Rogue One discussion .... SPOILERS
What did you think?,.
cgi tArkin and Leia, gold leader, etc
Funnmovie. No opening scrawl....
Rogue One discussion .... SPOILERS
Loved it.
didnt miss the crawl. I thought the use of CGI to put tarkin and Leia in was excellent and the voices nailed.
Liked seeing Garvin Dreis return as well.
I thought it was very brave to do a film in which essentially everyone dies.
Nice touches all over the place like having the 'blue squadron' lead the attack.. it was supposed to be blue squadron in EPIV but the blue/green screen special effects at the time made it problematic so they made it red.
I quite liked the imperial 'turtle' shuttles (i calll em turtles because the four wings remind me of a tutrtles flippers.)
All in all 9 out of 10 (becasue nothing should ever really get a 10)
Loved seeing Red Leader and Gold leader.
Loved seeing the bombing runs by the Y-Wings.
Unsure why the Tantive IV was stowed in the General's star cruiser...not sure what type that was, looked mildly separatist refit?
Blue Squadron rocked.
Biggs was there also. Only for a brief second. I loved it. CGI Tarkin caught me off guard. When I seen him from behind I was like that's great, but a full performance was unexpected and totally awesome.
I missed the scroll and Flying Star Wars.
Vader's castle was an awesome nod to Splinter of the minds eye.
K2SO was another favorite.
Thought it was great that like a week later Luke was red 5. Oh hey a position just came available.
Thought I spotted the VCX100 on Yavin. Far left of the screen. Will look for it at the second showing.
Staying as spoiler free as possible helped.
Ow........ I hurt
Rogue Two would've been nice.
Biggs was there also. Only for a brief second. I loved it. CGI Tarkin caught me off guard. When I seen him from behind I was like that's great, but a full performance was unexpected and totally awesome.
I missed the scroll and Flying Star Wars.
Vader's castle was an awesome nod to Splinter of the minds eye.
K2SO was another favorite.
Thought it was great that like a week later Luke was red 5. Oh hey a position just came available.
Thought I spotted the VCX100 on Yavin. Far left of the screen. Will look for it at the second showing.
Staying as spoiler free as possible helped.
There was a VCX on Yavin, I just saw the cockpit, also one in the battle above Scarif.
Biggs was there also. Only for a brief second. I loved it. CGI Tarkin caught me off guard. When I seen him from behind I was like that's great, but a full performance was unexpected and totally awesome.
I missed the scroll and Flying Star Wars.
Vader's castle was an awesome nod to Splinter of the minds eye.
K2SO was another favorite.
Thought it was great that like a week later Luke was red 5. Oh hey a position just came available.
Thought I spotted the VCX100 on Yavin. Far left of the screen. Will look for it at the second showing.
Staying as spoiler free as possible helped.
Was Biggs in the battle? I also seem to think I heard "Wedge" during the battle, but not sure.
I thought the CG faces were lackluster.
I felt that Garven and Dutch were too forced. I mean, if you're already doing CG Tarkin and Leia, why not do that for Garven and Dutch so they could say something new? Having them use essentially the same lines was a turn-off for me.
It was kind of funny seeing a non-holo dejarik table (with dice!), but if I weren't a table-top gamer, I'd feel like that, too, was old after we already had that cameo in TFA.
K2S0 was hillarious.
Darth Vader was pure awesomeness.
Also thought I saw Biggs in a ship.
The Force is with me. I am one with The Force.
First of all: loved it. Especially Vader carving up rebels like Thanksgiving turkeys.
One small detail: Did I hear "General Syndulla, please report to ..." over the speakers at Yavin 4? That's awesome.
First of all: loved it. Especially Vader carving up rebels like Thanksgiving turkeys.
One small detail: Did I hear "General Syndulla, please report to ..." over the speakers at Yavin 4? That's awesome.
You did - I was watching it with subtitles and read them. Combined with the VCX at the space battle - and it seems like a logical conclusion that Hera was the General, not Cham, and took the ship to Scarif with the rest of the fleet.
Vader's castle is basically straight of Ralph McQuarrie's concept art, loved that.
