Deleted... Double post

The first time I saw it I loved it! For me it was a film written for those of us who are of an age that saw A New Hope in the cinema back in 1977 & were sorely disappointed by the prequels! It's fairly dark & gritty & I like that

After watching it numerous times... I love it even more! For me (and this is just my humble opinion) its on a par with The Empire Strikes Back!!

Right, I'll just go hide under a table

For me? Empire strikes back is still better. A New Hope too. Probably. It might have Return of the Jedi beat

Needless to say, I love it in ways that would require expletives to convey.

It's not a perfect movie by any means, the first act is particularly weak, but to me, the ending was magnificently gut wrenching. The point I realized this film truly had me on board was probably when I realized that there was no way in gosh darned heck Jyn and Cassian would survive unless some kind of deus ex machina that would ruin the entire movie was introduced... and part of me still wanted that to happen. Go on, ruin the entire ending and theme of heroic sacrifice because these crazy kids have earned a happy ending! But of course that doesn't happen, and the film is better for it. It would be pointless to kill the heroes off if the audience wasn't hoping for them to make it.

Other points in it's favor: Amazing cast performance, Felicity Jones and Diego Luna in particular. Jones pulls it off so well I really didn't notice that her character was fairly blandly (re)written until I re-watched the movie. Less capable acting/directing regarding Jyn Erso could have tanked the movie, but I think they pulled it off brilliantly.
Also, the movie is fricking gorgeous. It's recognizably OT-era, but brought to screen with technologies that, admittedly, must have been exactly what Lucas dreamed of. It's almost to the point that it makes me want to have them go back and update the special editions (but enough is really enough).

Would I love to see what ended up on Gareth Edwards cutting room floor? Of course! Does the movie _need_ a restored director's cut or would it even benefit from it? Probably not. It's a fine film, and a breath of fresh air after Jayjay's (admittedly well-polished) re-tread.

And Jyn Erso is awesome, despite everything.

After four watches, I liked the movie a lot! It is certainly one of my favorite Star Wars movies! My only complaint is that it gives me hope that Disney can actually make a good Star Wars movie.

15 hours ago, Felswrath said:

After four watches, I liked the movie a lot! It is certainly one of my favorite Star Wars movies! My only complaint is that it gives me hope that Disney can actually make a good Star Wars movie.

I'm excited as all get-out for The Last Jedi - with Jay Jay Abrams' hands out of that one, I'm expecting something great. I heard he's coming back for IX, though, so I'm a little bummed about that.

2 hours ago, Degenerate Mind said:

I'm excited as all get-out for The Last Jedi - with Jay Jay Abrams' hands out of that one, I'm expecting something great. I heard he's coming back for IX, though, so I'm a little bummed about that.

Please, it's not JJ Abrahms, it's Darth Plagerous!

I thought it was passable. I waited until it was on iTunes before I bothered, which allowed me to read the book first. The book fleshes out a lot of things, so I expect the movie made a lot more sense to me than to those who didn't read it.

Honestly, the movies don't even rank anymore. For me it's:

1. TCW (a bit stiff for Season 1, but by Season 5/6 completely blows away any of the movies on all levels, from dialogue and drama to world-building)
2. Rebels
3. E5
4. E3, tied with the dramatic half of E6
5. E7 (as a general movie)
6. E4
7. E1
8. Rogue One
9. E7 (as a sequel in the SW universe)
10. E2, tied with the loopy cutesy half of E6 that I have to fast forward through

Rogue One was, by far, my favorite of the star wars movies. I grew up with the original trilogy as a little kid (so they were awesome, but now i find them to be quasi unwatchable) and then the prequels as a young adult (which, if you eliminate Jar Jar, could have been decent) and now we have the steaming pile of rehashed original trilogy (only everything is BIGGER!!! so it must be better). Rogue One was great because it told a story about some regular men and women that didn't have plot armor. It was a war movie that happened to be set in the star wars universe. It showed the Rebellion to be flawed and not squeaky clean, and it brought a "regular non-chosen one people can be heroes too" vibe to star wars.

Remove saw gerrara and your good with me

Hiding now

2 hours ago, Matt Skywalker said:

Remove saw gerrara and your good with me

Hiding now

I agree he was a weak narrative link. The actor was wonderful and the character had potential, but he served more as a mcguffin with an aborted arc. They could have done so much more to make Saw a powerful addition to the story.

