First Star Wars standalone movie: Rogue One

Wow, that guy really gets around.

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Lord Vader!
Donnie Yen!!!

Ha! I named two (2!).

Actually, they did. The empire let the Millenium Falcon escape, and it led them to the Rebel base. They engineered the capture of Han Solo and enticed Luke to Bespin; they baited the Alliance into the attack of the second Death Star and sprung their trap. Lousy stormtrooper aim aside, they’ve always stayed one step ahead of the heroes in the original movies, if it hadn’t for Luke & Co rolling twelves every time.

Look, Rogue 1 could have done some obvious things to make the imperials less stupid. The shuttle could have landed in a massive hangar with hundreds of other shuttles, logically confusing a search; the imperial commander then could have looked both badass and ruthless when he ordered the entire hangar be obliterated by a Tie bomber strike to ensure the Rebel ride be taken out of commission.

The Rebels also could have been less inept if they had had three Hammerhead Corvettes ordered to destroy the shield, and a grueling gauntlet leaves only one to penetrate the imperial defences to crash through and destroy it. As it was, the rebels didn’t even have a thought to take the shield down until the star destroyer randomly gets disabled in just the right unlikely spot (other than impotent ywing strikes).

But then, we wouldn’t have had the star destroyer trade off that makes the destruction of the Rebel fleet at the end palatable; okay, how about, for once, we see a star destroyer actually destroyed as the end result of another capital ships’ guns? Its like the only way they can die is being pushed into things or colliding with themselves. Two Calamari Cruisers mauling a star destroyer until the superstructure is gutted and glowing? Yes please! But no, it’s always some fancy David and Goliath trick.

Which is fine for an adventure flick, but people billed this as a war movie and I guess I disagree, it was just a depressing action movie.

Ugh I just typed out a huge post about how the prequels are better than this new shit, and the prequels are bad too, but who cares.

I will continue to vote with my wallet. I’m glad Solo failed, and I’m proud to have contributed to its failure.

How’s that shitting on other people’s enjoyment for no reason working out?

I mean… you’re wrong. Like damned-near objectively. Rogue One wasn’t anything amazing, it had a ton of issues, but… yeah… no.

I mean, if you want to do a Cinema Sins* style listing of every ‘flaw’ then, yeah. It’s got issues. So does every single other movie, including the original.

The question is, does it do other things right, and does it do enough right things. To which I answer: absolutely!

The problem with the prequels isn’t that they do timings poorly, it’s that there isn’t enough core things they do well to compensate.

Rogue One, at bare minimum, gets the emotional core right, especially the end. It is a movie ultimately about sacrifice, and that it gets. It also shows the difference between the Empire and the Rebels, and that difference is why the Rebels succeed in the end. The Empire is every man out for themselves. The rivalry between Tarkin, Krennic, Vader etc is a weakness that leads to their setback. The Rebels are willing to sacrifice for each other. And it carries a high cost, but it carries the day.

That is what makes Rogue One a good movie in my book. What flaws it has are secondary to that.

Also it has a damn cool space battle that they use to create tension with the main plot. It doesn’t exist to look cool, but the developments on both battles play a role, and that feedback really helps up the stakes for the space fight.

Now Spiffy listed his reasons for why it didn’t work for him. I disagree with what he gave, but it was at least a thoughtful critique. I could rewatch the movie and provide a counterpoint to what he brings up (I could do so without, but would possibly miss some details by doing so). But in the end even if I were to agree to his points, it would not make me turn on the movie since it does not impact the important emotional core element.

*for the record I really, really hate the banal ‘list a bunch of plot holes (that may not be plot holes, but overly pedantic asshole commentary)’ style ‘criticism’. Cinema Sins is the worst

I agree, but the characters needed more… something so I cared more about them.

That said I liked it. It just had it’s issues. RLM roasted it a bit and I mostly agree with their criticisms, other than the “remember this” stuff they harped on a bit. I don’t mind seeing Star Destroyers and AT-ATs in my Star Wars movies, call me crazy.

Fair. I’m particularly disappointed with how they ‘used’ Saw. Particularly because it’s an already established character from Clone Wars and Rebels that they did better, so that core absolutely could be there.

