Rogue One (Spoiler Thread)

[poorpete]

Thoughts?

The person I watched it with thought it was boring. I wasn't that harsh. I actually thought the characters were great and the scenes were well done.

My issues

1) that the desire to not add issues to the timeline (aka "why haven't we seen these great characters elsewhere") led to everyone's demise, not because of any overarching story reason or moral. Wish they sucked-it-up and had a few survive. Jyn Erso, K-2SO, Baze and Chirrut -- I'd have been happy to see more adventures from them, necessities to timeline be-damned!

2) Moana showed us how great CG treatment of water has come, Rogue One showed us that The Uncanny Valley is still a thing. Specifically, a representation of a person that exists, portrayed in CG form, is still super creepy. Dunno if they can ever overcome that.

3) How about Darth Vader's strut?

4) Most of the fan service sucked. See #2 and #3 for examples.

Overall, a decent remake of Seven Samurai.

[Mike]

I thought the character development was good.

I thought this was an awesome WWII movie. Gender distribution was pretty good in this movie, but I was bothered when they had the whole crew of people volunteer to go with Jyn, and they were all dudes. I get that they wanted it to be as reminiscent as possible of a squadron of U.S. WWII G.I.'s, but if they can work a lizard-dude into that mix, they could have added a couple of people with vaginas and still maintained the WWII ambiance.

I have no problem with everyone dying. It was about sacrifice and about what we're willing to do for a cause we believe in. I loved seeing a Star Wars movie without Jedi. I loved seeing the different factions within the Rebellion. For once, good and evil in the Star Wars movie universe are not so simply defined as determining which flavor of Force your side follows. Cassian's actions and words highlight the evil things that even the best of us will do in service to a greater good. No one's hands are clean. Saw Gererra (Che Guevara, anyone) was an incredible metaphor of the dangers of becoming the evil that you are trying to fight. With his robot legs and breathing apparatus, his paranoia and willingness to use torture on supposed allies... he was more than halfway to being Darth Vader himself. I loved that.

Alan Two-DIcks as K-2SO absolutely rocked this shit. An endearing droid that actually kicks ass and doesn't have to be all cutesy. K2 was well written.

The uncanny valley was truly uncanny. Tarkin was okay, I suppose, but every time he was on screen, I was too distracted by the CGI to appreciate the scenes. Leia was just disturbing. Compare these to the apes in the last two Planet of the Apes movies. Compare them to Gollum in the Hobbit movies. Those movies were real and flawless and amazing. I completely forgot that they were CGI. Apply the exact same technology to portraying people, and it just falls flat.

[Cazmonster]

There are other things I will talk about later, but I was so happy to see Gold Leader and Red Leader kicking ass during the space battle. It was so great to see them.

One thing I would have cemented the 'It's the Rebel Fleet' terror from the planet would have been to see the Mon Cal ships and the Nebulon B actually kick ass. Dropping from hyperspace and launching dozens of cruiser-class torpedoes to take out everything but the world-shield would have been great.

[poorpete]

Granted, the characters I mentioned I wanted seeing again were part of the sacrifice-for-what-we-believe-in team, but it was more than that. Can you think of a named character introduced in this film that does not die?

I also agree that Tarkin was better CG. But I think that was because I was not as familiar with Tarken as with Leia, as someone who only watches these films every decade. I think some newbies or non-fans will not even realize Tarkin is CG. I guess my working hypothesis is familiarity matters in the Uncanny Valley.

[poorpete]

Heard from an article (or wikipedia, i forget) that Lucasfilm really wants their spinoff characters to be standalone, to not woven into the Episodes. This allowed the writers and director the ability to kill everyone off (which sounds like what they wanted). So....

My analogy is one from Star Trek:

These spinoffs characters are Redshirts. They might be good, they might be bad, either way, they'll all be dead by the end of the show.

Now to expect in the Han film, everyone not named Han, Lando, Greedo (assumption), or Jabba (assumption) will be killed by the end of the film.

[bralbovsky]

Loved the monk Chirra

Loved the willingness to let everyone go

Loved resonances with present day conflicts

Loved that there was no kiss at the end

K2 solid writing and development

Leia creepy

Tarkin at least supposed to be creepy

Rebel tactics uniformly terrible. The Empire must be entirely incompetent if this is their enemy and they're still around.

