The Rogue One Thread (Spoilers)

I am not sure I liked this movie, but all the positives people are saying make me want to watch it again and reconsider.

I wonder if Jyn and Cassian are more interesting, engaging characters in the version before the reshoots?

Glad they were so quick to release a follow-up to the original review. I had the same issues with the poorly defined characters and messy story. I enjoyed the last act, but that was mostly an action fest and it couldn't make me forget about the sloppy first half.

Seems like a lot of people responded positively to this movie just because it tried something different. While I also appreciate that, I just can't get past its flaws. I had way fewer problems with TFA, which felt more coherent and introduced new characters that I actually cared about. I didn't really mind how closely it followed the original formula, because it had to please old fans, appeal to younger ones as well, plant the seeds for future sequels, and just try to distance the series from the horrible prequels. With so many boxes to check, taking a safe route was to be expected. Rogue One had a lot less riding on it and the freedom to tell a stand-alone story. Despite a few bright spots, it failed to deliver something worthy of so much praise, at least in my book.

@zevvion: There's a lot to adress here. Between the contrived plot or the shallow characters, the anemic action or the gross fanservice, I'm not sure where to start.

I'll go with characters, and it seems like a lot of people are on board with me when it comes to this point. The characters were horribly shallow, they were either incredulous cliches, (like rebel spy guy who goes against his orders, or blind wise monk) or lacked any development, backstory, or pay off, (Jyn, forest witiker). The motivations of the main characters where also pretty much meta. Like, family connection, and threat of violence, those are lazy devices to drive characters. Amongst other motivations they can add to the character or story, but solely they just feel silly. These were the only primary motivations of the main character for the first act of the film.

The plot was extremely simple and lacked a mcguffin, like the rebels just showed up and were like "hey you're the protagonist so we need to do all of this and we have no plan!" They spent half the movie wasting time reaching secondary goals, these were empty plot devices that just served to pad out the movie. And all of this was rushed. The dialogue was also almost entirely exposition. And when it wasn't it was comical.

The action in this movie lacked tension, and was completely drained of intensity because of this. The action happened too often and was too poor to really mean anything to the audience. Characters enter stage left, stormtroopers enter stage right, characters kill every stormtroopers in a shootout. Rinse repeat. You could argue the whole stormtroopers original trilogy thing, but there are substantial differences with that.

Finally fanservice is always cheap, and it felt completely out of place here. They drained darth Vader of his intensity. "But the ending scene was badass!" No, it was a cheap attempt at the end of the movie to seem cool.

No I just generally addressed the points here, if you want specifics I can bullet point some examples, but overall when people talk about this movie it's a lot of apologizing. "Oh well for a Star Wars action movie it was great," but really it lacked any key element that made it Star Wars aside from the setting and it was doubly insulting because it was also a bad movie.

it's funny how every opinion on the internet now is pretty much 60/40 "this is absolute garbage!"/"this is the best thing ever!" by funny i mean kind of sad.

The cgi people were a jar jar binks level atrocity. But at least jar jar was convincing as a creature, the aliens that were created to represent tarkin and leia were terrifying, At the end i literally said to my friend "i hope she doesn't turn around as a cgi lady..." and then she fucking did, Carrier Fisher has gone through enough this month i think and i can't believe anyone thought cgi was at the point that uncanny valley could be avoided.

I see. I don't need specifics, I understand your position pretty well with what you wrote here. I disagree with you on most of it or have a different view regarding some points (for example, simplicity can be a good thing and in this case I felt that it was). Your last point seems like an attempt to form the opinions of others though. If you look at this thread alone it should be pretty clear there are people that genuinely loved this movie and not 'just because it's OK for a Star Wars movie'. I honestly think this was a good movie. I really enjoyed watching it. Of course there will be people that hated it or thought it was bad as usual, but there are also plenty of people that legitimately like it. I don't feel their opinion is worth any less.

That's the only point you made that I have issue with though. I understand the rest.

@zevvion: well I don't feel anyone's opinion is worth less because they liked a movie I didn't, I feel like that's a diversion though. The characters were still very poorly done, yes simplistic plots have advantages in action movies (the raid, judge dread) this movie had nothing of the sort. It had a basic plot, that's a more apt word I beilive, it didn't go anywhere interesting with its story and the conclusion it brought its characters to felt unearned. At the conclusion I didn't honestly care about any of them when they died one by one.

