First Star Wars standalone movie: Rogue One

The prequels are better than the new stuff, hands-down. However hamhandedly Lucas told the story, there at least was a very solid story in Ep 2 + 3. Ep 7 + 8 have been utter garbage on every level aside from high production value visuals. The new characters are arcless husks while these films shit on the original heroes, portraying them all as unhappy failures. How subversive, y’all never expected that, did ya? Well, no. Heroic journeys require heroes and worthwhile villains, not Mary Sues, not trashman troopers, not Snokes (fuck I hate that name, and thanks for the backstory before bifurcation occurred), Bieber Vader, etc.

Thank you for making it easy, as this term makes it clear there is no point discussing it further with you.

Literally every time someone starts shouting Mary Sue, in general not just Star Wars, it is a sure sign I am not dealing with a rational discussion.

I really really hate that term, so abused.

You’re a fine person John, but when it comes to Star Wars I’m afraid I will no longer engage with you.

Hm, for the record I didn’t dislike the movie, it was competent, it just disappointed in the areas I thought it was trying to excel. I knew going in everyone dies, and so I wasn’t really looking for characters to endear themselves to me, even though I quite liked the leads in their broody puggish ways.

What I thought this film would do was what I’ve always wanted; show me the Star Wars Sourcebook on film. How does the Empire and Rebellion operate, what’s it like from the inside out. Rather than focus on unlikely heroics, let’s see how the real universe and real soldiers navigate the battlefield.

Even more frustrating then, to read they considered this less a Star Wars movie and more of a Battle of Britain… seeing as, if this had been a WW2 film, it would be compared to Pearl Harbor, not Saving Private Ryan, and it got a pass because those were Space Ships lined up next to the shield generator, not aircraft carriers under attack chilling next to an oil derrick on fire.

But the movie as a whole was fine. That’s all. I nitpick the details because the details were all I went in wanting. The story I already knew, the characters I could give or take.

Dude, that character is the literal definition for that term. I’ve never used it anywhere else, but Rey fits it to a T. Her arc might’ve had a chance at being somewhat interesting, depending on where the story went with her parents and background, but good ole’ Rian threw that right out the window unless Abrams can somehow retrieve it without inducing groans.

There is nothing irrational about its use here. You might not like it because it’s too frequently used with misogynistic animus, and I get that, I honestly do, but I know that’s not my motivation for using it in regards to Rey.

“They can usually perform better at tasks than should be possible given the amount of training or experience. . . . .”

But it’s not just Rey’s abilities, it’s almost everything in these sequels that isn’t earned or felt. Everything feels hollow, it all comes too cheap and easy because modern script writing expects experienced movie-goers to sort of subconsciously fill in those gaps. I’m not fan.

I don’t know if I’m on board with Mary Sue, but everything else John said is accurate.

I like the characters in Force Awakens because their actors did excellent work with them. The characters are wasted in these god awful scripts and nothing stories.

Rogue One has the opposite problem, they wrote a cool story and didn’t bother to make good characters. It’s like a DM running a module, railroading 4 generic Player Characters through his pet story.

I think they packed too much story into Rogue One. They could have cut the whole father-daughter thing with the scientist who was forced to work on the Death Star. It could have simply been, “We have an agent who tells us the plans for the Death Star are on this planet. We need those plans to find a weakness.” Then you just do a hodge-podge collection of misfit heroes selected to go on a suicide mission. Maybe they are in prison, like The Dirty Dozen. It would give it more focus.

I felt like I never cared enough about the characters. Maybe they didn’t want us to because of the ending, but even that didn’t have to be like that. One or two could have escaped. In the Magnificent Seven not everybody made it, but a few did. It gave the movie a bit of a feel-good ending.

It was ok, but nothing yet has come close to the original trilogy in my mind. Disney needs to do something brand new. I don’t need to see young Solo or Luke’s missing years. I want something fresh.

Rey isn’t a Mary Sue - a Mary Sue is only ever an author insert character. The way you recognize one is by the addition of the author’s own weird personal quirks in addition to the character’s overwhelming awesomeness: “Not only was Mary Sue the world’s sexiest spy, but her degree in library sciences from Auburn University and her love of Sudoku made her brilliant as well as beautiful.”