[Mike]

[Eliahad]

[Bluedevyl]

I'm very interested to see what didnt actually make it into the film.

While I agree that the characters were interesting, I felt like they weren't as developed as some of their counterparts in TFA. While I get that Rogue One is a standalone, how hard would it have been to show a 3 or 4 minute encounter between Galen Erso and Bodhi? His last words are "This is for you, Galen" It would have given Mads Mikkelsen some more well-deserved screen time, and would have gone a long way to developing Bodhi's motives further. If I were a betting man, (I'd be broke) but I'd wager that scene would up on the cutting room floor (or would have, if they did that sort of thing manually anymore)

Those of you who know me know I'm a HUGE fan of basically everything Star Wars. The biggest thing that stuck with that part of my personality was the REMARKABLY stupid R2/C3P0 cameo... They're not telling you at the outset "This is just prior to A New Hope", though Plastic Carrie Fischer's line at the end certainly puts forth that idea. So, walk me through this: The Tantive IV departs the (awesome, by the way) Mon Cal flagship and flies away with the Devastator in hot pursuit... They're running for their lives, and she's just been given the data card with the transmission from Scarif. They'll be chased down by the Devastator and captured, and Leia will entrust R2 with bringing the data to Obi-Wan, setting the original trilogy in motion... except, R2 and 3P0 are on Yavin. They established this while the Rogues were leaving for Scarif. I get that they feel like they can't have a Star Wars movie without the two droids... but how is Leia supposed to get the data to R2? The entire interrogation sequence in ANH demonstrates clearly that the Empire doesn't know about the base on Yavin. So, the Tantive is going to fly there WHILE THE DEVASTATOR IS CHASING THEM to pick up the droids? It just was really jarring to me. I'll have to watch again... maybe they were shown while fighters were departing for Eadu, and we're just supposed to assume that they traveled with the fleet when they attacked Scarif... but why show them there at all? R2 is arguably the most important character in the entire nonology... why leave this hanging there?

Things I liked:

I agree with the non-kiss. Loved that.

Alan Tudyk

Donnie Yen

Ben Mendelsohn's Orson Krennic.

Vader's retreat being on Mustafar.

The land battle. Very well done.

Ship designs... the TIE speeder variant and the Mon Cal Flagship were particular standouts for me.

Things I didnt like:

I would have liked to see more of Saw Gererra. When you cast an actor of Forest Whitaker's talent in a part like that, I want more than we got. Even a part on the level of Maz Kanata from TFA would have been better.

More background on Jyn's intervening years would have been great. Show us, even through inference, where she's been.

The somewhat ham-handed use of kyber crystals... but I've bitched enough already.



TL:DR: Good, not great. A solid outing. Mid-pack on my list currently.

[Ronster]

So glad I saw it when I did and where I did;i.e. weekday matinee with my wife and daughters viewing 2D in a very good theater.

I'm good with all of the movie. I wanted more Saw and the monk.

To finally realize that Alan Tudyk was K2SO and that he piloted yet another space craft was a nice touch. K@ and Jyn ...I would have saved them somehow if I could have. They are too good to lose.

I liked the Vader; wanted more

Only one thing was missing: BOTHANS! I expected to see some sort of Bothan spy-net even if it was only in tribute.

[Phoebe]

All those new characters we saw were Bothans and that's why they all died.

[Stan]

[Phoebe]

I enjoyed the movie and, like Mike said, appreciated the complexity with which it treated "the good guys" and "the bad guys", since they came in all varieties and the path required to become one was disputed and unclear. Everyone likes that tall salty droid and most all the other new characters, and nobody likes the CGI. My kids did delight in seeing Princess Leia for a moment and they pretty much had to have that scene, but it would have been more realistic at a farther distance. A darker and grittier movie is preferable to a ridiculous (JarJar) or false (Han doesn't shoot first) one, especially when we get evil Vader back. Unfortunately, the storytelling was extremely poor, and the dark and gritty was way TOO dark and gritty for my taste.

