Official: STAR WARS THREAD. These are the droids you're looking for. **WARNING MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS

[Jr Mouse]

Movie. *******. Rocked.

Saw it Friday. Will share full thoughts soon, but It's funny. 90% of the "bad" stuff I see from people online is fanboy nitpicking. Like one reviewer I read went off for three paragraphs that he thought Vader "didn't look right". Lol

 

[wojt]

^ well he didn't look right I noticed it too and some sfx was 2nd grade compared to VII, but it wasn't that distracting to be a major issue

 

[willy cheesesteak]

My favorite characters from the movie were Chirrut Imwe, Baze Malbus, K-2SO, Bistan, Pao, and Weeteef Cyubee.

Spoiler: Warning: Spoiler!

The critiques about GMT aside, I thought they did a really good job on young Leia, similar to how they de-aged Michael Douglas in Ant-Man and RDJ in CA: Civil War.

What I felt the movie accomplished really well though was that it made you care about The Alliance so much more than all the previous films. The amount of sacrifice, how much the odds were stacked against them, and even the characters whose names you didn't know, you cared when they died. It really felt like a team effort and not just Skywalker and Co. and was a perfect segue into A New Hope. The ground battles and aerial dogfighting scenes were just stunning, easily the best out of all Star Wars films. When the rebel ships jumped into hyperspace and arrived at Scarif, I was in my seat like .

And Vader, finally, redeemed from those old prequels! That is the badass Darth Vader we all want! That last scene where the lights go dark, his breathing, and then him mowing down all those rebels and seeing the sheer terror in their faces while trying to escape. .

This film is what a good prequel should be and really put the 'war' in Star Wars.

 

[venividivicibj]

Saw it. Liked it a lot.

Sad, but good.

 

[Jr Mouse]



My favorite characters from the movie were Chirrut Imwe, Baze Malbus, K-2SO, Bistan, Pao, and Weeteef Cyubee.

Spoiler: Warning: Spoiler!

The critiques about GMT aside, I thought they did a really good job on young Leia, similar to how they de-aged Michael Douglas in Ant-Man and RDJ in CA: Civil War.

What I felt the movie accomplished really well though was that it made you care about The Alliance so much more than all the previous films. The amount of sacrifice, how much the odds were stacked against them, and even the characters whose names you didn't know, you cared when they died. It really felt like a team effort and not just Skywalker and Co. and was a perfect segue into A New Hope. The ground battles and aerial dogfighting scenes were just stunning, easily the best out of all Star Wars films. When the rebel ships jumped into hyperspace and arrived at Scarif, I was in my seat like .

And Vader, finally, redeemed from those old prequels! That is the badass Darth Vader we all want! That last scene where the lights go dark, his breathing, and then him mowing down all those rebels and seeing the sheer terror in their faces while trying to escape. .

This film is what a good prequel should be and really put the 'war' in Star Wars.

Spoiler: Warning: Spoiler!

Leia was old unused footage. They just cleaned it up and edited it in. No one was de-aged for that scene.

 

[willy cheesesteak]



Spoiler: Warning: Spoiler!

Leia was old unused footage. They just cleaned it up and edited it in. No one was de-aged for that scene.

Spoiler: Warning: Spoiler!

De-aged is probably the wrong word, but you know what I mean.

http://www.popsugar.com/entertainment/Who-Plays-Princess-Leia-Rogue-One-42859178

http://moviepilot.com/p/rogue-one-created-digital-characters-leia-tarkin/4170734

http://birthmoviesdeath.com/2016/12/17/lets-talk-about-rogue-ones-most-unsettling-cameo

 

[Van Veen]

I liked it, but it felt very video gamey to me, like the plot's only purpose was to bridge the action scenes.

Definitely got the look and feel right, and I loved the action scenes, but story-wise it seems tacked onto the Star Wars universe rather than integral to it.

 

[Graemsay]

I think that there are a few justifiable gripes with the film. There's one thing that annoyed me a bit in retrospect, which isn't really a major spoiler, but I've blacked it out to keep the two of you who haven't seen the film yet can avoid it.

At the start of the film, Jyn Erso is given a Khyber crystal necklace, and Chirrut Îmwe picks up on it during the Jedha sequence. But then it's forgotten about.

Furthermore, Galen's pet name for Jyn is Stardust, although that does crop up again, and Khyber crystals are described as being formed in the hearts of suns.

It strikes me that this might have been leading somewhere, or perhaps it was something that might have been figured out if they'd done another draft of the script. Alternatively, there was a payoff, but it was cut when the third act was re-worked.

Oh, and the Master Switch. What was that doing on a console in the middle of a glade?

OK, I do have another gripe. There were a few cool shots in trailers that didn't make it into the film. Like this, for example.



