANH back to back in a few months at home and see if it flows together better. Unfortunately I think the slow and meandering first half will not really do any good, BUT it could lead to a cool fan edit that mashes in the best parts of rogue 1 into ANH making a 3-4 hour single movie. It'll be a bit jarring though hearing the differences in Vaders voice and CGI Tarkin turning into Peter Cushing, not to mention the weird jump between the Tantive IV leaving the battle over Scarif and being attacked almost immediately again by Vader over Tatooine.

For all the weirdness of CGI Tarkin I'm not sure live actor would have been much better. Episode 3 used Wayne Pygram, aka Scorpius from Farscape, and it looked even weirder I think. Could of course just done without him.

I haven't really read much of this thread since last week some time but what little I have read seems like the same exact discussion/bitching/whining from a year ago with TFA.

Thoughts on the movie:

Positives:
- I thought the overall story line was great. Not the most complex story line ever but it didn't need to be. Having read Catalyst prior to watching this was a massive help and perhaps gave those who read it a much greater impression of this movie. You can pretty much hit the ground running knowing exactly what's going on after having read the book.
- This was the fucking space battle that I've been waiting for since 1983. Just absolutely incredible. Nothing else compares except ROTJ really. The TFA space battle was downright boring and uninspired next to this.
- Loved getting to see so many new planets. Especially like what they did with Jedah and like where they could go in the future (or past) with it.
- Loved that they finally had the balls to kill off everyone. No "everyone survives" happy ending bullshit.
- Tarkin was fucking awesome. I was downright fucking shocked the way they pulled this off. I figured they would just show him from the back and maybe we'd hear him speaking in the background a few times and that would be it. Yeah, the technology is still not absolutely perfect but fucking damn its getting close. His role in the movie was also critical to the story line, especially knowing everything that lead up to the events of the movie from Catalyst.
- Same as above with the rebel pilots from ANH showing back up. Fucking awesome!
- Darth Vader final scene. After 8 fucking Star Wars movies, this may finally have been the chance where we really got to see what a badass he is. Yeah, I know they've had books/comics/TV series with him fucking people up but honestly there's been very little of it in the actual damn movies up until now (outside of his duels with Luke)!
- Tons of good "fan service" throw backs to stuff from prior movies, books, and tv shows (too many to list them all really).
- K2SO was surprisingly good. Loved the gallows humor.
- They ended the movie exactly the way I wanted them to with the hand off to Leia and the take off of the Tantive IV.

Negatives:
- Right out of the gate, very disappointed there was no crawl. It was just very jarring not to see this come up at the beginning. This was a movie that absolutely needed it too. Yeah, I get that they're trying to separate these Anthology movies from the episodes but this was a stupid decision. There are so many other ways to set this movie apart from the episodes yet still have some explanation of whats going on.
- Completely forgettable music score. Even TFA was better than this. At least TFA had SOME memorable music. This one had absolutely none. Boring really.
- Saw Gerrera: Him staying behind in the rebel hideout made no since at all. He's tired of running? What? Maybe I could buy that he simply couldn't run with those metal feet but other than that, it was somewhat of a WTF moment that could have been handled better.
- Wish we could have gotten a bit more character development on Donnie Yen and Jiang Wen's characters. Felt this was a missed opportunity.


Overall, this was a superior movie to TFA in almost every aspect except for one. JJ Abrams is a character's director. The character development in TFA was superior to RO by a good amount. On the other hand, TFA needed to be a character focused movie where as RO did not (although it would have been great had it had more than it did). Also, RO did not suffer from massive plot holes or come across as a "soft reboot" of another Star Wars movie the way TFA did (ANH). Like it or not, RO took a chance and tried to tell an original story.

If I recall from last year, I gave TFA about an 8.5/10. I'd give RO about a 8.9/10. You can call me a Star Wars fanboi if you want but I don't give a fuck. The standards by which people hold these movies is honestly ridiculous.

spronk said:

it'll be interesting to watch R1 and ANH back to back in a few months at home and see if it flows together better. Unfortunately I think the slow and meandering first half will not really do any good]

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I do kind of tentatively agree with this

Lightning Lord Rule said:

Better than TFA on initial viewing, and I suspect it will be the opposite of that movie, in that TFA falls apart more and more as time goes on, and I suspect this will be viewed as better as time goes on and you watch it multiple times.

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Good post btw, a fun read.

While I personally want 7-9 to be the best new Star Wars movies currently available, I kinda think Rogue One stole the limelight and that over time it will be considered a better film, Star Wars aside, than Episode 7.