STAR WARS General Discussion | Warning: Possible SPOILERS!Movies 

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It's a good thing I checked my ticket receipt. Thought that the reason they didn't have anything earlier than 7pm on Friday was that they were all sold out. Turns out that I bought my ticket for the 7pm showing on Thursday. :lol: Works for me, though I forsee it having a line around the building to get in. :nervous: Hopefully being in a small-ish town that won't be the case. Going to go straight there after work I think.
 
Go see it
nice transition into A New Hope. This is one instance where A New Hope could have been shot all over again and continued from Rogue One in the theatre.

Don't read further, if you don't want to know the start of the movie...



It was weird not seeing the opening words scroll up. Getting right into it was just fine.

Graphics are excellent.
I'd say this was on a similar dark level to Empire. No Episode beats Empire, but thinking about how rebel spies got the plans from the Death Star in RoTJ, made me pour one for the homies.

Vader's intro made me grin.

"Those" explosions were crazy.

Tie fighters galore. X-Wings are no joke either- that's how you take down an Imperial Walker!

If you've read this far, screw it. Rebel fighter pilots from A New Hope and Empire make cameos. It was cool to see them in their groups.

More cameos of Star Wars gangsters.

In all, I felt out of place watching it because of the new faces. The music was different and then familiar andhen different again.

Wasn't really anything to make me think, "So that's why!!!"

I'm sure people will find more Easter eggs as more see the movie. That's all I have for now.
 
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The film is currently at 85% on Rotten Tomatoes, and I think that's a fair rating. It's well shot, well written, well acted, well scored and well directed. But it's missing something, the x factor - that thing that would give it a 95% rating. It's the film that I expected to see, but it wasn't the film that I was hoping to see. My main issue is that the film sets up so many interesting avenues to pursue, but doesn't do anything with them. I can see a clear path to a great film here, but instead it settles for a merely good film. It's not like The Force Awakens where untapped potential was squandered (and a basic knowledge of accounting is all that was needed to solve the problem). It's just a case of following through on the very promising foundations that it set up.
 
Let's not forget that this is the first film outside of the Skywalker saga, and I don't think Disney expected it to be perfect. They just need it to do well enough to convince the higher ups that more anthology films are worth it. I just got home from the first showing here, and I do have to say that I quite enjoyed it. I do plan on seeing it again so that I can really let it sink in, but a few things I would say:

Pros
  • They dumped all the cheesy lines from the trailers!
  • Great acting all around, lots of humor thrown in
  • Fantastic visuals, probably the best yet
  • Vader's last scene was intense!
  • Holy crap did they bring Tarkin back to life or what? BUT! (see below)
Cons
  • I love the digital renditions of Tarkin and Leia, but you can totally tell they are fake. Tarkin was pretty well done, but Leia I think needed more work. The look is good, movement could use some tweaks.
  • I thought the music score was a little over the top in a few areas. It was OK, not great IMO.
  • Some of the deaths felt rushed.
  • Kind of wish Chirrut was a little more serious of a character
 
R1600Turbo
Let's not forget that this is the first film outside of the Skywalker saga, and I don't think Disney expected it to be perfect. They just need it to do well enough to convince the higher ups that more anthology films are worth it. I just got home from the first showing here, and I do have to say that I quite enjoyed it. I do plan on seeing it again so that I can really let it sink in, but a few things I would say:

Pros
  • They dumped all the cheesy lines from the trailers!
  • Great acting all around, lots of humor thrown in
  • Fantastic visuals, probably the best yet
  • Vader's last scene was intense!
  • Holy crap did they bring Tarkin back to life or what? BUT! (see below)
Cons
  • I love the digital renditions of Tarkin and Leia, but you can totally tell they are fake. Tarkin was pretty well done, but Leia I think needed more work. The look is good, movement could use some tweaks.
  • I thought the music score was a little over the top in a few areas. It was OK, not great IMO.
  • Some of the deaths felt rushed.
  • Kind of wish Chirrut was a little more serious of a character
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I rolled my eyes a bit when I started to hear that Jason Bourne type hype music

@prisonermonkeys exactly how I felt about the movie.
 