Tarkin, and Leia especially, were a bit too far in the uncanny valley for me, but still loved them (what does it do for the novel Tarkin though? Started Catalyst).
This explains why there was no fleet to defend Yavin IV.
Dr Evazhan got out just in time.
Loved it, loved it, loved it.
So did my wife, though she was very sad to see Jyn go, she really liked her.
A non-Force centered Star Wars is just what the franchise needed! There's more than Jedi in the universe and the battle is much larger.
BTW, there were more Rebels easter eggs:
http://nerdist.com/star-wars-rebels-easter-eggs-in-rogue-one/
"May the force of the others be with you."
Including that was awesome.
This is covered in the book The Secret History of Star Wars , in an analysis of the evolution of the various draft scripts leading to the final one that we all know today.
The relevant section in chapter 2, "The Star Wars" is titled "The Force of Others" and goes on to say:
It is interesting to note that the Force is not existent in this draft—the phrase “may the force of others be with you” is used, but it is merely a generic “good luck” phrase, and is used casually by various people in the script, as are expressions such as “thank god.” Most agree that it is a playoff of the Christian phrase “May God be with you,” intended as a sort of ambiguous science fiction version of a theistic colloquialism. When Lucas began writing the second draft he would transform the samurai-inspired Jedi-Bendu of the rough draft into characters based on E.E. Smith's Lensmen, making them super-powered warriors. In determining the source of their power, Lucas took his “force of others” reference and turned it into a supernatural power, coupled with a crystal called the Kiber crystal which acts in a similar manner to the Lensmen’s lenses, increasing one’s natural abilities.
Loved the movie. Vader was totally awesome.
And I really liked K2 or "snark-threepio" as I call him.
Yep, the Vader scene was incredible. I loved the desperation of the Rebels trying to get the plans through. R1 helps put Ep IV into context too. The Rebels really are desperate. They lost a majority of their fleet, their ground forces, their best troops, etc. The assault on the 1st Death Star was a last ditch effort and had it of failed .. they're done. R1 really drives that home.
Apparently it was an actress playing Leia .. looked a bit CG to me still. Cushing was incredible .. not quite perfect .. but incredible. It is getting irritating hearing people complain about it. They nailed his voice, mannerisms, movement, expressions, etc. We're not going to need acting folk soon.
K2 showed a bit too much 'human' for me. Using sarcasm, comedic intonation and timing and saying goodbye when about to be shot was a little too much. The blind dead shots with the blaster dropping stormies was a bit fantastic.
The fight scene at the end was incredible!
Was Ip Man a former Jedi? I thought maybe he was a fella who never completed his training due to his eye sight or something. The ability to KO an armoured stormy with a single hit from his stick borders in the realm of disbelief. Yes, I know, Ewoks .. but they repeatedly pounded the stormies.
Loved that we have strayed from the Skywalker family and friends. I can't help to see R1 as Ep 3.5 as it flows seamlessly into Ep 4.
I kinda missed the opening crawl and that beautiful moment where Johnny Williams score blasts in with a giant STAR WARS on the screen. Felt a little hollow without it.
Great to see female leads. Nay, great to see competent, strong, believable female leads. Most movies (I'm looking at you Resident Evil, Underworld, Kill Bill, etc) have to give the ladies some mystical BS kung fu skills to be dominant. Jyn Urso and Rey on the other hand .. they're just awesome!
Mon Mothma .. what a match! That actress must be a clone!
A few little tie ins to ANH (C3P0, R2D2, Evizan and Ponda Baba, etc.) were just a enough and not overdone. The nods to various elements of the original book/art was also great. Imperial base, Blue squadron, etc.
I loved it. I've seen it twice and I'll grab the Blu-Ray.
Cushing was incredible .. not quite perfect .. but incredible. It is getting irritating hearing people complain about it. They nailed his voice, mannerisms, movement, expressions, etc.
Going by Wikipedia, the input of Cushing's family contributed to this:
Great to see female leads. Nay, great to see competent, strong, believable female leads. Most movies (I'm looking at you Resident Evil, Underworld, Kill Bill, etc) have to give the ladies some mystical BS kung fu skills to be dominant. Jyn Urso and Rey on the other hand .. they're just awesome!
