Finally saw the movie on the 28th. Avoiding spoilers before that was like making the approach at Eadu. Read through all 49 pages of this thread, so I'll try not to add anything that hasn't been discussed ad nauseam.
First off, loved the movie. The characters were a lot more realistic than anything the prequels had. And I'm not just talking about the main characters, even the unnamed characters. Being a military man for 12 years, it was interesting seeing the extras running over to each other when one was hit or calling out in grief when another died. One thing that is driven into your head while in training is that you can't drop everything during a firefight because your buddy is wounded. You then have two weapons out of the fight instead of one. But that buddy may well be as close to you as a brother or sister. The base instinct to help them or at least grieve their death can be overwhelming. Seeing that in the Rebel fighters really brought home how close they were to each other, and how this was probably the first large scale battle that they've had with the Empire (going by what the council says). Darth Vader's scene hit me not just because it finally showed Vader unleashed, but because of the blind panic it caused with the Rebels. Yeah, the guy could have just handed the plans through the door and said 'Go now, I shall gladly give my life for the Rebellion!', but that's not how humans work. Most likely his pants were sopping wet and the guy trying to open the door on the other side was tunnel visioned into saving people from the slaughter instead of getting the plans off the ship until it was nearly too late. It was a very human touch.
One of the things I absolutely loved about the film was how it developed the characters of Vader, Tarkin, and the Empire as a whole. There's been a lot of writing about Vader making him out to be always on the verge of suicide, crying in his meditation sphere, mourning C3PO being shot to pieces on Bespin, and generally ruining the Vader that existed when the OT were the only films in existence. This is of course due to Angsty Annie of the prequels, but in my view R1 has dispelled a lot of this. First off, Vader in this movie is a sadist, as he is throughout the OT. His castle overlooks the ledge where he was maimed on the planet where he believes he killed his wife and child. And far from being haunted by this place, he revels in it. He allows Krennic to grovel before showing him that he and the Emperor care nothing about their puppets or their aspirations and taunts him as Krennic is being choked. He's absolutely thriving at the sight of his life's greatest trauma. He's mastered it and broken all the chains that controlled him LIKE A SITH SHOULD. If Vader really had these whiny piny doubts for the past 2 decades, I have no doubt that Palpatine would have cast him out as an apprentice as Vader would have been an insult to the Sith. It also makes Luke's eventual redemption of Vader that much more of a victory.
Tarkin was more of an answer to a personal peeve of mine from the novel Lost Stars. The guy that utilizes the superlaser not just once but THREE TIMES more because it suited his mood than any actual military gains is not going to be friendly ol' Uncle Tarky to a young Ciena Ree (hate to say it, totally loathe her character). When he and his entourage caught Ciena and Thane fighting the bullies in a restricted area and Ciena said whereabouts of 'Gawsh gowly Mistah Imperial Man I just WUV the Empiah', the Tarkin of this movie and ANH would have responded with 'Then you are going to love the beating you're about to receive. Stormtroopers, deal with these brats. Pilot, get me off of this rock'. Tarkin only cares about what's good for Tarkin and perhaps his immediate family. He does not work or play well with others. And this seems to be the overriding philosophy of the Empire. Let somebody do the hard and risky work and just slip a knife into their backs once the task is complete and take the glory for yourself. I've witnessed this toxicity in leadership firsthand in some of my less fortunate postings and it titrates down to the lowest levels from which it originates. In the Empire's case, it originated with the Emperor himself. I therefore found myself totally unsurprised when the leadership was either loathe to make decisions (start of the Scarif attack) or putting so much focus on playing king of the hill that the hill winds up being blown up by a lucky torpedo strike.
One thing I didn't like about the film was the tendency to blur out the background while the main characters were doing their thing. I actually had to ask my wife if she was seeing it as well to make sure my retinas weren't on the verge of detaching. Honestly, I thought we had purchased tickets to a 3D viewing and the theater had cheaped out on the glasses. We were sitting somewhat close to the screen (larger than a standard theater screen but not quite IMAX) which exasperated the issue. Some of the easter eggs were nice, but stuff like chubby cheeks Red 5 and the droids were shoehorned in and detracted from the story (guess they have to keep the droids in their 100% appearance streak). Would have liked to have seen the two garrison Star Destroyers making more of an effort to fight, but the Devastator more than slaked the thirst brought on by the space battle and all of Star Wars Rebels (I still maintain that ISD Is post Disney did not have weapons installed unless it was Vader's personal ship). Also seemed to be a massive amount of pausing to strike a pose while throwing hand grenades. This is generally not a good idea as the movie shows.
Past the good and the bad, I'd like to talk about some specific plot points that have been discussed in this thread.
Why didn't Galen tell the Rebels how exactly to destroy the Death Star or include the plans with his message?