Fantastic movie, only a couple flaws with it but nothing that drags it down too much. Opening hour was a bit of a drag but after that it was so great. The ending, whilst it was exactly how I expected it to be, left me with a massive smile on my face and that's hard to do. I felt like a kid again during the ending, and that's what matters to me.
 
05XR8
prisonermonkeys exactly how I felt about the movie
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It just felt like the key players were handled really inconsistently. The Rebel Alliance started out decentralised (thus creating the need for the Death Star), but then they were unified, politicised and rendered impotent. There is a narrative progression there, but it happens in the blink of an eye. Likewise the Empire, or more particularly, Krennic. He starts out ambitious, but vulnerable to hubris. Once Tarkin takes over, he doesn't really do anything because he has no power. He's absolutely no threat to anyone. It's handled better than the Rebels, but it was a wasted opportunity because both the Rebels and Krennic go from a position of relative strength to being cowed by political forces which dovetails nicely with the Empire gaining power with the Death Star.
 
prisonermonkeys
It just felt like the key players were handled really inconsistently. The Rebel Alliance started out decentralised (thus creating the need for the Death Star), but then they were unified, politicised and rendered impotent. There is a narrative progression there, but it happens in the blink of an eye. Likewise the Empire, or more particularly, Krennic. He starts out ambitious, but vulnerable to hubris. Once Tarkin takes over, he doesn't really do anything because he has no power. He's absolutely no threat to anyone. It's handled better than the Rebels, but it was a wasted opportunity because both the Rebels and Krennic go from a position of relative strength to being cowed by political forces which dovetails nicely with the Empire gaining power with the Death Star.
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The writers ties up any loose ends too quickly. Rather, obviously. Krennic was made a cliche by trying to handle it himself. No other higher up(other than Vader and maybe General Grievous) got their hands dirty. They used Troopers and Bounty Hunters for that.

Even Saw Garrera was relegate to a similar role as Max Von Sydow. There was so much to expound on, a two-part movie, this should have been.
 
05XR8
Krennic was made a cliche by trying to handle it himself.
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I actually quite liked that - Krennic was set up as a man who staked his reputation on the Death Star project, so to take it personally seemed entirely in character. He was clearly undermined by his own ambition and hubris, so I was expecting him to do something that jeopardised the entire Empire, or at least the Death Star - like ordering the shield over Scarif to be lowered, or firing the Death Star at maximum power without testing it first.

There was so much to expound on, a two-part movie, this should have been.
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I would have started with the Rebel Alliance decentralised, and the Empire commissioning the Death Star to quash them because if they ever banded together, they would be a legitimate threat.

Cassian would start out disillusioned because his "important work" amounted to securing low-level defectors like Rook. In this version, the Rebels get the Death Star plans very early on, and they realise that they need Galen to understand what they are looking for. Jyn is enlisted to meet Saw, who knows where Galen is being held. So rather than a heist, it's a rescue mission.

The rescue is successful, and Galen reveals that he has found a way to sabotage the project. The Death Star is still being tested, so he proposes infiltrating the kyber crystal refinery and manipulating the data being sent to the Death Star for the next test. This will cause the crystals to be misaligned, triggering a catastrophic explosion. Meanwhile, the Rebels stage an attack on Scarif. Krennic launches an attack with the Death Star, but the false data works as intended.

But here's the twist: Krennic is in control of the Second Death Star. The explosion doesn't destroy it; it merely causes the Death Star to suffer an enormous amount of damage (thus explaining why the Empire could get the Second Death Star up and running so quickly). On the surface, the Rebels successfully steal the Death Star schematics, and the film ends as it does.
 
prisonermonkeys
He starts out ambitious, but vulnerable to hubris. Once Tarkin takes over, he doesn't really do anything because he has no power. He's absolutely no threat to anyone. It's handled better than the Rebels, but it was a wasted opportunity because both the Rebels and Krennic go from a position of relative strength to being cowed by political forces which dovetails nicely with the Empire gaining power with the Death Star.
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It's how he was in Catalyst leading up to the movie. At one point he sets up Tarkin with a ploy to either keep him busy and out of his hair for a while, or trying to get him killed altogether. But as you say he's no real threat to anyone, though some might argue that he was the the Erso's. Even with their long history, he was only in it for himself.