You're doing Leia a disservice.
Mon Mothma was planned to be in the prequels but got cut, they asked her back for this.
You're doing Leia a disservice.
I think most people who didn't see Star Wars in the theater in '78 just can't appreciate how ground breaking Leia was as a character.
The idea that the damsel in distress could be every bit as competent and capable as the hero was fairly groundbreaking, the fact that she had to take charge and save the heroes as well as the sarcasm was also unheard of in that era.
That said I did love Jyn and though that Felicity Jones did a great job in the movie.
Initial thoughts: Awesome movie. I loved it. I even watched it twice in a 12 hour span, I couldn't even tell that Tarkin was CGI the first time around because I saw it in 3D (which I do not recommend). K2, Krenic, Baze and Chirrut were my favorite characters in that order. My girlfriend and I also really loved the diversity of the cast, rather than just white and black and American and British characters, we also saw Chinese, Middle Eastern, Latin American and Scottish and Irish (Rebels on Scarif) characters with their accents in full. The second half of the movie was absolutely spectacular! The fighting, the duress of getting the plans, the space battle, Vader, I loved it all!
However, after seeing it a second time, there are plenty of criticisms I have for it:
-The first half of the movie felt rushed and didn't give us time to flesh out details. I feel like Forrest Whitaker was cut short as Saw Guerrera, he deserved more dialogue in order to understand the severity of his presence rather than relying on the ambush scene to reveal/add to his character. Also, stuffing Krenic's arc, Jyn's origins and the Rebel operations in the first half, I kinda wish there was more time spent on answering more how, why, and when questions to fully illustrate the plot rather than jump-here-jump-there, Death Star! Even if there was a small dialogue between Chirrut, Baze and Bodhi, it would've given them a little more face than the monk, the gunner and the pilot. Even Jyn and Kassian's relationship felt like a flipped switch rather than a naturally developed trust required for a suicide mission. A lot of the characters end up feeling flat and hard to care for when they die in the end.
-This is gonna be a bad one: I felt like the trailers totally mislead me. I know trailers really shouldn't have an influence to the final product, but there were a lot of things we missed out on that seems like they tried selling to us. For example, their is a dialogue in the trailer of Jyn getting scolded by the Alliance, and her saying "I rebel." I hated that line, but it made Jyn seem like more of an extremist Rebel working against the bureaucracy of a sluggish rebellion. I found it odd that she went from feeling very indifferent towards the Rebellion and apathetic to the Empire in the first half, but suddenly becomes inspired and motivated to rebel at the start of the second half before they leave Yavin. Sure, her dad dies and she sees a city being blown up, but she doesn't seem like a very convincing character. In fact, I think she should've been pissed at the Rebels for killing her father. Also, there were some scenes like the burning farmhouse, or Krenic wading through the waters of Scarif with bodies of Stormtroopers and Rebels floating around him that seem to have been cut from the film as well.
-Easter eggs. It was weird seeing the dudes from the Mos Eisley bar, but then it got tiresome with the mentioning of "General Syndulla" and seeing R2 and 3PO in the hangar. I thought the Stormtroopers mentioning the outdated T-15 was hilarious. But other than that, all the throwbacks to everything was just a mumble and groan to me. It was almost as bad as JJ forcing all the Beastie Boys easter eggs into TFA. You can give us Blue Squadron and mention of the Rebels franchise, but you can't mention Porkins going in for a Y-Wing bombing run for **** sake?
I really did enjoy the movie, despite my deluge of criticism above. It's just that I wanted more, and I usually don't because I like mysticism and ambiguity in stories that utilize it to its advantage as a literary device (like how we know nothing about Rey and Finn from the movies). But I think when the plot to the movie being made has been spoiled 40 years ago, it would be okay to go into more detail, more screen time and more character development than just "funny blind Force-monk beats Stormtroopers" or "old extremist dude no want to talk to us and that's the only reason why Jyn is in this movie." I would've liked another hour of screen time, if not a two-part film, but that's just me.
Still an 8/10 for me though!