Now you're free to disagree, but offer salient points at the very least, because as it stands now you've essentially just told me you liked the movie, and in my head I find that inane for the above stated reasons, so you explaining a little of that could help.

@makayu: I didn't explain because my point was you were deciding the reason why others liked it; it would've felt out of place if I gave a counter argument. Like I'm arguing why you should like it. You shouldn't. I'm not trying to change anyone's opinion.

But since you're asking for it: I really liked this movie because it told an interesting story. I thought Cassian was a really good character. The way he was set up he really seemed like the guy doing the dirty jobs. He started moving away from that as he started to believe Jyn's story. I really like the way he delivered lines. It felt entirely believable to me. It's as he said when signing up for the one-way trip: he gave his life for the resistance and he wanted to keep believing in it to his death. I think that worked really well when that action took place in the second half of the movie. That beach scene was pretty strong for me because it seemed as if he finally was proud of what he did in his last moments.

This was also the first time we've seen Darth Vader actually be a badass rather then all talk no show. That bothered me immensely about the main Star Wars films: they always portrayed Vader as someone who isn't a push over as far as charisma goes. But he never, ever, seemed physically imposing to me. Of course it's a product of its time, but those Vader fights always seemed so terrible to me. In the first few he literally looked incompetent to fight and in the later one with Luke he looked like the hyper-aggressive over-comitting person in your dojo that you get with ease every single time because he lacks any sort of nuance. Seeing him make narrative sense in his actions was refreshing and fun.

As for Chirrut, I really loved that character because he showcased the middle ground between common folk and Jedi. He believed in the Force and was a skilled fighter, but he lacked true Jedi powers. The end result was really cool. There was ultimately just so much in this movie that makes Star Wars seem more grounded rather than (almost) a fairy tale, while still making complete sense in its own universe. I thought it was very impressive.

@zevvion: I dont really think the movies ever tried to portray vader as a badass, I think that's how the fans and certainly the EU portray him though, I think vaders character in the original trilogy is exactly what is showed on screen, a fallen hero, a damaged man with deep problems, that culminates really well in the end too. His character has a redemptive arch. Where as cassian was a walking cliche, as was Chirrut, they were both throwaway characters that existed purely to satisfy a trite plot. The redemption, (if you can call it that) felt unearned because I didnt care about the character up to that point.

The Darth Vader scene was blatant fan service, and if what you're going to nitpick about a star wars movie is its believably then thats just silly. The point of light saber duels in the star wars films is not for the flourish or the badassery, or the technical skill, its a way to visually express a conflict between characters. The lightsaber battle in A New Hope, is 10 times as good as the battle with Darth Maul because emotionally the conclusion matters to us, Ben was a character we were routing for. In rouge one however, it was basically a 12 year old power trip on screen. you wanna talk about unreliability in the action then this movie was rife with it, trust me im a U.S. Marine man, the blaster fights in this movie were silly. by stripping the action of characters we care about the film then forces us to enjoy it purely on just the action alone, and that was bland.

Its fine you liked this movie man, we both just want different things out of movies, I just think this movie represents a very specific downward trend in recent Hollywood cinema, movies are getting dumber and it consistently disappoints me.

(Side note: Darth Vader choking someone and saying "Dont choke on your ambitions!" made me laugh very hard in the theater, there is a reason he was mostly silent in the originals. its more intimidating.)

Couldn't disagree more with some people saying that this movie is dumb. This movie actually manages to elevate the forces at play here and complicates all of them to a degree that made it much more than a simple good vs evil tale. The Empire is a brutal, oppressive, fascist regime but it highlights the good people sucked into that machine and coerced into becoming a part of it. The Rebellion is a force of hope, but will quietly approve of assassinating a person if it suits their goals. The movie even introduces a more extremist element of the rebellion that's effectively been isolated and left to their own elements-- a group that doesn't hide the brutal tactics it employs, while at the same time showing the members of this group as being human, conversing, reading or playing games while our heroes are locked in a cell.