Galen could have just said shoot the exhaust port, but how do you tell somebody who's never seen a moon sized battlestation exactly where that 2 meter target is? 'Oh yeah, it's in the trench, go about 5-6 km past the shooty part then start looking for it'. The Rebel Base would have been glowing dust without the actual plans. So where were the plans? Not on Eadu it seems. They were kept as a physical copy on Scarif. Imperial secrecy about the project being what it was, it is unlikely that they would have just allowed him to bring his USB drive in and walk out of the vault with a copy. So rather than give the Rebels information that would be useless to them and a lifesaver for the Empire should his message be intercepted, he gave the source of the weakness and the means to find how it was accessed. An exhaust port can be shielded easily enough, totally rebuilding the reactor would have taken years.
CGI folks
I've heard talk about how the characters should have been perfect or not been used at all. For those of you who believe that only exact facsimiles of characters should be used, here is my response.
OMG HOW IS THAT EVEN THE EMPEROR IT LOOKS LIKE AN OLD WOMAN WITH MONKEY EYES!
Seriously, would actors mimicking Cushing or Fisher have looked more accurate than the CGI renderings for such closeup scenes? No they wouldn't have. So I guess Tarkin should have just been totally absent from the movie and popped onto the Death Star in charge with no real explanation in ANH. Like people have said, if you can notice it then it's bad right?
Lack of Porkins
Porkins and Ponda Baba were having an adventure in a haunted house while the attack was going on. The planet they were on was very close to Tatooine so while Ponda was able to reunite with Doc Two Face, Porkins had a much longer trip back to Yavin. First person to get this reference gets a free Death Stick.
The Tantive IV
So we know that the Tantive left Yavin after Admiral Fatsquid took the Rebel's primary grouping of capital ships on a suicide run. While many have said that they may have joined the fight from the outset, Captain Antilles was under orders from Bail Organa himself to go pick up Obi Wan from his vacation on Tatooine. Not likely that the guy who got his throat crushed rather than give up the Princess would ferry her into a fight without good reason. Consider this, Yavin Base, thanks to their subscription to Verizon, were easily getting messages from the U-Wing and even knew when it had crashed. Is it that much of a leap of imagination to imagine that the Rebel Fleet sent out a 'HALP' or two once the Devastator started devastating? We're pretty much following Vader's progression through the disabled ship as he shows us how The Force Unleashed should have been. Considering he's not with the retinue of stormtroopers that likely made the trip in the TIE and Lambda shuttles, his arrival in that corridor probably wasn't straight out of the docking port. Could the Tantive, en route to a nearby system, not have responded to the distressed Rebel fleet and beat a hasty path to the Mon Cala hangar? It pretty well literally broke out of there afterwards and the Devastator didn't promptly vaporize it so it may have had the element of surprise on both runs. If ol' Captain Speirs could hoof it through German lines twice IRL, I'm pretty sure plot armor would protect the Tantive during a similar circumstance.
As for Leia's interaction with Vader after her capture. Note that this was after she had given the plans to R2. She was pulling whatever she could out of her white robes to stall the search for the plans. Vader for his part directly accused her of being a part of the plot and promptly called BS on her story after one sentence.
Standing out in the rain
I've had numerous formations out in rain, sleet and snow because the CO or 1SG wanted to get the day going and another battery or company was already hogging the only place inside that was large enough to hold such a gathering. If the boss tells you to stand in the rain, you stand in the rain. It's not a lack of common sense, it's obeying an order. It also makes disposing of the engineers corpses a lot easier as you just had to roll them off the edge instead of carrying them through who knows how many corridors and doors. That's Krennic level efficiency for you.
Jyn didn't finish off Krennic
Luke and Han didn't exactly track down Vader's crippled ship to finish him off either. To the movie's credit, they didn't pull the old 'leave the villain alive and he shoots you in the back' bit.
Bor Gullet
Not going to lie, Seti Eels would have been a better choice. They love sand.
Finally coming out of the movie there were two things that I wish had been slightly tweaked to make things a wee bit better. First, since killing off of characters wasn't much of an issue, Admiral Radula (see what I did there?) should have had a proper death scene. Not only did he throw in on the mission that would eventually save the Rebellion from destruction and so deserved a proper sendoff, but he was also the one person... squid... guy that was shown to know where the hidden base was located. Killing him made the Princess into a much more valuable prisoner and made her Dantooine gambit actually work as they wouldn't have a second fish to fry in order to get the information. He was in a giant glass bridge and his ship was being torn apart by the Devastator, 5 seconds of him ordering the plans off the ship just as the bridge is breached by enemy fire is all that was needed.
Krennic's death needed something a bit extra as well. He was the one who marveled at the Death Star's destructive power floating over Jedha. The fact that his final moments were spent staring down the figurative barrel of the weapon that he had created, a final reaction, either of admiration or of terror, would have been nice. If you've obsessed over something for years, you should at least be able to muster up a 'Clever girl' before it kills you.
Edited by flyboymb