For those that haven't read Catalyst, this should get you relatively up to date. Recommended viewing before you go to the movie if you haven't done so already.



Edit:

Rogue One: A Star Wars Story Opens to $29 Million on Thursday
 
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R1600Turbo
It's how he was in Catalyst leading up to the movie. At one point he sets up Tarkin with a ploy to either keep him busy and out of his hair for a while, or trying to get him killed altogether. But as you say he's no real threat to anyone, though some might argue that he was the the Erso's. Even with their long history, he was only in it for himself.
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I think I've said this before, but I utterly detest it when films do this. Audiences should not be required to read or view a complementary text just to understand the primary text. If the primary text cannot tell a self-contained story, then something has gone horrendously wrong.
 
prisonermonkeys
I think I've said this before, but I utterly detest it when films do this. Audiences should not be required to read or view a complementary text just to understand the primary text. If the primary text cannot tell a self-contained story, then something has gone horrendously wrong.
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Or they could just make a 5 hour movie. Catalyst is not required reading. But it does help. You want to know why Krennic says "I need you to come back" to Galen at the beginning of the film? Catalyst has your answer. Most people that see the film could care less though, as long as it's entertaining. Then again for those that don't want to read it, YouTube will usually fill you in such as the video I posted.

I for one was happy knowing I went into the film knowing the back story of those two characters.
 
R1600Turbo
You want to know why Krennic says "I need you to come back" to Galen at the beginning of the film? Catalyst has your answer.
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It's pretty obvious what happened, even without Catalyst - Galen lost faith or grew a conscience. Catalyst provides details, but you don't explicitly need to know them to understand what is happening.

On the other hand, I feel that taken on its own, Rogue One does a lot of damage to Tarkin's character. In A New Hope, he was one of the most formidable characters in the Empire, but Rogue One turns him into a devious bureaucrat who got to his position with underhanded tactics. Of course, the film needed an explanation for why Tarkin was in control of the Death Star and not Krennic, and I did like the idea of a rivalry between them, but I think the way it was executed undermined both Tarkin and Peter Cushing. Catalyst no doubt expands on their backstory and restores Tarkin's ruthlessness, but this is the problem that supplementary texts have.

A better way to do it would be to have Krennic control the Death Star after Jedha, but overlook or dismiss the security breaches caused by Galen, and subsequently jeopardise the Death Star project with his ego; this in turn prompts the Empire to put Tarkin in command.
 
Work bought all of us tickets to an afternoon showing as our holiday gift so I got to see it today.

I felt like too many people died in the movie and it kind of left me feeling like the character I had a connection with during the movie were merely there to just move the story forward or something.

Oh and people need to stop asking how many Bothans died during the movie, that's a different Death Star.
 
Joey D
I felt like too many people died in the movie and it kind of left me feeling like the character I had a connection with during the movie were merely there to just move the story forward or something.
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It was pretty refreshing to see a film where the main characters were not guaranteed to survive by virtue of being the main characters, and it actually was a suicide mission rather than a suicide mission that everyone somehow survives. Rook's death in particular got me because it was so sudden; it wasn't a case of his sacrificing himself to buy someone time. That said, K-2SO's death also got to me because I quite liked him (I've always been a fan of Alan Tudyk).

It did feel like they were killing the main characters off to explain why none of them appeared in subsequent films. There is, however, a Boba Fett anthology film that is in production - it wouldn't be hard to have him track down one of the survivors of Scarif for the Empire as the film's opening.
 
Pacing in the first third was a combination of a mess and a bit of a boring retread of stuff from other movies, most blatantly VII. After that it took off (with a couple more pacing stumbles still) and never let up. Really impressed with it.
 
Been dying to see the new film all week. Got so antsy, I made the mistake of looking up some of the main characters on the Star Wars wiki... That was a huge mistake... :banghead:

Hopefully I can persuade my folks to go see it on Sunday. If the cinematic shots were anything to go by in the trailers, I think I'll like this one more than TFA.
 
R1600Turbo
Actually it's been put on hold (thankfully) and I hope they do something else.
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He does seem like a character who would be easy to mangle. He's meant to be cruel, ruthless and uncompromising, but such a film would likely recast him as essentially a good guy, tracking down the various vicious criminals of the galaxy.
 

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