This is a movie that effectively complicates the painfully simple politics of Star Wars and gives us a diverse cast of characters. True, some of the characters are more fleshed out than others but it provided enough personality to make me care about all of them. These are all normal people who had lives and jobs that have been disrupted by the Empire-- unlike the mainline Star Wars movies, this is not a story about "the chosen one". Everyone serves a role in accomplishing the goal of aiding the rebellion and everyone sacrifices their lives in order to maintain hope and provide a future. It's both optimistic and bleak, and while it doesn't reach the heights of a war movie like the Thin Red Line, it does a good job for a Hollywood blockbuster in showing the complications that arise in warfare and the ordinary people who fight and die in the face of an increasingly violent, fascist regime that is spreading throughout the galaxy.

Outside of all of that, I also found it to be very entertaining and it managed to tie into A New Hope elegantly without resorting to boring fan service for the sake of fan service.

@makayu: For me, the problem with that reasoning is that: why is no one stopping Darth Vader? If he truly is as poor of a combatant as he is shown to be, then why was Luke having trouble with him? Why are people scared of him, specifically in combat? I do feel the same way as far as the conclusion to Vader's arc goes. As soon as he takes the helmet off, you can tell he is a broken old man. But he was supposed to be this fearsome warrior before all that.

I don't know, if you're going to take Jedi and the Sith as these people that are off to the side playing with toys, while everyone around him can totally kill them any time they want (which is the impression I got in the original trilogy) then I think the entire lore would collapse on that. You could start to pick scenes apart that don't make sense at that point. So much of the original trilogy revolves around a fear of Vader and Jedi, it just wouldn't work otherwise.

I'm not sure why you're saying the blaster fights are silly in this movie compared to your profession. It's Star Wars. The blaster fights have never made sense, especially not in the original trilogy. It's like me saying I'm a dietitian and Rey would have several health issues and wouldn't look as healthy of skin if she ate nothing but bread and a minor amount of other stuff. I would certainly hope the marines are not at all similar to Star Wars battles. I guess you can still criticize it, but then it's odd to not mention the other 7 movies for doing the same thing and just blaming this one.

But yeah, I gathered that we just like different things. I agree with every first half of the points you raise, they're just followed by 'and that's why it's awesome' for me while it's 'and that's shit' for you. Except I also thought the 'Don't choke on your ambitions' line was dumb.

Vader deflects Solo's blaster fire with his hands, force chokes, threatens and kills his subordinates one after another, fights Luke one-handed (pushing him to the ground with the strength of his arm) and doesn't slow down at all when he is grazed, picks up and throws large objects with the force and levitates himself in Empire, throws his lightsaber at you, has a huge body 6 feet and 8 inches tall, and has an army under his command. I'd be scared of him too. Rogue One added nothing imposing to the character that wasn't already there. The scene went too far and feels undeserved, considering he was barely a character in the film and shouldn't have been there, according to the dialogue of the first movie. His swordsmanship in Empire and Jedi already was fairly fast at times.

The first line in the opening text crawl of A New Hope: "It is a period of civil war." The movies are about a fascist regime trying to crush a rebellion in order to consolidate their power and enforce their rule throughout the galaxy. I have nothing against a simple good vs evil story, I'm a fan of the original trilogy-- I just happened to like the focus this film took complicating that good vs evil dichotomy.

A very timely story considering what is going on with some countries right now. This kind of complication is exactly what was hinted at in the originals - its just that those movies couldn't afford to dwell on it because it would ruin the purity of the good vs evil story. What I hope these intermediate movies do (and it's off to a great start) is flesh out the grey areas of the SW galaxy between the black and white main line movies. I just hope they don't ham it up too much with the Han Solo movies.

@ezekiel: We've watched those movies differently. Vader always looked like a push over in the original trilogy. He did nothing that made it seem as if no one could just straight up take him on. He was slow, sluggish, inaccurate and showed no skill whatsoever fighting with a sword or lightsaber in this case. The movements he makes are so ridiculous, even novice swordfighters learn to not fight like that quickly. Vader was not killed because of plotarmor. Any regular swordfighter would take him easily. Him walking away from several of those fights is the equivalent of people with guns running towards the main character who has a melee weapon. It just made no sense whatsoever.

That's the problem with those movies though. They only set up characters power based on dialogue, they didn't actually show it. I am a show-don't-tell kind of person so he never made the impression on me that he was a force to be reckoned with.