I read Guardians of the Whills today. Well worth the read. I often have mild enjoyment from EU / Legends / Whatever books. More than a few have rated as "misses" for me, too, which is why I don't usually reference them when I run games. But, this one was very well written, fleshed out Chirrut and Baze beautifully, and added a great deal in terms of the notion of various faiths devoted to the Force. I also like how they handled Chirrut's force sensitivity. He would basically have sense with maybe one upgrade. It also used Saw Garerra as an intelligent and disturbing moral counterpoint to the heroes. I thought it served as great inspiration for an AoR or FaD game.

I liked it.

I had serious problems with TFA mostly due to the script and Abrams bloody Mystery Box Fixation!?

It gave me a Guns of Navarone vibe as for the ending I couldn't help feel it wasn't necessary to show all the deaths onscreen in my head canon Jyn & Cassian passed out in the elevator as it headed back to the ground level.

Tarkin's attack set off its defence protocols sending the lift into the bowels of the base located deep underground where they were safe from the resulting blast wave.

Remember that's a Secure Imperial Facility and Tarkin only shot the transmitter atop of it if he wanted to he could have obliterated but he deliberately made sure the Facility specifically it's Archive would survive the attack.

So there's nothing stopping them making a sequel where we learn Chirrut was seriously wounded and Base knocked out by that grenade as the Imperials wanted prisoners to question over the attack.

Waking up in that lift Jyn & Cassian are rescued by a reactivated KS-20 with his aid they rescue at least Base & Chirrut and escape offworld in an Imperial Shuttle before the Empire can react since Lord Vader is chasing the Tantive IV, Tarkin is busy playing with his new toy in another system so whoever is cleaning up their mess certainly wouldn't expect an escape under their noses now would they??

Anyway what's wrong with being optimistic??

1 hour ago, copperbell said:

It gave me a Guns of Navarone vibe as for the ending I couldn't help feel it wasn't necessary to show all the deaths onscreen in my head canon Jyn & Cassian passed out in the elevator as it headed back to the ground level.

If we hadn't seen their deaths, we'd get endless speculation about if and how they survived, and a couple years on they'd be back in action in some godsdamned tie-in novel or whatever, which would completely negate the storytelling value of their sacrifice. Being definite and specific about how they all died is a virtue.

6 hours ago, copperbell said:

.... and Tarkin only shot the transmitter atop of it ....

With a laser that hit with more destructive force and penetrating power than multiple large-scale nuclear warheads.

But, hey, I'm all for desperate hand-waves. More power to you!

I enjoyed it. I'm not entirely sure the story needed to be told, as others have noted, but it was an interesting, different kind of Star Wars .

I liked how it added a couple of wrinkles to the Rebel Alliance by way of Cassian's pragmatism.

I find the Story Group's after-the-fact explanation regarding Chirrut insulting to my intelligence as a viewer, to be frank. What on earth would be wrong with having another Force-sensitive in the galaxy when you've already got Kanan (who isn't so bad) and Ezra (an entirely unappealing character)? In fact, they've got an entire show PREDICATED upon the existence of Force users and sensitives who are neither Luke, Obi-wan, nor Yoda. It doesn't make sense to me.

45 minutes ago, Mindless Philosopher said:

I find the Story Group's after-the-fact explanation regarding Chirrut insulting to my intelligence as a viewer, to be frank. What on earth would be wrong with having another Force-sensitive in the galaxy when you've already got Kanan (who isn't so bad) and Ezra (an entirely unappealing character)? In fact, they've got an entire show PREDICATED upon the existence of Force users and sensitives who are neither Luke, Obi-wan, nor Yoda. It doesn't make sense to me.

I have only the vaguest foundation for it, but my impression is that they changed his nature or degree of Force ability during editing or in a late rewrite. The whole movie has a cobbled together feel.

3 minutes ago, Stan Fresh said:

I have only the vaguest foundation for it, but my impression is that they changed his nature or degree of Force ability during editing or in a late rewrite. The whole movie has a cobbled together feel.

Well, it did change directors partway through.

On 10/7/2017 at 10:11 PM, Vondy said:

I read Guardians of the Whills today. Well worth the read. I often have mild enjoyment from EU / Legends / Whatever books. More than a few have rated as "misses" for me, too, which is why I don't usually reference them when I run games. But, this one was very well written, fleshed out Chirrut and Baze beautifully, and added a great deal in terms of the notion of various faiths devoted to the Force. I also like how they handled Chirrut's force sensitivity. He would basically have sense with maybe one upgrade. It also used Saw Garerra as an intelligent and disturbing moral counterpoint to the heroes. I thought it served as great inspiration for an AoR or FaD game.

Now if they had only done some of that in the movie I might've liked it more

I found it a distinctively "by the numbers" star wars movie that played out much like a catalogue of things to do rather then a coherent movie. I found it enjoyable enough, but it had way too many speeches, a lot of relatively pointless location jumps and a relatively uninteresting cast that was just slapped together to try and emulate a new hope, again.