Honestly I just wanted more Chirrut (Donnie Yen). The relationship between him, Jeddah, and Baze was one of the most potentially interesting things that didn’t go nearly deep enough.

Agreed. They also mostly wasted Forrest Whittaker which annoys me.

Basically this.

I actually find myself agreeing with a lot of the point Spiffy makes there in the sense that I think it would have been a better movie to have included (some) of that stuff, but at the end of the day, Rogue One was a movie that gets what Star Wars is about better than any film since the original trilogy.

Read an interesting piece recently about the future of Star Wars after episode IX, and how it would/could survive when the Skywalker/Solo saga wraps up (which is what they claim) and what a huge challenge that would be. And I couldn’t disagree more. Sure - it’s nostalgic to see Solo and the Skywalkers on the screen again, and characters you can believe in/root for are important, but - IMO - the thing that sets Star Wars apart from every other Scifi universe (especially at the time it came out) is the feeling of place - i.e., the world building. This is immediately obvious if you look at SW next to its contemporaries - the Star Wars universe feels “lived in” and real - nothing else from that period even comes close.

A good deal of that quality is lost in the prequels, where Lucas had become obsessed with computer graphics and SFX (also why his touch-ups of the originals actually lessens those films, rather than improving them). TFA is actually not bad in this respect, IMO, except for its compulsive need to ape and one-up every single little thing from the original trilogy. It’s one reason I think The Last Jedi is a terrible Star Wars film - absent a few sequences on the casino planet (does anyone remember its name?) there is no sense of place or reality. The First Order and the Resistance might as well have been alone in the Universe - and essentially, that is what the film makes them out to be since apparently nobody cared that Starkiller Base blew up 9 planets and the entire Republic Fleet or can be bothered to respond to the Resistance’s distress call (some diplomat, Leia turns out to be). There’s literally nothing about TLJ that suggests this could be happening in a real place.

Edwards understands this point about Star Wars, and because of that - IMO - he is able to make Rogue One work as a Star Wars movie, despite the plot holes and other issues (shared with pretty much every other title in the franchise).

I’m not a huge fan of these tie ins to cartoons a lot of people don’t watch. (I realize there are a number of people who do watch it.)

Rogue One was enjoyable and felt right. I didn’t expect to fell the same connection to characters I’ve seen for around 2 hours as I did to characters I’ve seen in 3+ movies over the decades. Solo isn’t a terrible movie either. It just kind of lost it’s Star Wars feel along the way.

It cuts both ways. The film needs to be able to have the character stand on its own, or have the tie in be an, essentially, invisible cameo.

Did you know that there are two characters and one ship original to Rebels that appear in Rogue One? No, probably not unless you looked at an article of Easter eggs. But they were little background notes, the intercom call is for a General Syndulla and their astromech appears rolling through the background. It’s a nice touch.

Now the one in Solo is far more prevalent and… doesn’t add much, or at least it causes as much confusion and distraction as it adds. For someone who watched the Clone Wars tv show it is a cool call out, but even for me I was… not exactly thrilled with it. Honestly I’d have been much more thrilled had they made it Xisor from Shadows of the Empire.

But that’s where Saw kind of falls flat. Now, beware, I am about to spoil his character arc from the Clone Wars.

Saw was introduced in Clone Wars as an insurgent against the CIS. Anakin and his padawan assist him, but ultimately during the battle his sister is killed. He, presumably, takes over leadership of their guerilla group after her death, and leads a campaign against the occupying robot army.

Flash forward. He hasn’t some strong sense of being a loner. Anakin aides him, but Saw has been told he wouldn’t be able to get the Republic army to help. So once Anakin leaves, he’s on his own. He distrusts working with others because they have been unreliable in the past. Rebels gives some background on what Saw was doing and the why to his methods. But, this is important to note, this crossover occurred after Rogue One launched. Saw was brought back by the movie, and the cartoon decided to tie back in to him. So this is using a minor character from Clone Wars (who in appearance, demeanor, and personality bears almost zero resemblance) and Rebels deciding to fill in the gaps between the two.