Bob Anderson was a respected choreographer. Vader's swordsmanship was fine in context. It's fiction, fantasy. The SW universe doesn't have to obey all the rules of our reality. He looked powerful. You yourself admitted that the characters in the OT and Rogue One don't know how to fire rifles, so I don't see why this bothers you so much. It's a universe in which every planet is habitable and breathable, lightspeed is enough for interstellar commute and ships are designed as if for atmospheres.

Do you mind explaining the problems in the duel of Empire or Jedi? I know I'm just inviting more criticism, but I'm curious.

Saw this the other day, after reading a lot of positive buzz I was expecting uhh anything? Drab, boring I don't remember or care about anyone or anything that happened. The reason everyone loves the robot is because it was the only morsel of flavour in the entire movie and he wasn't even that remarkable.

I have no idea why they made an entire film to cover up a shitty plot hole, I don't want every film to be about a boring cartoony sphere which shoots planet deleting lazers. I heard it was good even for non Starwars fans, went with a few family members 2 of them fell asleep the other felt like they wasted their money. If no director after Lucas has the courage to step away from the original trilogy I'm done with whatever wankfest we have in store.

I went in with zero expectations and still enjoyed it very very little. Felt just so heartless and, while competently shot, just done following a checklist. Perfectly encapsulate the feeling of a story that was told not because someone wanted to tell it, but because someone was hired to tell it (i know it's a very common reality, this film just really egregiously represent the concept to me).

Do Disney execs have something against character development? Should i care for Jyn or Diego Luna, like, at all? For the blind space monk put there for the chinese market and the big guy (did anyone else feel like it was written as a wookie in a previous draft of the script and then changed to a human?)? The random Forest Whitaker? The obligatory droid as comedic relief? The only one I ended up liking strangely is Bodhi, the common man in a crazy universe that keeps (heroically) persevering for the sake of his cause even while in costant peril of losing his life or worse (the guy gets mind-raped by a tentacle monster, for god sake) following his change of heart and defection. He's a good partisan/resistance fighter character.

Also lol at the whole planet shield thing and in particular the corvette-into-destroyer-into-other-destroyer-into-shield gate sequence; what was that, Dominic Toretto at it again? :D

Yeah, please replace the planet killers with massive scale space battles. I wanna see First Order Star Destroyers and corvettes against Republic battleships, with small fighters throughout. The Republic has to respond after Starkiller Base destroyed one of their worlds. I doubt Disney has the guts to involve them, though. They'll again show the resistance against the bigger force.

Speaking of Star Destroyers, I found it strange that Rogue One featured one hovering in the atmosphere of the planet in which the heroes ran into the Forrest Whitaker character. What was keeping it afloat?

@zevvion: You're only talking about sword fighting. There's more to showing an intimidating character than fighting....one of the first things he does is pick someone up by the neck, off the ground. One of the next things he does is choke someone again, with his mind. That's just two things. Hell, don't underestimate dialogue either. "COMMANDER, TEAR THIS SHIP APART AND FIND THOSE PLANES. BRING ME THE PASSENGERS, I WANT THEM ALIVE." The troops immediately follow his orders.

@ezekiel literally just listed all the things he's done to gain an intimidating presence in the original trilogy. The funny thing is I disagree with him about Rogue One and agree with you that it was a good movie. But it seems like you're completely overlooking what always made Darth Vader a great and intimidating villain. Yeah I absolutely loved his badass moment in Rogue One but all it does is reinforce that he's a powerful enemy, not establish it first hand. That was done 40 years ago and grew in the sequels.

@frostyryan: I'll be ready to admit I don't always require consistency, but for some reason it did bother me too much in this specific case that he wasn't a consistent intimidating, and more importantly skilled character throughout.

+ Looked and sounded nice. Real props beat CGI just about every time which I salute the last two movies (if only they would drop CGI people too).

- Bland cast of completely unforgettable characters. A robot was more memorable than any of the people.

- Plot was there just to move people around for the sake of the plot itself most of the time.

Over all an ok sci-fi action thing. Around the ballpark of 7/10 maybe? I don't think I'll remember anything of this after a week.

As with most movies, Jenny Nicholson, breaks it all down like a champ in the video below. I like her rye insights. Anyway the video below is full of lots of spoilers...final warning...oh, and its a bit long.