I felt that this group of people might have been much better being "in a squad"to begin with. That way we would have felt a greater sense of unity from the cast, as it was the Monk and the heavy were just kinda there, Jyn was kinda there as the "Not part of this group but I have no choice but I'm going to U-turn into a speech giving heroine". Cassian and K2-SO were really the only interesting members of that cast, largely because second to Jyn they had the most screen time and were actually part of a unit to begin with, so having them together to begin with would have saved this final fantasy "I found a new party member" vibe I had throughout.

and cut the movie down into two steps; find Jyn's father (and actually tying in Saw to that rescue attempt as apposed to making him another unrelated segment.)

In short, i was promised a war movie, I got a very undefined movie that was neither firefly here nor a war movie; that probably only got recognised as an incredible movie for fixing a plot hole that never existed (who would have thought? A shot that only a space wizard could hit would hit the only weak point of this station? NO, THE HEAD SCIENTIST RUINED THE PROJECT SO THAT HE RIGGED IT SO SOMEONE ELSE COULD SOMEHOW MAKE THE ONE IN A BILLION SHOT WHAT CUNNING PLOT) made a handful of cool cameos from the OT villians (who largely were background characters and for most part fairly unrelated to what was actually going on.) and killed off it's cast with all the interest of a child with a crayon set. Thank goodness most of the cast was kinda just there! Background characters, assemble! Just in short rogue 1 was a cobbled together mess only saved by the big name branding it was attached to, with as much focus as I deberlately put into this paragraph to explain how much I loved ice cream smoothies. GRENADE!

I mean I enjoyed it enough. I just don't think Rogue 1 was actually a good movie.

So I seem to see more people here saying they didn't like than I thought I would. I personally loved it! I think it was much better the FA (most of my friends agree with me) (basically a new hope but newer?) a very different movie from all the rest (all the others so far focus on the Jedi, which gets a little tiring for me) which just makes it stand out all the more. I actually really like the music, I know it's no John Williams but still good. I won't go into plot and characters, but overall five out of five for me, currently my favorite SW movie, we will see if TLJ changes that though!

This is a great analysis of why Rogue One kind of blows, it's all about character (or lack thereof):

On 10/8/2017 at 5:36 AM, copperbell said:

I liked it.

I had serious problems with TFA mostly due to the script and Abrams bloody Mystery Box Fixation!?

It gave me a Guns of Navarone vibe as for the ending I couldn't help feel it wasn't necessary to show all the deaths onscreen in my head canon Jyn & Cassian passed out in the elevator as it headed back to the ground level.

Tarkin's attack set off its defence protocols sending the lift into the bowels of the base located deep underground where they were safe from the resulting blast wave.

Remember that's a Secure Imperial Facility and Tarkin only shot the transmitter atop of it if he wanted to he could have obliterated but he deliberately made sure the Facility specifically it's Archive would survive the attack.

So there's nothing stopping them making a sequel where we learn Chirrut was seriously wounded and Base knocked out by that grenade as the Imperials wanted prisoners to question over the attack.

Waking up in that lift Jyn & Cassian are rescued by a reactivated KS-20 with his aid they rescue at least Base & Chirrut and escape offworld in an Imperial Shuttle before the Empire can react since Lord Vader is chasing the Tantive IV, Tarkin is busy playing with his new toy in another system so whoever is cleaning up their mess certainly wouldn't expect an escape under their noses now would they??

Anyway what's wrong with being optimistic??

Is it sad that this is more realistic than Kylo, Hux and Phasma escaping Starkiller Base??

On 8.12.2017 at 4:32 PM, whafrog said:

This is a great analysis of why Rogue One kind of blows, it's all about character (or lack thereof):

Nerdwriter has a piece about Passable Movies which applies as well imho. Furthermore, I think for me, they screwed up the editing. There had been a re-cut of the Battle of Scarif with just the space battle in one go, about 8 minutes and it actually blows the battle of endor away which has roughly the same screen time, but Return of the Jedi is much better in bringing the ground and space action into a similar timing frame. If you watch those 8 minutes of space battle, you see that this goes basically in one go and seems to take a lot less time than the action on the ground.

Though lessons from the screenplay makes a good point about why we fall asleep in the cinema.

I liked it a lot and I think it was a story that needed to be told in a movie to avoid the legends mess where there were around half a dozen different explanations of how the rebels got the plans.

Plus I always wanted to see the rebel victory mentioned in the ANH opening scrawl and the battle at Scarif was far closer to my personal vision of that battle then the legends versions

Since we're posting videos of Rogue One reviews, this is one I enjoyed.