Rey is just good old fashioned power inflation, which comes with the territory in a long running franchise. People loved character X in the original. So when later creators in the series are trying to make an impression with a new character, Y, they make Y a lot more powerful than X in order to establish Y is a major player. See: every superhero comic series ever, every anime, etc. etc.

I agree and disagree with you. First the agreement, I think they need to do fresh things within the Star Wars universe, not the re-hashes of some ones backstory. I disagree in that I think the father/daughter thing is what made the Rogue One story believable. Her knowledge of her father made everyone believe what she said about the plot.

It’s not a perfect film, but the originals were far from perfect as well.

Yes! Thank you. A raid / heist plot, with the double agent / creeping objectives / side plot complications. That would have given so much more room to breathe life into the world around them. U-578 was not boring because we didn’t devote an hour explaining why one of the sailors hates Germans.

It’s funny - the first time my kids watched Star Wars, they asked, “Why are they fighting the Empire?”

I mentioned “Well, Darth Vader chokes a guy to death in the opening of the movie, then they blow up a planet.”

They were like, “Oh, I suppose.”

My children may be fascists.

Yeah, everything has to be more awesome. Kylo was similar really.

Agreed - especially in TFA, which is basically OT Star Wars - but bigger and more amazing!!! Which is a damn shame, because the actors themselves are great and I think they could have achieved pretty much the same effect by simply going with a huge space battle at the end, rather than the stupid Bigger, more Powerful Death Star route. Have the Republic Fleet and Senate be destroyed in a Pearl Harbor like surprise attack - preferably with the First Order showing some actual strategic brilliance - and have the desperate last minute rescue be about getting Leia out alive, and you’d have ended up with the exact same end result, but 1) it wouldn’t be a dull rehash of the previous films, and 2) you’d actually have set up the First Order as being an actually menacing and dangerous opponent - as opposed to the unbelievable clown show that they turn out to be.

I would have loved to see some interesting Star Wars films with new characters, but at this point I just don’t see that there is going to be anything interesting done with any of them. It’s a shame, IMO, because I think the new ensemble have the chemistry and the screen presence to pull this off, but - as I mentioned above - I just don’t think Disney understands what makes Star Wars worth watching. Abrams does - I think - but I don’t see him having the ability to pull off the massive film-making feat required to stick the landing with episode IX.

Going back to Rogue One, I think it manages to toe the line well between providing something new, while still providing “fan-service” and homages to the original movies, and (IMO) improving upon the old films - which is pretty much unprecedented for a prequel film. It’s not perfect, but that alone makes it standout among the films done since Return of the Jedi.

Can’t do it.

I felt this movie seemed like fan fiction, but decent fan fiction. I mainly liked it for some of the visuals, which Gareth Edwards seems great at, like the Death Star on the horizon, etc., and the tie-ins to the other movies (not all of them - xnay on walrus man, etc. - but having the original X-wing/Y-wing leaders was amazing, and I liked Jimmy Smits cameo to tie in the prequels, and almost everything about the space battle at the end).

After Solo, however, Rogue One seems like a work of high art. That said, Solo also made these spin-offs seem even more pointless, and as a result made me wish this movie was never made either.

Ha ha, you guys still care about Star Wars!

-Tom

First half of Rogue One is pretty awesome. Once they land on the Sandals Emerald Bay planet it begins to suck pretty hard.

You people are so weird. R1 is the best Star Wars movie since Jedi and it’s not even close.

That’s a pretty low bar.

You are not wrong, my friend.

In my continuing quest to wok my way through all the Star Wars stuff on Disney+, I re-watched Rogue One the other night. Outside the original trilogy, which has so much nostalgia around it that comparison isn’t really feasible, this is my favorite of the movies and it’s not particularly close. Interesting characters with plenty of flaws, lots of tie-ins to the rest of the universe, good pacing, various cool battles and explosions both ground and space, and the heroes don’t get last-minute ridiculous saves out of nowhere that undermine the plot tension. Disney has a lot of space in the Star Wars universe to set more stories - hope they find a way to do more like this one.