Top 10 Worst Reasons You Liked Rogue One

I watched it today with only 10 people in the theatre. I liked it, but would still rank it as my fifth favorite Star Wars movie.

It wasn't very good. Certainly not as good as Episode VII. Still better than prequels (though that's not a high bar).

The main reason I think I didn't like it that much was that it tried and failed to be a standalone movie.

The characters were totally bland. I felt no emotional attachment to any of them; no reason to care for them at all.

Jay's relationship with her father wasn't successfully conveyed (although he was probably the most human character in the film). The film tries to set him up as a man torn between serving evil or securing death for both himself and his family. That idea, however, fails to hold any traction since we never actually have doubts that Galen ever did the right thing, which made his whole conflict meaningless. Did he choose to work for the empire? Well no, military showed up at his house, killed his wife and captured him. Did he work on the Death Star a little too eagerly, as though he enjoyed it? Not really; he designed the station to have a fatal flaw. All of his moral shortcomings are meaningless for his character, because he's never actually consciously chosen them. Still, I enjoyed what little screen time he had (the flashback of him laughing with imperials was one of the most memorable scenes from the movie).

I don't get Jay's character at all. Are we supposed to relate to her feeling abandoned? Because we never actually see the effect that's had on her (we're only told). Is she supposed to be a mysterious outlaw? Because we never see her doing outlaw things (and we aren't even told that). Are we to empathise with her relationship with Forest Whitaker? Because... that's also not shown.

I won't even talk about the rebel guy whose name I can't remember because he was as generic as can be. He did mention how being part of the rebellion cost him a lot. Sure would've been great to be shown that instead! I was incredibly confused when he suddenly started caring about Jay for some reason at some point.

The pilot guy was okay, and showed a little character during the movie. Also: why was it pointlessly implied that his mind would be wiped out or something while he came out of the interrogation totally unscathed?

Anyway, the point is: too many characters.

Another failure: fanservice.

Vader and Tarkin were completely unnecessary for the movie. Completely. Their presence only inhibited the importance of the movie's only new villain (pretty bad for a standalone movie to have 2 out of 3 villains be recurring). Add Leia and the other recurring guy to the list.

AT-ATs were completely unfit for a planet whose main purpose is to serve as the imperial archive. They're siege machines, for god's sake.

Space battle was cool, it felt really spatially cohesive. Vader choking scene was cool, although totally out of place.

Without any prior attachement, I don't think I would like this movie at all (my girlfriend had this stance, this was her first Star Wars movie).

I think they should have cut the Vader castle scene. It felt unnecessary. I think his inclusion at the end was great and would have been more powerful had he not made an appearance to that point.

Also, I wish they would have had the Mon Cal ship beam the plans to Princess Leia's ship. I didn't like the fact that she was present for the suicide mission. The scene could have been nearly identical, but had Vader's ship intercept the transmission beamed out as Vader is cutting down the Rebels. Then you cut to Leia and Vader's ship jumps to pursuit... Opening scene of a New Hope.

The correct answer is it's either the best or second best Star Wars movie ever made. Episode VII is the other acceptable answer.

I absolutely loved it. It may very well be one of my favorites. The film manages to sell me on both Darth Vader and AT-ATs in a way that they haven't before. They nuanced the complexity of the struggle between the Empire and the Rebel Alliance and the people within to a certain degree. If I had to knock the movie for something it would be the, what I felt, friendly relationship between Jyn and Cassian feeling rushed and out of place.

Too bad the movie kills some of the best characers (though I admit some are thin on characterization, but I enjoyed the concepts of them nevertheless) in a Star Wars film to date.

I've not seen the movie, but young Schwarzenegger in the new Terminator looked pretty convincing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SW8KIuMV0s4

Maybe Disney should have consulted with Paramount. Or not done it at all.

I would say the Vader stuff added a lot to his character in the grand scheme of things. We have never seen him so savage before, and it allows the films that follow to be seen in a new light.

Tarkin, in my view, needed to be present as the Death Star is very much portrayed as his project in A New Hope. Ye could probably have done with having his back turned to the camera a bit more, and being seen in reflection more.