I don't know if I just didn't understand the plot due to having a terrified kid on my lap or what, but NONE of it made the slightest bit of sense. Why did anyone but Jyn need to go see Galen at all, given that Bodhi already has risked everything (why? we learn nothing of him) to deliver the message, and nothing new is learned until they have the actual plans for the weapon? Are we to believe the others went back solely to assassinate the source of their most valuable leak ever, and that Bodhi would ever return, under the circumstances? Why does Galen help the Empire at all AFTER they kill his wife and his daughter is missing? Either they never needed him, in which case they wouldn't have tracked him down, or they needed him and he could have stopped them by not helping. If the idea was that he merely helped them speed it up, then we needed a clearer account of that, and we certainly need some of his interactions with Bodhi or at the least a scene explaining Bodhi's decision to go Rebel and help Galen. If we can get that in a few good moments in Episode VII with Finn, surely we could have it here too.

What on earth does Saw want, even? Why is he on Jedha? Why is anyone still on Jedha, for the benefit of those who aren't steeped in the backstories about the Jedi? Has Jyn been there before - was she raised there?! Can we get any clue as to why she saw the Empire murder her mother in cold blood and kidnap her father, and was raised by extremist rebels, yet is totes blase about all of it? Why are the extremists extremists, besides being willing to hood people and use an alien octopus as truth serum? Why does being reminded that you are a pilot wipe out all alien octopus effects? What exactly was Cassian doing that required him to shoot his injured, non-climbing co-conspirator early on (besides avenging in WAY darker style the re-write of Han Solo's shoot-first moment)? In what ten minutes did his entire moral compass change, and what has he been doing "since six years old" to grow that compass in the first place? We don't need fully developed character arcs but we need at least some scraps to make sense of the major plot developments. Cassian's transformation from "whatever it takes" to "can't pull trigger" is way weirder than, say, Finn's vacillation between "I'm out" and "we gotta help her!", which at least can be explained by the trauma of his recent defection plus possible love interests.

Worse yet, what was the point of all that struggle and death down below on Scarif to let the Rebel forces know to open the shield portal, when they were already trying to open the shield portal? Why can't the Empire figure out what was transmitted right away? Don't they have radios? Can they jam the Rebel frequencies but never intercept them? And why on earth would they blow up that whole place, if it was supposedly the only special warehouse for structural plans? Does no one in the entire galaxy make copies? Why wouldn't the rebels all save copies too? Why wouldn't the Empire at least investigate what happened down there after the fact so they could respond accordingly? Valuable prisoners and intelligence? Why are the subsequent episodes all about the Rebel victories in preventing the Empire from using their damn death star, which one gets the distinct sense is a New Thing, when we see two enormous mass destructions already caused by it here? The only reason any of the plot made sense is that we already knew the overarching story in which to slot new details.

I didn't mind that the new characters died, but if Yoda can be hiding out on a planet without being mentioned for a whole movie, and bunch of nonsense can happen in episodes 1-2-3 that never gets mentioned again, I'm sure they didn't need to kill everyone off for reasons of continuity alone. Rather, the message of the whole movie seemed to require that everyone die because we the Audience need to become acclimated to the reality of nuclear holocausts and senseless slaughters and tsunamis or whatever. It was the story of many Bothans dying to advance the rebel cause even though the happy ending comes too late for them to see, though we already know it happens. Had I known the movie was going to be THIS dark, I would not have taken my little kids to see it. As it was, we had an unpleasant car ride home because I was like, Buffy, we get that you're 13 and understand the movie, but listen to my carefully chosen words to your siblings and stop trying to Refute me with Facts: definitely Yes, the heroes LIVED because the Light came to transport them back out of the shield portal, and they WON. Certainly whole planets and moons were NOT lost to senseless, merciless holocausts that the good heroes in the other movies prevented to achieve victory? Anyway...

I liked that the small hammerhead corvette pushed one big destroyer into the other. That's classic David and Goliath style Star Wars story. The main character woman was cool, though we were permitted to learn so little of her thoughts, but there was something totally weird about her upper lip that I could not get past because it was so often the literal center of the close-ups on her face. They really, really wanted us to examine her upper lip in detail, and I did, and I did not like it. No offense to her, but it was a weird directorial choice. TTFN.

[Ronster]

more on the Kaiburr Crystals for those interested... ...it makes it plain to see how the Emperor grew in power.