I saw this a second time last night and loved it a lot more than the first! It was nice having all the right context about how each faction was fighting with and against each other, especially toward the beginning when they’re on Jedha.
The entire last third of the movie is just wonderful. I love the rebels’ entire plan from conception to execution to conclusion. The final scene on Scarif is just gorgeous and a perfectly fitting end, and the final scene of the movie is just as terrifying and it deserves to be.
I went with my wife and it was her first time seeing it - it didn’t occur to her either that Tarkin was fully CG, though she did say he looked a little weird in retrospect once I did tell her. She thought it could have been a retro style choice and mostly due to lighting since the movie tried to ape the style of A New Hope. She definitely knew Leia was CG though for more obvious reasons.
My partner had no idea he died years ago & didn’t even know he was CGI. I could really see the inconsistencies with lighting this go round, although I maintain that the character wasn’t abused to show off the special effects. His screen time is spent on story as much as any other character.
Ironically, I still can’t see the seams, so to speak, on Leia, who my partner thought looked incredibly fake. (I can’t tell with red & gold leaders either, so it’s probably just the shorter screen time.)
I wanna say I picked it up in TIE Fighter? Or maybe that was just the ship’s classification as a Corellian Corvette. I distinctly remember screaming at the TV for being so wrong when the Star Wars Trivial Pursuit DVD said the Tantive IV was the “Rebel blockade runner.” WTF, Trivial Pursuit? Where’d your standards go? This is the same company whose first question when we opened their Lord of the Rings game was “What is the name of Arwen’s horse?”
In any case, I’m still bitter…
But Rogue One! I still enjoyed it quite a lot the second time. I think the characters are weaker than Force Awakens (I don’t understand you haters) including the acting; there’s a helluva lot of exposition in the final battle, which was as unnecessary as it was overlong; Mads Mikkelsen’s hologram speech still made me tear up (admittedly I’m easy) with his on point acting; and Vader’s big moment remains pitch perfect. Both times I’ve gotten home hyped to watch Star Wars. Maybe my standards have been permanently lowered by the prequels, but I’m definitely calling this a win for the franchise. The flaws aren’t fatal at all.
Are you kidding?! I don’t think Tolkien himself could remember that one without referencing his notes. That question owned us. It crushed our spirits before we even began. (I believe I won in the end though.)
I just want consistent standards of difficulty across all franchises, ya know?
Well, just to assuage your concern, “Rebel Blockade Runner” was the official designation of the ship until the 1981 radio play gave it the “Tantive IV” name. Only later in the EU did the ship class become “Corellian Corvette” and more technically, the “CR90 Corvette” manufactured by the Corellian Engineering Corporation.
Here’s the really jacked up part of it all: The new official Disney/Lucasfilm canon refers to this class of ship as an Alderaan Cruiser instead! Is it still manufactured by Corellians, and then sold to Alderaan? No one knows!
Remember how the Romulans and the Klingons seemed to be flying the same ships in TOS? And they later came up with some weird lend-lease retcon thing to explain it? It’s just what happens when you’re hacking together pulp adventures under contract and suddenly realize you have a fan base that cares about the details when you never did yourself :)
True. It’s just further evidence that despite Disney’s canon mandate, it’s going to grow increasingly complicated, start contradicting itself, and end up just as silly and convoluted as the EU was. On top of that, people working on canon products are slipping old EU stuff back into the new canon as fast as they can.
I get the impression, though it may prove inaccurate, that Disney is spending considerably more resources to keep the new cannon more internally consistent.
That said, yes, they are bringing in many old Legends items back, but I’ve been mostly ok with that so far. The TIE Defender, Thrawn, kyber crystals, and all that have been things I’ve welcomed back.
Time will tell, but I’m inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt with this… until they screw it up.
That’s fair, it is indeed Glorfindel’s horse. But since Arwen is his stand-in in the movies, I think the horse is still the same. This is just random crap pulled from internet sources though so I have no idea, and I don’t have an Asfaloth in this race.