The walking machines were not AT-ATs, they were AT-ACTs, which are cargo carriers. That is why they have the orange box in the middle. One is seen without the section present at all, and is quickly destroyed. To be fair, there may have bee AT Its in the mix too, I've only seen the film once so far!

My point was that they were unnecessary for the movie. I judged Rogue One as a standalone story, a spinoff, placed in a larger universe. As a standalone story, the elements I described were more than cameos or nods; they inhibited the importance of the only original villain of the movie, without adding anything in terms of plot or character development. They were there so people's faces could light up with a smile that says 'I too have knowledge of this piece of popculture'.

If the story of the rebellion stealing Death Star plans couldn't have been told without those characters, then maybe it was a story that didn't need to be told at all.

@imsh_pl said:

I don't know if this is necessarily a bad thing though right? For people to enjoying seeing characters they like.

That kind of thing varies. I thought the inclusion of the Millennium Falcon in Force Awakens was really lame and had similar feelings about the R2D2 and C3PO origin stories in the prequels. General 'universe shrinking' stuff. I didn't really have a problem with how those things materialised in Rogue One. It didn't seem out of place to me that those characters were there.

People go to Star Wars for different things.

@paulmako: It isn't necessarily a bad thing. However, it's extremely prone to being overused. In the worst case scenario, it can overshadow the supposedly original story that you're trying to tell, and only serve as a distraction from the actual quality of the story.

For example, I absolutely loved the sequence at the end of Vader hacking the rebels to bits. It was probably my second favorite scene in the movie. Only after the movie ended did I ask myself what purpose did that scene serve in the film, and I couldn't tell you.

You would think that during the last three minutes of the movie, every scene is used to tie the loose ends of the preceding 2 hours, to hush down the tone in an attempt to end on a very specific note, maybe to leave an audience with a question/cliffhanger. The cynic in me sees this scene being stalled till the very end as an attempt to trick the audience into thinking that the film's entirety was as exciting as the 60 second window when their inner child was taken on a ride.

If you want what I would consider a very good example of nailing the place of a spinoff story in a larger universe then you need not look further than Fantastic Beasts. Set on a different continent, almost a century before the original story. The setting and the mood of the world at the time is explained at the beginning of the movie via a series of newspaper headlines. Starring adults facing adult problems in the magic world instead of children encountering it for the first time. The only things you needed to know before seeing it were that in that universe people were doing magic with wands, non-magical people didn't know about them, and a major source of conflict in the world was the disagreement on whether they should. The occasional references to the original story were single sentences in the characters' dialogue, and knowing them wasn't essential to the plot.

I wouldn't be so harsh on Rogue One if it were set up as a prequel instead of as a spinoff.

Lol.

So different! The Empire already has flying and hovering freighters and cargo shuttles, which can move freight much more efficiently. The walkers, as weapons, in Empire Strikes Back made the Empire look more powerful and intimidating, reinforcing their dominance after the destruction of the Death Star. In Rogue One, it's fanservice.

I didn't think that part was too fan-servicey either. The Empire has a hugely important outpost there and they like walkers. There's probably an unnecessary lore reason for why are are perfectly suited. I don't think it's unreasonable to find them in the same place.

If that counts as fan service then the presence of TIE Fighters in The Empire Strikes back is fan service.

At the time, TIE fighters in Episode V were simply 'the combat spacecraft of the empire'. The producers had to have a design for the ships, and they put together something that they thought looked cool. Their presence in the film had a narrative reason of 'we want battles in space'.

They weren't there for nostalgia reasons, because at that point, people didn't have nostalgia for Star Wars. The preceding movie was 3 years old.

The inclusion of something that was introduced earlier isn't enough to constitute fanservice/relying on nostalgia. What's important is the 30 years inbetween during which that something has already been established as iconic within popculture.

I'm watching this now. How the heck does she remember all those forgettable details? Good video. She's generally right about the film being needlessly complicated and having lousy character arcs. And I almost laughed at her Glory comparison.

I don't really like Star Wars, but I watched 4 to 7 and then this. This one might be one of the ones I enjoyed the most, because I don't like the light saber stuff and this one had almost none of it. Definitely not worth the IMAX premium for a non-fan though.

That said, Hollywood, please stop shoehorning every lead/major character with women, nowadays it reeks of cliché social agenda.