My thing is that there is clearly an interesting story about how he looks and his methods, it’s just that the movie not only doesn’t explore that, it barely acknowledges it. Which is to say, I wanted them to do more with Saw. I suspect there is some bits left on the cutting room floor that would be quite intriguing to me.

Only because you know about the tie in right? I mean the story sounds interesting, if you follow the other show at all but I don’t. To me, he’s just like most the other characters in that shoe, interesting enough to wet the tongue but you really never get to dive in… which I think is the entire point. It’s also the reason you don’t hear about them later. They were nobodies and they mean everything to our heroes later.

I think it’s already a tall ask to expect so many to watch all these old movies to be ready for the new ones… throwing in all these other canon series too is just a step too far. I am not a fan of that approach. I think it discourages anyone but the most hardcore fans from continuing.

Which is why I say they have to stand on their own, in the movie.

There is nothing in Saw’s story that makes his Clone Wars appearance needed. There is zero need to watch that series to get anything about Saw.

Rebels takes the potential of Saw that was unrealized, and actualizes part of it. This is after the movie. More of a ‘if you found Saw interesting and wanted more, come watch this’.

My complaint with Saw is I feel the movie could be improved by having a little more ‘why’ to his methods. Because it would make Jyn’s arc more interesting too. By giving a little more of that, we can understand not only who he is better, but why Jyn chose to walk away from it. That’s really what I wanted more of. And that would require no outside media to do.

I don’t really disagree.

Rogue One was 2 hours and 13 minutes. They start pushing limits when they start huffing it past two hours. A part of me almost always wants more of the things I liked, and for the most part, I did like Rogue One. On the other hand, there is a part of me that says not everything needs to be a trilogy. I walked into Rogue One expecting an answer to a couple of questions generated in the other movies. Instead of a sentence for those answers, I got another movie.

I think there are number of those moments in this particular movie, where a little more would be nice but then we have a 3 hour movie or we’re talking about yet another trilogy… It’s a fine line for sure and maybe by worrying about the one problem the fell into the other problem. But like I said, I almost always want more so yeah I would have liked to know about, well pretty much all those characters, but I settled for… this is the loss that was experienced to get what was needed to make our heroes heroes, and it was our loss too.

And you’re point about length is absolutely valid, and a great one.

It seems you and I largely come away at about the same place with a Rogue One, the only difference being I was able to get that little more because I watched Rebels. Which… isn’t a bad way to do it in my book. Certainly better to have two 25 minute episodes to provide the extra than to try and force an additional 10 minutes into the film and risk destroying the pacing or something.

Certainly I’d like the movie to do it, but perhaps as you suggest this was the better alternative.

And I’ve only heard good things about these cartoons. I am not knocking it because of that. A number of people have recommended it to me. I just, I might screw around on this board while I work and during my free time but the number of shows I commit to is very small, but the number of movies I watch and go to is rather large. Tying the two together is generally not something I like.

It disappoints me that people dislike Star Wars right now, especially when the new trilogy, Rogue One and Solo… the only thing these movies have in common with each other is the universe. They’re very different movies… but they weren’t made in the 70s and 80s. The young people, they seem to be eating it up, but not this one. Rogue one doesn’t really have that fun factor as much. It’s harsher, and that’s okay. You also don’t have to watch this movie to in order to enjoy the others so it’s a little weird to me that they tied it into the cartoon, which my 4 year old nephew watches (I think it’s this one unless there is another Star Wars cartoon), but he’s not seeing this movie any time soon.

Perfect and eloquent summation of my feelings about the movie. It made me actually give a shit. And it’s why it’s my favorite one since TESB.

It’s interesting. Someone up thread mentioned about what they’re going to do when the Skywalker/Solo arc wraps up.

It made me realize for the first time - I will no longer care. It may be my age, but I realized, undeniably, for me, these movies are interesting to me because of the original story, and its characters. My interest is in Skywalker and Solo (and Kenobi, etc.).

And I do not care in the slightest for any of the new characters. I’m not sure why. It may be because they did not graft onto me seeing them as an adult.