And this.



I really wanted to see how Jyn dealt with that TIE fighter!

 

[Jr Mouse]



^ well he didn't look right I noticed it too and some sfx was 2nd grade compared to VII, but it wasn't that distracting to be a major issue

To be fair Vader looked different in all three of the original films. My understanding is they tried to blend in the design changes we saw as his costume evolved over the OT for his look in this film. I was fine with it.

 

[otc]

Shouldn't he look identical to the opening of Ep IV?

Spoiler: Warning: Spoiler!

I mean...it literally happens like 5 minutes later.

I actually felt a little weird about the ending. It was cool seeing the rebellion muster a bit of a fleet (and then have it destroyed) and kind of makes it a little clearer how they could muster a big fleet in ROTJ, but have basically nothing but fighters on hand in ANH.

But...having watched the opening of ANH before going to see Rogue One, it didn't exactly seem to fit with what I expected. In Rogue One, Leia's ship is launched off a bigger capital ship in the midst of combat, moments before it would have been boarded.

In ANH, the ship is fleeing a star destroyer, but the way the soldiers inside position themselves, you'd think this was the initiation of combat, not a bunch of people who saw action 30 minutes ago. Then the captain says "This is a consular ship...we are on a diplomatic mission" and Vader responds "If this is a consular ship, where is the ambassador?".

That doesn't feel right moments after running from a massive space battle. Even if the captain tried that excuse, their conversation wouldn't really make sense having just launched out of an attacking fleet (can't even argue the ships were defending themselves...the rebels were the aggressors) and even engaged storm troopers on board.

I guess I was just assuming the message would be passed to Leia in a more sneaky manner...transmission forwarded off to a passing diplomatic vessel when it becomes clear that the agents on the ground will never escape.

 

[Jr Mouse]



Shouldn't he look identical to the opening of Ep IV?

Compared to the refinements made in ESP and ROTJ, Vader's costume in ANH was a little rough. So I don't really blame them for wanting to tweak it a little to look better on screen. Again, non of it was distracting to me. It looked close enough to the ANH version that non of the changes bothered me or threw me off. He looked like Vader and I appreciated they brought back the reddish tent in his eyes.

If we really want to get technical about it all, one could easily call out the voice work for lacking that slight hurriedness to his speech patterns that went away in the following two films as James Earl Jones perfected his take on the villain.

 

[otc]

FWIW, I didn't actually notice any problem with the costume.

I mean...he looked like vader.

 

[Jr Mouse]



FWIW, I didn't actually notice any problem with the costume.

I mean...he looked like vader.

One other thing I appreciated:

Spoiler: Warning: Spoiler!

At the end of the film Vader fought like he should. Slow, deliberate strikes. His movements had weight to them and power. Non of that kinetic super hero nonsense from the prequels.

 

[venividivicibj]

This just in-Vadar, not allowed to change clothes.

 

[Van Veen]



I agree with a lot of this, especially the video game thing. Here are some comments:

Spoiler: Warning: Actual spoilers

> Everything is well designed, with a nicely lived-in feel. Appropriately much closer to the look of the OT than to the plasticky feel of the prequels.

This I absolutely loved. They nailed the look and feel across the board.

Couldn't help but smile about how the hairstyles of the rebel and imperial officers are straight out of the late 70s. The main characters had more modern styling, of course, so we can relate to them more.

> Also near the end, it gets very computer gamey with 'go plug in this cable over there, then go to turn on this switch at that console, then pick up the thingy and plug it in, go to another console to flip another switch and finally back to push a button'.

This has been a HUGE problem of mine with recent sci-fi action movies. Here, we have a humanized AI "NPC" with plot-convenient limitations telling the "player" what tasks they need to accomplish. K-2SO = Cortana.

> CGI Tarkin looks plasticky, Leia looked good.

He looked straight out of a Pixar movie.

> I missed the opening crawl and the Star Wars music.

Michael Giacchino did a great job with the score, I thought. He used the original leitmotifs where appropriate. The opening theme is most strongly associated with Luke, and the movie has nothing to do with Luke.

> This must be the SW movie where The Force is mentioned most often, yet the one with the least. Missed that too.

In Ep.IV, all the Jedi are thought to be dead, and there is explicit doubt that the Force exists. (Han calls it "simple tricks and nonsense.") It wouldn't make sense to introduce a strong Force user in this movie. They got it in this movie in a way that didn't betray the plot of episode IV.

> The characters didn't really made me invest in them, so when everybody dies in the end, I found I didn't really care.

Agreed, generally. Like I said, I thought the movie seemed more about big action scenes than plot/character. However I also liked that everyone died, so we don't get some random sequel that takes place between Episodes 4 and 5 where Diego and Felicity pop up again for another one-off task.